When the women in the Sparrow family reach thirteen, they develop a unique ability. In young Stella's case, the gift, which is both a blessing and a curse, is the ability to see a person's probable future. Stella foresees a gruesome murder, and tells her charming, feckless father about it, but it is too late — the murder has already been committed and suspicion falls on him. Her mother Jenny, on the other hand, can read other people's dreams, but so often misinterprets them, to her own cost. Hoffman unlocks the caskets of family life and the secret history of a community in this magical story about young love and old love, about making choices — usually the wrong ones — about foresight and consequences, all suffused with the haunting scent of roses and wisteria, and the hum of bees on a summer evening.

Johnny Maxwell and his friends have to do something when they find Mrs Tachyon, the local bag lady, semi-conscious in an alley... as long as it's not the kiss of life. But there's more to Mrs Tachyon than a squeaky trolley and a bunch of dubious black bags. Somehow she holds the key to different times, different ears — including the Blackbury Blitz in 1941. Suddenly now isn't the safe place Johnny once thought it was as he finds himself caught up more and more with then... SMARTIES PRIZE, SILVER MEDAL WINNERSHORTLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD.

Jack Reacher. The ultimate loner. An elite ex-military cop who left the service years ago, he`s moved from place to...

Querry, a world famous architect, is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference: he no longer finds meaning in art of pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case', a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in work for the lepers his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Then the white community finds out who Querry is...

The Gulag — a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners — was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost. Applebaum intimately re-creates what life was like in the camps and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the twentieth century.

A hilarious collection of the many articles written by Stephen Fry for magazines, newspapers and radio. It includes selected wireless essays of Donald Trefusis, the ageing professor of philology brought to life in Fry's novel The Liar, and the best of Fry's weekly column for the Daily Telegraph.

Cassie is nothing if not organised. A successful journalist, she's ticked almost all the boxes: attentive boyfriend, own flat, good job, great friends... it's all fallen into place. In theory, at least. There's one part of Cassie's life, however, which is anything but organised, and that's her love for the Darling family. As the only child of ambitious parents, Cassie spent her childhood abandoned to the somewhat peremptory care of a series of nannies until one day, peeping over the garden wall, she met her nextdoor neighbours: Fritz and Ben, the boys who became her inseparable childhood friends, Gudrun, their father, and Phoebe Darling, the woman who took Cassie in and transformed her life. But now Phoebe is ill, and when she summons Cassie to ask of her the only favour she's ever requested, Cassie knows she can't say no. But what Phoebe asks is an impossibility: concerned about what will happen to Fritz and Ben after her death, she wants to see them safely married off. Yet entertaining as they were as children, they're terrible as adults. They're utterly charming, ridiculously sexy and completely irresistible, but they're also totally unemployable, hopelessly messy and irretrieva.

A gritty and captivating story of courage and strength against terrible odds, this is the story of Midge, abandoned with her eccentric uncle during the holidays, and her adventures with the Various, a band of earthily realistic fairies. The existence of the Various, who are strange, wild and sometimes even deadly, has been kept secret since the beginning of time, but when their world begins to clash with that of human beings, their livelihood is threatened with extinction. This is a wonderfully imaginative story of love and loyalty, and is the first in a powerful trilogy.

Little does the town of Charles Valley, Georgia, know that beneath the irreproachable facades of its three most famous doyennes lies an explosive decades-old secret that is about to be revealed.

Diary takes the form of a 'coma diary' kept by one Misty Tracy Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in hospital after a suicide attempt. Once she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at art school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid. Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in houses he's refurbished and scrawling vile messages all over the walls. Angry homeowners are suing, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. The canvases are taken away by her mother-in-law and her doctor, who seem to have a plan for Misty — and for all those annoying tourists...

The dilettantes who frequent Lady Tantamount's society parties are determined to push forward the moral frontiers of the age. Marjorie has left her family to live with Walter; Walter is in love with the luscious but cold-hearted Lucy who devours every man in sight; the repulsive Spandrell deflowers young girls for the sake of entertainment and all the while everyone is engaged in dazzling and witty conversation. Often described as a Vanity Fair for the Twenties, Point Counter Point contains wickedly accurate portraits of D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Ottoline Morrell and Huxley himself.

In these early Hemingway stories, which are partly autobiographical, men and women of passion live, fight, love and die in scenes of dramatic intensity. They range from haunting tragedy on the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro, to brutal America with its deceptive calm, and war-ravaged Europe.

All aboard! This Seussian, train-shaped board book with big, bold flaps lets babies and toddlers engage in a rollicking game of Lift the Flap. Sturdy board pages and an accordion binding lets the fun unfold and makes the perfect nursery room decoration.

Imagine you could go anywhere, with anyone and do anything. Where would you live? Where would you sleep? Who would be your friends? What games would you play? Go on... You choose! With the help of Nick Sharratt's wonderfully detailed illustrations, Pippa Goodhart looks at a whole range of scenarios where choosing is made fun!

Somewhere in a place so far up there is no down, a ship is waiting to take the nomes home. And one nome, Masklin, knows that they've got to try and contact this ship. It means going to Florida (wherever that is), then getting to the launch of a communications satellite (whatever that is). A ridiculous plan. Impossible. But Masklin doesn't know this, so he tries to do it anyway. And the first step is to hitch a ride on a new kind of truck, a truck with wings — Concorde. The final title in the nome trilogy.

Among the Russians is a marvellous account of a solitary journey by car from St. Petersburg and the Baltic States south to Georgia and Armenia. A gifted writer and intrepid traveller, Thubron grapples with the complexities of Russian identity and relays his extraordinary journey in characteristically lyrical style. This is an enthralling and revealing account of the habits and idiosyncrasies of a fascinating nation along with a sharp and insightful social commentary of Russian life.

A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in Auschwitz coped (or didn't) with the experience. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest — and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. The sort of person the concentration camp prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Frankl came to believe man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. This outstanding work offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living.