Deception, blackmail, murder, revenge — these are the themes of stories that move from London to the coast of Spain, from Mauritius to Dublin to Dordogne. Whether his subject is assassination by stealth, the cruel confidence trick or the cold shock of coincidence, Frederick Forsyth is never less than compulsive, the detail always authentic.

«This comprehensive biography of the legendary Russian poet draws on a wealth of new material, including memoirs, letters and journals, and interviews with Akhmatova's surviving friends and family. Anna Akhmatova began writing in the years before World War I, a time when, according to Akhmatova herself, «to think of a woman as a poet was absurd». Her genius would rise above categorization, but this biography makes clear how heavily she paid for the political and personal passions that informed it. A fierce poise, forged by Anna's lonely childhood, carried her through her father's resistance to her writing — which prompted her to change her name from Gorenko to Akhmatova, a name taken from a Tartar ancestor — and her flawed but passionate love affairs. We see Akhmatova's work banned from 1925 until 1940, and banned again following World War II, when the Union of Soviet Writers labeled her «half nun, half harlot». We see her steadfast resistance to Stalin during her hopeful but unsuccessful attempt to win her son's release from prison. We see her abiding loyalty to such friends as Mandelstam, Shostakovich and Pasternak as they faced Stalinist oppression. And we see how, through everything, Akhmatova continued to write, her poetry giving voice to the Russian people by whom she was, and still is, deeply loved.»

'You have an enemy, Dr Brennan. It is in your interest to learn who placed that call.' A routine case turns sinister when Dr Temperance Brennan is accused of mishandling the autopsy of a missing heiress. Someone has made an incriminating accusation that she missed or concealed crucial evidence. Before Tempe can get to the one man with information, he turns up dead. The heiress isn't the only elderly female to have appeared on Tempe's gurney recently. Back in Montreal, three more women have died, their bodies brutally discarded. Tempe is convinced there's a link between their deaths and that of the heiress. But what — or who — connects them? Tempe struggles with the clues, but nothing adds up. Has she made grave errors or is some unknown foe sabotaging her? It soon becomes frighteningly clear. It's not simply Tempe's career at risk. Her life is at stake too.

When a rock star, a fashion designer, a software tycoon and a millionaire heiress are all murdered in mysterious circumstances, Detective Lindsay Boxer is quickly assigned to the high-profile investigation. Few people are as interested when a local hero, Bagman Jesus, is found brutally executed. Reporter Cindy Thomas, however, becomes fascinated by his story. He was loved by so many — who would want to kill him? Could the down-and-out Samaritan have been hiding a dark secret? Both Lindsay and Cindy need the help of their fellow members of the Women's Murder Club to crack these complicated cases; but with tensions running high, will the friends be strong enough to stick together, or will the strain tear them apart?

A shocking truth lies within the pages of an ancient library, locked inside a high-security complex deep beneath the Nevada desert. And the US government will stop at nothing to keep it classified. But now a shadowy group of ex-employees want the world to know — however terrifying the disclosure might prove to be. And when a single volume missing from the original collection mysteriously surfaces at a London auction house, they persuade former FBI agent Will Piper to help them obtain it and unlock the ultimate secret of the library, once and for all. Travelling to England, Will discovers the text contains a sonnet that holds a series of clues — clues that reveal the book has had a profound effect on the history of mankind. But all the time he is being watched. And as he gets nearer to the final revelation, he and his young family become a direct target for a deadly group of men whose duty it is to guard the library's secret — whatever it takes. However, the truth is too powerful to keep hidden...

With the ink still wet on his diploma, the twenty-five-year-old Dr Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone doctor in a vast country practice — on the eve of Revolution — is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.

The five, irreverent, satirical and imaginative stories contained in Diaboliad caused an uproar upon the book's first publication in 1925. Full of invention, they display Bulgakov's breathtaking stylistic range, moving at dizzying speed from grotesque satire to science fiction, from the plainest realism to the most madcap fantasy. Diaboliad is a wonderful introduction to literature's most uncategorisable and subversive genius.

John Grisham takes you into the heart of America's Deep South with a collection of stories connected by the life and crimes of Ford County: a place of harsh beauty where broken dreams and final wishes converge. From a hard-drinking, downtrodden divorce lawyer looking for paydirt, to a manipulative death row inmate with one last plea, Ford County features a vivid cast of attorneys, crooks, hustlers, and convicts. Through their stories he paints a unique picture of lives lived and lost in Mississippi. Completely gripping, frequently moving and always entertaining, Ford County brims with the same page-turning quality and heart-stopping drama of his previous bestsellers.

Three and a half years ago former Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton moved to Atlanta hoping to leave her tragic past behind her. Now working as a doctor in Atlanta's Grady Hospital she is starting to piece her life together. But when a severely wounded young woman is brought in to the emergency room, she finds herself drawn back into a world of violence and terror. The woman has been hit by a car but, naked and brutalised, it's clear that she has been the prey of a twisted mind. When Special Agent Will Trent of the Criminal Investigation Team returns to the scene of the accident, he stumbles on a torture chamber buried deep beneath the earth. And this hidden house of horror reveals a ghastly truth — Sara's patient is just the first victim of a sick, sadistic killer. Wrestling the case away from the local police chief, Will and his partner Faith Mitchell find themselves at the centre of a grisly murder hunt. And Sara, Will and Faith — each with their own wounds and their own secrets — are all that stand between a madman and his next crime...

«Once a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him. The figure approaching in the freezing cold is Harriet, the only woman he has ever loved, the woman he abandoned in order to go and study in America forty years earlier. She has sought him out in the hope that he will honour a promise made many years ago. Now in the late stages of a terminal illness, she wants to visit a small lake in northern Sweden, a place Welin's father took him once as a boy. He upholds his pledge and drives her to this beautiful pool hidden deep in the forest. On the journey through the desolate snow-covered landscape, Welin reflects on his impoverished childhood and the woman he later left behind. However, once there Welin discovers that Harriet has left the biggest surprise until last. «Italian Shoes» is as compelling as it is disturbing. Through his anti-hero Welin, Mankell tackles ageing and death with sensitivity and acuity, and as with the critically acclaimed Depths, delivers a moving tour-de-force on the frailty of mankind.»

This book is with an introduction by Will Self. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught.

Since 1922, when Howard Carter discovered Tut's 3,000-year-old tomb, most Egyptologists have presumed that the young king died of disease, or perhaps an accident, such as a chariot fall. But what if his fate was actually much more sinister? Now, in The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard chronicle their epic quest to find out what happened to the boy-king. The result is a true crime tale of intrigue, betrayal, and usurpation that presents a compelling case that King Tut's death was anything but natural.

This is the story of Precious Jones, a sixteen year old illiterate black girl who has never been out of Harlem. She is pregnant by her own father for the second time, and kicked out of school when that pregnancy becomes obvious. Placed in an alternative teaching programme, she is urged to write down her thoughts in a book. This is Precious' diary, in which she honestly records her relationships and her life. Told with tremendous power, vitality and wit; this is an uncompromising and hugely enjoyable novel.

«The inexorable rise of Communism was the most momentous political phenomenon of the first half of the twentieth century. Its demise in Europe and its decline elsewhere have produced the most profound political changes of the last few decades. In this illuminating book, based on forty years of study and a wealth of new sources, Archie Brown provides a comprehensive history as well as an original and compelling analysis of an ideology that has shaped the world. Tracing the story of Communism from its nineteenth-century roots, the book shows how the political movement Karl Marx described as a 'spectre haunting Europe' expanded throughout the world during the twentieth century, and how the principles and precepts of this revolutionary system became a living reality for many millions of ordinary people. Even today, although Communism has been widely discredited in the West, a quarter of humanity — in Asia and Latin America — still lives under its rule. Archie Brown explores the appeal of Communism to its adherents, its resounding successes and its catastrophic failures. In the 1950s and '60s, as tensions mounted within Eastern Europe, internal struggles came to dominate party politics, and fresh challenges from the West exerted increasing pressure on the Communist states to reform. The book considers why so many of these apparently invincible regimes collapsed when they did, often extremely suddenly, changing the lives of so many overnight. A groundbreaking work from an internationally renowned specialist, «The Rise and Fall of Communism» is the definitive study of the most remarkable political and human story of our times.»

Jeremy Paxman's unique portrait of the Victorian world takes readers on an exciting journey through the birth of modern Britain. Using the paintings of the era as a starting point, he tells us stories of urban life, family, faith, industry and empire that helped define the Victorian spirit and imagination. To Paxman, these paintings were the television of their day, and his exploration of Victorian art and society shows how these artists were chronicling a world changing before their eyes. This enthralling history is Paxman at his best — opinionated, informed, witty, surprising — and a glorious reminder of how the Victorians made us who we are today.

At a dinner party given by his parents-in-law, Commissario Brunetti meets Franca Marinello, the wife of a prosperous Venetian businessman. He's charmed — perhaps too charmed, suggests his wife Paola — by her love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance. A few days later, Brunetti is visited by Carabinieri Maggior Filippo Guarino from the nearby city of Marghera. As part of a wider investigation into Mafia takeovers of businesses in the region, Guarino wants information about the owner of a trucking company who was found murdered in his office. He believes the man's death is connected to the illegal transportation of refuse — and more sinister material — in his company's trucks. No stranger to mutual suspicion and competition between rival Italian police departments, Brunetti is nevertheless puzzled by the younger man's paranoid behaviour. Eventually Guarino agrees to email a photo of his suspect, but by the time the photograph arrives, he himself is dead. Was he killed because he got too close? And why is it that Franca Marinello has often been seen in company of the suspect, a vulgar man with Mafia connections and a violent past? Donna Leon's new novel is as subtle, gripping and topical as ever, bringing the sights, sounds and smells of Venice flooding to life.

At the centre: Toby O'Dare — Lucky the Fox — a contract killer of underground fame. A soulless soul, a dead man walking... He's fallen far from grace, and lives under a series of aliases. Lucky takes his orders from someone he calls 'The Right Man', someone whose name and allegiances he doesn't know. When the novel opens, the time is the present. The place is Riverside, California, the Mission Inn. For Lucky, it is his place of solace; he can be there without disguise. This time, he's been sent on an assignment to kill. Into his nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions, comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save lives, rather than destroy them. Lucky, who grew up in a New Orleans, son of an alcoholic mother and a murdered father, long ago dreamt of being a priest, craving rituals, taking refuge in history, books and lute music — but instead came to embody danger and violence — now seizes his chance. He is lifted in (angel) time and carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England, to a dangerous world, where Jews live an uneasy existence, their money coveted and protected by the crown for their function as money-lenders, unjustly despised by the rest. Into this primitive, treacherous setting, where accusations of ritual murder have been made against innocent Jews, and children have been found dead or missing, O'Dare begins a journey of salvation that leads him from the medieval villages of England to the cities of London and Paris as his quest becomes a story of danger and flight, loyalty and betrayal, selflessness and love.

'This is the Gyre — the most hostile environment in the galaxy'. 250,000 years' worth of junk is floating in deep space, home to the shipwrecked Sittuun, the carnivorous Sollogs, and worst of all — the Humans. The Doctor and Amy arrive on this terrifying world in the middle of an all-out frontier war between Sittuun and Humans, and the countdown has already started. There's a comet in the sky, and it's on a collision course with the Gyre...When the Doctor is kidnapped, it's up to Amy and 'galaxy-famous swashbuckler' Dirk Slipstream to save the day. But who is Slipstream, exactly? And what is he really doing here? This is a thrilling, all new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy, as played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit series from BBC Television.

Ethan Blake is seventeen and desperate to escape from his dead-end life. When he sees someone B.A.S.E. jump from the top of his block of flats, it changes the way he sees the world for ever. Soon, Ethan is caught up in the adrenaline-fuelled world of skydiving. He's a natural, so it's no surprise when he's invited to join an elite skydive team, but is he signing up for more than just jumping out of planes? The team's involved in covert military operations — missions that require a special kind of guts, missions so secret even MI5 denies all knowledge.

«Tyrant, blackmailer, racketeer, murderer — his influence reaches every level of American society. Meet Don Corleone, a friendly man, a just man, a reasonable man. The deadliest lord of the Cosa Nostra. The Godfather. A modern masterpiece, «The Godfather» is a searing portrayal of the 1940s criminal underworld. It is also the intimate story of the Corleone family, at once drawn together and ripped apart by its unique position at the core of the American Mafia. Still shocking forty years after it was first published, this compelling tale of blackmail, murder and family values is a true classic.»