«Ryan Bingham’s job as a Career Transition Counselor-he fires people-has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls «Airworld» finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss’s desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom, conditions begin to deteriorate. With perception, wit, and wisdom, Up in the Air combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the psychic costs of our rootless existence, and confirms Walter Kirn as one of the most savvy chroniclers of American life.»

«Shakespeare became famous as a dazzling poet before most people even knew that he wrote plays. His sonnets are the English language's most extraordinary anatomy of love in all its dimensions-desire and despair, longing and loss, adoration and disgust. To read them is to confront morality and eternity in the same breath. Produced under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today's most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, The Sonnets and Other Poems includes all of Shakespeare's sonnets, the long narrative poems «Venus and Adonis» and «The Rape of Lucrece» and several other shorter works. Incorporating definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works, this unique volume also includes an expanded Introduction by Jonathan Bate that places the poems in literary and historical context and illuminates their relationship to Shakespeare's dramatic writing. Also featured are key facts about the individual selections; an index of the first lines of the sonnets; a chronology of Shakespeare's life and times; and recommendations for further reading. Ideal for students and general readers alike, this modern and accessible edition sets a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.»

In August 1944, Hans Georg Klamroth was executed for his part in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Wibke Bruhns, his youngest daughter, was six years old at the time. Decades later, watching a documentary about the events of 20 July, images of her father in the Third Reich People's Court appeared on the screen — and she realises she never knew him. In My Father's Country, Bruhns tells of her search for her father. Returning to her ancestral home in Halberstadt, Northern Germany, she retraces her family's story from Kaiser Wilhelm to the end of World War Two, discovering old photographs, letters and diaries, which she uses to piece together a unique and unforgettable family epic.

In her second novel, Nicola Monaghan moves her focus from a Nottingham council estate to the City of London. It's the late '90s and party-girl Frankie Cavanagh has just started working as a trader, experiencing life on the trading floor in all its sweaty, adrenalin-fueled madness, for the first time. She is determined to fit in with the boys — she works hard, plays hard and gives as good as she gets. Frankie fancies her American boss, Tom, from the start — he's sexy, charismatic and a lot of fun; exactly what she's looking for in Mr Right Now. They embark on an adventure together, a risky (he's married), exciting but dangerous affair based on doing anything for a thrill. As Frankie begins to lose her grip, she speeds head on towards the ultimate question: just how far is she prepared to go for a dare? In this macho world of sex, drugs and big-money deals, a girl could get pushed too far... Starfishing gives an insight into both the vibrant London club scene and the world of trading in the '90s, crackling with energy and intensity. It's also about an Essex girl who has come to the City to make her fortune (not find a man and spend his), but gets caught up in a game that she doesn't know how to end. This is a powerful and thrilling novel which confirms an impressive talent.

The Cologne police know a woman is going to die. They know the day it will happen. And they're powerless to stop it. They call on an outside expert: Jan Fabel, head of Hamburg's Murder Squad and Germany's leading authority on serial killers. Fabel is on the point of leaving the police for good, but Carnival in Cologne is a time when the world goes crazy, and he is drawn into the hunt for the Carnival Cannibal. What he doesn't know is that he is on a collision course with a crack special forces unit from Ukraine and a disturbed colleague with a score to settle. Fabel finds himself on a trail of betrayal and vengeance, violence and death. And once more he faces his greatest enemy. The true Master of the Carnival.

This title presents a callous murder, a devastating secret, and a crime of passion. Bishopthorpe Palace, York. September 1373. John Thoresby, the Archbishop of York, lies dying. One of the most powerful men in the country, his imminent demise has the dominant families of the north vying to influence his succession. Owen Archer, Thoresby's master of the guards, is one of the few men Thoresby trusts. He is determined to ensure that his lord's last days are as peaceful as possible, but his plans are thrown into disarray when Thoresby agrees to a visit from Joan, Princess of Wales, wife of the Black Prince and mother of the young heir to the throne of England.She has come to seek the great man's advice before it is too late. Owen resolves to do his duty, but within minutes of Joan's arrival things go disastrously wrong when a member of the royal party is murdered. Then, only days later, a messenger carrying urgent letters for Thoresby is found hanging in the woods. Soon, the shadow of suspicion falls on the whole household. And as Owen races against time to find the murderer amongst them, he starts to realise that not only has one of his own men been compromised, but all their lives are now in danger.

A charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century, All the Sad Young Literary Men charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith, as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle through the encouragement of the women who love and despise them to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame. Heartbroken in his university town, Mark tries to focus his attention on his graduate work concerning Russian revolt, only to be lured again and again to the free pornography on the library computers. Sam binds himself to the task of crafting 'the first great Zionist epic' even though he speaks no Hebrew, has never visited Israel, and is not a practicing Jew. Keith, thwarted by inherited notions of greatness and memories of his broken family, finds solace in the arms of the selfless woman who most reminds him of his past. At every turn, at each character's misstep, All the Sad Young Literary Men radiates with comedic warmth and biting honesty and signals the arrival of a brave and trenchant new writer.

One early September night in Florida, a young woman brings her daughter to work. April's usual babysitter, Jean, has had a panic attack that has landed her in hospital. April doesn't really know anyone else, so she decides it's best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children's videos in the office, while she works. But April is a stripper at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favourite stripper, and he's drunk and angry and lonely.From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood, honour and masculinity. Set in the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed, it juxtaposes lust for domination with hunger for connection, sexual violence with family love. It seizes the reader by the throat with the same psychological tension, depth and realism that characterised Andre Dubus' bestselling House of Sand and Fog — and with an even greater sense of the dark and anguished places in the human heart.

Six months ago, city girl Sophie Mills gave up everything to move to Cornwall. All to be with the man that she thinks she loves, and his two daughters who she knows she loves. But adjusting to life in the countryside isn't quite as easy as Sophie imagined it would be. Designer shoes aren't nearly so readily available — not that she ever has any occasion to wear them — and sometimes she doesn't even recognise herself; which most of the time makes her happy but every now and then scares her to death. The hardest thing of all for Sophie is to make that final commitment to actually move in with Louis and the girls — she's been the longest paying guest of the Avalon B&B, St Ives in the history of the establishment. And as she tries to adapt to country living, her newly adopted family and discovering more about Louis' past, she begins to wonder if she's got what it takes to make it all work...

The hotel Waldhaus in the Swiss mountain village of Waltenberg is central to the action of this epic novel, which takes place in Europe from the First World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Waltenberg tells the story of the love between Hans Kappler, a German novelist, and Lena Hotspur, an American singer; of the friendship between Hans and Max Goffard, a French journalist. It is also a spy story. Michael Lilstein, a leader of the underground German communist party before World War II and an Auschwitz survivor, becomes responsible for the East German spy network. In 1956 in Waltenberg, Lilstein recruits as his mole a young Frenchman whose identity remains mysterious. At the height of the Cold War the CIA observe Lilstein and Max at Hans' funeral, determined to flush out the mole. Waltenberg is a riveting novel of espionage and a major work of literature.

It is six months since Jonathan Ransom foiled the attack on an Israeli jet that threatened to plunge the world into war. He has spent the last six months in hiding in South East Asia avoiding having to confront his wife's double life and the lie that was their eight-year marriage. Now Emma has initiated a reconciliation which Ransom reluctantly goes along with. They meet in London and vow to start over with no more secrets between them. But only minutes after they reunite, they bear witness to a terrible act of violence. A band of gunmen ambush a convoy of limousines carrying the U.S. Secretary of State and the Saudi Arabian Oil Minister to a secret meeting. Caught in the midst of the attack, Jonathan and Emma take matters into their own hands. When the violence subsides, the Saudi Minister has been killed, all of the terrorists are dead, and Emma is missing. Despite their actions, Jonathan and Emma fall under suspicion. Pursued by MI5, Jonathan knows that his only path to freedom lies in tracking down his wife. To do so, he must learn once and for all the truth behind her identity, and whether she has renounced her ways as a spy. Or if he, Jonathan Ransom, is the ultimate pawn in a game far beyond his imagining.

Vienna the year is 1903. Outside one of the cities most splendid baroque churches the decapitated body of a monk is found. Shortly after, the remains of a municipal councillor are discovered in the grounds of another church — his head also ripped from his body. It transpires that both men were rabid anti-semites and suspicions fall on Vienna's close-knit community of Hassidic Jews. In a city riven by racial tensions and extremism, the situation is potentially explosive. Detective Inspector Rheinhardt turns to his trusted friend, the young psychoanalyst Doctor Max Liebermann, for assistance. As the investigation progresses, Liebermann is drawn into the world of Jewish mysticism — a magical world dominated by the rites and secret lore of the Kabbalah. Liebermann, a man who rejects all forms of superstition, is forced to embrace his own cultural origins to understand the meaning of the murders.In the old ghetto district of Prague, he learns of folk legends concerning a great Kabbalist which will ultimately provide him with the key to the mystery. At the same time, Liebermann's life is in crisis. Political forces conspire against him, resulting in his suspension from the General Hospital — and the unobtainable object of his romantic desires has become an unhealthy obsession.

Holly Barrett lives a very solitary, quiet life in a small town on the coast of Massachusetts. She has a five-year-old daughter called Katy, who she accidentally conceived the night she lost her virginity to the boy she'd had a crush on for years — and who ran a mile the minute he heard about her pregnancy — and the only other people in her life are her beloved grandfather, Henry, and her best friend Anna. All that changes when she meets Jack Dane, a man she falls rapidly and passionately in love with — and whom Katy and Henry also adore. Jack proposes just a few weeks after they meet, and they're married within six weeks. For once Holly feels like the heroine of her own life story, and she's happier than she's ever been. But then dark secrets start to emerge about Jack's past: it becomes clear that he's not been entirely honest about his earlier life in England. And it's suddenly frighteningly possible that rather than marrying the man who will save her and Katy from the small life they've got trapped in, Holly may have brought a monster into all their lives.

Will Ferguson takes us on a wild romp across the dust bowl of West Texas. The year is 1939. The world is on the brink of war, and the American Dream is rusting out from the inside. Jack McGreary is adrift in the faded boomtown of Paradise Flats. Raised by his eccentric and increasingly erratic father, Jack has learned to live by his wits. He outsmarts the local businessmen, out-argues the local priest, and even outplays a gang of hardened carnies at a seedy fairground. And when a pair of fast-talking swindlers named Virgil and Miss Rose blow through town, Jack falls in with them. Together they go on a crime spree across the American Southwest, staging a series of elaborate and often hilarious cons. Young Jack is swept along into a world of hot jazz and cold calculating crimes of the heart, as the sexual tension between him and Miss Rose comes to a boil. Someone is being set up. Are Miss Rose and Virgil playing Jack? Or is Jack playing them?

June Dawson has come a long way from the rough East End background where she met, got pregnant by and eventually married charming, reckless Johnny Fuller. Now she lives in leafy Rainham, in a nice little cul-de-sac, with her ultra-respectable second husband and a lovely social life. Then her world collapses when daughter Debbie announces that she is pregnant by her low-life, drug addict boyfriend, Billy McDaid. June feels as though she is being physically sucked back into the world of villains and thugs she thought she had escaped for ever. But worse is to come. Much, much worse. The baby — doted on by his violent, feckless dad — grows into the child from hell: mean, sadistic and out of control. Suddenly the family is not just in crisis. It is in meltdown.

In an era when supermarket conformity rules, it is refreshing to discover that there are still wonderful, traditional varieties of fruit and veg out there waiting to be grown and tasted. What about Glaskin's Perpetual rhubarb, quick to settle in and ready to be cut in its first year? Or Alderman peas, deliciously sweet even when they reach the size of marbles? Not to mention Ashmead's Kernel apple, as devoured and praised by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: 'exploding with champagne-sherbet juice infused with a lingering scent of orange blossom'. But Forgotten Fruits is more than a guide to these unusual varieties. It's also a fascinating work of natural and social history. Did you know, for example, that beetroot was instrumental in ending the slave trade? Or that observing gooseberries helped Charles Darwin to arrive at his theory of evolution? Or that there are over 2,000 varieties of cooking and eating apples in Britain alone? If you want to grow a bit of history in your garden, if you'd like to get a real taste of the huge variety of local produce that Britain has to offer, or even if you just want to find out a bit more about how rural life in the UK has evolved over the past centuries, Forgotten Fruits will prove irresistible — and enlightening — reading.

«In «Whatever She Wants», Andrew Rosetta lifts the lid on the mysterious, sexy and little-known world of the male escort. As one of the most sought-after escorts in London, Andrew's clients are many and varied: from a gangster's wife in search of a little fun to a world-famous pop star requiring the utmost discretion, all of them are looking for different things. His personal life, meanwhile, is just as turbulent — from a girlfriend who discovers his secret to a client who turns against him and threatens to reveal all. Smart, erotic and eye-opening, «Whatever She Wants» reveals exactly what type of woman is willing to part with her money in search of sex, and what type of man is willing to provide it.»

Katie Price has led a rollercoaster life and the excitement, glamour and emotional twists and turns show no signs of slowing down. Although happily married to Peter Andre, the past few years have been troublesome for Katie. She has overcome a string of fiercely emotional challenges: she has battled post-natal depression, endured a traumatic miscarriage and continually fought fears for the safety and health of her children and husband. It has all undoubtedly taken its toll on her and placed great strains on her relationship. Katie has always been a strong, passionate, sensitive and independent woman but even she has been pushed to her limits.Yet Katie's spirit has always shone through and he enthusiasm and determination have seen her triumph: her career continues to go from strength to strength and her desire and appetite to succeed know no bounds. She has given birth to a beautiful daughter, Princess Tiaamii, too and despite everything that has been thrown at them, Katie and Peter have emerged more in love than ever before. Jordan: Pushed to the Limit is a truly intimate portrait of a sensational life. Every page is filled with searing honesty and Katie's unmistakable frank way with words in this moving, up-front and intensely personal account of a life lived to the full.

Some 2,000 km of crystal clear coastline fringed by 1,200 mainly uninhabited islands is enticing a record number of visitors. The independent traveller can count on cheaply available accommodation, superb seafood, a lively bar scene and — unless it's a busy island in high season — lots of space. Inland, surrounded by national parks, traditional villages and rare wildlife, stands the culturally vibrant, classically Habsburg capital of Zagreb. Together with informed recommendations of restaurants, hotels and nightspots, Time Out Croatia covers all aspects of this newly rediscovered tourist region, from its peculiar history to its secluded beaches and hilltop villages. No other guide offers such a unique insider perspective.

Private detective Frank Behr has been perfectly content living a solitary life, working on a few simple cases, and attempting to move on from his painful past. But when Paul and Carol Gabriel ask him to help them find their missing son, he can hardly refuse. Going against everything he fears — Behr's been around too long to hope for a happy ending — he enters into an uneasy partnership with Paul on a quest for the truth that will become both dangerous and haunting. Richly textured and crackling with suspense on every page, City of the Sun masterfully takes readers on an investigation like no other.