«Bestselling author Christopher Winn takes us on a captivating journey around London to discover the unknown tales of our capital's history. Travelling through the villages and districts that make up the world's most dynamic metropolis «I Never Knew That About London» unearths the hidden gems of legends, firsts, inventions, adventures and birthplaces that shape the city's compelling, and at times, turbulent past. See the Brentford river views that inspired Turner to become an artist and find out where London's first nude statue is. Explore the oldest and largest tidal mill in Britain and unearth the original Big Brother house in Bromley. Spy out the village that gave its name to a car and the Russian word for railway station. Discover which church steeple gave us the design of the traditional wedding cake, where the sandwich was invented and where in Bond Street you can see London's oldest artefact. Visit the tombs of Karl Marx, John Constable and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Climb the famous 39 steps, go from East to West and back again at Greenwich and fly the world's biggest big wheel. Brimming with stories and snippets providing a spellbinding insight into what has shaped our capital, this beautifully illustrated gem of a book is guaranteed to inform and amuse in equal measure.»

Bestselling author Christopher Winn takes us on the ultimate journey around Scotland. Travelling county by county, this irresistible miscellany unearths the enthralling stories, firsts, birthplaces, legends and inventions that shape the country's rich and majestic history. To uncover the spellbinding tales that lie hidden within Scotland's wild and romantic shores, to experience what inspired the country's powerful literature and towering castles, and to tread in the footsteps of her villains and victors, is to capture the spirit of this fascinating country and bring every place you visit to life. You will discover the story of the original 'sweetheart', John Balliol, whose embalmed heart is buried beside his devoted wife Devorgilla at Sweetheart Abbey in Kirkcudbrightshire. In Aberdeen you will find the only granite cathedral in the world. And you will hear the haunting echo of the Bear Gates of Traquair House in Peeblesshire were slammed shut when Bonnie Prince Charlie left Scotland in 1746 — legend has it that they will never be re-opened until a Stuart King once more sits on the throne. This beautifully illustrated treasure trove of a book is the perfect gift, and will act as an eye-opening guide to thrilling, alluring and ever-bewitching Scotland.

John Grisham's first work of non-fiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits — drinking, drugs and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept 20 hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a 21 year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder. With no physical evidence, the prosecution's case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to Death Row. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Trumble is a minimum security federal prison, home to an assortment of criminals, including three former judges. When one of their scams goes awry, it ensnares the wrong victim, an innocent on the outside, a man with dangerous friends.

«Friday August 15th, 1997 — The night the girls arrived, two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. First there are the Donaldsons, decent Brad and homespun, tenacious Bitsy (with her 'more organic than thou' airs, who believes fervently that life can always be improved), two full sets of grandparents and a host of big-boned, confident relatives, taking delivery with characteristic American razzmatazz. Then there are the Yazdans, pretty, nervous Ziba (her family 'only one generation removed from the bazaar) and carefully assimilated Sami, with his elegant, elusive Iranian-born widowed mother Maryam, the grandmother-to-be, receiving their little bundle with wondering discretion. Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as tiny, delicate Susan, wholesome, stocky Jin-ho and, later, her new little sister Xiu-Mei, take roots, become American. While Maryam, the optimistic pessimist, confident that if things go wrong — as well they may — she will manage as she has before, contrarily preserves her 'outsider' status, as if to prove that, despite her passport, she is only a guest in this bewildering country. Full of achingly hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, «Digging to America» is a novel with a deceptively small domestic canvas, and subtly large themes — it's about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds. And the end catches you by the throat, ambushes your emotions when you least expect it, as only Tyler can.»

They found him in a small town in Brazil, near the border with Paraguay. He had a new name, Danilo Silva, and his appearance had been changed by plastic surgery. The search had taken four years. They'd chased him around the world, always just missing him. It had cost their clients three and a half million dollars. But so far none of them had complained. The man they were about to kidnap had not always been called Silva. Before, he had another life, a life which ended in a car crash in February 1992. His gravestone lay in a cemetry in Biloxi, Mississippi. His name before his death was Patrick S. Lanigan. He had been a partner at an up and coming law firm. He had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Six weeks after his death, $90 million had disappeared from the law firm. It was then that his partners knew he was still alive, and the long pursuit had begun...

The citizens of the One State live in a condition of 'mathematically infallible happiness'. D-503 decides to keep a diary of his days working for the collective good in this clean, blue city state where nature, privacy and individual liberty have been eradicated. But over the course of his journal D-503 suddenly finds himself caught up in unthinkable and illegal activities — love and rebellion. Banned on its publication in Russia in 1921, We is the first modern dystopian novel and a satire on state control that has once again become chillingly relevant.

Since its return to the screen in 2005, masterminded by Russell T Davies, Doctor Who has become a genuine phenomenon picking up countless awards, attracting huge audiences and selling lots and lots of books — over half a million so far. This latest adventure sees the Doctor pitted against one of his most famous adversaries — the deadly Cybermen. It is the first book to feature the Doctor's new companion Martha Jones and is sure to be snapped up by all fans of the show.

Ellie is a sweet-natured brunette, generous of heart with a sparkling smile and an accent which reveals her East End background. Bonny is beautiful and spoilt, with cascades of blonde hair, the brightest pair of blue eyes and a mouth like Cupid's bow. The two girls meet in London at the end of the war when, seduced by two American airmen, they pool their wits and resources and set off to make a living on the stage. Set against the hardship and austerity of post-war Britain, and the glamour and ruthlessness of life in variety theatre, their story is one of sacrifice and burning ambition. But most of all of a powerful friendship that lasts against all odds.

From the seedy backstreets of London's Soho in the 60s to the tough, sexy world of international rock-stardom in the 70s, Georgia sees it all-When nine-year-old orphan Georgia James is unexpectedly fostered by the kindly Celia and her bank manager husband she can hardly believe her luck. But then — on her fifteenth birthday — she suffers the cruellest betrayal of all at the hands of her foster father and is forced to run away, leaving everything she loves behind her. Penniless, sleeping rough, Georgia is soon introduced to the sleazy Soho world of brassy strippers, sweat shops, camaraderie and hardship. Fired by a fierce ambition, blessed with an extraordinary voice, her long struggle for fame and fortune begins. But even when she reaches the top she finds that the scars of the past can open up to ruin her-Steeped in atmosphere and raw emotion, Georgia is the story of a determination to succeed against all the odds and of a burning first love.

Fixated on the crimes which have been committed against his people, but unable to live among them, Max moves away, and draws cartoon histories of Jewish suffering in which no one is much interested. He is drawn into the Holocaust obsessions from which he realises there can be, and should be, no release. This book is a comedy of cataclysm.

In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter. In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys to mankind's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking novel unfolds, it is the search itself — for meaning, for truth, for love--that offers hope for humanity's rebirth from the ashes.

He watches her from across the crowded dance club, a sensual black-haired stranger who stirs Gabrielle Maxwell's deepest fantasies. But nothing about this night — or this man — is what it seems. For when Gabrielle witnesses a murder outside the club, reality shifts into something dark and deadly. In that shattering instant she is thrust into a realm she never knew existed — a realm where vampires stalk the shadows and a blood war is set to ignite. Lucan Thorne despises the violence carried out by his lawless brethren. A vampire himself, Lucan is a Breed warrior, sworn to protect his kind — and the unwitting humans existing alongside them — from the mounting threat of the Rogues. Lucan cannot risk binding himself to a mortal woman, but when Gabrielle is targeted by his enemies, he has no choice but to bring her into the dark underworld he commands. Here, in the arms of the Breed's formidable leader, Gabrielle will confront an extraordinary destiny of danger, seduction, and the darkest pleasures of all...

He comes to her more dead than alive, a towering black-clad stranger riddled with bullets and rapidly losing blood. As she struggles to save him, veterinarian Tess Culver is unaware that the man calling himself Dante is no man at all, but one of the Breed, vampire warriors engaged in a desperate battle. In a single erotically charged moment Tess is plunged into his world — a shifting, shadowed place where bands of Rogue vampires stalk the night, cutting a swath of terror. Haunted by visions of a dark future, Dante lives and fights like there is no tomorrow. Tess is a complication he does not need — but now, with his brethren under attack, he must shield Tess from a growing threat that includes Dante himself. For with one reckless, irresistible kiss, she has become an inextricable part of his underworld realm... and his touch awakens her to hidden gifts, desires, and hungers she never knew she possessed. Bonded by blood, Dante and Tess must work together to thwart deadly enemies, even as they discover a passion that transcends the boundaries of life itself...

Black Dogs is built around a brilliant short story, a memerically slow-motion encounter with two terrifying dogs by an English couple who are honeymooning just after the war in a French mountain village.

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. This is a lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this story — a black man charged with raping a white girl in the Deep South of the 1930s.

Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the university of Virginia who is forty-three and newly single. He has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi; a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for many years and is now a recluse. With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons to Ray to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. Ray reluctantly heads south. But the meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray. And perhaps someone else.

«When Carl Lee Hailey guns down the hoodlums who have raped his ten-year-old child, the people of Clanton see it as a crime of blood and call for his acquittal. But when extremists outside Clanton hear that a black man has killed two white men, they invade the town, determined to destroy anything and anyone that opposes their sense of justice. Jake Brigance has been hired to defend Hailey. It's the kind of case that can make or break a young lawyer. But in the maelstrom of Clanton, it is also the kind of case that could get a young lawyer killed. 'The best thriller writer alive' — Ken Follett, «Evening Standard». 'Grisham is a natural storyteller' — «Daily Telegraph». 'A giant of the thriller genre' — «Time Out». 'Leaves one eager for more' — «Spectator».»