Detective Sigurdur Oli is in trouble. After a school reunion exposed the chasm between his life and those of his much more successful contemporaries, leaving him bitter and resentful, one of his old friends asks him to pay an unofficial visit to a couple of blackmailers. He readily agrees, only to arrive to find one of the pair lying in a pool of blood. When the victim dies in hospital, Sigurdur Oli is faced with investigating a murder without revealing his own reasons for being present at the murder scene. Moving from the villas of Reykjavik's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, Black Skies is a superb story of greed, pride and murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers.

Lionel Asbo — a very violent but not very successful young criminal — is going about his morning duties in a London prison when he learns that he has just won GBP139,999,999.50 on the National Lottery. This is not necessarily good news for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Des Pepperdine, who still has reason to fear his uncle's implacable vengeance. Savage, funny, and mysteriously poignant, Lionel Asbo is a modern fairytale from one of the world's great writers.

This title comes from the acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World — a new riveting action spy thriller, blistering gangster noir, and howling absurdist comedy: a propulsively entertaining tale about a mobster's son and a retired secret agent who are forced to team up to save the world. All Joe Spork wants is a quiet life. He repairs clockwork and lives above his shop in a wet, unknown bit of London. The bills don't always get paid and he's single and has no prospects of improving his lot, but at least he's not trying to compete with the reputation of Mathew Tommy Gun Spork, his infamous criminal dad. Edie Banister lives quietly and wishes she didn't. She's nearly ninety and remembers when she wasn't. She's a former superspy and now she's... well... old. Worse yet, the things she fought to save don't seem to exist anymore, and she's beginning to wonder if they ever did. When Joe fixes one particularly unusual device, his life is suddenly upended. The client? Unknown. And the device? It's a 1950s doomsday machine. And having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the government and a diabolical South Asian dictator, Edie's old arch-nemesis. With Joe's once-quiet world now populated with mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realises that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she gave up years ago, and pick up his father's old gun...

Just imagine what it would be like to be as small as a mouse; or as big as a house. Imagine exploring the depths of the ocean, travelling into the past or the future — or something even stranger... This wonderfully inventive and interactive book allows a child to tell their own story, combining new elements each time. And with intricately detailed illustrations for parent and child to pore over together, this really is a book to share time and time again.

Acclaimed The Science of Discworld centred around an original Pratchett story about the wizards of Discworld. In it they accidentally witnessed the creation and evolution of our universe, a plot which was interleaved with a Cohen & Stewart non-fiction narrative about Big Science. In The Science of Discworld II: The Globe our authors join forces again to see just what happens when the wizards meddle with history in a battle against the elves for the future of humanity on Earth. London is replaced by a dozy Neanderthal village. The Renaissance is given a push. The role of fat women in art is developed. And one very famous playwright gets born and writes The Play. Weaving together a fast-paced Discworld novelette with cutting-edge scientific commentary on the evolution and development of the human mind, culture, language, art, and science, The Globe presents a fascinating and brilliantly original view of the world we live in. The scene of the final epic battle is the first production of A Midsummer's Night Dream at the Globe Theatre.

When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of creation and disaster. Yet, paradoxically, we see how the richness of a universe based on rules, has led to a complex world and at least one species that tried to get a grip of what was going on.

'My name is August. I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse'. Auggie wants to be an ordinary ten-years-old. He does ordinary things — eating ice cream, playing on his Xbox. He feels ordinary — inside. But Auggie is far from ordinary. Ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids aren't stared at wherever they go. Born with a terrible facial abnormality, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents his whole life, to protect him from the cruelty of the outside world. Now, for the first time, he's being sent to a real school — and he's dreading it. All he wants is to be accepted — but can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all? Narrated by Auggie and the people are around him whose lives he touches forever, Wonder is a funny, frank, astonishingly moving debut to read in one sitting, pass on to others, and remember long after the final page.

Global democracy is at a crossroads and David Graeber, one of the most influential scholars and activists of recent decades, here offers the perfect book to address this historical moment: a short, provocative exploration of the idea of democracy, its current crisis, and its still untapped potential as a tool for change.

A literary thriller unfolding in multiple time frames, THE TWELVE is a page-turning and epic tale of sacrifice and survival. In the present day: As three strangers attempt to navigate the chaos cast upon civilization by a U.S. government experiment gone wrong, their destinies intertwine. A hundred years in the future: Amy, Peter, Alicia, and the others introduced in THE PASSAGE hunt the original twelve virals... unaware that the rules of the game have changed, and that one of them will have to sacrifice everything to bring the TWELVE down.

Maeve Binchy, 'the grand story teller', returns with a cast of characters you will never forget when they all spend a winter week together on holiday at Stone House, a restful inn by the sea...

«A NEW YORK TIMES #1 Bestseller and Amazon Best Book of 2011In «The Black Mirror,» a series of brutal murders pushes Batman's detective skills to the limit and forces him to confront one of Gotham City's oldest evils. Helpless and trapped in the deadly Mirror House, Batman must fight for his life against one of Gotham City's oldest and most powerful evils!Then, in a second story called «Hungry City,» the corpse of a killer whale shows up on the floor of one of Gotham City's foremost banks. The event begins a strange and deadly mystery that will bring Batman face-to-face with the new, terrifying faces of organized crime in Gotham.»

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

“The indomitable Reacher burns up the pages.” USA Today Four people in a car, hoping to make Chicago by morning. One man driving, another telling stories that don’t add up. A woman in the back, silent and worried. And a hitchhiker with a broken nose. An hour behind them, the FBI descends on an old pumping station where a man was stabbed to death — the knife work professional, the killers nowhere to be seen. All Jack Reacher wanted was a ride to Virginia. All he did was stick out his thumb. But he soon discovers he has hitched more than a ride. He has tied himself to a massive conspiracy, in which nothing is what it seems, and nobody is telling the truth.

As a police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay — with officer Nestor Camacho on board — Tom Wolfe is off and running. Into the feverous landscape of the city, he introduces the Cuban mayor, the black police chief, an ambitious young journalist and his Yale-marinated editor.

Yves Harteloup is a disappointed young man, scarred by the war. He returns for the summer to the rich, comfortable Atlantic resort of Hendaye, where he spent blissful childhood holidays. There he becomes infatuated by a beautiful, bored young woman, Denise, whose rich husband is often away on business.

Alice Munro captures the essence of life in her brilliant new collection of stories. Moments of change, chance encounters, the twist of fate that leads a person to a new way of thinking or being: the stories in Dear Life build to form a radiant, indelible portrait of just how dangerous and strange ordinary life can be.

Detective Alex Cross arrests renowned plastic surgeon Elijah Creem for sleeping with teenage girls. Now, his life ruined, Creem is out of jail, and he's made sure that no one will recognize him — by giving himself a new face. A young woman is found hanging from a sixth-floor window, and Alex is called to the scene. The victim recently gave birth, but the baby is nowhere to be found. Before Alex can begin searching for the missing newborn and killer, he's called to investigate a second crime. All of Washington DC is in a panic, and when a third body is discovered, rumours of three serial killers send the city into an all-out frenzy. Alex's investigations are going nowhere, and he's too focused on the cases to notice that someone has been watching him — and will stop at nothing until he's dead. With white-hot speed, relentless drama, and hairpin turns, Alex Cross Run is James Patterson's ultimate thrill ride.

A history lesson they'll never forget... and neither will you. Mattie Engel is one of the rising stars at Private Berlin, and believes she's seen the worst of people in her previous life with the Berlin police force. That is until Chris, her colleague — and until recently, her fiance — is found dead, brutally murdered in an old slaughterhouse outside the city. The slaughterhouse is filled with bodies. But just as Private begin their investigations, the building explodes, wiping out all evidence of the crimes, and nearly killing Mattie and her team. Mattie soon realises that a masked killer is picking off Chris's childhood friends, one by one, and destroying the trail. But who wants the past buried so badly? What is the truth about that slaughterhouse? And will Mattie become the killer's next victim?

For the second time in his short life, fourteen-year-old Teddy Clock has survived a massacre. Orphaned once more when his foster family is murdered, the traumatized teenager has nowhere to turn — until the Boston PD puts Detective Jane Rizzoli on the case. Jane spirits Teddy to the exclusive Evensong boarding school, a sanctuary where young victims of violent crime learn vital skills of survival. But even behind locked gates, Jane fears that Evensong’s benefactors aren’t the only ones watching. And when she learns of two other students whose pasts bear a shocking resemblance to Teddy’s, it becomes chillingly clear that a circling predator has more than one victim in mind. Joining forces with medical examiner Maura Isles, Jane races to stop an obsessed killer’s twisted quest — before an unspeakable secret dooms the children’s fate.