'Anything you do in the past changes the future. The tiniest little actions have huge consequences. You might tread on an ant now and it might entirely prevent someone from being born in the future'. There's nothing like the issue of evolution to get under the skin of academics: especially when those same academics are by chance or bad judgement deposited at a critical evolutionary turning point when one wrong move could have catastrophic results for the future. Unfortunately in the hands of such an inept and cussed group of individuals, the sensitive issue of causality is sadly only likely to receive the same scant respect that they show to one another...

The place is St Oswald's, an old and long-established boys' grammar school in the north of England. A new year has just begun, and for the staff and boys of the school, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world and Roy Straitley, Latin master, eccentric, and veteran of St Oswald's, is finally — reluctantly — contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the school, a darker undercurrent stirs. And a bitter grudge, hidden and carefully nurtured for thirteen years, is about to erupt. Who is Mole, the mysterious insider, whose cruel practical jokes are gradually escalating towards violence — and perhaps, murder? And how can an old and half-forgotten scandal become the stone that brings down a giant?

Emma is sitting on a turbulent plane. She's always been a very nervous flyer. She really thinks that this could be her last moment. So, naturally enough, she starts telling the man sitting next to her — quite a dishy American, but she's too frightened to notice — all her innermost secrets. How she scans the backs of intellectual books and pretends she's read them. How she does her hair up like Princess Leia in her bedroom. How she's not sure if she has a G-spot, and whether her boyfriend could find it anyway. How she feels like a fraus at work — everyone uses the word 'operational' all the time but she hasn't a clue what it means. How the coffee at work is horrible. How she once threw a troublesome client file in the bin. If ever there was a bare soul, it's hers.

You're in the army now, son... New Year's Day, 1990. The Berlin Wall is coming down. The Cold War is ending. Soon America won't have any enemies left. The army won't have anybody to fight. Things are going to change. Jack Reacher is the Military Police duty officer on a base in North Carolina when he takes a call reporting a dead soldier in a hot-sheets motel. Reacher tells the local cops to handle it — heart attacks happen all the time I don't know but I've been told.. But why is Reacher in North Carolina, instead of Panama, where the action is? Then the dead man turns out to have been a two-star general who should have been in Europe. And when Reacher goes to the general's house to break the news, he finds another corpse: the general's wife. What is he dealing with here? The last echoes of the old world...Or the first shocks of the new? Lee Child's new stomach-churning, palm-sweating thriller turns back the clock to Jack Reacher's army days. For the first time we meet a younger Reacher, a Reacher not yet disillusioned with military life. A Reacher with family. A Reacher in dogtags and starched uniform who imposes army discipline, if only in his own pragmatic way. A Reacher as far from the no-credit card, no-last-known-address drifter of the previous eight novels as is possible to imagine.

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist...and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet. It's a tough decision. But he's got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too...

Meet Rebecca Bloomwood. She’s a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money. She spends her leisure time… shopping. Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can’t. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties. Her only comfort is to buy herself something – just a little something… Can Becky ever escape from this dream world, find true love, and regain the use of her Switch card? The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic…the perfect pick me up for when it’s all hanging in the (bank) balance.

Becky Bloomwood thought being married to Luke Brandon would be one big Tiffany box of happiness. But to be honest, it's not quite as dreamy as she'd hoped. The trouble started on honeymoon, when she told Luke the tiniest little fib, about the teeniest little purchase. Now she's on a strict budget, she doesn't have a job — and worst of all her beloved Suze has a new best friend. She's feeling rather blue — when she receives some incredible news. She has a long-lost sister! Becky has never been more excited. Finally, a real sister! They'll have so much in common! They can go shopping together…choose shoes together…have manicures together. Until she meets her — and gets the shock of her life. It can't be true. Surely Becky Bloomwood's long-lost sister can't…hate shopping?

Lexi wakes up in a hospital bed after a car accident, thinking it's 2004 and she's a twenty-five-year old with crooked teeth and a disastrous love life. But, to her disbelief, she learns it's actually 2007 — she's twenty-eight, her teeth are straight, she's the boss of her department — and she's married! To a good-looking millionaire! How on earth did she land the dream life??! She can't believe her luck — especially when she sees her stunning new home. She's sure she'll have a fantastic marriage once she gets to know her husband again. He's drawn up a 'manual of our marriage', which should help. But as she learns more about her new self, chinks start to appear in the perfect life. All her old colleagues hate her. A rival is after her job. Then a dishevelled, sexy guy turns up... and lands a new bombshell. What the **** happened to her? Will she ever remember? And what will happen if she does?

Within the walls of a cloistered convent, a scene of unspeakable carnage is discovered. On the snow lie two nuns, one dead, one critically injured – victims of a seemingly motiveless, brutally savage attack. Medical examiner Maura Isles’ autopsy of the murder victim yields a shocking surprise, but the case takes a disturbing twist. The body of another woman has been found. And someone has gone to a lot trouble to remove her face, hands and feet. As long buried secrets are revealed so Dr Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, find themselves part of an investigation that leads to an awful, dawning realisation of the killer’s identity…

Originally built to house the workers of Victorian London, Balaklava Street is now an oasis in the heart of Kentish Town and ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at Number 5. Her death would appear to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water. It falls to the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London’s longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, to search for something resembling a logical solution. Their initial investigations draw a blank and Bryant’s attention is diverted into strange and arcane new territory, while May finds himself in hot water when he attempts to save the reputation of an academic whose knowledge of the city’s forgotten underground rivers looks set to ruin his career. In the meantime, the new owner of Number 5 is increasingly unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, the particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water... Pooling their information to investigate hitherto undiscovered secrets of the city, Bryant and May make some sinister connections and realize that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there’s still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for – and kill again to protect. With the PCU facing an uncertain future, the death toll mounts and two of British fiction’s most enigmatic detectives must face madness, greed and revenge, armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home.

«How do you make it as a pop star? Packed with scandal and intrigue, «Pop Babylon» takes you to the dark heart of one of the world’s most wicked and secretive industries. Tracking a year in the making of a brand new boy band, «Pop Babylon» is pure, unadulterated reading pleasure. Disgraceful, revelatory and great down-and-dirty fun, it’s essential reading for anyone who wants to know what it really takes nowadays to be top of the pops.»

Rachel Sexton works for the National Reconnaissance Office as an intelligence officer. She is also the daughter of a Senator currently running for President. Her father's main offensive, and a very popular one, against the incumbent President is to attack the huge amount of NASA funding. Rachel is barely on speaking terms with her father, believing him to be totally corrupt, but is still worried she is being used by the President when he asks her to verify an amazing find by NASA, a find which will settle the arguments about NASA funding for ever. Reluctantly agreeing to view the find Rachel is whisked off to the North Pole. What she finds once she gets there takes her breath away. However, she quickly learns that nothing is what it seems, and, with two civilian scientists, is soon fleeing for her life. Stranded on an ice berg they are rescued in the nick of time by a nuclear submarine, but once back in the US their attempts to expose the plot show them that they can trust absolutely no one... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Paul West, a young Englishman, arrives in Paris to start a new job — and finds out what the French are really like. They do eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs' droppings. They don't wash their armpits with garlic soap. Going on strike really is the second national participation sport after pétanque. And, yes, they do use suppositories.In his first novel, Stephen Clarke gives a laugh-out-loud account of the pleasures and perils of being a Brit in France. Less quaint than A Year in Provence, less chocolatey than Chocolat, A Year in the Merde will tell you how to get served by the grumpiest Parisian waiter; how to make perfect vinaigrette every time; how to make amour — not war; and how not to buy a house in the French countryside.

For once in Becky Bloomwood's life, things are going smoothly. She's got the dream job as a personal shopper (spending other people's money — and getting paid for it.) She's got a fabulous Manhattan apartment with her boyfriend Luke. They've even opened a joint bank account (although they can't quite agree on whether a Miu Miu skirt counts as a household expense). Then Luke proposes — and all of a sudden life gets hectic. Becky's Mum wants her to get married in Oxshott and wear her old frilly wedding dress. Luke's mother wants to host a grand extravaganza at the New York Plaza, complete with woodland glade and the New York Philharmonic. Becky knows she has to sit down and decide — but to be honest, it's a lot more fun tasting cake, trying on dresses and registering wedding presents. Time's ticking by, plans are being made both sides of the Atlantic and soon she realizes she's in trouble...

A book of short stories from the author of CHOCOLAT Take your partners, please. Suburban witches, defiant old ladies, ageing monsters, suicidal Lottery winners, wolf men, dolphin women and middle-aged manufacturers of erotic leatherwear. In these twenty-two short stories from the author of HOLY FOOLS and FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE, the miraculous goes hand-in-hand with the mundane, the sour with the sweet, and the beautiful, the grotesque, the seductive and the disturbing are never more than one step away. JIGS & REELS is Joanne Harris' first collection of short stories. As she says in her Foreword, a good short story can startle, ignite, and illuminate...giving you vivid, anarchic glimpses into different world, different people. Here, she proves she is as good as her word by creating an eclectic selection of tales for our times that will delight, surprise, entertain and horrify in equal measure. Sly, funny, sometimes provocative but always personal, JIGS & REELS shows a side to Joanne Harris you have never seen before. So go on, be tempted. After all, it's only dancing.

A Discworld Howdunnit Who's murdering harmless old men? Who's poisoning the Patrician? As autumn fogs hold Ankh-Morpork in their grip, the City Watch have to track down a murderer who can't be seen. Maybe the golems know something — but the solemn men of clay, who work all day and night and are never any trouble to anyone, have started to commit suicide... It's not as if the Watch hasn't got problems of its own. There's a werewolf suffering from Pre-Lunar Tension. Corporal Nobbs is hobnobbing with the nobs, and there's something really strange about the new dwarf recruit, especially his earrings and eyeshadow. Who can you trust when there are mobs on the streets and plotters in the dark and all the clues point the wrong way? In the gloom of the night, Watch Commander Sir Samuel Vimes finds that the truth might not be out there at all. It may be amongst the words in the head. A chilling tale of poison and pottery.

When Titanic set sail in 1912, she was the largest, most luxurious and most technologically advanced man-made moving object in the world. Built by the great industrial communities that made Britain the pre-eminent superpower of the age, the famous ocean liner signalled the high-water mark of our nation's manufacturing industry. A must-read for any Titanic enthusiast, this fascinating book tells the untold stories of the men and women who made the 'ship of dreams' a reality: the fearless riveters who risked deafness from hammering millions of rivets that held together the fortress-like steel hull, the engineers charged with the Herculean task of fitting engines to power the massive ship across the Atlantic at a speed of 23 knots, the electricians who installed state-of-the-art communications systems and enormous steam-driven generators, each capable of powering the equivalent of 400 modern homes the highly skilled carpenters, cabinet-makers and artists who laboured over every last detail of the opulent staterooms. Titanic, of course, was destined to sink on her maiden voyage, but the achievement of the thousands of people who built and fitted out this astonishing ship lives on.

«Alentejo Blue» is the story of the Portuguese village of Mamarrosa told through the lives of those who live there and those who are passing through — men and women, children and old people, locals, tourists and expatriates. For some, such as Teresa, a beautiful, dreamy village girl, it is a place from which to escape; for others — the dysfunctional Potts family — it is a way of running from trouble (but not eluding it). Vasco, a cafe owner who has never recovered from the death of his American wife, clings to a notion that his years in America make him superior to the other villagers. One English tourist makes Mamarrosa the subject of her fantasy of a new life, while for her compatriots, a young engaged couple, Mamarrosa is where their dreams finally fall apart. At the book's opening an old man reflects on his long and troubled life in this beautiful and seemingly tranquil setting, and anticipates the return of Marco Afonso Rodrigues, the prodigal son of the village and a symbol of this now fast-changing world. The homecoming is the subject of continuing speculation, and when Marco Afonso Rodrigues does finally appear, villagers, tourists and expatriates are brought together and jealousi.»

«Mesmerizing...an exquisite rendering of what one might call feels at the subatomic level.» -The New York Times A prime number is a lonely thing. It can only be divided by itself or by one, and it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia are both «primes»-misfits haunted by early tragedies. When the»

America in 1963 is a country at a crossroads: Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the Cuban missile crisis, the sexual revolution, FBI, CIA, LSD — and a promise of change offered by a new President, John F Kennedy. Some people believe in the future. Other conspire to control it. Chandler Forrestal is a man whose life is changed forever when he is unwittingly dragged into a CIA mind-control experiment. After being given a massive dose of LSD, Chandler develops a frightening array of mental powers. With his heightened perception he uncovers a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. Chased by the dark powers of world government, will Chandler be able to harness his 'shift' and rewrite history?