«On a Chicago street in bright sunshine, Jack Reacher, is strolling nowhere and sees an attractive young woman, struggling on crutches. Naturally, he stops to offer her a steadying arm. And then he turns around to see a handgun aimed straight at his stomach. Locked in a dark, stifling van racing across America, chained to the woman, Reacher needs to know why he's there. The kidnappers are saying nothing. The woman claims to be an FBI agent. She's tough enough to be one. But at their remote destination, will raw courage and cunning be enough to overcome the hopeless odds? Full of non-stop action and gritty suspense, «Die Trying» is a tightly plotted thriller starring one of the most exciting action heroes in today's fiction, the redoubtable, romantic, footloose former army cop, Jack Reacher.»

«Quirky, bizarre, tragic, fiendishly funny, «The Hotel New Hampshire» is anything but a conventional family saga, though a family saga it certainly is. The Berry family are different. Love abounds — both healthy and incestuous. It is the overwhelming desire of the Berry father to run a hotel, which he does, with dubious success, in both a former girls' school in New Hampshire, and in Vienna. It is the Berry children who grab the readers' attention, sympathies and love — all five of them: Frank (the eldest), Franny (the weirdest), John (the narrator), Lily (the writer) and Egg (the youngest). When Irving, or rather John, writes 'Frank's queer, Franny's weird, Lily's small and Egg is Egg' the initiated reader can do no other than shout a deafening 'yes, I know what you mean!' From there on, the reader is held spellbound as the family Labrador, Sorrow, is first stuffed then becomes the cruel victim of a plane crash; and as John and Franny realise their incestuous desires. Stunningly readable, mercilessly involving, «The Hotel New Hampshire» is peopled with characters — and bears — that you'll never forget.»

It's the Discworld's last continent and it's going to die in a few days, except...Who is this hero striding across the red desert? Sheep shearer, beer drinker, bush ranger, and someone who'll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he's sober. A man in a hat whose luggage follows him on little legs. Yes, it's Rincewind, the inept wizard who can't even spell wizard. He's the only hero left. Still...no worries, eh?

«Des Moines, Iowa born writer Bryson's first success was the travel book «The Lost Continent». After living in England for several years, he wanted to go back to the USA to find the perfect little US town of his past, he lovingly called Amalgam. More travel books followed, in the form of «Neither Here Nor There» (where he travels through Europe), «Notes From A Small Island» (where he travels around the United Kingdom, before returning back with his to the USA to live there for good) and «A Walk In The Woods» (where he walks the Appalachian trail). After moving back to the States, Bryson started to write a column for «The Mail on Sunday Night and Day» magazine. This is a collection of these column entries. Bryson writes about everything from everyday chores, to sueing people, the beach, TV, movies, air conditioners, college, Americana, injury dangers, wasting resources and holiday seasons.»

It’s no more than a breath away... Everyone needs a place to relax after a long day, after all. So here is the place where the Grim Reaper can kick back and take the load off his scythe. Here’s the golf course that’s not so much crazy as insane, and the useless maze, and the dark gardens — all brought (incongruously) to life. And here, for the first time ever, you will find out the reason why Death can’t understand rockeries, and what hapens to garden gnomes. As Death rides Binky into the sunset (of other people’s lives), you can at last see what he gets up to when he’s not at work.

'I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.' And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states — united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity — he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature — hilariously, stomach-achingly funny, yet tinged with heartache — and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.

In Riley, Catherine Cookson explores the relationship between a young man and an older woman. Riley, who left school with scant education, is invited to work with a theatre and it is here that he meets the leading lady, Nyrene Forbes-Mason.

«Margrave is a no-account little town in Georgia. Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles in the rain, just passing through. An arbitrary decision, a tribute to a guitar player who died there decades before. But Margrave has just had its first homicide in thirty years. And Reacher is the only stranger in town. So the murder is pinned on him. As nasty secrets leak out and the body count mounts, only one thing is for sure: They picked the wrong guy to take the fall. «Killing Floor» introduces Jack Reacher, the tough ex-military cop of no fixed abode. Trained to think fast and act faster, with an eye for the women, he is truly every thinking reader's perfect action hero.»

An entertaining, anecdotal look at the origins of language and ideas in the USA. Bryson explains why two bicycle repairmen from Ohio succeeded in mastering manned flight, why the assassination of President Garfield led to the invention of air conditioning, and many other improbable but true facts.

«In «Neither Here nor There» Bill Bryson brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student 20 years before. Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.»

«From the author of «Notes from a Small Island» and «The Lost Continent» comes this humorous report on his walk along the Appalachian Trail. The Trail is the longest continuous footpath in the world, and it snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in America.»

Discworld Goes To War, With Armies Of Sardines, Warriors, Fishermen, Squid And At Least One Very Camp Follower. As two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch faces unpleasant foes who are out to get him… and that’s just the people on his side. The enemy might be even worse. Jingo, the 21st in Terry Pratchett’s phenomenally successful Discworld series, makes the World Cup look like a friendly five-a-side.

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster.

Once it had been the great forest of Lythe — a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. And here, in the beginning, lived the Fairfaxes, grandly, at Fairfax Manor. Now the Fairfaxes have dwindled and are hardly any family at all.

Between Uberwald and Whale Bay, the Octarine Grass Country and the Widdershins Ocean, lies the most exciting and dangerous terrain in all Discworld. This is a map of Lancre, where Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick live.

There's a werewolf with the pre-lunar tension in Ankh-Morpork. And a dwarf with attitude and a golem who's begun to think for itself. But for Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, that's only the start...There's treason in the air. A crime has happened. He's not only got to find out whodunit, but howdunit too. He's not even sure what they dun. But soon as he knows what the questions are, he's going to want some answers.

It's the night before Hogswatch. And its too quiet. Where is the big jolly fat man? Why is Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say Ho Ho Ho? The darkest night of the year is getting a lot darker...Susan the gothic governess has got to sort it out by morning, otherwise there won't be a morning. Ever again...The 20th Discworld novel is a festive feast of darkness and Death (but with jolly robins and tinsel too). As they say: 'You'd better watch out...'

The show must go on, as murder, music and mayhem run riot in the night...The Opera House, Ankh-Morpork...a huge, rambling building, where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by a strangely-familiar evil mastermind in a hideously-deformed evening dress...At least, he hopes so. But Granny Weatherwax, Discworld's most famous witch, is in the audience. And she doesn't hold with that sort of thing. So there's going to be trouble (but nevertheless a good evenin's entertainment with murders you can really hum...)

«After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such bestsellers as «The Mother Tongue» and «Made in America», decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland — and partly because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another. It was thus clear to him that his people needed him. But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of modern-day Britain, and to analyze what he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, zebra crossings, and place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey, and Shellow Bowells. With wit and irreverence, Bill Bryson presents the ludicrous and the endearing in equal measure. The result is a social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain.»

In Lightning, bestselling novelist Danielle Steel tells the story of a woman whose life is changed by one swift, unexpected stroke of fate. As a partner in one of New York's most prestigious law firms, Alexandra Parker barely manages to juggle husband, career, and the three-year-old child she gave birth to at forty. Then lightning strikes — a routine medical check-up turns her world upside down when tests reveal shattering news. Her husband Sam, a Wall Street whiz-kid, is as proud of his long-time marriage to Alex as he is of his successful career — until he is caught off guard by Alex's illness. Terrified of losing his wife and family, Sam fails to provide any kind of emotional support. Almost overnight, Sam takes his distance from Alex, and they become strangers. As lightning strikes them yet again, Sam's promising career suddenly explodes into disaster, and his very life and identity are challenged. With his future hanging in the balance, Alex must decide what she feels for Sam, if life will ever be the same for them again, or if she must move on without him.