Flying Lancaster bombers on raids into Germany was one of the most dangerous missions of the war. Casualties in Bomber Command were shockingly high, there was statistically only a 17 per cent chance of a bomber crew surviving a full tour of operations. Night after night Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey King and the crew of C Charlie risked their lives. Together they faced incredible dangers, near misses, close encounters with the fighter planes of the Luftwaffe, and crash landings. Against this background a friendship was formed that bound the crew of C Charlie together against all odds. Between May 1943 and May 1944 Geoffrey King and his crew flew thirty missions over Germany, hitting Frankfurt, the Ruhr, and bombing Berlin ten times. They trusted each other so much that they were determined to stay together after their full tour. They refused to take leave and be split up, instead they volunteered immediately for another tour. As King says 'We believed in ourselves so much, no one ever panicked, even when the situation looked so desperate. We all believed that our best chance of staying alive was to stick together'. Geoffrey King and the crew of C Charlie are unique in having flown together for fifty missions and living to tell the tale. Now, sixty years later, Geoffrey is the only one of this group of friends still alive to tell the story. As well as the memories of the other men he spent three years of the war with, he lives daily with the memories of those ten missions above Berlin, as he flew into what seemed certain death, and aircraft all around him were blasted out of the sky.

This title offers an epic Romeo and Juliet for the 21st century. In a bustling London cafe, Anil, now a famous architect, sits waiting for Lina. It is years since he last laid eyes on her, the love of his life. Lina is running for the train — punctuality has never been her strength. After all this time she cannot be late to meet Anil. Together, they think back to tragedies both personal and political, betrayals large and small. A past played out across three continents that house their rival worlds: Sikh and Muslim, wealthy and modest, liberal and orthodox, corrupt and moral... Lina has one more revelation that must be shared with Anil. Might it unite them once and for all, or has it come too late?

If you had three wishes, what would you wish for? Having spent two years alone in France, doing his best to survive in a foreign land, and failing miserably to woo a dishy French copine, Michael Wright has everything he ever wanted: manly powertools; a cat, chickens and sheep; earthy neighbours; an aircraft and a grand piano. Yet he is still alone and — in a moment of rare self-knowledge — decides that the only way to find the girl of his dreams is to stop looking for her. Yet barely a week after coming to this momentous decision, an email from an old school friend re-introduces him to Alice — a paid-up city girl who speaks only three words of French and comes with an expensive shoe habit and a deep-rooted mistrust of the countryside. Even worse, she lives and works on the far side of the Atlantic, in Baltimore, USA. And so begins an unlikely romance, conducted across two continents, as Michael the rustic hermit struggles to unlearn his lessons in living alone and contemplates the alarming prospect of sharing his French life (not to mention his aeroplane) with someone else...

Hannah is a confused fourteen-year-old. In the magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah's own life, her parents' marriage is crumbling. Over the next decade and a half, love throws her some complicated questions. At what point can you no longer blame your adult failures on your messed up childhood? Is settling for someone who's not your soulmate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you being plucky — or just pathetic?

1980s Romania: As the sun sets on the magical shore of the Black Sea and casts its last rays across the water, all Nora Teodoru can think about is pursuing her dream of becoming an accomplished artist — and of her love for Gigi, her childhood boyfriend from the Turkish part of town. But storm clouds are gathering as life under Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu becomes increasingly unbearable. His secret police are circling, never far from the young couple's doors. Nora and Gigi make plans to escape to Turkey. But nothing can prepare them for the events that follow...

When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Is the apparent 'grand design' of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? In The Grand Design, the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe is presented in language marked by both brilliance and simplicity. Model dependent realism, the multi verse, the top-down theory of cosmology, and the unified M-theory — all are revealed here. This is the first major work in nearly a decade by one of the world's greatest thinkers. A succinct, startling and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform — and provoke — like no other.

«Curtis Sittenfeld's sparkling debut is set in an American boarding school, a hotbed of privilege, ambition and neurosis, every bit as snobbish and competitive as anything dreamed up on this side of the Atlantic. Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts; she leaves behind her affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, her head filled with images from the school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls hold lacrosse sticks on pristine athletics fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. As Lee soon learns, Ault is quite unlike anything she has previously experienced, a self-enclosed world populated by jaded teenagers whose expectations, values and social rituals are utterly unfamiliar to her. At first an observer of, then a participant in the hyper-vigilant, intricately demarcated life of the school, Lee eventually finds her own place in the pecking order — until a single act of spontaneous folly shatters her carefully honed identity. «Prep» is a sharp and lucid portrait of the pain and the excitement of adolescence, and a remorseless dissection of privilege and class in the cradle of the American establishment.»

Chrissie always believed that Richie loved her, had loved her for all the twenty-three years they'd been together, loved their three daughters and their house in Highgate and their happy, lively existence. But if she really was the love of his life, why had he never given her the one thing that would have made her life perfect? The ring she wore was not a wedding ring, and it did not bring her the security of marriage. That belonged, still, to Margaret, back in Newcastle where Richie had started off as a musician, before he became famous. Margaret and her son Scott never saw Richie, and had never met the three girls. They were his other family, not mentioned but always in Chrissie's mind, an obstacle to her complete happiness. And then, suddenly and shockingly, Richie is no longer there, and Chrissie and the girls have to learn to manage without him. The presence of the other family becomes, all at once, impossible to ignore — not least because they are involved in Richie's will. Old resentments, and feelings of abandonment and loss, have to jostle with the practicalities of money and property...

Something terrible has happened in the snowbound village of Kingdom Come, Wyoming. Twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Meals remain untouched on dining room tables. Cars are still parked in garages. The human occupants have vanished, seemingly into thin air. This is the unsettling place where Maura Isles finds herself trapped during a snowstorm. She has joined a group of friends on a drive to an isolated ski lodge, but when a wrong turn leaves her car stranded in deep snow, she stumbles down a private road into the valley of Kingdom Come, where she takes shelter — and disappears. Days later, Jane Rizzoli flies to Wyoming to search for her missing friend. A crashed vehicle has been found with four badly burned bodies still inside. The authorities assume that one of the women is Maura. But is it? Jane Rizzoli's search for the truth leads her to Kingdom Come, where a terrifying and gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow...

Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in an internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of the world's greatest thinkers. It begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon, and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders.

Shipcott in bleak mid-winter: a close knit community where no stranger goes unnoticed. So when an elderly woman is murdered in her bed, village policeman Jonas Holly is doubly shocked. How could someone have killed and left no trace? Jonas finds himself sidelined as the investigation is snatched away from him by an abrasive senior detective. Is his first murder investigation over before it's begun? But this isn't the end of it for Jonas, because someone in the village is taunting him, blaming him for the tragedy, and watching every move he makes...

A gripping psychological thriller played out in cyberspace, from the bestselling author of Chocolat and The Lollipop Shoes. Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer. Blueyedboy is the brilliant new novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems. Told through posts on badguysrock@webjournal.com, this is a thriller that makes creative use of all the disguise, deception and mind games that are offered by playing out one's life on the internet.

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he's back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck... Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive, because he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his younger self how to be a good copper and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There's a problem: if he wins, he's got no wife, no child, no future... It is a discworld tale of one city, with a full chorus of street urchins, ladies of negotiable affection, rebels, secret policemen and other children of the revolution. Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a Hard-boiled Egg!

Featuring Jack Reacher, hero of the new blockbuster movie starring Tom Cruise, in an explosive follow-up to the cliffhanger ending of 61 Hours. Has Jack Reacher finally met his match? 61 Hours ended with Reacher trapped in a desperate situation from which escape seemed impossible. Even for him.Was that really the end of the road for the maverick loner? Worth Dying For is the kind of explosive thriller only Lee Child could write — a heart-racing page-turner no suspense fan will want to miss.

After filming a group of footballers' wives in a bust-up on a plane using only her camera phone, Eva Valentine is offered the chance of a lifetime — a job as an undercover TV reporter. But, as always, there's a downside — the fabulous offer means uprooting little daughter Daisy and moving to London.

Mary Soames is the only surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. Younger than her siblings by several years, she went to day school and enjoyed an idyllic childhood played out in her very own Garden of Eden — Chartwell. This title tells her story.

Jack Reacher is alone, the way he likes it. He watches a man cross a New York street and drive away in a Mercedes. The car contains $1 million of ransom money. Reacher's job is to make sure it all turns out right — money paid, family safely returned. But Reacher is in the middle of a nasty little war where nothing is simple. What started on a busy New York street explodes three thousand miles away, in the sleepy English countryside. Reacher's going to have to do this one the hard way.

Jack Burns’ mother, Alice, is a tattoo artist in search of the boy’s father, William, a virtuoso organist, who has fled America to Europe. To fund her journey, she plies her trade in the seaports of the North Sea as she tracks her four-year-old son’s errant father. But Alice is a mystery, and William can’t be found. And even Jack’s memories are subject to doubt. Jack returns to the United States, and studies in Canada and New England, but his life is still shaped by the events of his childhood quest, in particular his relationships with older women. It is only when he becomes a Hollywood actor that what he has experienced in the past comes into telling play in his present...

It was New York, 1929, a city of speakeasies, swells and hoodlums at the fag end of the roaring twenties. It's a hell of a time and place for a young cop to be trying to make his way in the world. Joe Quinn's first case is one that could put his name up in lights; a banker takes a dive from a tall building onto Wall Street. All the signs point to murder. Pretty soon, the dead man has company; a group of old buddies is being eliminated, in a particularly gruesome manner. For the young detective a case that starts as an opportunity swiftly becomes a nightmare from which he cannot escape. Joe Quinn is about to discover just how tough being an honest cop in a dishonest world can be.

Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers. Riding the subway in New York at two o'clock in the morning, Reacher knows the twelve giveaway signs to look out for. Watching one of his fellow-passengers, he becomes sharply aware: one by one, she ticks off every bulletpoint on his list. So begins the new heartstopping new thriller starring today's most admired action hero, the gallant and enigmatic loner Jack Reacher.