In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, a twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, pursued by the constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River — John Irving's twelfth novel — depicts the recent half-century in the United States as a world 'where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.' From the novel's taut opening sentence to its elegiac final chapter, what distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author's unmistakable voice, the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller.

«Coco Barrington was born into a legendary Hollywood family, her last name loaded with expectations. Her mother is a mega-bestselling author who writes under the name of Florence Flowers and her sister, Jane, is one of Hollywood's top producers. They're not your typical family, by any means... Jane has lived with her partner, Liz, for 10 years; Florence, widowed but still radiant, has just begun a secret romance with a man twenty-four years her junior. And Coco, a law school dropout and family black sheep, works as a dog walker, having fled life in the spotlight for the artsy Northern California beach town of Bolinas. But when Coco reluctantly agrees to house-sit in Jane's luxurious home, she soon discovers how much things can change in just a matter of days... It turns out Jane's house comes complete with an unexpected houseguest: Leslie Baxter, a dashing but down-to-earth British actor who's fleeing a psycho ex-girlfriend. Their worlds couldn't be more different. The attraction couldn't be more immediate. Suddenly Coco is seeing things differently: Leslie is not just a celebrity, he's a single dad to an adorable six-year-old girl. Her mother is not just a self-centered walking advertisement for cosmetic surgery, she's a woman in love, with vulnerability and new insight. And Jane and Liz are about to take the bravest plunge of all — into parenthood. With wit and intelligence, Danielle Steel's new novel explores love in all its guises, taking us into the lives of three unusual, but wonderfully real couples. Funny, sexy and wise, «One Day at a Time» is at once moving, thought provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.»

On 12th June 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armee forded the River Niemen and crossed the Rubicon — its invasion of Russia had begun. Charged with delaying the enemy's inexorable march on Moscow, a group of Russian officers summon the help of the oprichniki, a band of mercenaries from the outermost fringes of Christian Europe. As rumours of a plague travelling west from the Black Sea reach the Russians, the Oprichniki — twelve in number — arrive. Preferring to work alone, and at night, they prove brutally, shockingly effective against the French. But one amongst the Russians, Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, is unnerved by the mercenaries' ruthlessness... and as he comes to understand the true, horrific nature of these strangers, he wonders at the nightmare they've unleashed in their midst...

Lara has always had an overactive imagination. Now she wonders if she is losing her mind. Normal twenty-something girls just don't get visited by ghosts! But inexplicably, the spirit of Lara's great aunt Sadie — in the form of a bold, demanding Charleston-dancing girl — has appeared to make one last request: Lara must track down a missing necklace Sadie simply can't rest without. Lara's got enough problems of her own. Her start-up company is floundering, her best friend and business partner has run off to Goa, and she's just been dumped by the love of her life. But as Lara spends time with Sadie, life becomes more glamorous and their treasure hunt turns into something intriguing and romantic. Could Sadie's ghost be the answer to Lara's problems and can two girls from different times end up learning something special from each other?

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork — not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football — the important thing about football — is that it is not just about football. Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!

Three women, smart and successful, working in the fast and furious world of magazines, meet for cocktails and gossip once a month. Roxanne: glamorous, self-confident, with a secret lover u and hoping that one day he will leave his wife and marry her. Maggie: capable and high-achieving, until she finds the one thing she can't cope with u motherhood. Candice: honest, decent, or so she believes u until a ghost from her past turns up, and almost ruins her life. A chance encounter in the cocktail bar sets in train an extraordinary set of events which upsets all their lives and almost destroys their friendship...

It is bitter mid-winter on the Swedish island of Oland, and Katrine and Joakim Westin have moved with their children to the boarded-up manor house at Eel Point. But their remote idyll is soon shattered when Katrine is found drowned off the rocks nearby. And the old house begins to exert a strange hold over him.

«Charles Darwin's masterpiece, «On the Origin of Species», shook society to its core on publication in 1859. This title takes on creationists, including followers of 'Intelligent Design' and all those who question the fact of evolution through natural selection.»

This is a hymn to what makes England, especially the English countryside, so special, in a collection of passionate, eclectic and thought-provoking pieces. It includes Bill Bryson on seaside piers, Michael Palin on crags, Eric Clapton on Newlands Corner, Bryan Ferry on Penshaw Monument, Sebastian Faulks on pub signs, Kate Adie on deer parks, Kevin Spacey on canal boats, Gavin Pretor-Pinney on clouds, Richard Mabey on marshland, Simon Jenkins on English country houses, John Sergeant on Great Tew, Benjamin Zephaniah on the Malvern Hills, Joan Bakewell on estuaries, Antony Beevor on the north downs in Kent, Libby Purves on Harbour Walls, Jonathan Dimbleby on the beach at West Wittering, and many more.

«Six years in the writing, «The Lost Symbol» is Dan Brown's extraordinary sequel to his internationally bestselling Robert Langdon thrillers, «Angels & Demons» and «The Da Vinci Code». Nothing is ever what it first appears in a Dan Brown novel. Set over a breathtaking 12 hour time span, the book's narrative takes the reader on an exhilarating journey through a masterful and unexpected landscape as Professor of Symbology, Robert Langdon, is once again called into action. Expertly researched and written with breakneck pace, «The Lost Symbol» once again demonstrates why Dan Brown is the world's bestselling thriller writer.»

1925, a damp wintry night in Berlin. Englishman Philip Gibson, in Germany to seek the answers to a tantalising mystery surrounding the Grand Duchess Anastasia, witnesses an attack on Natasha, a young woman who has fled from Russia. When Philip takes the fragile, lonely Natasha in to help her recuperate, she quickly falls for his kind and caring nature. But when further threats are made on her life, Philip finds himself at the heart of another mystery. What is it that links Natasha to this mysterious, damaged woman? And will her love for Philip survive the secrets that will be unearthed?

GET READY FOR THE MOST EXCITING COUNT-DOWN OF YOUR LIFE. HOUR # SIXTY-ONE — Icy winter in South Dakota. A bus skids and crashes in a gathering storm. On the back seat: Jack Reacher, hitching a ride to nowhere. A life without baggage has many advantages. And disadvantages too, like facing the arctic cold without a coat. HOUR # THIRTY-ONE — A small town is threatened by sinister forces. One brave woman is standing up for justice. If she's going to live to testify, she'll need help from a man like Reacher.Because there's a killercoming for her. HOUR # ZERO — Has Reacher finally met his match? He doesn't want to put the world to rights. He just doesn't like people who put it to wrongs.

The locals in the Italian village where he lives call him Signor Farfalla — Mr Butterfly. He is a discreet gentleman who spends his time studying rare butterflies. But Farfalla's real profession is deadly. He considers himself an artisan, not for the butterflies he paints but for the guns he creates for assassins. Farfalla has resolved to make his next job his last. Then, perhaps, he can settle down comfortably in the Italian village he has grown to love and enjoy the remainder of his life without constantly looking over his shoulder. But a treacherous circle is closing in on him...

Some know her as Meredith Nic Essus, princess of faerie. Others as Merry Gentry, LA private eye. In the fey and mortal realms alike, her life is the stuff of royal intrigue and celebrity drama. Among her own kind, she has confronted enemies, endured the treachery and malevolence of her kith and kin, and honoured her duty to conceive a royal heir...all so she could claim a throne. But now she's turned her back on court and crown in favour of exile in the human world. However, while she may have rejected the throne, she cannot abandon her people. Someone is killing the fey. The LAPD are baffled and Merry is worried: her kind are not easily captured or killed. At least not by mortals. And it's not just these murders that concern her. It appears mortals who she once healed with magic are now able to perform miracles themselves — a phenomenon that's wreaking havoc on relations between man and fey and provoking suspicions of forbidden powers. So much for leaving blood and politics behind her. Merry had dreamed of a quiet life, but evil knows no borders and it seems nobody lives forever — not even the immortal...

Superman, Dracula, The Avengers, Treasure Island... when you're ten years old, you can fall in love with any story so long as it's a good one. But what if you're growing up in a house without books? Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema, devouring novels, comics, cereal packets — anything that might reveal a story. But it's 1960, and after fifteen years of post-war belt-tightening, his family is not ready to indulge a child cursed with too much imagination... Caught between an ever-sensible but exhausted mother and a DIY-obsessed father fighting his own demons, Christopher takes refuge in words. His parents try to understand their son's peculiar obsessions, but fast lose patience with him — and each other. The war of nerves escalates to include every member of the Fowler family, and something has to give, but does it mean that a boy must always give up his dreams for the tough lessons of real life? Beautifully written, this rich and astute evocation of a time and a place recalls a childhood at once eccentric and endearingly ordinary.

Three tons of Saddam Hussein's gold in an unguarded warehouse in Dubai... For two of Nick Stones closest ex-SAS comrades, it was to have been the perfect, victimless crime. But when they're double-crossed and the robbery goes devastatingly wrong, only Stone can identify his friends killer and track him down... As one harrowing piece of the complex and sinister jigsaw slots into another, Stones quest for vengeance becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy, to which he and the beautiful Russian investigative journalist with whom he has become ensnared unwittingly hold the key. Ticking like a time-bomb, brimming with terror and threat, Andy McNabs latest Nick Stone adventure is a high-voltage story of corruption, cover-up and blistering suspense — the master thriller writer at his electrifying, unputdownable best.

Assistant D.A. Alexa Hamilton has just been handed the kind of case that makes careers: the trial of accused serial killer Luke Quentin. Sifting through mountains of forensic evidence, Alexa relentlessly builds her case and prepares for a high-stakes trial... until threatening letters throw her private life into turmoil. The letters are addressed to Alexa's beautiful 17-year-old daughter, Savannah, who Alexa has raised alone since her painful divorce years before. Alexa is certain that Quentin is behind the letters — and that they are too dangerous to ignore. Suddenly Alexa must make the toughest choice of all — and send her daughter back to the very place that Alexa swore she would never return: to her ex-husband's world of southern tradition, long memories, and the antebellum charm of Charleston. While Alexa's trial builds to a climax in New York, her daughter is settling into southern life, discovering a part of her family history she's never known. As a family's wounds are exposed and the healing begins, Alexa and Savannah, after a season in different worlds, will come together again — strengthened by the trials they have faced, changed by the mysteries they have unraveled, armed with miracles that are uniquely their own.

Are optimists just reckless dreamers? Are pessimists miserable doom-mongers or just erring on the side of caution? Is the glass half empty or half full? Brilliantly compiled and beautifully written, this is a rich anthology of evidence from both sides of any argument. Covering everything from Africa to Beauty, Happiness to Patriotism to Walking, it is sop to any disposition; the perfect tool for squabbling families, a counterbalance for arguing couples and a mine of detail for the quarrelsome. The Optimist on the Afterlife: My heaven will be filled with wonderful young men and dukes. (Dame Barbara Cartland) And the Pessimist: 'That's what Hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead' — (Samuel Beckett).

Chloe needs a holiday. She's sick of making wedding dresses and her partner Philip has trouble at work. Her wealthy friend Gerard has offered the loan of his luxury villa in Spain — perfect. Hugh is not a happy man. His immaculate wife Amanda seems more interested in the granite for the new kitchen than in him.