At eighteen, in that first golden Oxford summer, Milly's best friends were Rupert and his American lover Allan. When Rupert suggested that she and Allan should get married, just so that Allan could stay in the country, it all seemed just a bit of fun — and to make it seem real she dressed up in cheap wedding finery and posed on the steps of the registry office for photographs. Ten years later, Milly is a very different person. Engaged to Simon — who is wealthy, serious, and believes her to be perfect — she is facing the biggest and most elaborate wedding imaginable. Her dreadful secret is locked away so securely she has almost persuaded herself that it doesn't exist — until, with only four days to go, her past catches up with her.

When Mitchell is released from prison after serving three years for a vicious attack he doesn't remember, he reluctantly finds himself caught up with Robert Gant, a ruthless lowlife with violent plans. Attempting to stay out of Gant's way, Mitchell finds work as a handyman at the mansion of a faded movie actress. When she eagerly plies him with cash, cars and sex, Mitch starts to wonder if even this job comes with a catch. But it isn't long before Mitchell's violent past catches up with him. When people close to him start getting hurt, Mitchell is forced to act, and take brutal on revenge on those who've stolen his life...

«This work combines two of Bill Bryson's best-loved books and demonstrates his take on life — from either side of the pond. The books, «Notes from a Small Island» and «Notes From a Big Country», went on to become major bestsellers. «The Complete Notes» combines these two popular books into one volume. Written in the form of bite-sized essays, both books are gently humorous as they highlight the idiosyncracies of the USA and Great Britain.»

'One night when she was four and sleeping in the bottom bunk of her bunk bed, Ruth Cole awoke to the sound of lovemaking — it was coming from her parents' bedroom'. This is the story of Ruth Cole. It is told in three parts: on Long Island, in the summer of 1958, when she is only four; in 1990, when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career; and, in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth Cole is a forty-one-year-old widow and mother. She's also about to fall in love for the first time...

«Following a week in the life of a busy wedding planner, and based entirely on true but anonymous stories, «Wedding Babylon» takes you to the heart of an industry where emotions run high, money flows like champagne and GBP3,000 cakes are made of polystyrene. Why are weddings so expensive? What makes us spend a year's wages on one Big Day? And just how Big does your Day actually have to be? Hilarious, shocking and full of jaw-dropping true tales of wedding days from hell, here is definitive proof that, sadly, the course of true love never did run entirely smooth...»

In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison. In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a G.P. But Dr. Hunter has gone missing and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend — Jackson Brodie — himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted.

Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him. Oh... and at six o'clock every day, without fail, with no excuses, he must go home to read 'Where's My Cow?', with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy. There are some things you have to do.

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet — Lost on the left, Found on the right — and the two never seem to balance. Jackson has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, he attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected...

It`s New York, 1926. Rocco Campobello, the great tenor collapses on stage. He emerges from this brush with death a changed man: a fallen, but enlightened colossus, casting off the mantle of celebrity, he embarks on a journey into his dark and sinister past which takes him back to his impoverished early life and to the city that made him: Naples.

January 1972: the tiny outpost of British Honduras is threatened with imminent invasion by battle-hardened, US-trained Guatemalan paratroops. Britain's response must be immediate and decisive. But there is only one deterrent the government can offer: HMS Ark Royal, once the Navy's most powerful warship, now a white elephant on the verge of being scrapped. To save the small colony, she must launch a pair of Buccaneer fighter bombers on an unprecedented long-range mission. But first the old carrier must make a high-speed, 1,500 mile dash across the Atlantic towards the Gulf of Mexico. The odds of arriving in time are very slim indeed...Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts and previously unseen, classified documents, Rowland White has pieced together one of the most audacious and thrilling missions of post-war British military history.

The Love Story. The marriage of Barack and Michelle stands as one of the great personal and political partnerships, and by the time he was sworn in, Barack and Michelle Obama were indisputably the First Couple not only of America but of the world. Yet, incredibly, the true nature of that relationship has remained a mystery. Until now. Christopher Andersen draws on those who know the Obamas best to examine in detail the unique partnership and the grace, courage and humour that defines it. An inspiring, sympathetic and compelling look at two remarkable individuals, Barack and Michelle, is above all else, a revealing, stirring love story!

At St Jude's School for Girls, four friends are facing very different problems ...Can Gina still be happy with her boyfriend when there's such an exciting new guy on the scene? How will Amy survive when her rich dad's money disappears? What can tomboy Niffy do to make herself gorgeous? And why is Min spending so much time in the study and missing all the fun? Sounds like all the St Jude's friends need to get in touch with their inner Rebel Girl!

Using the Imperial War Museum's vast archive of personal diaries, this remarkable anthology examines the stories of ordinary men and women who fought, and in some cases died, on the front line and home front during the Second World War. The Words of War features diverse first-hand accounts from individuals who took part in the key campaigns of the war. In the words of the young officer facing defeat and capture at Dunkirk, the pilot officer losing friends and comrades during the Battle of Britain, the Land Girl dealing with a new life in the countryside, the Royal Naval seaman fighting the weather in the Russian convoys, the infantryman about to hit the beaches on D-Day, the bomb aimer aboard an Avro Lancaster as it heads towards another German target, the soldier fighting in the Far East against the Japanese, and many others, this unique publication vividly documents the harsh realities of day-to-day life during the conflict. With each diary entry placed in context within a historical narrative that weaves together the complete story for the reader, The Words of War provides a poignant and emotional insight into the human cost of war, while shedding new light on this unforgettable period in history.

In this wonderfully written memoir of Jacqueline Wilson’s life as a teenager, stories about family problems, first love, school life and friends build up a fascinating picture of a real teenager and her inner life. She uses extracts from her real diary to cover issues as diverse as how she created beehive hairdos to her troubled school life.

'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'. Blueeyedboy 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 a webjournal called badguysrock, this is a thriller that makes creative use of all the multiple personalities, disguise and mind games that are offered by playing out a life on the internet.

Danny Coughlin is Boston Police Department royalty and the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains. His beat is the predominately Italian neighbourhoods of the North End where political dissent is in the air — fresh and intoxicating. On the hunt for hard-line radicals as a favour to his father, Danny is drawn into the ideological fray and finds his loyalties compromised as the police department itself becomes swept up in potentially violent labour strife. Luther Lawrence is on the run. A suspect in a nightclub shooting in Oklahoma, he flees to Boston, leaving his wife behind. He lands a job in the Coughlin household and meets Danny and the family's Irish maid, Nora, who once had a powerful bond. As the mystery of their relationship unravels, Luther finds himself befriending them both even as the turmoil in his own life threatens to overwhelm him. Desperate to return to his wife and child, he must confront the past that has followed him and settle scores with enemies old and new. Set at the end of the Great War, AciThe Given DayAci is meticulously researched and expertly plotted, it will transport you to an unforgettable time and place.

A world away from the killing fields of France was a battle that could have changed the face of history. Over the course of 1917, German bombers threatened to engulf London in firestorms – a portent of the London Blitz and the Battle of Britain over twenty years later. They were determined to bring London to its knees. The First Blitz took place over eight nights in 1917, but it was the second wave of attacks in the summer of 1918, following the development of the ‘Elektron’ incendiary bomb, that came within an ace of obliterating London. The margin between the survival of the world’s greatest capital city and its total destruction came down to less than one hour. The events and decisions taken in the course of those fateful days were as important as anything that happened on the Western Front. With breathtaking insight, compelling drama and supreme narrative clarity, Neil Hanson tells the story of the air war that could have altered the course of the conflict, and with it the history of the twentieth century itself...

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.

A former tiffinboy from Mumbai, Ram Mohamad Thomas, has just got twelve questions correct on a TV quiz show to win a cool one billion rupees. But he is brutally slung in a prison cell on suspicion of cheating. Because how can a kid from the slums know who Shakespeare was, unless he has been pulling a fast one? In the order of the questions on the show, Ram tells us which amazing adventures in his street-kid life taught him the answers. From orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, and into the homes of Bollywood's rich and famous, Slumdog Millionaire is brimming with the chaotic comedy, heart-stopping tragedy, and tear-inducing joyfulness of modern India.

Autumn,1942: Hitler’s legions have swept across Europe. Soviet Russia reels under the German onslaught while across the channel, Britain struggles on. And in North Africa, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps have routed the 8th Army, threatening the oil fields of the Middle East. The war hangs in the balance...Out of this, the British hatch a desperate plan — to send a small, heavily armed yet highly mobile force behind enemy lines to strike a blow that will stop Rommel’s army in its tracks. It is to be called the Long Range Desert Group and its exploits will become the stuff of legend. Based on real events, Steven Pressfield’s bold new novel brings to pulse-racing life the ingenuity and daring of this maverick commando unit — a disparate, dedicated ’band of brothers’ who sacrificed so much for the sake of freedom...