Search results for ""simon schuster ltd""

'Joyous – a treat of a tale that whisks your heart away to the beautiful shores of Orkney. Prepare to fall in love with this fantastic series!' MIRANDA DICKINSON On paper, Merina Wilde has it all: a successful career writing the kind of romantic novels that make even the hardest hearts swoon, a perfect carousel of book launches and parties to keep her social life buzzing, and a childhood sweetheart who thinks she’s a goddess. But Merry has a secret: the magic has stopped flowing from her fingers. Try as she might, she can’t summon up the sparkle that makes her stories shine. And as her deadline whooshes by, her personal life falls apart too. Alex tells her he wants something other than the future she’d always imagined for them and Merry finds herself single for the first time since – well, ever. Desperate to get her life back on track, Merry leaves London and escapes to the windswept Orkney Islands, locking herself away in a secluded clifftop cottage to try to heal her heart and rediscover her passion for writing. But can the beauty of the islands and the kindness of strangers help Merry to fool herself into believing in love again, if only long enough to finish her book? Or is it time for her to give up the career she’s always adored and find something new to set her soul alight?​The brand new series from Holly Hepburn, first published as four ebook parts: BROKEN HEARTS AT BRIGHTWATER BAY, SEA BREEZES AT BRIGHTWATER BAY, DANGEROUS TIDES AT BRIGHTWATER BAY and SUNSET OVER BRIGHTWATER BAY ~*~Praise for Holly Hepburn~*~ 'A fresh new voice, brings wit and warmth to this charming tale of two sisters' Rowan Coleman 'Warm, witty and laced with intriguing secrets! I want to pull up a bar stool, order a large G&T and soak up all the gossip at the Star and Sixpence!' Cathy Bramley 'The Star and Sixpence sparkles with fun, romance, mystery, and a hunky blacksmith. It's a real delight' Julie Cohen 'Like the dream pub landlady who always knows exactly what you want, Holly Hepburn has created the most delightful welcome to what promises to be a brilliant series, in the first Star and Sixpence. The sisters are warm and intriguing, the neighbours are (mostly!) friendly and the gossip is utterly addictive. I was very sad when it was time for last orders, and am already looking forward to the next round. Especially if a certain blacksmith happens to be at the bar...' Kate Harrison 'Warm, witty and utterly charming, Snowdrops at the Star and Sixpence is the perfect book to curl up with on a cold winter's day. It left me with the most wonderful happy glow' Cally Taylor 'A super sparkling star of a story and I can’t wait for part two’ Alexandra Brown 'Like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, this sparkling story will sweep you away and leave your heart full of love.' Cathy Bramley

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A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND FOUNDER OF THE EVERYDAY SEXISM PROJECT, LAURA BATES. 'Following [Everyday Sexism] will make most women feel oddly saner.' Caitlin Moran 'Piercingly astute.' StylistLaura Bates, pioneering feminist, activist and bestselling author, has given voice to hundreds of thousands of women through her international Everyday Sexism Project. Drawing attention to both hidden and blatant sexist acts and attitudes, Laura has exposed the startling truth behind misogyny in our society: systemic, ingrained and ignored. From Weinstein to Westminster, a torrent of allegations of sexual harassment and assault have left us reeling. One hundred years since some women were first given the right to vote, we are still struggling to get to grips with the true extent of gender inequality that continues to flourish in our society. In this collection of essays, originally published in the Guardian, Laura Bates uncovers the sexism that exists in our relationships, our workplaces, our media, in our homes and on our streets, but which is also firmly rooted in our lifelong assumptions and in the actions and attitudes we explain away, defend and accept. Often dismissed as one-offs, veiled as 'banter' or described as 'isolated incidents', MISOGYNATION joins the dots to reveal the true scale of discrimination and prejudice women face. A bold, witty and incisive analysis of current events, MISOGYNATION makes a passionate argument for stepping back, opening our eyes and allowing ourselves to see the bigger picture.IN PRAISE OF LAURA BATES 'Funny and clever.' Telegraph 'Girl Up is an essential compendium of wit, wisdom, advice and straight-talk.' Sarah Knight 'We owe Bates a great debt of gratitude for her Everyday Sexism Project.' LA Times 'Laura was one of the first women to harness the power of social media to fight sexism and misogyny and give millions of young women a voice.' Grazia 'Bates takes a myth-busting approach to body image, food, sex and advertising and is particularly good at boiling down feminist language into a snappy, everyday vernacular' Metro 'For any woman who is sick of being told how to act, how to dress, or how to ward off unwanted advances, [Girl Up] is for you. Independent '[Girl Up is] another hard-hitting book which exposes the truth surrounding pressures on body image, false representations in the media, and lots of issues very relevant to girls today. Red

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*** PRE-ORDER THE ONLY SUSPECT NOW, THE NEW CAUTIONARY TALE OF OBSESSION, LOVE, JEALOUSY AND DECEPTION FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF OUR HOUSE AND THE OTHER PASSENGER *** 'One of this summer's most anticipated thrillers'Stylist 'Scarily plausible' ObserverMEET THE NEIGHBOURS YOU'LL LOVE TO HATE Until Darren and Jodie move in, Lowland Way is a suburban paradise. Beautiful homes. Friendly neighbours. Kids playing out in the street. But Darren and Jodie don't follow the rules and soon disputes over loud music and parking rights escalate to threats of violence. Then, early one Sunday, a horrific crime shocks the street. As the police go house-to-house, the residents close ranks and everyone's story is the same: They did it. But there's a problem. The police don't agree. And the door they're knocking on next is yours. Praise for Those People:'Guaranteed to have you vibrating with impotent fury … a carefully crafted psychological thriller’ Laura Wilson, Guardian ‘A feverish atmosphere is built up, with Candlish again skewering the peccadilloes and prejudices of her middle-class characters’ Sunday Times 'You're in for a treat!' Lisa Jewell 'Those People is nail-bitingly tense from the first page to the last. Louise Candlish shows us the dark side of suburbia – and of ourselves' Erin Kelly ‘Sharp satire and a plot that builds to a roiling boil with a couple of oh-so-clever final twists’ Sarah Vaughan 'Beautifully modulated and terrifically suspenseful' Washington Post ‘Twists aplenty, and such wonderful observation - I loved it' Clare Mackintosh 'An addictive, twisty page-turner about the neighbours from hell' Alice Feeney 'A delicious slice of suburban noir. I loved it' Harriet Tyce 'Candlish is a master at peeling away the veneer of middle-class respectability, and utterly nails the trials of living cheek-by-jowl with awful neighbours. You’ll be asking yourself, “How far would I go?”' heat 'Booth’s boorish presence causes sleep-deprived couples to bicker hatefully and grown siblings to become enraged with one another, until the whole community seems to turn on itself - with fatal consequences' Wall Street Journal 'A smart and twisty tale… a compelling read' Woman & Home 'A devilishly good thriller… with a wicked ending. Loved it' Laura Kemp 'Utterly gripping' RED 'A read that will make you rejoice for nice neighbours!' Prima 'Louise Candlish captures the mores of middle-class life and our worst, curtain-twitching tendencies like no one else' RED, online 'Full of marvellously toxic characters' Best 'An unsettling, darkly funny, artfully composed novel about the way we live now' Irish Times

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'60 fantastical structures described and illustrated in this colourful and highly entertaining book.' The Sunday Times 'If you can’t think of a present for the armchair architect in your life – well, problem solved' The Daily Telegraph 'These ghostly architectural echoes entrance the reader.' The Field ‘This is a lavishly illustrated book of wonder for the dreamer in your life’ The MetroA skyscraper one mile high, a dome covering most of downtown Manhattan, a triumphal arch in the form of an elephant: some of the most exciting buildings in the history of architecture are the ones that never got built. These are the projects in which architects took materials to the limits, explored challenging new ideas, defied conventions, and pointed the way towards the future. Some of them are architectural masterpieces, some simply delightful flights of fancy. It was not usually poor design that stymied them – politics, inadequate funding, or a client who chose a ‘safe’ option rather than a daring vision were all things that could stop a project leaving the drawing board. These unbuilt buildings include the grand projects that acted as architectural calling cards, experimental designs that stretch technology, visions for the future of the city, and articles of architectural faith. Structures likeBuckminster Fuller’s dome over New York or Frank Lloyd Wright’s mile-high tower can seem impossibly daring. But they also point to buildings that came decades later, to the Eden Project and the Shard. Some of those unbuilt wonders are buildings of great beauty and individual form like Etienne-Louis Boullée’s enormous spherical monument to Isaac Newton; some, such as the city plans of Le Corbusier, seem to want to teach us how to live; some, like El Lissitsky’s ‘horizontal skyscrapers’ and Gaudí’s curvaceous New York hotel, turn architectural convention upside-down; some, such as Archigram’s Walking City and Plug-in City, are bizarre and inspiring by turns. All are captured in this magnificently illustrated book.

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Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic meets the Salem Witch trials in this haunting story about three sisters on a quest for revenge - and how love may be the only thing powerful enough to stop them.Welcome to the cursed town of Sparrow… Two centuries ago, in the small, isolated town, three sisters were sentenced to death for witchery. Stones were tied to their ankles and they were drowned in the deep waters surrounding the town. Now, for a brief time each summer, the sisters return from the depths, stealing the bodies of three weak-hearted girls so that they may seek their revenge, luring boys into the harbor and pulling them down to their watery deaths. Like many locals, seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot has accepted the fate of the town. But this year, on the eve of the sisters’ return, a boy named Bo Carter arrives; unaware of the danger he has just stumbled into or the fact that his arrival will change everything... Mistrust and lies spread quickly through the salty, rain-soaked streets. The townspeople turn against one another. Penny and Bo suspect each other of hiding secrets. And death comes swiftly to those who cannot resist the call of the sisters. But only Penny sees what others cannot. And she will be forced to choose: save Bo, or save herself.

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'There is an addictive pungency to this exotic tale of lives lived loudly' Sunday Times 'The remarkable life of Caresse Crosby, now retold by her great-granddaughter' Observer'I will describe it as best I can. This is their story. Or perhaps just mine. Let us begin, again . . .' A vivid and inventive debut novel about four generations of women in a family, their past and their legacy, which evokes the work of Kate Atkinson, Tessa Hadley and Virginia Baily. On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother’s home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. ‘Home’ is the sprawling Italian castle of Roccasinibalda, and Diana’s mother is the legendary Caresse Crosby, one half of literature’s most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of Harry Crosby, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the ‘Lost Generation’. But it was not only Harry who was lost. Their incendiary love story concealed a darkness that marked mercurial Diana and still burns through the generations: through Diana's troubled daughters Elena and Leonie, and Elena’s young children. Moving between the decades, between France, Italy and the Channel Islands, Tamara Colchester’s debut novel is an unforgettably powerful portrait of a line of extraordinary women, and the inheritance they give their daughters.'Sensual, evocative and rich with observational truth, this is a vivid and intricate portrait of three extraordinary women' Jeremy Page, author of Salt'Evocative' Good Housekeeping 'This is a bold, striking and confident novel filled with vivid, sometimes shocking, scenes. It spans decades, generations and continents without ever feeling disjointed. This is a stunning introduction to an intriguing new voice in British fiction, who does real justice to her prodigious forebear' Netgalley reviewer

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THE WORD-OF-MOUTH SENSATIONTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERA RICHARD & JUDY BOOKCLUB SELECTIONNOW A NUMBER ONE NETFLIX SERIES'Timely and compelling' Shari Lapena'Impressive' The Times'Gripping' Observer'Sensational’ Clare MackintoshA high-profile marriage thrust into the spotlight.A prosecutor who believes justice has been a long time coming. A scandal that will rock Westminster.And the women caught at the heart of it. Praise for Anatomy of a Scandal:'Magnificent' Marian Keyes'Intelligent, subtle and thought-provoking' Louise Candlish'The definition of a page-turner' Elizabeth Day'Almost impossible to put down' Louise O’Neill'Once the trial of MP James Whitehouse starts, you could not have prised the book from hands for love or money' Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express'An absolute masterpiece – prepare to be very impressed' heat'A lot of reviews claim that a novel has them ‘hooked from the start’ – but with this story, it’s painfully true' Grazia‘A timely thriller about marriage, but also about power, who wields it, and how that affects who we believe’ Stylist‘Well-written, pacy and full of twists and turns’ Independent'New Netflix series lays bare the toxic privilege of those in power… Friend’s performance is eerily plausible. His Whitehouse is charismatic and smoothly persuasive, his eloquence barely concealing his arrogance… Equally strong is Miller as Sophie, who is forced for the first time to examine her own cosseted way of life and the principles she has sacrificed to preserve it' Financial Times'This drama will immediately entire fans of House of Cards, Apple Tree Yard and The Undoing…. Miller is excellent as the elegant, brittle Sophie, who is forced to watch her beautifully organised house fall out of order, the heart of a drama that manages to feel both aesthetically glossy and morally gritty' Sunday Times Culture 'Feels like it could have been ripped from the headlines' Evening Standard 'A cautionary tale for our times' Daily Telegraph**OUT NOW: REPUTATION, THE THRILLING AND TIMELY NEW NOVEL FROM SARAH VAUGHAN**

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**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON, CHARLIE HUNNAM AND SIENNA MILLER**‘A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure’ JOHN GRISHAMThe story of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's The Lost World, by the author of the international Number One bestsellers KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE WAGER Fawcett was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers plunged into the jungle, trying to find evidence of Fawcett's party or Z. Some died from disease and starvation; others simply disappeared. In this spellbinding true tale of lethal obsession, David Grann retraces the footsteps of Fawcett and his followers as he unravels one of the greatest mysteries of exploration. ‘A wonderful story of a lost age of heroic exploration’ Sunday Times ‘Marvellous ... An engrossing book whose protagonist could out-think Indiana Jones’ Daily Telegraph‘The best story in the world, told perfectly’ Evening Standard ‘A fascinating and brilliant book’ Malcolm Gladwell

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From the co-producer of Dork Diaries comes Kaylee, a lover of pranks, who takes on The Tooth Fairy, a Prankster Extraordinaire!Kaylee loves pulling pranks: from dropping water balloons on passersby to even tricking Santa Claus, she's a prize-winning prankster! Is she the Princess of Pranks? No! That title is held by none other than the Tooth Fairy. But when Kaylee loses a tooth and the Tooth Fairy goes about her usual tooth-taking business, Kaylee pranks her with a fake frog. As Kaylee and the Tooth Fairy try to out-prank one another, things get way out of hand. Will the two finally see eye and eye and share the crown? Erin Russell, daughter of DORK DIARIES superstar, Rachel Renée Russell, makes her picture book debut with a rousing and rollicking story, sure to delight losers-of-teeth and pranksters young and old, and Jennifer Hansen Rolli's illustrations perfectly capture the hilarity and chaos of this unusual rivalry!

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'This was much more than a bunch of guys out on an exploring and collecting expedition. This was a military expedition into hostile territory'. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild, vast land ruled by the Indians. Charismatic and brave, Lewis was the perfect choice and he experienced the savage North American continent before any other white man. UNDAUNTED COURAGE is the tale of a hero, but it is also a tragedy. Lewis may have received a hero's welcome on his return to Washington in 1806, but his discoveries did not match the president's fantasies of sweeping, fertile plains ripe for the taking. Feeling the expedition had been a failure, Lewis took to drink and piled up debts. Full of colourful characters - Jefferson, the president obsessed with conquering the west; William Clark, the rugged frontiersman; Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition; Drouillard, the French-Indian hunter - this is one of the great adventure stories of all time and it shot to the top of the US bestseller charts. Drama, suspense, danger and diplomacy combine with romance and personal tragedy making UNDAUNTED COURAGE an outstanding work of scholarship and a thrilling adventure.

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“There is only one bond that I trust: between a woman and her sisters. We never take our eyes off each other. In love and in rivalry, we always think of each other.” When Katherine of Aragon is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined – with Margaret’s younger sister Mary – to a sisterhood unique in all the world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland and France. United by family loyalties and affections, the three queens find themselves set against each other. Katherine commands an army against Margaret and kills her husband James IV of Scotland. But Margaret’s boy becomes heir to the Tudor throne when Katherine loses her son. Mary steals the widowed Margaret’s proposed husband, but when Mary is widowed it is her secret marriage for love that is the envy of the others. As they experience betrayals, dangers, loss and passion, the three sisters find that the only constant in their perilous lives is their special bond, more powerful than any man, even a king.

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On the basis of 1,400 oral histories from the men who were there, bestselling author and World War II historian Stephen E. Ambrose reveals for the first time anywhere that the intricate plan for the invasion of France in June 1944 had to be abandoned before the first shot was fired. The true story of D-Day, as Ambrose relates it, is about the citizen soldiers - junior officers and enlisted men - taking the initiative to act on their own to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall when they realised that nothing was as they had been told it would be. D-DAY is the brilliant, no holds barred, telling of the battles of Omaha and Utah beaches. Ambrose relives the epic victory of democracy on the most important day of the twentieth century.

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Escape the cold winter nights with Sunday Times Top Five bestseller Heidi Swain's Summer at Skylark Farm!  Amber is a city girl at heart. So when her boyfriend Jake suggests they move to the countryside to help out at his family farm, she doesn't quite know how to react. But work has been hectic and she needs a break so she decides to grasp the opportunity and make the best of it. Dreaming of organic orchards, paddling in streams and frolicking in fields, Amber packs up her things and moves to Skylark Farm. But life is not quite how she imagined - it's cold and dirty and the farm buildings are dilapidated and crumbling. But Amber is determined to make the best of it and throws herself into farm life. But can she really fit in here? And can she and Jake stay together when they are so different?A story of love in the countryside from the Sunday Times 

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‘Fearsome wit’ Elle‘Charming’ Buzzfeed‘Ridiculously entertaining’ Associated Press‘Endearingly honest’ Guardian A collection of humorous autobiographical essays by the Academy Award-nominated actress and star of Pitch Perfect, Twilight, Up in the Air, Into the Woods and Trolls. Even before she made a name for herself on the silver screen, Anna Kendrick was unusually small, weird, defiant, and ‘10 per cent weird’. When she was thirteen, a classmate dropped by her house unexpectedly and discovered written evidence of Anna’s social ineptitude. From then on she decided to ‘keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But here's the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.’ In Scrappy Little Nobody, she invites her readers inside her brain, sharing extraordinary and charmingly ordinary stories with candour and winningly wry observations. With her razor-sharp wit, Anna recounts the absurdities she’s experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture as only she can – from her unusual path to the performing arts (her older brother’s affinity for Vanilla Ice may have inadvertently launched her career) to her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her initial ‘dating experiments’ (including only liking boys who didn't like her back) to the perils of reading The Shining while filming Twilight in the isolated Canadian wilderness to reviewing a binder full of butt doubles to her struggle to live like an adult woman instead of a perpetual ‘man-child'. Enter Anna's world and follow her rise from ‘scrappy little nobody’ to someone who dazzles on the stage, the screen, and now the page – with an electric, singular voice, at once familiar and surprising, sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious).

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The Times Book of the YearBBC History Magazine Book of the YearDaily Telegraph Book of the Year BOOK OF THE WEEK - The Times ‘The strength of this book lies in the cold realities it delivers. “The thirteen months of 1947-48,” writes Fenby, “provide trenchant examples of how realpolitik can serve a wider purpose if those in power know how to use it.” Crucible captures perfectly the urgency of the time…Read this book for the light it shines on a turbulent time; cherish it for the lessons it provides’ - Gerard DeGroot 'Looking back 70 years Jonathan Fenby argues convincingly that the period from 1947 to 1948 “really did change the world”. His book is an assured gallop across the terrain of contemporary history in this fateful year. The global devastation of the second world war had smashed longstanding institutions and bankrupted empires, leaving behind the kind of power vacuums that were major openings for change and chaos. Crucible swings from one region to the next in a fast-moving account of how local actors filled those vacuums, often with violence.’Mary Sarote, Financial TimesOne year shaped the world we know today. This is the page-turning story of the pivotal changes which were forged in the space of thirteen months of 1947-48 Two years after the end of the second conflict to engulf the world in twenty years, and the defeat of the Axis forces of Germany, Italy and Japan, this momentous time saw the unrolling of the Cold War between Joseph Stalin's Soviet Russia and the Western powers under the untried leadership of Harry Truman as America came to play a global role for the first time.The British Empire began its demise with the birth of the Indian and Pakistan republics with the flight of millions and wholesale slaughter as Vietnam, Indonesia and other colonies around the globe vied for freedom. 1948 also marked the creation of the state of Israel, the refugee flight of Palestinians and the first Arab-Israeli war as well as the victories of Communist armies that led to their final triumph in China, the coming of apartheid to South Africa, the division of Korea, major technological change and the rolling out of the welfare state against a backdrop of events that ensured the global order would never be the same again. This dynamic narrative spans the planet with overlapping epic episodes featuring such historic figures as Truman and Marshall, Stalin and Molotov, Attlee and Bevin, De Gaulle and Adenauer, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, Nehru and Jinnah, Ben Gurion and the Arab leaders. Between them, they forged the path to our modern world.

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'Fabulous' Lesley PearseThe Liberation is set in Italy in 1945 as British and American troops attempt to bring order to the devastated country and Italy’s population fights to survive. Caterina Lombardi is desperate – her father is dead, her mother has disappeared and her brother is being drawn towards danger. One morning, among the ruins of the bombed Naples streets, Caterina is forced to go to extreme lengths to protect her own life and in doing so forges a future in which she must clear her father's name. An Allied Army officer accuses him of treason and Caterina discovers a plot against her family. Who can she trust and who is the real enemy now? And will the secrets of the past be her downfall? This epic novel is an unforgettably powerful story of love, loss and the long shadow of war.

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***FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF THE LOST SWIMMER, now in development as a film*** 'A taut and tightly wound page-turner' Marie Claire When environmental scientist Laura Alvarado is sent to a remote Antarctic island to report on an abandoned whaling station, she begins to uncover more than she could ever imagine. On a diving expedition, Laura emerges into an ice cave where she is shocked to see an anguished figure, crying for help. But in this freezing, lonely landscape there are ghosts everywhere, and Laura wonders if her own eyes can be trusted. Has she been in the ice too long? Piecing together a past and present of cruelty and vulnerability that can be traced around the world, from Norway, to Nantucket, Europe and Antarctica, Laura will stop at nothing to unearth the truth. As she comes face to face with the dark side of human progress, she also discovers a legacy of love, hope and the meaning of family. If only Laura can now find her way out of the ice ...Out of the Ice delivers compelling psychological drama for fans of Ruth Ware and Rosamund Lupton. Praise for The Lost Swimmer, now being developed as a film: ‘Ann Turner has produced a vivid, suspenseful thriller that should appeal to those with a taste for armchair travel’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘We had pins and needles trying to unravel the truth throughout Turner’s crisply written, cleverly plotted tale of deceit’ iBooks Editor

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Meet the women of American Housewife… They smoke their eyes and paint their lips. They channel Beyoncé while doing household chores. They drown their sorrows with Chanel No. 5 and host book clubs where chardonnay trumps Charles Dickens. They redecorate. And they are quietly capable of kidnapping, breaking and entering, and murder. These women know the rules of a well-lived life: replace your tights every winter, listen to erotic audio books while you scrub the bathroom floor, serve what you want to eat at your dinner parties, and accept it: you’re too old to have more than one drink and sleep through the night.Vicious, fresh and darkly hilarious, American Housewife is a collection of stories for anyone who has ever wondered what really goes on behind the façades of the housewives of America…

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AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 'A GOOD READ' 'A novel that made such a deep impression on me at sixteen that I can still conjure the atmosphere in my fifties: of yearning, infatuation mingled indistinguishably with envy, and remorse' Lionel ShriverAn American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

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NOW A MAJOR BBC TV SERIES STARRING COLIN FARRELL, JACK O'CONNELL AND STEPHEN GRAHAMA ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act. Soon he will face an evil even greater than he had encountered at the siege of Delhi, in the shape of Henry Drax: harpooner, murderer, monster . . . 'A tour de force' Hilary Mantel'Riveting and darkly brilliant' Colm Tóibín 'One of my favourite books ever' Richard Osman

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When O-lan, a servant girl, marries the peasant Wang Lung, she toils tirelessly through four pregnancies for their family's survival. Reward at first is meagre, but there is sustenance in the land - until the famine comes. Half-starved, the family joins thousands of peasants to beg on the city streets. It seems that all is lost, until O-lan's desperate will to survive returns them home with undreamt of wealth. But they have betrayed the earth from which true wealth springs, and the family's money breeds only mistrust, deception - and heartbreak for the woman who had saved them. The Good Earthis a riveting family saga and story of female sacrifice - a classic of twentieth-century literature.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR.SUNDAY TIMES SPORT BOOK OF THE YEAR. From its late-Victorian flowering in the mill towns of the northwest of England, football spread around the world with great speed. It was helped on its way by a series of missionaries who showed the rest of the planet the simple joys of the game. Even now, in many countries, the colloquial word for a football manager is not 'coach' or 'boss' but 'mister', as that is how the early teachers were known, because they had come from the home of the sport to help it develop in new territories. In Rory Smith's stunning new book Mister, he looks at the stories of these pioneers of the game, men who left this country to take football across the globe. Sometimes, they had been spurned in their own land, as coaching was often frowned upon in England in those days, when players were starved of the ball during the week to make them hungry for it on matchday. So it was that the inspirations behind the 'Mighty Magyars' of the 1950s, the Dutch of the 1970s or top clubs such as Barcelona came from these shores. England, without realising it, fired the very revolution that would remove its crown, changing football's history, thanks to a handful of men who sowed the seeds of the inversion of football's natural order. This is the story of the men who taught the world to play and shaped its destiny. This is the story of the Misters.

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From internationally bestselling author Isabel Allende comes an exquisitely crafted, multigenerational love story.'A fairy tale of a novel' New York Times'A multi-generational epic of fate, war and enduring love' Harper's Bazaar'A poetic and profound meditation on the power of love' BustleIn 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis and the world goes to war, young Alma Belasco's parents send her overseas to live with an aunt and uncle in their opulent San Francisco mansion. There she meets Ichimei Fukuda, the son of the family's Japanese gardener, and between them a tender love blossoms, but following Pearl Harbor the two are cruelly pulled apart. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love they are forever forced to hide from the world.Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to reconcile her own troubled past, meets the older woman and her grandson, Seth, at Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, and learn about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.

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The explosive new thriller by the New York Times bestseller, Lisa Unger. Twenty-year-old Finley Montgomery has always been different. She’s never been able to control the things that happen to her – not even the pain of a new tattoo or the roar of her motorcycle can drown out the chaos. When she moves to her grandmother’s house in the small town of The Hollows in upstate New York, Finley is hoping to a fresh start. Then a detective shows up. He knows about Finley’s unusual gifts and he wants her help. There’s a little girl missing and the police investigation has gone cold. Now, time is running out. Only Finley can uncover the truth – but can she find the answers before it’s too late?

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A heart-warming and nostalgic family saga set at the heart of wartime London, from the bestselling author of A Wartime Christmas. Perfect for fans of Sheila Newberry and Rosie Goodwin 'Surely one of the best saga writers of her time' – Rosie Clarke Following her mother's untimely death, Lizzie Allen is facing desperate times. Her father Tom, crippled during WWI, has been left a broken and bitter man; her elder brother Vinnie is in serious trouble with the local hard man; her two younger sisters are in danger of being taken into care, and her sweetheart Danny is heading for Australia to seek his fortune. Determined to keep her family together, yet unable to escape the poverty and degradation of the slums, heartbroken Lizzie is tricked into marriage by Danny's unscrupulous brother, Frank.Can she escape her increasingly unhappy and violent marriage and save her family? And will she ever be reunited with her one true love, former barrow-boy, Danny Flowers?Praise for CAROL RIVERS:'A gripping page turner' - LEAH FLEMING'Brings the East End to life - family loyalties, warring characters and broken dreams. Superb' - ELIZABETH GILL

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'Alan Judd's special magic is to mix contemporary events as they break over our heads with the codes and crafts of the secret world on whose special traits he is always uncannily up to date' Peter Hennessy'Plotting in the best le Carré tradition' Mail on Sunday From the author of Legacy, now a major BBC Film, and The Kaiser's Last Kiss comes a brilliant new novel for fans of John le Carre and Charles Cumming Brexit looms and Charles Thoroughgood, Chief of MI6, is forbidden for political reasons from spying on the EU. But when an EU official volunteers the EU’s negotiating bottom lines to one of his officers, Charles has to report it. Whitehall is eager for more but as the case develops Charles realises that it may not be quite what it appears. At the same time, he finds he has a family connection with a possible terrorist whom MI5 want checked out. In both cases, Charles is forced to become his own agent, seeking what he really does not want to find. Authoritative and packed with in-depth knowledge, Accidental Agent is a gripping new spy thriller from a master of the genre. ‘Judd infuses his writing with insider knowledge’New Statesman 'Wonderful. One of the best spy novels ever' Peter Hennessey on Legacy 'Belongs to the classic tradition of spy writing' Guardian 'Judd has an infallible grasp of intelligence'Spectator

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'An entertaining new book… which looks back at the most bizarre sporting activities ever devised by mankind' Daily Mail 'Perfect book for the Christmas stockings of adults and curious children' Wall Street Journal For those who enjoyed the quirkiness of Schott's Miscellany, the erudition of The Etymologicon or the extremes of The Dangerous Book for Boys, this is the ideal read. From Flagpole Sitting to Hot Cockles, Edward Brooke-Hitching has researched through piles of dusty tomes to bring vividly back to life some of the most curious, dangerous and downright bizarre sports and pastimes ever devised, before we thought better of it and erased them from the memory. After all, who would ever want to bring back Fox Tossing, a popular sport for men and women in 17th-century Germany? The sport involved dozens of couples pairing up and standing 20-25 feet apart in an enclosed field, each holding one end of a net, and then they would pull hard at both ends as the fox ran past, sending it flying high into the air. There are many other sports revealed within these pages that are unlikely ever to make an appearance on our TV screens, such as Firework Boxing, which is just as dangerous as it sounds. Meanwhile, Ski Ballet may not have been so risky, but Suzy 'Chapstick' Chaffee's signature move - the Suzy Split (a complete forward split while balanced on the tips of her skis) - was probably not one to try at home.An intriguing, entertaining and occasionally shocking insight into the vivid imaginations of humanity across the years, Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports is an unforgettable read and a perfect gift.

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'Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk did for raptors' New Statesman'Charming and moving...with extraordinary scientific research' Guardian'An engaging work of natural science... There is clearly something about the octopus’s weird beauty that fires the imaginations of explorers, scientists, writers' Daily Mail In 2011 Sy Montgomery wrote a feature for Orion magazine entitled 'Deep Intellect' about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death. It went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since then, Sy has practised true immersion journalism, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, pursuing these wild, solitary shape-shifters. Octopuses have varied personalities and intelligence they show in myriad ways: endless trickery to escape enclosures and get food; jetting water playfully to bounce objects like balls; and evading caretakers by using a scoop net as a trampoline and running around the floor on eight arms. But with a beak like a parrot, venom like a snake, and a tongue covered with teeth, how can such a being know anything? And what sort of thoughts could it think? The intelligence of dogs, birds and chimpanzees was only recently accepted by scientists, who now are establishing the intelligence of the octopus, watching them solve problems and deciphering the meaning of their colour-changing camouflage techniques. Montgomery chronicles this growing appreciation of the octopus, but also tells a love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about consciousness and the meeting of two very different minds.

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THE CROSS SPORTS BOOK AWARDS AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR The Sunday Times bestseller is 'brilliant, gripping, beautifully written, real,' says Jonathan Northcroft. So, you think you know Joey Barton. Think again. No Nonsense is a game-changing autobiography which will redefine the most fascinating figure in British football. It is the raw yet redemptive story of a man shaped by rejection and the consequences of his mistakes. He has represented England, and been a pivotal player for Manchester City, Newcastle United, Queens Park Rangers, Marseille, Burnley and Glasgow Rangers, but his career has featured recurring controversy. The low point of being sent to prison for assault in 2008 proved to be the catalyst for the re-evaluation of his life. No Nonsense reflects Barton’s character – it is candid, challenging, entertaining and intelligent. He does not spare himself, in revealing the formative influences of a tough upbringing in Liverpool, and gives a survivor’s insight into a game which, to use his phrase, 'eats people alive'. The book is emotionally driven, and explains how he has redirected his energies since the birth of his children. In addition to dealing with his past, he expands on his plans for the future. In this updated edition he speaks frankly about the gambling addiction that has left him facing a hefty ban. The millions who follow his commentaries on social media, and those who witnessed him on BBC’s Question Time, will be given another reason to pause, and look beyond the caricature.'Compelling' Donald McRae, Guardian 'Brilliant' Matt Lawton, Daily Mail

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A deeply moving, vitally important picture book encouraging empathy and kindness.Somewhere in this world, there is someone just like you, who finds the same things funny and who laughs the way you do. Have you ever stopped to think that there might be someone out there who is just like you? And if they needed you, would you help them? Helen Docherty’s lyrical rhyming text is perfectly matched by David Roberts’ stunning, thoughtful illustrations, as the two combine to make a picture book that is as necessary as it is beautiful.  

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‘The year’s best cricket book’ Daily Telegraph‘Well researched and engagingly written, this exemplary work reveals a hidden history…superbly told story’ Sunday Times‘Easily the cricket book of the year, of the century…It extends the possibility of cricket-writing-as-literature’ Suresh Menon, The Hindu It is arguably the most famous photograph in the history of cricket. In George Beldam's picture, Victor Trumper is caught in mid stroke, the personification of cricketing grace, skill and power, about to hit the ball long and hard. Yet this image, 'Jumping Out', is important not only because of who it depicts, but also what it illustrates about the changing nature of the game and how it has been seen. Now, in Gideon Haigh's brilliant new book, Stroke of Genius, we learn not only about the man in the picture but also the iconography of Trumper's powerful position in cricket's mythology. For many, Australian batsman Trumper was the greatest ever. Neville Cardus wrote: 'I have never yet met a cricketer who, having seen and played with Victor Trumper, did not describe him without doubt or hesitation as the most accomplished of all batsmen of his acquaintance.' Like Lionel Messi or Roger Federer today, he defied the obvious bounds of affiliation. Unlike the current generation of sporting stars, however, there were no memoirs or papers, very few interviews, no action footage - even his date of birth is a matter of debate and conjecture. What isn't in doubt, though, is the impact he had on the game and on his nation. Haigh reveals how Trumper, and 'Jumping Out', helped to change cricket from the Victorian era of static imagery to something much more dynamic, modern and compelling. As such, Trumper helped not only transform cricket but even the way his country viewed itself.

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A magical wintry story filled with adventure, wonder and edge-of-your-seat excitement, this is the perfect read for fans of Michelle Harrison, Piers Torday and Emma Carroll.‘Once an adventure digs its claws in, there is not an awful lot you can do about it. Especially when magic is involved . . .’ In the snowy kingdom of Erkenwald, whales glide between icebergs, wolves hunt on the tundra and polar bears roam the glaciers. But the people of this land aren’t so easy to find - because Erkenwald is ruled by an evil Ice Queen and the tribes must stay hidden or risk becoming her prisoners at Winterfang Palace.Join Eska, a girl who breaks free from a cursed music box, and Flint, a boy whose inventions could change the fate of Erkenwald forever, as they journey to the Never Cliffs and beyond in search of an ancient, almost forgotten, song with the power to force the Ice Queen back. This is a story about an eagle huntress, an inventor and an organ made of icicles. But it is also a story about belonging, even at the very edges of our world . . .'A shimmering thrill-ride of a book. I loved every page.' Lauren St John, author of The White Giraffe 'Sky Song made my heart sing - I loved it!' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Girl of Ink and Stars'A dazzling snowstorm of an adventure, with hope at its heart' Emma Carroll, author of Letters from the Lighthouse‘I cannot recommend highly enough… a brilliant, heart-stopping, tear-inducing, soul-soaring adventure’ MG Leonard, author of Beetle Boy‘A truly magical tale’ The Guardian‘Abi Elphinstone is proving to be a worthy successor to CS Lewis’ The Times'Abi Elphinstone’s books are full of adventure, wit, heart, and, above all, bravery’ Katherine Rundell, author of The Explorer ​

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‘A gripping but utterly heartrending read’ – The Sunday Times ‘A must-read for beauty fans and budding entrepreneurs alike’ – Glamour ‘Honest and inspiring’ – Good Housekeeping ‘Inspirational’ - Prima ‘A fantastic read… Honest and inspirational… Jo’s couragous story is not just for those who are fans of famous scents and fancy bags, but also for budding entrepreneurs’ – The Sun ‘Inspiring and insightful’ – Woman & Home ‘You won’t fail to be inspired by this scented story’ – YOU Jo Malone is the inspirational British businesswoman responsible for creating her globally renowned beauty business and, more recently, her new brand 'Jo Loves'. This, her first autobiography, tells in full her incredible journey from modest beginnings as a teenager, struggling with dyslexia and leaving school with no qualifications, to becoming an international brand name and one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. Jo's lively story explores how her fascination with smell teamed with her natural ability to create world-famous blends such as 'Lime, Basil & Mandarin', revolutionised the way we think about fragrance. Her unique talent for pioneering innovation and originality within her field is unrivalled. Yet, despite her success, she has faced huge challenges with courage and determination, including being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 37 and told she only had nine months to live, and her decision to go it alone after selling the original Jo Malone brand to the Estee Lauder Corporation and walking away in 2006. Jo's commitment and down-to-earth approach to life, work and family makes her one of the most likeable and well respected personalities in British retail and her honesty, hard work and entrepreneurial grit are an inspiration to all.

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Crossing continents and spanning decades, Saree is an epic story of beauty, oppression and freedom, for fans of Victoria Hislop and Kate Mosse. Nila wasn't born beautiful or powerful or rich - but she has a rare talent to tranform lives. She is a seamstress, and as she works she weaves into the saree silk a pattern of love, hope and devotion which will prove to be invaluable to more lives than just her own. From the lush beauty of Sri Lanka, ravaged by bloody civil war, to mystical India and finally its eventual resting place in Australia, this is the story of one precious saree and the lives it changes. Nila must find peace; Mahinda yearns for his true calling; Pilar is haunted by a terrible choice; Sarojini doubts her ability to love; Madhav is a holy fraud; and Marion witnesses the very meaning of love. Six lives. Six loves. Six stories bound together by the precious saree that links them all.

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Winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year Award 20161943, in the ruins of Blitzed London… Stella Thorne and Dan Rosinski meet by chance and fall in love by accident. Theirs is a reluctant, unstoppable affair in which all the odds are stacked against them: she is newly married, and he is an American bomber pilot whose chance of survival is just one in five.… He promised to love her forever Seventy years later Dan makes one final attempt to find the girl he has never forgotten, and sends a letter to the house where they shared a brief yet perfect happiness. But Stella has gone, and the letter is opened by Jess, a young girl hiding from problems of her own. And as Jess reads Dan's words, she is captivated by the story of a love affair that burned so bright and dimmed too soon. Can she help Dan find Stella before it is too late?Now forever is finally running out.

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From the author of APPLE TREE YARD, now a major BBC drama starring Emily Watson A man dies a week after rewriting his will. In it, he has left everything he owns to a woman he has known for only three weeks. As Bet investigates Peter's past, she discovers that her ex-lover was not all that he seemed… In a crumbling office block, another woman has a different sort of ghost to confront. Iris runs her own business but strange things keep happening. Her phone rings and there's no one there. Somebody taps at her door. In the basement, something unpleasant is lurking ...What connects these two women and can they ever escape it?

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Following on from Tom's life with six cats in UNDER THE PAW, he now picks up the story in TALK TO THE TAIL, updating readers on what has happened with his feline friends as well as looking back for more confessions about his animal-loving past. Readers of Tom's previous book will be delighted to read what has happened to his six eccentric cats. Why does Janet keep bringing 1980s sweet wrappers into the house? Will 24-hour surveillance of The Bear, using a state-of-the-art cat GPS system, finally solve the mystery of his wanderlust? Tom also writes about his bumbling forays into the remainder of the animal kingdom. He attempts to overcome his crippling fear of horses with disastrous results, chase ostriches in Kenya, put his hand into a tiger's mouth for 0.9 seconds and he meets his 'alter-doggo' -- the spaniel Tom regularly walks who likes to roll around in dead animals. Where will it all end? Will he give in to temptation and get a dog, a goat or even more cats? With this soppy creature-obsessive, anything is possible.

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From the author of APPLE TREE YARD, now a major BBC drama starring Emily Watson The last thing anyone would expect in a small, rural village is murder - let alone the horrific double murder of a respectable middle-aged local couple. During one of the hottest summers England has ever seen, the two are brutally stabbed to death. Their teenage daughter is missing. Alison, a young local reporter, is asked to cover the murders. But it isn't long before it emerges that she has one or two dark secrets of her own - secrets in her past even she is not aware of...

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How do you do the right thing when there are only bad choices to be made? A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul survived WW2 as a magnet for refugees and spies, trafficking in secrets and lies rather than soldiers. Expatriate American businessman Leon Bauer was drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs in support of the Allied war effort. Now as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of post-war life, Leon is given one last routine assignment. But when the job goes fatally wrong - an exchange of gunfire, a body left in the street, and a potential war criminal in his hands - he is plunged into a nightmarish tangle of intrigue, shifting loyalties and moral uncertainty.Rich with atmosphere and period detail, Istanbul Passage is the story of a man swept up in the dawn of the Cold War, an unexpected love affair, and a city as deceptive as the calm surface waters of the Bosphorus that divides it.

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A Lucas Davenport thriller by internationally bestselling novelist John Sandford 'He knows where the bodies are buried.' A familiar expression, often said with a laugh. But in Lucas Davenport's line of work, it's sometimes all too true.... When a county deputy is called out to an abandoned farmhouse in the cornfields of Minnesota by a couple of terrified teenagers, he finds that a body has been stuffed down a cistern. And then another, and another. By the time Lucas Davenport is called in, the police are up to fifteen bodies, and counting. And when Lucas begins to investigate, he makes some disturbing discoveries of his own. The victims have been killed over a great many years, one every summer, regular as clockwork. How could this have happened without anybody noticing? Because one thing was for sure: The killer has to live close by. He is probably even someone they see every day...***READERS LOVE THE PREY SERIES*** 'John Sandford knows all there is to know about detonating the gut-level shocks of a good thriller' The New York Times Book Review ​ 'The best Lucas Davenport story so far. The man has a fine touch for outlaws' Stephen King on Golden Prey 'Sandford’s trademark blend of rough humor and deadly action keeps the pages turning until the smile-inducing wrap-up, which reveals the fates of a number of his quirky, memorable characters' Publishers Weekly on Golden Prey 'It appears there is no limit to John Sandford’s ability to keep new breath and blood flowing into his Lucas Davenport series. This is a series you must be reading if you are not already' Bookreporter.com 'Sandford has always been at the top of any list of great mystery writers. His writing and the appeal of his lead character are as fresh as ever' The Huffington Post 'Sandford is consistently brilliant' Cleveland Plain Dealer

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'A case study in human frailty, jealousy and desire ... fascinating.' The Times, Best Books of 2019 'Meticulously researched...superbly evocative and gripping...a narrative that builds with the intensity of an approaching thunderstorm.' The Spectator 'Sean O'Connor can't resist striking a theatrical note in this "biography of murder".' Sunday Times Adultery, alcoholism, drugs and murder on the suburban streets of Bournemouth. The Rattenbury case of 1935 was one of the great tabloid sensations of the interwar period. The glamorous femme fatale at the heart of the story dominated the front pages for months, somewhere between the rise of Hitler and the launch of the Queen Mary. With painstaking research and access to brand new evidence, Sean O’Connor vividly brings this epic story to life, from its beginnings in the south London slums of the 1880s and the open vistas of the British Columbian coast to its bloody climax in a respectable English seaside resort.The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a gripping murder tale and a heartbreaking romance, as well as the biography of a vital, modern woman trapped between the freedoms of two world wars and suffocated by the conformity of peacetime. A startlingly prescient parable for our times, it is the story of a protagonist who dared to challenge the status quo only to be crucified by public opinion, pilloried by the press and punished by the relentless machinery of the British legal system. With a wealth of fascinating period detail, from its breathtaking opening to its shocking conclusion, The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury is a true story as enthralling, provocative and moving as any work of fiction.

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‘This book will delight both New Order-ites and general rock readers’ MojoA ROLLICKING, NO-HOLDS-BARRED ACCOUNT OF NEW ORDER'S ENTIRE HISTORY. Two acclaimed albums and an upcoming US tour – Joy Division had the world at their feet. Then, on the eve of that tour, the band’s troubled lead singer, Ian Curtis, killed himself. The next time they got together, they were a new band. That band was New Order – their label was Factory Records, their club The Haçienda. Their distinctive sound paved the way for the dance music explosion that followed, earning them the reputation as one of the most influential bands of their generation, and changing the course of popular music. Following on from his bestselling titles The Haçienda and Unknown Pleasures, Peter Hook has written a rollicking, no-holds-barred account of the band's entire history. Substance is packed with never-before-seen detail, discographies and technical information. This is possibly the most entertaining memoir ever written by a British musician. ‘There are stories here that make Ozzy Osbourne looks like Mother Teresa’ Sunday Express ‘A rollicking read’ Record Collector ‘Rock writing rarely tells us properly what a band treading water or in slow decline feels like from the inside. Hook does so memorably’ Guardian ‘As mammoth and downright idiotic as the band deserves … something hilariously daft happens on nearly all of Substance’s 750 pages’ Classic Pop

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An accessible, beautifully crafted and heartbreakingly topical novel about PTSI and the unseen effects of global conflict on ordinary lives.Beyond the bright lights and casinos lies the real Las Vegas, a forces town. In the predawn hours, a woman's marriage crumbles with a single confession. Across the city, Bashkim, the young son of an immigrant family, observes how they are struggling to get by in the land of opportunity. Three thousand miles away on the other side of the United States, a soldier, recently returned from active service in Iraq, wakes up in hospital with the feeling he's done something awful. In Laura McBride's heartbreaking and authentic novel, these disparate lives are brought together by one split-second choice; this is a story about families, the ones we are born to and the ones we choose to make. Faced with seemingly insurmountable loss, each person must decide whether to give in to despair, or to find the courage and resilience to rise.

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THE NOVEL THAT STARTED IT ALL - ARKADY RENKO NOVEL #1 'One of those writers that anyone who is serious about their craft views with respect bordering on awe' Val McDermid 'Makes tension rise through the page like a shark's fin’ Independent*** Three bodies found frozen in the snow. And the hunt for the killer begins… It begins with a triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything. A wonderfully textured, vivid look behind the Iron Curtain, Gorky Park is a tense, atmospheric, and memorable crime story.Praise for Martin Cruz Smith 'The story drips with atmosphere and authenticity – a literary triumph' David Young, bestselling author of Stasi Child 'One of those writers that anyone who is serious about their craft views with respect bordering on awe' Val McDermid ‘Cleverly and intelligently told, The Girl from Venice is a truly riveting tale of love, mystery and rampant danger. I loved it’ Kate Furnivall, author of The Liberation ‘Smith not only constructs grittily realistic plots, he also has a gift for characterisation of which most thriller writers can only dream' Mail on Sunday 'Smith was among the first of a new generation of writers who made thrillers literary' Guardian 'Brilliantly worked, marvellously written . . . an imaginative triumph' Sunday Times ‘Martin Cruz Smith’s Renko novels are superb’ William Ryan, author of The Constant Soldier

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From the New York Times bestselling author of It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover’s bestselling Slammed series comes to its gripping conclusion. There are two sides to every love story. Now hear Will’s. Layken and Will’s love has managed to withstand the toughest of circumstances, and the young lovers, now married, are beginning to feel safe and secure in their union. As much as Layken relishes their new life together, she finds herself wanting to know everything there is to know about her husband, even though Will makes it clear he prefers to keep the painful memories of the past where they belong. Still, he can’t resist his wife’s pleas, and so he begins to untangle his side of the story, revealing for the first time his most intimate feelings and thoughts, retelling both the good and bad moments, and sharing a few shocking confessions of his own from the time when they first met.In This Girl, Will tells the story of their complicated relationship from his point of view. Their future rests on how well they deal with the past in this final instalment of the beloved Slammed series.

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When football legend Sir Stanley Matthews described England's 4-1 defeat of the Netherlands in Euro 96 as 'the best England performance I have seen in years', coach Terry Venables knew he had achieved what he had set out to do. It was his most thrilling experience in football, and a moment that brought the nation together. Football had truly come home, and Venables had plotted the route. After more than 50 years at the top of the game, Venables has developed an unparalleled reputation as one of the most innovative coaches this country has ever produced. He recalls his early days as a player making his way in the Swinging Sixties of London, when showbiz and football first began to mix. But he was always destined for a career in management, and there soon followed a golden period of success. He reveals the secrets behind his methods that took him to FA Cup and La Liga triumphs, along the way becoming the founding father of the modern Barcelona. For all the acclaim he received, there has also been controversy as well, and Venables relives that horrible period when he suddenly became front-page news. In the end, there was always the football to return to and the loyal support of his family. For anyone who wants to understand the story of English football, from the days of Alf Ramsey to Roy Hodgson today, this book is an essential read.

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Don Roberto Luciano, boss of the Sicilian Mafia, agrees to be chief witness in the trial of Paul Carolla, who murdered Luciano's firstborn son, Michael, 20 years ago. Despite round-the-clock protection, all the Luciano men are killed the night before a family wedding. The don's wife, Graziella, holds together what's left of the family - daughters-in-law Theresa and Sophia, and Theresa's daughter Rosa - while instructing their lawyer to sell off business holdings. Eventually the women become involved in the business themselves, trying to recover money that's disappeared into Carolla's hands. Following a courtroom shootout, Carolla's adopted son Luka, using his knowledge of organization politics and his mastery of murder, becomes the women's partner and protector. Once the Luciano women discover Luka's secret, however, they implacably take revenge in the ruthless manner of their age-old code, and the strongest of them becomes the new head of the family, the bella mafiosa . . .

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SECRETS FROM THE PAST, UNRAVELLING IN THE PRESENT From the million-copy Sunday Times bestseller comes a gripping and moving story spanning 25 years and World War II, secrets, family and enduring love.The streets of Paris hide a dark past… September, 1937. Kitty Travers enrols at the Conservatoire on the banks of the Seine to pursue her dream of becoming a concert pianist. But then war breaks out and the city of light falls into shadow. Nearly twenty-five years later, Fay Knox, a talented young violinist, visits Paris on tour with her orchestra. She barely knows the city, so why does it feel so familiar? Soon touches of memory become something stronger, and she realises her connection with these streets runs deeper than she ever expected. As Fay traces the past, with only an address in an old rucksack to help her, she discovers dark secrets hidden years ago, secrets that cause her to question who she is and where she belongs…Praise for Rachel Hore's novels: ‘A tour de force. Rachel's Paris is rich, romantic, exotic and mysterious’ JUDY FINNIGAN ‘An elegiac tale of wartime love and secrets’ Telegraph ‘A richly emotional story, suspenseful and romantic, but unflinching in its portrayal of the dreadful reality and legacy of war’ Book of the Week, Sunday Mirror 'Pitched perfectly for a holiday read' Guardian 'Engrossing, pleasantly surprising and throughly readable' SANTA MONTEFIORE 'A beautifully written and magical novel about life, love and family' CATHY KELLY

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