THE AUTHOR HAS CHOSEN TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS OUT OF CONCERN FOR THE SAFETY OF HIS OR HER SOURCES.

Alex Urban

Alex Wheatle

Alex is an author and best-selling children’s book illustrator. Since he could first hold a pencil, Alex has been drawing characters, bringing each to life with a sense of mischief and fun. After studying Illustration for Children’s Publishing at the North Wales School of Art and Design, he went on to illustrate The Runaway Pea, which was selected for the BookTrust’s 2020 Time to Read Campaign. Alex has won the Inspiread 2023 Book Award for his picture book I Did See a Mammoth, the 2020 Shrewsbury Book Fest award and The FCBG 2020 award for his illustrations in The Runaway Pea, as well as being nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal and was a finalist in the 2020 Oscar’s Book Prize. His books have been translated into multiple languages. A love of fun storytelling and growing up on 80’s cartoons lead Alex to write his own books, which combine captivating characters and quirky exploits, along with a positive moral message. Alex currently lives in his hometown of Northampton with his wife, two sons, and their chihuahua.

Alex Willmore

Alex Y. Ferguson

Alex de Campi's mostly-indie career stretches from her Eisner-nominated debut Smoke (Dark Horse) through recent Eisner nominees Bad Girls (Gallery 13) and Twisted Romance (Image). Plus company work: she's killed off most of Riverdale, twice, in Archie vs Predator I &amp; II. Her next projects are YA adventure The Backups (Imprint / MacMillan, 2020) and a thriller with director Duncan Jones. Catch her YA adventure Reversal on her Patreon, and action-thriller Bad Karma on Panel Syndicate. She also writes for TV and film (the Blade Runner anime &amp; more). She is on social media as @alexdecampi and lives in Manhattan.

Alex de Campi

Alexa Chung

Alexander Aciman

Alexander Armstrong is one half of the comedy duo Armstrong &amp; Miller who had a regular series on Channel 4 from 1997 to 2001 and then returned with three series of the BAFTA winning Armstrong &amp; Miller Show on BBC1 in 2007. Alexander’s many straight acting roles have included Love Life, Life Begins, Mutual Friends and the sitcomHunderby. He frequently hosts Have I Got News For You?, is the voice of Danger Mouse and the narrator of CBeebies cult hit Hey Duggee. Alexander is also a presenter on Classic FM and has a number one bestselling classical album to his name, but is probably best known for presenting the highly successful daytime quiz show Pointless, now in its twelfth series.

Alexander Armstrong

Alexander Barabanov

Alexander Betts

Alexander Breeze

Alexander C. Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. The company, established in Palo Alto, California, in 2003, builds software and artificial intelligence capabilities that are used by defense and intelligence agencies in the United States and allied nations around the world, as well as companies across the commercial sector. Karp is a graduate of Haverford College and Stanford Law School. He earned his doctorate in social theory from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Alexander C.Karp

Alexander Chee won a Whiting Award for his first novel, Edinburgh, and is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and NPR, among others, and he is a contributing editor at the New Republic. He has recently been selected as a prestigious LA Times critic-at-large. He lives in New York City.

Alexander Chee

Alexander Douglas was born in Canberra, Australia where he studied music and philosophy. He now teaches the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics at the University of St Andrews. He has published two books on the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza and one on the philosophy of debt. He has grown increasingly interested in combining ideas from Western and East Asian philosophy. He loves music, literature, history, and engineering. He lives with his wife in Edinburgh.

Alexander Douglas

Alexander Freed is the author of the Star Wars Alphabet Squadron trilogy, Star Wars: Battle­front: Twilight Company and Star Wars: Rogue One and has written many short stories, comic books, and videogames. Born near Philadelphia, he currently re­sides in San Francisco, California. He enjoys the city’s culture, history, and secrets, but he misses snow.

Alexander Freed

Alexander Garros

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Humboldt

Alexander Kent's great interest in the ships and men of the eighteenth century navy was aroused when he was still at school. Although he attended fleet reviews and explored modern warships and dockyards with his father, he found that the great days of square riggers and battles at close quarters captured his imagination. H.M.S. Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, was always high on his list of regular visits. 
 
He served in the Royal Navy as a young man, and saw action in the Battle of the Atlantic and other major theatres of war, but his first love of the great days of sail remained unshaken. 
 
Now firmly established as a leading writer of authentic sea stories, he was the author of twenty-eight acclaimed books featuring Richard Bolitho. Under his own name, Douglas Reeman, and in the course of a career spanning forty-five years, he wrote over thirty novels and two non-fiction books. He died in January 2017.

Alexander Kent

Alexander Lee

Alexander Lernet-Holenia was born in Vienna in 1897. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War and became a protégé of Rainer Maria Rilke. During his life he wrote poetry, novels, plays and was a successful screenwriter. His books were included on the first Nazi blacklist and subsequently burned, but after the end of the Second World War, he again became a vital figure in Austrian cultural life.

Alexander Lernet-Holenia

Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton in Canada. His first collection, Light Lifting, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won an Atlantic Book Award. In 2019, he won an O Henry Prize for his short story, 'Lagomorph', originally published in Granta, and the first story in Animal Person. MacLeod lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

Alexander MacLeod

Alexander Mackendrick

Alex Maskill was born in Watford, and grew up both there and in Eastbourne, East Sussex. He's has just completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Leicester and now has a degree in Politics. He hopes to follow this with an MSc in Computer Science. 
The Hive Construct is his first novel and won the 2013 Terry Pratchett Prize.

Alexander Maskill

Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world's most prolific and most popular authors. His career has been a varied one: for many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Then, after the publication of his highly successful No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers through the world. These include the Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in The Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series, and the Corduroy Mansions series, novels which started life as a delightful (but challenging to write) cross-media serial, written on the website of the Telegraph Media Group. This series won two major cross-media awards - Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Award 2009 for a Cross Media Project and the New Media Age award. In addition to these series, Alexander writes stand-alone books, including The Forever Girl; Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party and Emma - a reworking of the classic Jane Austen novel. He is also the author of a book on Edinburgh, A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, as well as several collections of short stories, academic works, and over thirty books for children. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the British Book Awards Author of the Year Award in 2004 and a CBE for service to literature in 2007. He holds honorary doctorates from nine universities in Europe and North America. In March of 2011 he received an award from the President of Botswana for his services through literature to that country. Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh. He is married to a doctor and has two daughters.

Alexander McCall-Smith

Alexander Monro

Alexander Norman has written a number of books with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and has known him personally for over 30 years. He regularly gives lectures on Tibetan history and culture and is fascinated by the country and its people. He lives in the UK.

Alexander Norman

Alexander Piatigorsky

Alexander Pope was born on 21st May 1688.He was brought up a Roman Catholic at a time where the laws of England were prejudicial towards Catholics. He suffered tuberculosis as a child and was crippled by it. He never grew taller than 4'6". He first published The Rape of the Lock when he was twenty-three years old in 1712. He later added to it in 1714 and 1717. It was written to reconcile two families who had fallen out over a similar incident where a young Lord Petre had cut off a lock of hair from Arabella Fermor's head. Pope went on to translate the works of Homer and produce The Dunciad and An Essay on Man. Pope died on 30th May 1744.

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pushkin

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Judy Astley

Do the friendships you make on holiday have anything to do with real life? It might be sensible to hope that they don't!! Bestselling author Judy Astley has written another highly entertaining, hilarious and upbeat escapist read - perfect for readers of Carole Matthews, Jenny Colgan, Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson. 
 
'As sweet and intoxicating as a glass of rum punch' -- ET Life 
'A warm, funny story of love, life and infidelity...' -- Woman 
'Romantic fiction at its best' -- ***** Reader review 
'Warm and witty' -- ***** Reader review 
'Riveting' -- ***** Reader review 
 
************************************************************************* 
Everyone likes a holiday romance - but not if your husband's having it! 
 
For the last few years, Beth and Ned have gone to the same Caribbean island to the same luxury spa hotel. There they meet the same crowd, and take up where they left off last time. Real life, home life, family life, are all safely left behind. 
 
Except this year. 
 
This year, home problems have somehow tagged along for the ride. Ned has been playing away - a bit of a drunken fling, that's all, nothing to worry about, Beth thinks. But although they have put it all behind them, what Beth doesn't know is that Ned's fling was with the female half of one of the couples they are holidaying with. 
 
To make matters worse, Beth has insisted on bringing along their sixteen-year-old daughter Delilah, who's been ill and needs rest and sunshine. Not so ill, however, that she can't look around for some entertainment...

All Inclusive

an unputdownable and unforgettable laugh-out-loud read from bestselling author Judy Astley

Stephen Clarke

What are the French really like? 
 
Paul West, a young Englishman arriving in Paris to start a new job, is about to find out. 
_________________ 
 
They do eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs’ droppings. 
 
They don’t wash their armpits with garlic soap. 
 
Going on strike really is the second national participation sport after petanque. 
 
And, yes, they do use suppositories. 
 
Less quaint than A Year in Provence, less chocolatey than Chocolat, A Year in the Merde will tell you how to get served by the grumpiest Parisian waiter; how to make perfect vinaigrette every time; how to make amour - not war; and how not to buy a house in the French countryside.

A Year In The Merde

The pleasures and perils of being a Brit in France

Zane Radcliffe

'Callum looked out over Reykjavík, its colourful dolls' houses snuggled together, their rooftops so sharp and precise against a blue-screen sky. He loved this daft capital, this gale blown toy town with whalebones under its flagstones...' 
 
But Callum Pope cannot escape the horrors of his past. 
 
He has fled his native Glasgow to make a fresh start in Iceland with Bírna Sveinsdóttir, the pretty glaciologist who is slowly thawing his heart. 
 
He has moved in with Bírna, her indomitable mother (who happens to believe in fairies) and her eleven-year-old daughter - who refuses to believe in Callum. He tries hard to adjust to this new life among three generations of singular females, however, the dark secret Callum is hiding is about to raise its malign head, threatening not only to destroy his relationship but also the life of a young girl... 
 
&nbsp;Perceptive, expansive and chilling, The Killer's Guide to Iceland is a novel about love, loss and persistent light, from the award-winning author of London Irish.

The Killer's Guide To Iceland

Ingvar Ambjornsen

Elling has a wildly overactive imagination and has been molly-coddled by his mother all his life, so when she dies he is left completely incapable of taking care of himself. After a stint in the very helpful Broynes Rehabilitation Centre, Elling returns to Oslo with his room-mate Kjell Bjarne in tow. Together the odd couple embark on a free-spirited new life. 
 
On a quest to live like normal average people, Elling and Kjell's friendship grows - kittens, girlfriends and terrorist poetry enter the equation - even fame beckons. But there are fears to conquer before that, answering the telephone for one, leaving the house for another and the journey outdoors is by no means an easy one. 
 
A touching and hiliarious comedy of anxiety from Norway's biggest talent, Beyond the Great Indoors rejoices in the simplest pleasures of life and reminds us of the importance of conquering our everyday fears.

Beyond The Great Indoors

Leslie Marshall

When six-year-old Elray reaches up to touch the moon in the Tunnel of Love, she narrowly escapes a freak electric current that claims the lives of both her parents. Suddenly orphaned, she is left stunned and mute, until two loving but undomesticated uncles step in. 
 
Cross-dressing Uncle Ajax insists on being addressed as 'Aunt'; Uncle Harwood is a macho photographer, full of swagger and fond of drink. When the deceptively sweet Irish lawyer Rena moves in to mount a lucrative lawsuit against the fairground, the eccentric household becomes the very model of family life reinvented.

A Girl Could Stand Up

Susannah Waters

When you're running away from life, how far do you need to go...? 
 
A nineteen-year old runs away from her life and keeps on running. Haunted by the unexplained departure of her mother four years earlier, she is looking and not looking. Adopting one identity after another - female escort, apple-picker, cashier, canvas girl in a travelling circus - she is afraid to slow down for fear of what, or who, may catch up with her. When anonymous postcards start to arrive at every place she goes, she is finally forced to confront the fate of her long-gone mother. Can this runaway-girl escape the same end? 
 
In a compulsive and moving novel riddled with family secrets, a predictably happy ending is never a guarantee. But one thing becomes certain; people can only ever save themselves.

Long Gone Anybody

Ruaridh Nicoll

A remote fishing village in Scotland seems the perfect place for Betsy Gillander to abscond for a few days with her fiancé. There, in a landscape marred only by a vast MoD range away to the west, the pale winter sun lights up this next step in her happy and structured life. 
But then a violent storm wraps itself around the village and for three days the couple are trapped in their hotel. The enforced intimacy opens Betsy's eyes to the indolent cruelty of the man she's agreed to marry, while in the hotel bar the locals gather, increasingly anxious for news of a boat still out at sea. 
By the time the sun reappears, Betsy's fiancé has left her and she is adrift in a community shattered by the loss of the boat and seven of its sons. The pain of her break-up in the face of such tragedy produces in her a terrible guilt and Betsy finds herself drawn into a cloistered, close-knit community with a morality far beyond her understanding...

Wide Eyed

Sheena Joughin

A wry, spirited look at being glad and young, this foray back into Eighties London explores relations between sisters, mothers, friends and lovers from the vantage point of a girl caught unexpectedly in the middle. 
 
Sisterly sharing is taken beyond the pale when twenty-something Chrissie finds a postcard from her boyfriend to her sister signed, "Kisses, Nick". Within moments she severs her two central relationships and looks boldly forward to the haphazard pleasures of an independent life. 
 
Her lyrical journey, from love-lorn waitress to self-contained mother, takes us through the pubs, parks, parties, patisseries, peeling houseboats and rackety flats of west London to the shores of Lisbon, Ireland and Brighton. But Chrissie's attempts to escape the emotional convolutions of London only ever seem to lead to encounters that intensify rather than dispel her growing sense of how knotty life can be. 
 
Graceful, sensitive, gently humorous, Things to do Indoors captures intimately the bizarre complexity of life for those who yearn to become independent, but can't stop looking for love.

Things To Do Indoors

Robert Edric

An imprisoned paedophile and child murderer unexpectedly appeals his conviction. In return for a reduced sentence, he offers to implicate those involved in the crimes who were never caught; to provide evidence of Police corruption at the time of the original investigation; and, most importantly, to reveal where the corpses of several long-sought, but never found teenage girls are buried. 
 
Unhappy at what may be about to happen, but at the same time desperate to locate the body of his own missing daughter, the father of one of these girls approaches Private Investigator Leo Rivers with a plea for help. 
 
Rivers' enquiries stir cold and bitter memories. Long-dead enmities flare suddenly into violence and a succession of new killings. Everyone involved, then and now, and on both sides of the law, is unprepared for the suddenness and ferocity with which these old embers are fanned back into life. As the investigation progresses, it gathers momentum, and now must speed inexorably to the even greater violence and sadness of its conclusion. 
 
The first of a trilogy of contemporary crime novels set in the city of Hull, Robert Edric's new novel is reminiscent of Chandler and Mosley, and yet remains uniquely British. Against the backdrop of Internet pornography, Police corruption and child murder, this dark and intense novel reads like a game of chess where each piece is invested with a deceptive significance.

Cradle Song

Fans of Carole Matthews, Jenny Colgan, Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson will love this uplifting and upbeat comic novel from bestselling author Judy Astley. The perfect dose of escapism! 
 
'As irresistible as triple choc fudge cake - with extra cream' -- Mail on Sunday 
'A witty take on a modern dilemma' -- Woman and Home 
'You'll love this funny novel' -- Sun 
'Real wit...The story is so entertaining' -- Scottish Daily Record 
'A refreshingly good read' -- ***** Reader review 
'Good fun' -- ***** Reader review 
'I couldn't put the book down. Great read!' -- ***** Reader review 
 
**************************************************************************************** 
Does losing weight make you a happier person? 
 
Jay has always envied her cousin Delphine. While Jay was brought up in a large, noisy and chaotic family, Delphine was indulged, perfectly dressed with a co-ordinated bedroom, an immaculate wardrobe, dancing lessons and monogrammed silver-backed hairbrushes. 
 
Now Jay lives happily with her architect husband and their three teenage children, running a successful cleaning company and trying to keep some kind of order on her disorderly household, while Delphine has long since disappeared to Australia with her second husband. 
 
But Jay does sometimes wonder whether she should be more like her cousin - utterly well-organised and with a seemingly perfect body. 
 
So Jay decides to diet. But what should it be? She tries a range, with a variety of successes and failures. 
 
But then Delphine reappears, with a third husband in prospect and the same old air of apparently effortless superiority. But Jay never considers that perhaps Delphine is the envious one...

Size Matters

a witty and warm-hearted comedy from bestselling author Judy Astley

Julie Hilden

Maya and Ilan have an unusual marriage: Maya agrees to tolerate Ilan's chronic infidelity as long as she can participate and he will never stray without her. To her surprise, she finds their threesomes as arousing as they are disturbing and, for a while, everything seems fine. But as Maya's writing career takes off and she becomes more independent, Ilan feels threatened, and opts for another kind of sexual experimentation - one that plays on Maya's fear and ultimately threatens her life. 
 
Meanwhile, Maya is drawn into another relationship with a fateful third character. When her new liaison begins to mirror her marriage to Ilan, Maya discovers that her lover, seemingly a stranger, knows far more about her past than she has revealed. 
 
A compelling chronicle of obsession and power, 3 brings new immediacy to a timeless question: what is the greatest sacrifice you would make for love?

Dan Fesperman

Vlado Petric, former detective in war-torn Sarajevo, has left his beloved homeland to join his wife and daughter in Germany, where he scratches a meagre living among the dust of former conflicts on the building sites of the new Berlin. 
Returning home one evening, he finds an enigmatic American investigator waiting for him in the small apartment he now shares with his wife and daughter. The investigator, Calvin Pine, works for the International War Crimes Tribunal, and he tells Petric that they want him to go to The Hague. It doesn't take Petric long to accept, especially when Pine tells him they are after a big fish: one of the men who they think is responsible for the terrible massacre of Srebrenica. 
 
What Petric doesn't know is that he is also being used as bait to lure into the open a murderer from the previous generation; a man whose activities in the Second World War makes the current generation of killers look like amateurs. 
As Petric travels from modern-day Germany, through the ruins of Bosnia, to the peaceful hills of southern Italy where bitter, unresolved tensions still crackle beneath the surface, the stakes become all too personal. And he soon finds that investigating the mysteries of the past can be every bit as dangerous as finding his way through the war zones of the present.

The Small Boat Of Great Sorrows

'She emerged from a flurry of windblown rose petals, her pale skin interrupted at regular intervals by bands of red - scarlet bob, scarlet lips, cropped scarlet top, scarlet mini, scarlet knee socks, scarlet boots. She looked like a barber's pole, or a lolly that had to be licked.' 
 
Scarlet plucks her twelve-string guitar with nails the colour of glazed cherries and Belfast music hack Jessie (Jay to his friends) Black is smitten. He charms his way on to her tour bus as her band head for Dublin, but the second they cross the border he feels the heat of a sniper's bullet... 
 
Who wants Jay dead? Or rather, who doesn't want him dead? Any number of people might, with some justification, have pulled the trigger. There's Scarlet's stalker, the gun-toting shoe fetishist. And the still-grieving widow of Northern Ireland's international goalkeeper, Miles Huggins, who Jay inadvertently killed. Not to mention the property magnate who was blackmailed into handing Jay the key's to Belfast's first-ever million-pound flat. Or the RUC Chief Constable who has given Jay an ultimatum. Or, now you come to mention it, how about Sinn Fein numero uno Martin O'Hanlon, whose cover Jay's been strong-armed into exposing? However it's when Scarlet goes missing that things start getting serious and Jay has to go it alone. 
 
A story of blackmail, corruption and exploding peacocks, 'Big Jessie' is the new firecracker thriller from the author of the WHSmith Award-winning 'London Irish'.

Big Jessie

Ben Elton

The war on drugs has been lost but for want of the courage to face the fact that the whole world is rapidly becoming one vast criminal network. From pop stars and princes to crack whores and street kids. From the Groucho Club toilets to the poppy fields of Afghanistan, we are all partners in crime. 
 
HIGH SOCIETY is a story or rather a collection of interconnected stories that takes the reader on a hilarious, heart breaking and terrifying journey through the kaleidoscope world that the law has created and from which the law offers no protection.

High Society

Gigi Levangie

Clarissa is an archetypal LA babe. She is 28 (real age 31), has never done a day's work in her life and is outspoken, hedonistic and exceedingly manipulative. And she wants to keep it that way. Her life is a constant round of lunches with her hilariously bitchy girlfriends (known as the Star Chamber), parties, and yet more parties. The only thing missing from her life is a rich husband to keep her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. So, without further ado, she sets about planning an extravagant wedding (just two hundred of her closest friends) and reserving the finest hotel suites in town for her reception before she's so much as spoken to her intended. But she soon finds out that Aaron, the son of a billionaire, is more than a match for her and that, for the first time in her life, Clarissa has bitten off more than she can chew.

Maneater

Bruce shoots movies. Wayne and Scout shoot to kill. In a single night they find out the hard way what's real and what's not, who's the hero and who's the villain. The USA watches slack-jawed as Bruce and Wayne together resolve some serious questions. Does Bruce use erection cream? Does art imitate life or does life simply imitate bad art? And most of all, does sugar-pie really love his honeybun?

Popcorn

Ravi Shankar Etteth

Swati Varma is one of modern Delhi's more bleesed inhabitants. Then on brilliant morning when the world seemed cleansed by the coming of the rains, the unthinkable happens: his pregnant wife is killed in a road accident. Devastated, Swati makes a pilgrimage back to the land of his forebears, Panayur, in the state of Kerala, to scatter his beloved's ashes in the sacred waters of the Papanasini river. 
 
Returning to this long-forgotten world, he is reunited with a childhood companion who now cares for the crumbling, ghost-filled palace that was his home. For Panayur - seemingly still free from the religious turmoil that threatens so much of the country - was once a kingdom, and Swati is the direct descendant of the its last king. As two friends talk, share memories and exchagne secrets, thousands of miles away, Vel - a cousin Swati never kew he had - sets out on a quest for the truth about his family that will take him from America, to Berlin and, ultimately, to Panayur. 
 
And so begins an extraordinary and healing journey. One that will lead both Swati and Vel back through the cruel, vibrant, myth-filled history of the kings of Panayur to the legend that lies at its heart - the legend of the tiger by the river...

The Tiger By The River

SMALL, WELL APPOINTED FUTURE. SEMI DETACHED. 
 
If the end of the world is nigh, then surely it's only sensible to make alternative arrangements. Certainly the Earth has its points, but what most people need is something smaller and more manageable. Of course there are those who say that's planetary treason, but who cares what the weirdos and terrorists think? Not Nathan. All he cares is that his movie gets made and that there's somebody left to see it. 
 
In marketing terms the end of the world will be very big. Anyone trying to save it should remember that.

This Other Eden

John O'Farrell

It's a big night at the London Palladium. As Jimmy Conway steps out blinking into the spotlights live on national television, he can't help wondering whether he should have perhaps shared his little secret with someone by now. Jimmy has never done any performing of any sort ever before... 
 
Just as 'bogus doctors' are occasionally discovered working in hospitals, Jimmy Conway has become a 'bogus celebrity'; winning an award for something he never did, being photographed in Hello! in someone else's house, and ultimately making a fool of the entire mad and shallow celebrity merry-go-round.

This Is Your Life

Eleanor Bailey

For the last 150 years, Berlin has been a city of myth, dreams and possibility. For Erich, it has been home for over two decades. Yet even after two failed marriages and a stuttering career as a artist, he has little to show for it: a pair of dysfunctional children, an agoraphobic girlfriend who believes she is Marlene Dietrich and a worthy but unprofitable café gallery. With the arrival of his younger brother Max, recovering from a suicide attempt, everything changes. Max has always been the golden one for whom success came easily and yet who never cared. Erich's problem is that he always cared too much. 
 
The brothers are at a crossroads, both emotionally and geographically. It is only together that they can claw their way back to life, perhaps through the life and times of Europe's most gilded city . . .

Marlene Dietrich Lived Here

WINNER OF THE WH SMITH'S PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD [New Talent] 
 
There are 750,000 Irish living in London. One of them has to get out. For good... 
 
It is the summer of 1999. Bic (half-Irish, half-Scots) is eking out a living selling crêpes to the hordes descending on Greenwich market. With one severed ear, two bizarre deaths and the arrest of his dog for civil disobedience, Bic's year hasn't exactly been going to plan. 
 
But when raven-haired Roisin takes the stall opposite his, things seem to be looking up - if Bic can just get past her over-protective brothers. That is, until Bic wakes up the-morning-after-the-night-before, in his clothes, in Edinburgh, to find he's the UK's Most Wanted Man - on the run and with fourteen murders to his name... 
 
'Very fresh, very funny' COLIN BATEMAN 
 
'A huge and exciting plot...I loved the twist at the end' Goodreads 
 
'Great story and full of humour' Goodreads

London Irish

Diana Appleyard

It has been an idyllic summer, Tess reflects, as she packs up the Cornish holiday home in preparation for plunging back into the cold reality of normal life. An idyllic summer, and there will be more - so why does she feel awash with a nameless fear about returning home? 
 
Alone at the holiday cottage for one last night with her young daughter - Mark and the boys have already returned home to London - she has the time, and the silence, to take stock of her life. A life, which, on the surface, has everything a woman could want. So why, now the children are growing up, does she want more? The dramatic decision she takes that night sets her off on a quite new journey - but one for which she may need the courage to travel alone...

Out Of Love

One house. Ten contestants. Thirty cameras. Forty microphones. 
 
Yet again the public gorges its voyeuristic appetite as another group of unknown and unremarkable people submit themselves to the brutal exposure of the televised real-life soap opera, House Arrest. 
 
Everybody knows the rules: total strangers are forced to live together while the rest of the country watches them do it. Who will crack first? Who will have sex with whom? Who will the public love and who will they hate? All the usual questions. And then, suddenly, there are some new ones. 
 
Who is the murderer? How did he or she manage to kill under the constant gaze of the thirty television cameras? Why did they do it? And who will be next?

Dead Famous

John Harding

At fifty the guarantee runs out... 
About to hit the big five-oh, obsessed with sex, cocaine-fuelled and gripped by a crippling fear of death, Professor Michael Cole is finding life a bit of a struggle. 
It's finding the time to squeeze everything in, really. He's supposedly writing the definitive biography of his literary hero, John Donne, but barely manages three hundred words a week. His insatiable enthusiasm for his prettier female students might be partly to blame, but they are only young once. And the fact that one of his female colleagues has yet to succumb to his charms is, admittedly, a distraction he could well do without. But throw in a fight for promotion, a wife to lie to and two small children to look after and it's no wonder his blood pressure has reached life-threatening heights. He knows the time has come to act his age. The question is how. 
Because Michael Cole is very much a creature of habit and, as we all know, old habits die hard. But it's when he's caught in the act of adultery by his grandmother that Cole truly begins to see the writing on the wall. After all, she's been dead for twenty-five years... 
 
Marrying humour, heart and a singular understanding of the human condition, WHILE THE SUN SHINES is an uproariously funny yet hugely affecting novel about growing-old disgracefully and the price we sometimes have to pay...

While The Sun Shines

In the magnificent wilderness that is the Scottish Highlands, Aaron and Hugh have been friends for as long as they can remember, bound by a shared affinity for their surroundings and an increasing sense of alienation from the remote, close-knit community that is their home. 
 
But when a young woman - fleeing life in the city and a broken love affair - moves to the area, the ties that bind the boys are slowly, irrevocably stretched to near-breaking point. And as the strain on Aaron and Hugh's friendship builds, so the violence that is endemic in the land begins to infect them both. Driven to the very edge of reason, they turn on their world to vent their frustration and anger and hurt in the only way they know, embarking on a spree of quite horrific destruction...

White Male Heart

1897. In an isolated station in the Belgian Congo, an Englishman awaits trial for the murder of a native child. Imprisoned in a makeshift gaol, Nicholas Frere awaits the arrival of the Company's official investigator, while his friend, James Frasier, attempts to determine the circumstances which surround the charge. 
 
The world around them is rapidly changing: the horrors of the Belgian Congo are becoming known and the flow of its once-fabulous wealth is drying up. Unrest flares unstoppably into violence. 
 
Frere's coming trial will seek to determine considerably more than the killing of a child. But at the heart of this conflict lies a secret so dark, so unimaginable, that one man must be willingly destroyed by his possession of it, and the other must both sanction and participate in that destruction. 
 
'More disturbing even than Conrad in his depiction of the heart of darkness . . . it will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times 
 
'Relentless . . . an impressive and disturbing work of art' Robert Nye, Literary Review 
 
'Edric describes a compelling plot in fine, spare prose' David Isaacson, Daily Telegraph

The Book Of The Heathen

Willy Russell

The hilarious, bittersweet novel from the playwright behind EDUCATING RITA, SHIRLEY VALENTINE and award-winning musical BLOOD BROTHERS. 
 
Dear Morrissey, 
I'm feeling dead depressed and down. Like a streetlamp without a bulb or a goose at the onset of Christmas time. 
Anyroad, I thought I'd pen a few lines to someone who'd understand... 
 
It's 1991. Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. Only lately, he's been feeling dead down. His dad left home after falling in love with a five-string banjo. His fun-hating grandma believes she should have married Jean-Paul Sartre: 'I could never read his books, but y' could tell from his picture, there was nothing frivolous about John-Paul Sartre.' Felonious Uncle Jason and Appalling Aunty Paula are lusting after the satellite dish. 
 
And so he turns to the one person who'll understand what he's going through: Morrissey. Told through a series of heartfelt letters to the frontman of The Smiths, this is a laugh-out-loud funny, incredibly poignant tale from a character you can't help but love. 
 
'Big-hearted, wonderfully funny and engrossing' THE MIRROR 
 
'A warm, funny, poignant story. I loved The Wrong Boy - and so will you' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 
 
'A comic masterpiece' BEL MOONEY, MAIL ON SUNDAY

The Wrong Boy

Michael Adams shares a flat with three other men in their late twenties. Days are spent lying in bed, playing computer games and occasionally doing a bit of work. And then, when he feels like it, he crosses the river and goes back to his unsuspecting wife and children. 
 
For Michael is living a double life - he escapes from the exhausting misery of babies by telling his wife he has to work through the night or travel up north. And while she is valiantly coping on her own, he is just a few miles away in a secret flat, doing all the things that most men with small children can only dream about. He thinks he can have it all, until is deception is inevitably exposed... 
 
The Best a Man Can Get is written with the hilarious eye for detail that sent John O'Farrell's first book, Things Can Only Get Better, to the top of the bestseller lists. It is a darkly comic confessional that is at once compelling, revealing and very, very funny.

The Best A Man Can Get

Jody Shields

'He watches her eating one fig, then two more, grinding the seeds between her teeth, the sound echoing in her head, perhaps the last sound Dora heard before there was the thunder of blood in her ears...' 
Vienna, 1910. On a warm August night, the body of a young girl is discovered in the city's celebrated Volksgarten. She has been strangled. Using the latest forensic methods and psychological thinking, the Chief Inspector of Police begins his painstaking search for the killer. He is not alone, however. His wife Erszébet - an exotic, passionate woman steeped in the folk tales and Gypsy lore of her native Hungary - becomes obsessed with the dead girl. In secret, and enlisting the help of a young English governess, she conducts her own investigation of the murder, guided by intuition, instinct and superstition... With its beautifully-evoked setting of Vienna just prior to the Great War, a city embracing the modern and yet in thrall to superstition and prejudice, and riven by corruption, perverse sexual practices and disease, The Fig Eater is a rich and seductive period page-turner of a novel.

The Fig Eater

Perfect escapism again from the pen of bestselling author Judy Astley, No Place for a Man is a sizzling and seriously funny novel about family life and the eternal need to hold everything - and everyone - together. Perfect for fans of Carole Matthews, Jenny Colgan, Lucy Diamond and Milly Johnson. 
 
'Amusing and entertaining, easily relatable and recognisable characters' -- ***** Reader review 
'I couldn't put the book down. Great read!' -- ***** Reader review 
'Warm and witty' -- ***** Reader review 
'Riveting' -- ***** Reader review 
 
******************************************************************************* 
SOMEONE HAS TO HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER, AND IT WON'T BE HIM! 
 
Jess has just waved goodbye to her darling son, off backpacking to Oz. She's left with two teenage daughters and husband Matt - all of whom find themselves regularly featured in her popular and lighthearted newspaper column in which she conveys to her readers an enviably cheery muddle of family life. 
 
 Things become less rosy when Matt, after twenty years with the same firm, is made redundant. Only Jess sees the potential calamity in this. Matt is delighted with his new freedom and takes to hanging out at the local bar with others of the male barely-employable tendency, drinking and drifting and dreaming up hopeless schemes to make them all rich... 
 
Daughter no. 1, meanwhile, has taken up with a mysterious boy living in an abandoned car on the allotment, and her younger sister is over-burdened with a surfeit of secrets. 
 
For Jess, trying to hold everything together and missing her first-flown child, it becomes ever-harder to maintain the carefree façade for her readers. Of course she could just tell them the truth...

No Place For A Man

another light-hearted and laugh-out-loud comedy from bestselling author Judy Astley

Jane Smith

Japanese Classics

Meet the hilarious British dilettante Bertram 'Bertie' Wooster who can't seem to help finding himself in the middle of awkward social situations, calling upon his valet Jeeves to escape embarrassment.

Jeeves & Wooster

Jenny Q

Jess Tennant

Joe Rat Adventures

Joey Pigza

Johnny Maxwell

Jon Katz

Jonathon Payne & David Jones

Joseph Stark

Journey into Space

Jumpman

Post-graduation, Allyson Healey decided to embark on a three week tour of Europe. It all goes according to plan until she meets Willem. He is everything she is not; free spirited, a risk taker. She allows herself to be swept away by him for just 24 hours, and then returns home the next day. Willem, determined to find her, puts his trust in fate and travels the world hoping that somewhere he will come across her. This sweepingly romantic trio of novels is filled with emotion, romance and a life affirming belief in fate.

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