Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: a sparkling historical drama from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Uprooting from their quiet Dorset village to the carnal streets of London, young Jem Kellaway and his family feel far from home. The Kellaways struggle to fi nd their place in a tumultuous city, alive with repercussions from the blood-splattered French Revolution. Luckily streetwise Maggie Butterfi eld is on hand to show Jem the ropes. Together they encounter the neighbour they’ve been warned about: radical poet and artist William Blake. Jem and Maggie’s passage from innocence to experience becomes the very stuff of poetic inspiration.

The second book in Dolores Redondo’s atmospheric Baztan trilogy, featuring Inspector Amaia Salazar. With masterful storytelling and a detective to rival Sarah Lund, this Spanish bestselling series has taken Europe by storm. A year after arresting Jason Medina for the rape and murder of his step-daughter, Detective Inspector Amaia Salazar has one last duty to complete before starting her maternity leave – attending Medina’s trial. When the trial is suddenly called off, Amaia is appalled. But the judge had no choice. Jason Medina has committed suicide in the bathroom of the courthouse, leaving behind a cryptic note addressed to Amaia：the single word ‘Tarttalo’. What message was Medina trying to send with this obscure reference to Basque mythology? To unravel the truth, Amaia must return once again to the Baztan valley, her family home and the place where she feels most vulnerable. As the investigation becomes more complicated and more personal, those closest to Amaia will be placed in mortal danger…

Can you be re-lit by poetry? This little book offers everyone one of the oldest of all remedies for stress：the reading of poetry. Intended to help you endure some of your stressful moments and painful experiences, these poems tell us we are not alone. Again and again over the centuries great poets return to love and death and memory – remembrance of childhood joy, of happy days and beautiful places, of loved ones we have lost or feeling at peace and at one with the natural world. ‘Stressed Unstressed’ harvests an array of poems on such themes in the hope that they will speak to you when you are processing your worries or when you simply want to fill your mind with different, more positive thoughts. Words can act as drugs, and on the bedside or in a waiting-room this little volume of poetry can help in all sorts of difficult circumstances. So here is a selection of new poems and old, enduring classics and forgotten gems. Next time you are feeling stressed or anxious, worried or sleepless, panicky or unable to cope, ‘Stressed Unstressed’ invites you to join the thousands of others who have read and remembered and loved these poems – to form a very special community. This is bibliotherapy.

The inside story of the campaign that rocked the United Kingdom to its foundations, and the implications of the Scottish independence movement for the future of British politics. Alex Salmond has been a passionate supporter of Scottish independence his whole life. In September 2014, he came close to realising that dream. In a riveting daily diary, written with his trademark wit and charm, Salmond takes us into the heart of the YES campaign, revealing what was said and done behind the scenes as the referendum reached its dramatic climax. He explains how the YES campaign energised the entire Scottish nation and rewrote the rulebook for grassroots political campaigning, not just in the UK but throughout the world. He also looks ahead to the critical role of the ‘national question’ in the future of British politics, making clear that the referendum was not the end of a process, but the beginning of one. The dream of Scottish independence is very much alive

Have you ever dodged anyone just to avoid making smalltalk? All Shys have. If I saw an acquaintance coming towards me, I’d cross the street and pray he or she didn’t see me. If there were a shop nearby, I’d dart into it until the coast was clear.

Second in Feist & Wurts’ wonderful epic trilogy – one of the most successful fantasy collaborations of all time THE EMPIRE TRILOGY: BOOK II Nobody knows how to play the Game of the Council better than Mara of the Acoma. But when you’re surrounded by deadly rivals intent on toppling you at every turn, you need to be the best simply to survive…

Devised by devious genius Tom Cutler, The Pilot Who Wore a Dress is a fiendish collection of riddles, mysteries and puzzles to test and tease your brain. Here’s a simple one to get you started：four bodybuilders are huddling together in the street, under a small ladies’ umbrella, yet after 20 minutes not one of them has got wet. How is this possible? Separated into original brainteasers and timeless conundrums, plus locked-room head-scratchers and unsolvable crimes borrowed from the very best of detective fiction, this cunning collection will give your lateral thinking muscle a proper workout. See if you can crack the problems by tracing the clues tucked away in each mystery, without sneaking a peak at the answers at the back of the book. These puzzles are perfect for the squashed commute and after-dinner whoopla alike. They are guaranteed to entertain and delight, whether you’re a wannabe Sherlock Holmes or a budding Jonathan Creek. Side effects may include bafflement, laughter, smugness, and exclamations along the lines of, ‘It’s so obvious once you know the answer.’ Oh, and about those bone-dry bodybuilders – who said it was raining? So obvious!

The much-anticipated novel from David Nobbs is the spiritual follow-up to The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and is as witty as it is prescient.

A novella from Caroline Smailes featuring characters from her critically acclaimed debut, In Search of Adam.

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now, for the first time, they are available in electronic book format, so a whole new generation of readers can be swept away on the adventure of a lifetime. This is the fifteenth book in the series. All the elements that have made Patrick O’Brian’s astonishing series one of the most highly praised works in contemporary fiction are here in Clarissa Oakes – the narrative grip, the impeccable ear for dialogue, the humour and the unsurpassed capacity to create and recreate a rich and true friendship between two men in the late eighteenth-century. Captain Jack Aubrey sails away from the hated Australian prison colonies in his favourite vessel the Surprise, pondering on middle age and sexual frustration. He soon becomes aware that he is out of touch with the mood of his ship: to his astonishment he finds that in spite of a lifetime’s experience he does not know what the foremost hands or even his own officers are thinking. They know, as he does not, that the Surprise has a stranger aboard: and what they, for their part, do not know is that the stranger is potentially as dangerous as a light in the powder magazine itself.

‘The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you’ll read this year’ The Washington Post A dark and socially provocative Southern-fried comedy about four UC Berkeley students who stage a dramatic protest during a Civil War reenactment – a fierce, funny, tragic work from a bold new writer LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2015 LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION 2015 Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D’aron Davenport is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyper-liberal pond of UC Berkeley. Everything changes in his American History class, when D’aron lets slip that his hometown hosts an annual Civil War re-enactment. His announcement is met with righteous indignation, and inspires a ‘performative intervention’. Armed with youthful self-importance, makeshift slave costumes, righteous zeal and their own misguided ideas about the South, D’aron and his three idiosyncratic best friends descend on Braggsville. Their journey through backwoods churches, backroom politics, Waffle Houses and drunken family barbecues is uproarious to start, but will have devastating consequences. A literary coming-of-age novel for a new generation, written with keen wit, tremendous social insight and a unique, generous heart, Welcome to Braggsville reminds us of the promise and perils of youthful exuberance, while painting an indelible portrait of contemporary America.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENGLISH PEN DEBUT FICTION PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD ‘The UnAmericans’ is a debut story collection of great poise A former dissident from Communist-era Prague fears his daughter’s new play will cast him in an unflattering light. A divorced dry cleaner tries to move on, bemused by his daughter’s reawakened faith. A Hollywood actor is imprisoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee and has a fraught reunion with his son. A young Israeli journalist, left unemployed after America’s most recent economic crash, begins dating a middle-aged widower. And in the book’s final story, a tour de force spanning three continents and three generations of women, a young American and her Israeli husband are forced to reconsider their marriage after the death of her art-collecting grandmother. This collection is a stunning exploration of characters shaped by the forces of history. Each finely turned story presents a different, morally suspenseful problem. Arranging and resolving these problems, Molly Antopol writes with an orchestral richness, in fiction that is intricately but delicately composed. But ‘The UnAmericans’ is remarkable as much for its heart as its sophistication: each voice is humane, full of warmth and wit; each page brims with a love of life. The result is a debut collection with the power not only to absorb and thrill, but to move.

WINNER OF THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2013 SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE PRIZE 2013 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BORD GAIS IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2013 With the voice of Anthony Sonaghan – a modern-day Traveller born to a powerful, mythic inheritance – Gavin Corbett summons a world we thought we knew as we have not seen or heard it before: ‘There I was now. In a room, a tidy room, tidier than any room I been in before. The bed was hard. The walls they gave no sound. A heavy window thumped itself shut. Good I says. Peace I says.’ Anthony, the son of a Sonaghan father and a Gillaroo mother, is descended from two families whose enmity is a matter of legend. Though he belongs to a storytelling tradition, Anthony has grown up away from his people, and is only dimly aware of their disputes. That is until the blood feud touches him, and he comes to Dublin to lie low. His time in the city is a reckoning. Only there does he appreciate the strength of his heritage but also its otherness. In an unforgettable feat of imposture, Gavin Corbett has found a startling idiom - vivid and innocent - with which to speak for Anthony and that other, Travelling world.

Having been published in over 100 countries, translated into 42 different languages, with over 21 million copies of his books sold internationally, Paulo Coelho can truly claim to be one of the most popular writers in the world. The Independent on Sunday has called him a ‘publishing phenomenon’. Paulo’s writing is a visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore. His stories are simple and direct, yet they have the power to change lives and inspire you with the courage to follow your dreams…… His fifth novel, The Fifth Mountain, is set in the 9th century BC. Elijah is a young man struggling to maintain his sanity amidst a chaotic world of tyranny and war. Forced to flee his home, then choose between his newfound love and security and his overwhelming sense of duty, this is a moving and inspiring story about how we can transcend even the most terrible ordeals by keeping faith and love alive.

Book three in the magnificent Empire Trilogy by bestselling authors Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts, now available in ebook Welcome to the final play of the game. Now revered as the Servant of the Empire, Mara of the Acoma is in more danger than ever before. Not only does she face threats from the brotherhood of assassins and the cunning spies of rival ruling houses, but she has attracted the attention of the awesome Assembly of Magicians, who sees her as a threat to their power. But Last Mara has not reached her position through luck or accident of fate. Surrounded on all sides by enemies determined to bring her down, Mara must draw on her deepest resources to secure her place as Mistress of the Empire once and for all. Mistress of the Empire is the stunning final book in Feist and Wurts’ epic trilogy – one of the most successful fantasy collaborations of all time.

"Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn't know my home town was at war with itself over its children, and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives. I didn't know that if a girl broke your heart, another girl, virtuous at least in spirit, could mend it on the same night. And I didn't know that the enthalpy decrease in a converging passage could be transformed into jet kinetic energy if a divergent passage was added. The other boys discovered their own truths when we built our rockets, but those were mine." So begins Homer "Sonny" Hickam Jr.'s extraordinary memoir of life in Coalwood, West Virginia - a hard-scrabble little mining company town where the only things that mattered were coal mining and high school football and where the future was regarded with more fear than hope. Looking back after a distinguished NASA career, Hickam shares the story of his youth, taking readers into the life of the little mining town of Coalwood and the boys who would come to embody its dreams. In 1957 a young man watched the Soviet satellite Sputnik shoot across the Appalachian sky and soon found his future in the stars. 'Sonny' and a handful of his friends, Roy Lee Cook, Sherman O'Dell and Quentin Wilson were inspired to start designing and launching the home-made rockets that would change their lives forever. Step by step, with the help (and occasional hindrance) of a collection of unforgettable characters, the boys learn not only how to turn scrap into sophisticated rockets that fly miles into the sky, but how to sustain their dreams as they dared to imagine a life beyond its borders in a town that the postwar boom was passing by. A powerful story of growing up and of getting out, of a mother's love and a father's fears, Homer Hickam's memoir Rocket Boys proves, like Angela's Ashes and Russell Baker's Growing Up before it, that the right storyteller and the right story can touch readers' hearts and enchant their souls. A uniquely endearing book with universal themes of class, family, coming of age, and the thrill of discovery, Homer Hickam's Rocket Boys is evocative, vivid storytelling at its most magical. In 1999, Rocket Boys was made into a Hollywood movie named October Sky starring Chris Cooper, Jake Gyllenhaal and Laura Dern. October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys. It is also used in a period radio broadcast describing Sputnik 1 as it crossed the 'October sky'. Homer Hickam stated that "Universal Studios marketing people got involved and they just had to change the title because, according to their research, women over thirty would never see a movie titled Rocket Boys" so Universal Pictures changed the title to be more inviting to a wider audience. The book was later re-released with the name October Sky in order to capitalize on interest in the movie.

"Without this child, we shall all die." Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight. Her extraordinary journey will have immeasurable consequences far beyond her own world..

Because a picture paints a thousand words. Ella has always been an artist, jotting down pictures from a young age, and now in her thirties she has made it her profession. Commissioned to capture memories, fading beauty and family moments, her sitters often reveal more about themselves than merely their outward appearance. When Ella's younger sister Chloe asks her to paint a portrait of her new fiancé Nate, Ella is reluctant. He is a brash American who Ella thinks has proposed far too fast, so the thought of spending many hours alone with him fills her with dread. But before long Ella realises there is more to Nate than meets the eye. Beautifully inter-weaving the stories of Ella's sitters – from the old lady with a wartime secret, to the handsome politician who has a confession to make – with Ella's own hunt for her real father and slow realization that she is falling in love with the wrong man, Isabel Wolff delivers a mesmerizing story that delivers a powerful emotional punch. A truly unforgettable portrait of the many aspects of love.

Set sail for the read of your life … Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Master and Commander is the first of Patrick O’Brian’s now famous Aubrey/Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written. It establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship’s surgeon and an intelligence agent. It contains all the action and excitement which could possibly be hoped for in a historical novel, but it also displays the qualities which have put O’Brian far ahead of any of his competitors: his depiction of the detail of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war, of weapons, food, conversation and ambience, of the landscape and of the sea. O’Brian’s portrayal of each of these is faultless and the sense of period throughout is acute. His power of characterisation is above all masterly. This brilliant historical novel marked the début of a writer who grew into one of our greatest novelists ever, the author of what Alan Judd, writing in the Sunday Times, has described as ‘the most significant extended story since Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time’.

The popular paperback edition of this fascinating collection of stories, which continue the tales of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and contains an alternative version of The Children of Hurin. Unfinished Tales is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring, and provides those who have read The Lord of the Rings with a whole collection of background and new stories from the twentieth century’s most acclaimed popular author. The book concentrates on the realm of Middle-earth and comprises such elements as Gandalf’s lively account of how it was that he came to send the Dwarves to the celebrated party at Bag-End, the emergence of the sea-god Ulmo before the eyes of Tuor on the coast of Beleriand, and an exact de*ion of the military organization of the Riders of Rohan. Unfinished Tales also contains the only story about the long ages of Numenor before its downfall, and all that is known about such matters as the Five Wizards, the Palantiri and the legend of Amroth. The tales were collated and edited by JRR Tolkien’s son and literary heir, Christopher Tolkien, who provides a short commentary on each story, helping the reader to fill in the gaps and put each story into the context of the rest of his father’s writings.

Following the success of We Need to Talk About Kevin this is a stunning examination of inheritance, literal and psychological: what we take from our parents, what we discard, and what we are stuck with, like it or not. After having escaped for years to London, Corlis McCrea returns to the grand Reconstruction mansion where she grew up in North Carolina, now willed to the three grown children following the death of their parents. All three want the house. Fiscal necessity dictates that two must buy a third out. Just as she was torn as a girl, the sister must choose between her decent younger brother and the renegade eldest―the black sheep who covets his legacy in order to destroy it. The adult siblings re-enact the deep enmities and loyalties of childhood, as each bids for a bigger slice of the pie.