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.

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.

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

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!

One of the great hidden gems of the past decade. Written in brief entries from ‘Ambition’ to ‘Zzzzz’ Salway's confident debut novel chronicles the existential ups and downs of British 20-something Verity Bell. The alphabetically arranged mini-chapters make for an inventive and episodic narrative, as Verity muses on her career (A is for Attitude: "I work as a secretary in the media… something I don't always talk about because some people seem to think I'm showing off"), her friendship with the fabulous Sally (B is for Best Friends: "my best friend, Sally, has become the mistress of a millionaire called Colin"), her feelings on Gwyneth Paltrow (G is for You-Know-Who: "If I looked like Gwyneth Paltrow, nothing could possibly go wrong in my life") and other issues of love, friendship and family. With both parents deceased, Verity clings to Sally as a sort of substitute family, but struggles with her insecurities and her envy of Sally's ‘perfect’ existence. She falls madly in love with a married man but, unsurprisingly, their steamy affair is not the solution to Verity's problems; rather, it exacerbates her self-doubt as she plays second fiddle to the wife and children. Ultimately, Verity's life takes an unexpected turn, and she emerges a stronger and more creative woman. Salway wraps her bright, comic writing in bite-sized chunks that make this first novel an easy-reading pleasure. First published in 2004 to considerable critical acclaim - Neil Gaiman called Sarah ‘an astonishingly smart writer’ and Sainsbury’s magazine hailed the book as ‘a Bridget Jones for our times’ - Something Beginning With became a cult classic. By which we mean a book that didn’t sell a huge amount but nearly everyone who did buy it loved it. We are delighted to be able to include Something Beginning With as one of the launch titles for The Library of Lost Books. Sarah has a considerable online following and her debut novel has been unavailable for some time.

The ebook edition of a classic novel from the bestselling author of ‘The Future Homemakers of America’. What hope is there for Poppy Minkel? She has kinky hair, out-sticking ears, too yellow a neck and an appetite for fun, and her mother Dora despairs of ever finding her a husband, despite the Minkel's Mustard fortune that seasons these dubious attractions. When Daddy disappears, Poppy's tendency to the unusual is quietly allowed to flourish. World War I opens new horizons. With never a moment of self-doubt, she invents her own extraordinary life in step with the unfolding century.

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.

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…

From bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates, a taut and fascinating novel examining the mysteries of human memory and personality In 1965, a young research scientist named Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes, the subject of her study, a handsome amnesiac who cannot remember anything beyond the last seventy seconds. Over the course of thirty years, the two embark on mirroring journeys of self-discovery. Margot, enthralled by her charming, mysterious, and deeply lonely patient, as well as her officious supervisor, attempts to unlock Eli’s shuttered memories of a childhood trauma without losing her own sense of identity in the process. And Eli, haunted by memories of an unknown girl’s body underneath the surface of a lake, pushes to finally know himself once again, despite potentially devastating consequences. As Margot and Eli meet over and over again, Joyce Carol Oates’ tightly written, nearly clinical prose propels the lives of these two characters forwards, both suspended in a dream-like, shadowy present, and seemingly balanced on the thinnest, sharpest of lines between past and future. Made vivid by Oates’ eye for detail and searing insight into the human psyche, The Man Without a Shadow is an eerie, ambitious, and structurally complex novel, as poignant as it is thrilling.

This title includes three of Jean Ure's best-loved stories in a 3-in-1 edition. In Skinny Melon and Me, Cherry wonders how her mom could even think of remarrying—and to such a dweeb! At least she has her best friend, Skinny Melon, to cheer her up! In Becky Bananas: This Is Your Life! Becky shares her dreams and describes her wonderful life so far. And in Fruit and Nutcase Mandy's scatty parents drive her up the wall! She's trying really hard not to totally lose the plot!

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.

The first novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of We Need to Talk about Kevin is a compelling and provocative story of love and how we suffer for it. Still unattached and childless at fifty-nine, world-renowned anthropologist Gray Kaiser is seemingly invincible―and untouchable. Returning to make a documentary at the site of her first great triumph in Kenya, she is accompanied by her faithful middle-aged assistant, Errol McEchern, who has loved her for years in silence. When young graduate assistant Raphael Sarasola arrives on the scene, Gray is captivated and falls hopelessly in love―before an amazed Errol's eyes. As he follows their affair with jealous fascination, Errol watches helplessly from the sidelines as a proud and fierce woman is reduced to miserable dependence through miserable dependence.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

The first novel in C.S. Lewis’s classic sci-fi trilogy which tells the adventure of Dr Ransom who is kidnapped and transported to Mars In the first novel of C.S. Lewis's classic science fiction trilogy, Dr Ransom, a Cambridge academic, is abducted and taken on a spaceship to the red planet of Malacandra, which he knows as Mars. His captors are plotting to plunder the planet's treasures and plan to offer Ransom as a sacrifice to the creatures who live there. Ransom discovers he has come from the 'silent planet' – Earth – whose tragic story is known throughout the universe…

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE KITSCHIES ‘The Way Inn’ takes the polished surfaces of modern life, the branded coffee and the free wifi, and twists them into a nightmare. The Way Inn is a global chain of identikit mid-budget hotels, and Neil Double is a valued member of its loyalty scheme. Neil is a professional conference-goer, a man who will attend trade fairs, expos and conventions so you don't have to. This life of anonymised, budget travel would be hell for most, but it’s a kind of paradise for Neil, who has turned his incognito professional life into a toxic personal philosophy. But Neil is about to change. In a brand new Way Inn in an airport hinterland, he meets a woman – a woman he has seen before in bizarre and unsettling circumstances. She hints at being in possession of an astonishing truth about this mundane world. And then she disappears. Fascinated, and with his professional life unravelling, Neil tries to find the woman again. In doing so he is drawn into the appalling secret that lurks behind the fake smiles and muzak of the hotel…

‘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.