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The new novel from the bestselling author of THINGS MY GIRLFRIEND AND I HAVE ARGUED ABOUT.

Chris is 25. He has a job in advertising he despises – despite being naturally brilliant at creating shamelessly successful campaigns – an ‘artistic’ girlfriend, and his two best mates from university, who spend a lot of time playing pool, drinking Grolsch and quoting lines from Robocop at each other.

But Chris’s life is about to change. The eighties are coming to an end and he must take decisive action if he is to fulfil what he suspects is his true potential.

So, after pre-emptively celebrating the fact he is about to hand in his resignation, Chris goes to bed drunk in 1988 but very unexpectedly wakes up in 2006, with an unbelievable hangover, a long-suffering (and worryingly ‘old’-looking) stranger for a wife, a life that hasn’t turned out the way he had hoped for at all, and an unnerving amount of new body hair…

19th-century Istanbul: a conspiracy to steal an ancient reliquary; a secret which could change the world.

The Ottoman Empire is plagued by thefts of antiquities from mosques and churches that, within days, appear for sale in Europe. Among them is a reliquary, presumed lost for four hundred years and around which an elaborate and mysterious sect has grown.

In Istanbul, magistrate Kamil Pasha is under pressure to break the smuggling ring amid rising tensions between Christians and Muslims. He confronts a mysterious adversary who will stop at nothing to get the reliquary first. With the Balkans aflame and Kamil’s personal life in upheaval, the search into the old neighbourhoods where Istanbul’s crime rings reside may cost Kamil not only his position but also his life.

”She lists like Hornby. She talks dirty like Amis. She has the misanthropy of Larkin and examines the finer points of sexual technique as she is adjusting the torque on a beloved but temperamental old E-type…It’s hard to believe that this clever and candid new voice has no more to say. Whoever the author is, she should give up the day job. Only then will we find out what the real Belle de Jour is made of.’ Independent

This follow-up to the hugely successful ‘Intimate Adventures’ will be just as bold, funny and brilliant. Peppered with agony-aunt letters and advice, and stories from her ‘working’ life, it’s also the story of a young woman making her way in the world – told in Belle’s inimitable voice.

What Belle de Jour did next… this is the sparkling, witty and titillating follow-up to the bestselling INTIMATE ADVENTURES OF A LONDON CALL GIRL.

”She lists like Hornby. She talks dirty like Amis. She has the misanthropy of Larkin and examines the finer points of sexual technique as she is adjusting the torque on a beloved but temperamental old E-type…It’s hard to believe that this clever and candid new voice has no more to say. Whoever the author is, she should give up the day job. Only then will we find out what the real Belle de Jour is made of.’ Independent

This follow-up to the hugely successful ‘Intimate Adventures’ will be just as bold, funny and brilliant. Peppered with agony-aunt letters and advice, and stories from her ‘working’ life, it’s also the story of a young woman making her way in the world – told in Belle’s inimitable voice.

”She lists like Hornby. She talks dirty like Amis. She has the misanthropy of Larkin and examines the finer points of sexual technique as she is adjusting the torque on a beloved but temperamental old E-type…It’s hard to believe that this clever and candid new voice has no more to say. Whoever the author is, she should give up the day job. Only then will we find out what the real Belle de Jour is made of.’ Independent

This follow-up to the hugely successful ‘Intimate Adventures’ will be just as bold, funny and brilliant. Peppered with agony-aunt letters and advice, and stories from her ‘working’ life, it’s also the story of a young woman making her way in the world – told in Belle’s inimitable voice.

‘Le Guin’s storytelling is sharp, magisterial, funny, thought-provoking and exciting, exhibiting all that science fiction can be’ EMPIRE

‘Told with shimmering lyricism, this coming-of-age saga will leave readers transformed’ BOOKLIST

‘Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power’ OBSERVER

‘A tour de force’ EVENING STANDARD

The final part in the story that started with GIFTS, and the tale of Gry Barre of Roddmant and Orrec Caspro of Caspromant, two children with extraordinary powers.

They play a part in VOICES too, the sequel to GIFTS, in which Memer, a girl who has grown up in a captured city, is part of the people’s fight for freedom.

And now, in POWERS, we have the conclusion to Ursula Le Guin’s beautifully written, powerful and moving story of the Western Isles, a tale that will leave every reader begging for more.

A vivid blend of history and travel and a sweeping story of collaboration and resistance, fear and heroism, pacifism and sacrifice all set against the backdrop of the Pyrenees.

‘A beguiling mix of travel, memoir, history and good old-fashioned storytelling – a slice of hidden France’ Kate Mosse

‘Combining memoir, fact and storytelling, Bailey does an impressive job’ INDEPENDENT

‘A moving account of of the region during World War Two’ TIME OUT

Over the fifteen years Rosemary has been living in the region, the more she realised she didn’t know about the war; about the French during the Occupation, the real role of the Resistance, the level of collaboration, the concentration camps in the Pyrenees and the treatment of Jews and other refugees. It is still very much a veiled history and most of the archives remain firmly closed.

LOVE AND WAR IN THE PYRENEES is a portrait of human tragedy, heroism and cruelty that will create a picture of the period from a contemporary angle, the history linked to sights that can still be visited, and brought to life by letters, interviews and encounters with people today, including the historians currently trying to investigate what really happened.

A vivid blend of history and travel and a sweeping story of collaboration and resistance, fear and heroism, pacifism and sacrifice all set against the backdrop of the Pyrenees.

‘A beguiling mix of travel, memoir, history and good old-fashioned storytelling – a slice of hidden France’ Kate Mosse

‘Combining memoir, fact and storytelling, Bailey does an impressive job’ INDEPENDENT

‘A moving account of of the region during World War Two’ TIME OUT

Over the fifteen years Rosemary has been living in the region, the more she realised she didn’t know about the war; about the French during the Occupation, the real role of the Resistance, the level of collaboration, the concentration camps in the Pyrenees and the treatment of Jews and other refugees. It is still very much a veiled history and most of the archives remain firmly closed.

LOVE AND WAR IN THE PYRENEES is a portrait of human tragedy, heroism and cruelty that will create a picture of the period from a contemporary angle, the history linked to sights that can still be visited, and brought to life by letters, interviews and encounters with people today, including the historians currently trying to investigate what really happened.

The most eloquent and personal story of a young man at war since Geoffrey Wellum’s FIRST LIGHT

Until a winter evening in 1998 Nathaniel was just another history student on a comfortable career trajectory of high school to college to white collar job. Then he went to a lecture by a Wall Street Journal reporter who had just published a book on the US Marines. It brought forth a latent desire to break free of the ‘seat belt and safety goggle, safety-first’ culture: to be a warrior. He passed the gruelling selection course and joined the Marine Corps on graduation. Posted to a Marine Regiment in the wake of 9/11, he took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, then led a platoon of their elite Recon Battalion during the invasion of Iraq.

This is not a book about the Iraq invasion as such: it is an articulate and deeply thoughtful young man’s account of what it means to fight in the frontline, to risk not just death or injury, but psychological harm. He reveals some of the awful dilemmas war can bring, horrible problems to which there is no ‘right’ answer, but a decision had to be made quickly — by him alone. In combat you are just one bullet away from death — or promotion. But this doesn’t focus the mind: it makes it freeze up — unless your training is so thorough that you overcome exhaustion and terror.

‘Nate’ took 65 men to war and came home with all 65. He proved himself an excellent officer and won promotion, but resigned in 2003 to write this book and attend Harvard Business School.

The most eloquent and personal story of a young man at war since Geoffrey Wellum’s FIRST LIGHT

Until a winter evening in 1998 Nathaniel was just another history student on a comfortable career trajectory of high school to college to white collar job. Then he went to a lecture by a Wall Street Journal reporter who had just published a book on the US Marines. It brought forth a latent desire to break free of the ‘seat belt and safety goggle, safety-first’ culture: to be a warrior. He passed the gruelling selection course and joined the Marine Corps on graduation. Posted to a Marine Regiment in the wake of 9/11, he took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, then led a platoon of their elite Recon Battalion during the invasion of Iraq.

This is not a book about the Iraq invasion as such: it is an articulate and deeply thoughtful young man’s account of what it means to fight in the frontline, to risk not just death or injury, but psychological harm. He reveals some of the awful dilemmas war can bring, horrible problems to which there is no ‘right’ answer, but a decision had to be made quickly — by him alone. In combat you are just one bullet away from death — or promotion. But this doesn’t focus the mind: it makes it freeze up — unless your training is so thorough that you overcome exhaustion and terror.

‘Nate’ took 65 men to war and came home with all 65. He proved himself an excellent officer and won promotion, but resigned in 2003 to write this book and attend Harvard Business School.

Michael Palin’s bestselling diaries of the 1980s.

After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful MONTY PYTHON’S MEANING OF LIFE. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Michael’s life, culminating in the smash hit A FISH CALLED WANDA (for which he won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor), and the first of his seven celebrated television journeys for the BBC. He co-produced, wrote and played the lead in THE MISSIONARY opposite Maggie Smith, who also appeared with him in A PRIVATE FUNCTION, written by Alan Bennett.

Such was his fame in the US, he was enticed into once again hosting the enormously popular show Saturday Night Live, in one edition of which his mother makes a highly successful surprise guest appearance. He filmed several journeys for television and became chairman of the pressure group, Transport 2000. His family remains a constant as his and Helen’s children enter their teens.

As discussed in The Da Vinci Code… Long buried and suppressed, the Gnostic Gospels contain the secret writings attributed to the followers of Jesus.

In 1945 fifty-two papyrus texts, including gospels and other secret documents, were found concealed in an earthenware jar buried in the Egyptian desert. These so-called Gnostic writings were Coptic translations from the original Greek dating from the time of the New Testament. The material they embodied – poems, quasi-philosophical descriptions of the origins of the universe, myths, magic and instructions for mystic practice – were later declared heretical, as they offered a powerful alternative to the Orthodox Christian tradition.

In a book that is as exciting as it is scholarly, Elaine Pagels examines these texts and the questions they pose and shows why Gnosticism was eventually stamped out by the increasingly organised and institutionalised Orthodox Church.

Captain Alatriste returns in a swashbuckling tale of intrigue, romance and regicide.

Captain Alatriste’s affair with the beautiful actress Maria de Castro is rankling not only his long-term mistress but also the King of Spain. With loyal companion Inigo distracted by the affections of Angelica, Alatriste becomes embroiled in a series of tussles outside his lover’s house. Ambushed by arch-nemesis Malatesta, a skirmish ensues that leads to the death of Maria’s other lover – the monarch himself.

But behind this tale of sexual jealousy lurks a darker truth. As it becomes clear that both Alatriste and Inigo have been cunningly honey trapped – and that the dead man was an impostor. With a puppet king waiting dutifully in the wings, Alatriste must use all his cunning and swordsmanly guile to prevent the murder of the real king – and his implication in a crime for which he has been perfectly framed.

England from the perspective of its consort queens – a distaff history of the nation from 1066 to 1503.

England’s medieval queens were elemental in shaping the history of the nation. In an age where all politics were family politics, dynastic marriages placed English queens at the very centre of power – the king’s bed. From Matilda of Flanders, the Conqueror’s queen, to Elizabeth of York, the first Tudor consort, England’s queens fashioned the nature of monarchy and influenced the direction of the state. Occupying a unique position in the mercurial, often violent world of medieval state-craft, English queens had to negotiate a role that combined tremendous influence with terrifying vulnerability.

Lisa Hilton’s meticulously researched new book explores the lives of the twenty women who were crowned queen between 1066 and 1503, reconsidering the fictions surrounding well-known figures like Eleanor of Aquitaine and illuminating the lives of forgotten figures such as Adeliza of Louvain. War, adultery, witchcraft, child abuse, murder – and occassionally even love – formed English queenship, but so too did patronage, learning and fashion. Lisa Hilton considers the evolution of the queenly office alongside intimate portraits of the individual women, dispelling the myth that medieval brides were no more than diplomatic pawns.

England from the perspective of its consort queens – a distaff history of the nation from 1066 to 1503.

England’s medieval queens were elemental in shaping the history of the nation. In an age where all politics were family politics, dynastic marriages placed English queens at the very centre of power – the king’s bed. From Matilda of Flanders, the Conqueror’s queen, to Elizabeth of York, the first Tudor consort, England’s queens fashioned the nature of monarchy and influenced the direction of the state. Occupying a unique position in the mercurial, often violent world of medieval state-craft, English queens had to negotiate a role that combined tremendous influence with terrifying vulnerability.

Lisa Hilton’s meticulously researched new book explores the lives of the twenty women who were crowned queen between 1066 and 1503, reconsidering the fictions surrounding well-known figures like Eleanor of Aquitaine and illuminating the lives of forgotten figures such as Adeliza of Louvain. War, adultery, witchcraft, child abuse, murder – and occassionally even love – formed English queenship, but so too did patronage, learning and fashion. Lisa Hilton considers the evolution of the queenly office alongside intimate portraits of the individual women, dispelling the myth that medieval brides were no more than diplomatic pawns.

Pyke returns in a gripping tale of brutal murder and deception, set in the back streets of Victorian London and the cane fields of Jamaica.

London: 1840. The economy is sliding into recession; gangs of unemployed workers roam the streets; and a murderer prowls the capital’s poor neighbourhoods.

Pyke, still grieving over the death of his wife and struggling to shoulder his responsibilities as a father, is in debtors’ prison, having lost his home and reached the edge of bankruptcy. Fitzroy Tilling, now head of the new Metropolitan Police Force gives Pyke his freedom, but in return he must agree to investigate the brutal death of a young mulatto woman, who was apparently working as a prostitute.

It is not long before another woman turns up dead, and Pyke begins to suspect that he has stumbled on something more sinister, and more far-reaching than the murder of a couple of prostitutes…

Pyke’s investigation takes him from the London docks to the sugar plantations of Jamaica, from a fading colonial mansion to the back-streets of the East End in a struggle against ambitious and ruthless enemies, as well as demons of his own.

Terrific second novel set in the criminal underworld of pre-Victorian England from the author of THE LAST DAYS OF NEWGATE

It is 1835, and with the birth of the Industrial Revolution, railway fever sweeps the country. Pyke is uneasy with the luxury his aristocratic marriage has brought him, and when he is unofficially asked to investigate a decapitation, he can not resist the chance to resuscitate the old skills he learned on the streets.

But with the industrial world comes a new and faceless enemy: men who have money and power, and who will stop at nothing in their pursuit of both. For Pyke, with his young wife and child and an elevated place in society to protect, the stakes have suddenly become alarmingly high.

From the sweat shops of the east end to the palace of the Queen-in-waiting; from the elegant drawing rooms of the newly rich, to the blood-spattered backrooms of London’s taverns, Pyke’s investigation stirs up a hornets’ nest of trouble. As the death toll rises, an alluring woman from his past returns, and Pyke must draw on all of his resources if he is to protect his family, and survive.

A major reassessment of the one of the greatest English novelist of the twentieth century, from celebrated critic Sir Frank Kermode.

CONCERNING E.M. FORSTER is a rich, varied and original portrait of a literary great. When Sir Frank Kermode delivered the Clark Lectures at Cambridge University, he chose E.M. Forster as his subject; these lectures form the core of this book. Kermode reappraises the influence and meaning of Forster’s oeuvre, offering a fascinating interpretation of his most celebrated work, A PASSAGE TO INDIA.

There follows a series of interweaving discussions that bring to life diverse topics – Empire, class, poverty, the condition of the novel, the role of the artist – but always return to our enigmatic subject. Kermode also reflects on Forster’s considerable talent and shortcomings, places him within a wider social context, and casts spotlight on his contemporaries, presenting a unique panorama of twentieth-century English literature.

A major reassessment of the one of the greatest English novelist of the twentieth century, from celebrated critic Sir Frank Kermode.

CONCERNING E.M. FORSTER is a rich, varied and original portrait of a literary great. When Sir Frank Kermode delivered the Clark Lectures at Cambridge University, he chose E.M. Forster as his subject; these lectures form the core of this book. Kermode reappraises the influence and meaning of Forster’s oeuvre, offering a fascinating interpretation of his most celebrated work, A PASSAGE TO INDIA.

There follows a series of interweaving discussions that bring to life diverse topics – Empire, class, poverty, the condition of the novel, the role of the artist – but always return to our enigmatic subject. Kermode also reflects on Forster’s considerable talent and shortcomings, places him within a wider social context, and casts spotlight on his contemporaries, presenting a unique panorama of twentieth-century English literature.

Masterly collection of short stories by an American novelist at the height of her powers

It is the stories upon which Cynthia Ozick’s literary reputation rests. She writes about bitterness, cruelty and compulsion with brutal acuity and tenderness. She has created a timeless collection in which Greek mythology, superstition and the religious and cultural experience of the Jewish diaspora in America collide. The Pagan Rabbi is seduced by a tree sprite after seeing his daughter rescued from drowning by a water sprite. Such ecstasy is not permitted to mortals and so the scholar must die. He hangs himself with his prayer shawl as he watches the strangely beautiful nymph decay.
In Envy, a Yiddish poet who watches the success of a contemporary, becomes very like a character in an I.B. Singer story entrapped by his anguish and haunted by the memory of a child. In the Doctor’s Wife, the most gentle of the stories, a poor doctor not unlike Chekhov endures family life in which he is adored by his three sisters and oppressed by his family obligations.

In these stories, we see Ozick defining herself and her literary territory. The stories may be read purely as evocations of Jewish experience, where time seems to have by-passed these characters. In the Butterfly and the Traffic Light, Jerusalem is seen upon a hill as only it can be in legend, and America is said not to have cities scarred by battles. This is a dazzling collection of short stories by an internationally celebrated novelist.

How the division of the Americas from the rest of the world affected human history.

In 15,000 B.C. early humankind, who had evolved in Africa tens of thousands of years before and spread out to populate the Earth, arrived in Siberia, during the Ice Age. Because so much water was locked up at that time in the great ice sheets, several miles thick, the levels of the world’s oceans were much lower than they are today, and early humans were able to walk across the Bering Strait, then a land bridge, without getting their feet wet and enter the Americas.

Then, the Ice Age came to an end, the Bering Strait refilled with water and humans in the Americas were cut off from humans elsewhere in the world. This division – with two great populations on Earth, each oblivious of the other – continued until Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America just before 1500 A.D. This is the fascinating subject of THE GREAT DIVIDE, which compares and contrasts the development of humankind in the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New’ between 15,000 B.C. and 1500 A.D. This unprecedented comparison of early peoples means that, when these factors are taken together, they offer a uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human.

THE GREAT DIVIDE offers a masterly and totally original synthesis of archaeology, anthropology, geology, meteorology, cosmology and mythology, to give a new shape – and a new understanding – to human history.

How the division of the Americas from the rest of the world affected human history.

In 15,000 B.C. early humankind, who had evolved in Africa tens of thousands of years before and spread out to populate the Earth, arrived in Siberia, during the Ice Age. Because so much water was locked up at that time in the great ice sheets, several miles thick, the levels of the world’s oceans were much lower than they are today, and early humans were able to walk across the Bering Strait, then a land bridge, without getting their feet wet and enter the Americas.

Then, the Ice Age came to an end, the Bering Strait refilled with water and humans in the Americas were cut off from humans elsewhere in the world. This division – with two great populations on Earth, each oblivious of the other – continued until Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America just before 1500 A.D. This is the fascinating subject of THE GREAT DIVIDE, which compares and contrasts the development of humankind in the ‘Old World’ and the ‘New’ between 15,000 B.C. and 1500 A.D. This unprecedented comparison of early peoples means that, when these factors are taken together, they offer a uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human.

THE GREAT DIVIDE offers a masterly and totally original synthesis of archaeology, anthropology, geology, meteorology, cosmology and mythology, to give a new shape – and a new understanding – to human history.

The remarkable true story of the Queen Alexandra frontline nurses in the Second World War.

The amazing experiences of the Queen Alexandra nurses in the Second World War form one of the greatest adventure stories of modern times, and – incredibly – remain largely untold. Thousands of middle-class girls, barely out of school, were plucked from sheltered backgrounds, subjected to training regimes unimaginably tough by today’s standards, and sent forth to share the harsh conditions of the fighting services. They had to deal with the most appalling suffering, yet most found reserves of inner strength that carried them through episodes of unrelieved horror.

Over 200 nurses died, torpedoed in hospital ships, bombed in field hospitals or murdered in Japanese prison camps. Dozens won medals for gallantry. From the beaches of Dunkirk, to Singapore and D-Day, they saw it all. Whether tending burned pilots from the Battle of Britain or improvising medical treatment in Japanese death camps, their dedication was second to none. This is their story.