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Steinbeck's first major critical and commercial success, TORTILLA FLAT is also his funniest novel. Danny is a paisano, descended from the original Spanish settlers who arrived in Monterey, California, centuries before. He values friendship abovemoney and possessions, so that when he suddently inherits two houses, Danny is quick to offer shelter to his fellow gentlemen of the road. Their love of freedom and scorn for material things draw them into daring and often hilarious adventures. Until Danny, tiring of his new reponsibilities, suddenly disappears...

The first in a gripping, adventurous series, The Invisible Library is the astounding debut from Genevieve Cogman.Irene must be at the top of her game or she'll be off the case - permanently . . .Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book.Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested - the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene's new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own.Soon, she's up to her eyebrows in a heady mix of danger, clues and secret societies. Yet failure is not an option -the nature of reality itself is at stake.The Invisible Library is followed by the second title in The Invisible Library series, The Masked City.

Be Careful What You Wish For, the fourth instalment in Jeffrey Archer's The Clifton Chronicles, opens with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma rushing to hospital to learn the fate of their son Sebastian, who has been involved in a fatal car accident. But who died, Sebastian or his best friend Bruno? When Ross Buchanan is forced to resign as chairman of the Barrington Shipping Company, Emma Clifton wants to replace him. But Don Pedro Martinez intends to install his puppet, the egregious Major Alex Fisher, in order to destroy the Barrington family firm just as the company plans to build its new luxury liner, the MV Buckingham. Back in London, Harry and Emma's adopted daughter wins a scholarship to the Slade Academy of Art where she falls in love with a fellow student, Clive Bingham, who asks her to marry him. Both families are delighted until Priscilla Bingham, Jessica's future mother-in-law, has a visit from an old friend, Lady Virginia Fenwick, who drops her particular brand of poison into the wedding chalice. Then, without warning, Cedric Hardcastle, a bluff Yorkshireman who no one has come across before, takes his place on the board of Barringtons. This causes an upheaval that none of them could have anticipated, and will change the lives of every member of the Clifton and Barrington families. Hardcastle's first decision is who to support to become the next chairman of the board: Emma Clifton or Major Alex Fisher? And with that decision, the story takes yet another twist that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

From the author of the international bestseller, Hothouse Flower, Lucinda Riley's The Light Behind the Window is a breathtaking and intense story of love, war and, above all, forgiveness.The present: Emilie de la Martinieres has always fought against her aristocratic background, but after the death of her glamorous, distant mother, she finds herself alone in the world and sole inheritor of her grand childhood home in the south of France. An old notebook of poems leads her in search of the mysterious and beautiful Sophia, whose tragic love affair changed the course of her family history. As Emilie unravels the story, she too embarks on her own journey of discovery, realizing that the chateau may provide clues to her own difficult past and finally unlock the future.The past: London 1943. A young office clerk, Constance Carruthers, is drafted into the SOE, arriving in occupied Paris during the climax of the conflict. Separated from her contact in her very first hours in France, she stumbles into the heart of a wealthy family who are caught up in a deadly game of secrets and lies. Forced to surrender her identity and all ties to her homeland and her beloved husband, Constance finds herself drawn into a complex web of deception, the repercussions of which will affect generations to come.** Note to readers: In the US, this book is published under the title The Lavender Garden. **

The Rings of Saturn begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Bungay, Sebald's own story becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present: of Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. The result is a rich meditation on the past via a melancholy trip along the Suffolk coast, and an intricately patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human. Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century The Times

Perfect for fans of Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine; Ruth Hogan's The Keeper of Lost Things and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, A Man Called Ove is one of the best-loved and most life-affirming novels of the decade. This multi-million-copy phenomenon is a funny, moving, uplifting tale of love and community that will leave you with a spring in your step. 'Warm, funny, and almost unbearably moving' Daily Mail 'Rescued all those men who constantly mean to read novels but never get round to it' Spectator Books of the Year At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets. But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible . . .

When Yuko Moriguchi's four-year-old daughter died in the middle school where she teaches, everyone thought it was a tragic accident. It's the last day of term, and Yuko's last day at work. She tells her students that she has resigned because of what happened - but not for the reasons they think. Her daughter didn't die in an accident. Her daughter was killed by two people in the class. And before she leaves, she has a lesson to teach...But revenge has a way of spinning out of control, and Yuko's last lecture is only the start of the story. In this bestselling Japanese thriller of love, despair and murder, everyone has a confession to make, and no one will escape unharmed.

For readers new to The Dark Tower, The Wind Through the Keyhole is a stand-alone novel, and a wonderful introduction to the series. The Dark Tower is now a major motion picture starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba.The No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller The Wind through the Keyhole is a perfect bridge between the fourth and fifth novels in Stephen King's epic masterpiece. A story within a story which features both the younger and older gunslinger, it is also a wonderful introduction to The Dark Tower series.As Roland Deschain, and his ka-tet leave the Emerald city, a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. While they shelter from the starkblast, Roland tells a story about his younger days, when he was sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape-changer. At the scene of the crime he had tried to comfort a terrified young boy called Bill Streeter by reciting a story from The Magic Tales of the Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, 'The Wind through the Keyhole'. 'A person's never too old for stories,' he said to Bill. 'Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.' And stories like these, they live for us.JOIN THE QUEST FOR THE DARK TOWER...THE DARK TOWER SERIES:THE DARK TOWER I: THE GUNSLINGER THE DARK TOWER II: THE DRAWING OF THE THREE THE DARK TOWER III: THE WASTE LANDS THE DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD AND GLASS THE DARK TOWER V: WOLVES OF THE CALLA THE DARK TOWER VI: SONG OF SUSANNAH THE DARK TOWER VII: THE DARK TOWERTHE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE: A DARK TOWER NOVEL

Sylvia Plaths shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanityEsther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going undermaybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esthers breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rationalas accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2016Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power - from the Man Booker shortlisted author of Swimming Home'Propulsive, uncanny, dreamlike. A feverish coming-of-age novel' Daily Telegraph'A triumph of storytelling' Literary Review'Today I dropped my laptop on the concrete floor of a bar built on the beach. My laptop has all my life in it and knows more about me than anyone else. So what I am saying is that if it is broken, so am I . . .''Perfectly crafted. So mesmerising that reading it is to be under a spell' Independent on Sunday'Hot Milk treads a sweaty, sun-drenched path into the history books. A properly great novel' Romola Garai'Hot Milk is an extraordinary novel, beautifully rich, vividly atmospheric and psychologically complex... Every man and woman should read it' Bernardine Evaristo'The contemporary writer I admire most' Linda Grant 'Hypnotic... This novel has a transfixing gaze and a terrible sting that burns long after the final page is turned' Observer'Gorgeous. What makes the book so good is Levy's great imagination, the poetry of her language, her way of finding the wonder in the everyday. It's a pleasure' New York Times'Terrific, sizzling with heat and sexuality . . . You devour it in one sitting' Radio Times'Unmissable' New Statesman

The Peripheral by William Gibson is a thrilling new novel about two intertwined futures, from the bestselling author of Neuromancer'Wild, richly satisfying . . . big-screen, popcorn-chewing thrills. What a glorious ride' GuardianIn the near future in a broken down rural America, Flynne Fisher scrapes a living as a gamer for rich players. One night, working a game set in a futuristic but puzzlingly empty London, she sees a death that's unnervingly vivid. Soon after she gets word that it isn't a game after all - the future she saw is all too real, she's the only witness to a murder and someone from that unreal tomorrow now wants her dead.The story of a young woman caught between two worlds, The Peripheral interweaves two futures - pre-apocalypse USA and post-apocalypse London - to tell a story which gets right to heart of the way we live now.'A tightly plotted, tautly paced novel that unfolds with the dream logic of a fairy tale' The Times Literary Supplement'Frightening plausible. Not just a unique and brilliantly talented SF novelist but a social and psychological visionary. A wonderful addition to a brilliant oeuvre' The Times'Superb . . . frantic with imagination' Ned Beauman, Observer'Fast-moving, accessible, instantly gripping, so laden with cliffhangers you become afraid he'll run out of cliffs' SFXAccording to the Guardian, in terms of influence Gibson is 'probably the most important novelist of the past two decades'. The Peripheral, which marks a return to the futurism of Neuromancer, will be adored by Gibson readers and will also appeal to fans of Ender's Game, Looper and Source Code.

Discover the sixth book in the ludicrously inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, as broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and featuring original cast members including Simon Jones, Geoff McGivern, Mark Wing-Davey and Sandra Dickinson.Arthur Dent led a perfectly ordinary, uneventful life until the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hurled him deep into outer space. Now he's convinced a cruelly indifferent universe is out to get him. And who can blame him?His life is about to collide with a pantheon of unemployed gods, a lovestruck green alien, a very irritating computer and at least one very large slab of cheese. If, that is, everyone's favourite renegade Galactic President can get him off planet Earth before it is destroyed . . . again.'A triumph, fabulous. Colfer has given us a delight' Observer'I haven't read anything in a long time that made me laugh as much' The Times'Chock-full of fanciful, inventive one-liners and asides, brimming with a burning sense of the ridiculousness of life' Independent on Sunday'The best post-mortem impersonation I have ever read' Mark Lawson, Guardian

From the MAN BOOKER PRIZE- and WOMENS PRIZE-SHORTLISTED author of Swing Time, White Teeth and On Beauty - a masterful and intimate novel of modern London life A triumph. Every sentence sings Guardian Intensely funny, richly varied, always unexpected. A joyous, optimistic, angry masterpiece Daily Telegraph Smiths most satisfying novel. Funny, sexy, weird, full of acute social comedy. Shes up there with the best around Evening Standard Zadie Smiths brilliant tragicomic NW follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after theyve left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the choices theyve made, the people they once were and are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. Funny, poignant and vividly contemporary, NW is as brimming with vitality as the city itself.

The astounding new novel from the master of science fiction.President Barack Obama's summer reading choice and recently optioned by Ron Howard and IMAGINE to be made into a major motion picture.THE EARTH WAS A TICKING TIME BOMB.To ensure the survival they had to look beyond its atmosphere.So they became pioneers.Five thousand years later and their progeny form seven distinct races and they must journey to an alien: Earth.A magnificent, visionary work of speculative fiction from a true visionary that will dazzle you with its depth, psychology and awesome imagination.

'The perfect summer read... Gorgeously compelling' Good Housekeeping'Full of mystery and long-reaching shadows of the past . . . richly drawn and compelling' Rosanna LeyIt's 1951. In Europe's post-war wreckage, the glittering Italian Riviera draws an eclectic cast of characters; lured by the glamour but seeking an escape.Amongst them, two outcasts: Hal, an English journalist who's living on his charm; and Stella, an enigmatic society beauty, bound to a profiteering husband. When Hal receives a mysterious invitation from a wealthy Contessa, he finds himself aboard a yacht headed for Cannes film festival.Scratch the beautiful surface, and the post-war scars of his new companions are quick to show. Then there's Stella, whose secrets run deeper than anyone's - stretching back into the violence of Franco's Spain. And as Hal gets drawn closer, a love affair begins that will endanger everyone...The Invitation is an epic love story that will transport you from the glamour of the Italian Riviera, to the darkness of war-torn Spain. Perfect for fans of Kate Morton and Victoria Hislop.

Sitting quietly in his room in an old people's home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn't want to begin. His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The Mayor will be there. The press will be there. But, as it turns out, Allan will not . . .Escaping (in his slippers) through his bedroom window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, Allan's earlier life is revealed. A life in which - remarkably - he played a key role behind the scenes in some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.Translated by Roy Bradbury.

From her reflections on African American life and hardship in Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise, and her elegant tributes to dignitaries Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela (On the Pulse of Morning and His Day Is Done, respectively), every inspiring word of Maya Angelou's poetry is included in the pages of this volume.

Last Bus to Woodstock is the novel that began Colin Dexter's phenomenally successful Inspector Morse series.'Do you think I'm wasting your time, Lewis?' Lewis was nobody's fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity. 'Yes, sir.' An engaging smile crept across Morse's mouth. He thought they could get on well together . . .'The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of wilful murder, sexual assault and rape.But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key . . .Last Bus to Woodstock is followed by the second Inspector Morse book, Last Seen Wearing.

Harry Flashman: the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown's schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross, has three main talents - horsemanship, facility with foreign languages and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all. Expelled from Rugby for drunkenness, and none too welcome at home after seducing his father's mistress, the young Flashman embarks on a military career with Lord Cardigan's Hussars. En route to Afghanistan, our hero hones his skills as a soldier, duellist, imposter, coward and amorist (mastering all 97 ways of Hindu love-making during a brief sojourn in Calcutta), before being pressed into reluctant service as a secret agent. His Afghan adventures culminate in a starring role in that great historic disaster, the Retreat from Kabul.

Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She is attractive. She drives a red Corvette. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed and devoted to her. But Celeste has a secret. She has a singular sexual obsession - fourteen-year-old boys. It is a craving she pursues with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought.Within weeks of her first term at a new school, Celeste has lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web - car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack's house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming encounters in Celeste's empty classroom between periods. It is bliss.Celeste must constantly confront the forces threatening their affair - the perpetual risk of exposure, Jack's father's own attraction to her, and the ticking clock as Jack leaves innocent boyhood behind. But the insatiable Celeste is remorseless. She deceives everyone, is close to no one and cares little for anything but her pleasure.With crackling, stampeding, rampantly sexualized prose, Tampa is a grand, satirical, serio-comic examination of desire and a scorching literary debut.

The spellbinding novel from one of the world's best-loved authors, Paulo Coelho, now in ebook.This is the story of Brida, a young Irish girl, and her quest for knowledge. She has long been interested in various aspects of magic, and has taken courses in astrology, tarot, and numerology, but is searching for something more. Her search leads her to people of great wisdom, who begin to teach her about the world.Her teachers sense that Brida has a gift, but cannot tell what that is. Meanwhile, Brida pursues her course ever deeper into the mysteries of life, seeking to answer questions about who she is. She meets a wise man who dwells in a forest, and teaches her about overcoming her fears and trusting in the goodness of the world, and a woman who teaches her how to dance to the music of the world, and how to pray to the moon. She seeks her destiny, as she struggles to find a balance between her relationships and her desire to become a witch.This enthralling novel incorporates themes fans of Paulo will love. It is a tale of love, passion, mystery and spirituality.

A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. And then a secret is revealed and suddenly, she realizes how fragile her idyll is. Winner of the Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize, Foster is now published in a revised and expanded version. Beautiful, sad and eerie, it is a story of astonishing emotional depth, showcasing Claire Keegan's great accomplishment and talent.

Wendy Cope's first book of poems and parodies, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, went straight into the bestseller lists. Its successor, Serious Concerns has proved even more popular, addressing such topics as 'Bloody Men', 'Men and Their Boring Arguments', 'Two Cures for Love', 'Kindness to Animals' and 'Tumps' (Typically Useless Male Poets).

By the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me GoRyder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical - and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be - he comes steadily to realise he is facing the most crucial performance of his life. Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification - and the highest praise.

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me GoIn his highly acclaimed debut, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter.Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer night in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast.

LET THE DICE DECIDE.The rules are down to you. The rules that stop you seducing your neighbour downstairs, that stop you hitting your boss, that stop you leaving your family and leaving the country. The rules that stop you living.The dice don't do rules; the dice do life.Luke Rhinehart is a psychiatrist, a husband and a father, his life locked down by routine and order - until he picks up the dice. The dice govern his every decision and each throw takes him further into a world of risk, discovery and freedom. As the cult of the dice grows around him the old order fades: chance becomes his religion, the dice his god.If you haven't lived the life of the dice, you haven't lived at all. Let the dice decide. And roll with it.

First published in 1970 and widely regarded as a prophetic masterpiece, this is a groundbreaking experimental novel by the acclaimed author of 'Crash' and 'Super-Cannes'.The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force.The central character's dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, crash victim, psychopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychic turmoil to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.In this revised edition, Ballard has added extensive annotation that help to unlock many of the mysteries of one of the most prophetic, enigmatic and original works of the late twentieth century.

When London is lost beneath the rising tides, unconscious desires rush to the surface in this apocalyptic tale from the author of 'Crash' and 'Cocaine Nights'.Fluctuations in solar radiation have melted the ice caps, sending the planet into a new Triassic Age of unendurable heat. London is a swamp; lush tropical vegetation grows up the walls of the Ritz and primeval reptiles are sighted, swimming through the newly-formed lagoons.Some flee the capital; others remain to pursue reckless schemes, either in the name of science or profit. While the submerged streets of London are drained in search of treasure, Dr Robert Kerans - part of a group of intrepid scientists - comes to accept this submarine city and finds himself strangely resistant to the idea of saving it.First published in 1962, Ballard's mesmerising and ferociously imaginative novel gained him widespread critical acclaim and established his reputation as one of Britain's finest writers of science fiction.

Meaningful, moving and magical - the classic bestselling love storyEveryone needs a guardian angel...Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. But not Holly and Gerry.Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other's sentences and even when they fought, they laughed. No one could imagine Holly and Gerry without each other.Until the unthinkable happens. Gerry's death devastates Holly. But as her 30th birthday looms, Gerry comes back to her. He's left her a bundle of notes, one for each of the months after his death, gently guiding Holly into her new life without him, each note signed 'PS, I Love You'.As the notes are gradually opened, and as the year unfolds, Holly is both cheered up and challenged. The man who knows her better than anyone sets out to teach her that life goes on. With some help from her friends, and her noisy and loving family, Holly finds herself laughing, crying, singing, dancing - and being braver than ever before.Life is for living, she realises - but it always helps if there's an angel watching over you.

There's a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way through the alphabet. And as a macabre calling card he leaves beside each victim's corpe the ABC Railway Guide open at the name of the town where the murder has taken place.Having begun with Andover, Bexhill and then Churston, there seems little chance of the murderer being caught - until he makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans...