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It's 1960, in America, at a prestigious boys' public school. The school is a place of privilege that yet places great emphasis on its democratic ideals. A teenage boy in his final year at the school, on a scholarship, has during his time there learned to fit in with his adoptive tribe while concealing as much as possible about himself and his background. Class is ever present, but the only acknowledged snobbery is a literary snobbery. These boys' heroes are writers- Fitzgerald, Cummings, Kerouac. They want to be writers themselves, and the school has a tradition whereby once a term big names from the literary world are invited to visit. A contest takes place with the boys submitting a piece of writing, the winner getting to have a private audience with the visitor. When it is announced that Hemingway will be the next to come to the school, competition among the boys is intense, and the morals the school and the boys pride themselves on - honour, loyalty and friendship- become severely tested. No one writes more astutely than Wolff about the process by which character is formed, and here he illuminates the irresistible strength, even the violence, of the self-creative urge.

A state-of-the-art computerized killing machine bids to destroy world peace. Ed Howard discovers that he is confronting the world's most effective mercenary force, the East German Stasi, with the team he led into and out of Iraq, augmented by a female Korean agent.

From the author of "The Ninja". The shockwave still reverberates. This novel smashes out like a karate killer-blow. Age-old Japan is ready to be reborn.

The thriller follows the character Edward Armstead, who becomes obsessed with matching and surpassing the immense power and legacy of his late father. This driving obsession leads him down a ruthless path toward omnipotence, where he begins covertly manipulating global news and world events to ensure his media empire gets the exclusive coverage first.

Twelve hours after a woman's broken body is washed up on a deserted shore on the south coast of England, her traumatised three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away walking the streets of Poole, alone and apparently abandoned. Why was Kate Sumner killed and her daughter, a witness, allowed to live? More curiously, why had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea? Police suspicion centres on a young actor, a loner with an obsession for pornography who lies about his relationship with Kate, and whose sailing boat is moored just yards away from where the toddler is found. As the investigation proceeds, attention shifts inexorably towards the murdered woman's husband. Was he really in Liverpool the night she died? And is Kate the 'respectable woman' he claims her to be? And why does their daughter scream every time he tries to pick her up?

This New York Times Notable Book begins on a rainy winter night. It takes hours for a black woman known as Mad Annie to die in the gutter. It will take 20 years for the woman who found her to shape her neighbors' racism, the indifference of the police, and her own rage into the truth.

As the year 1349 approaches, the Black Death continues its devastating course across England. In Dorseteshire, the quarantined people of Develish question whether they are the only survivors.Guided by their beloved young mistress, Lady Anne, they wait, knowing that when their dwindling stores are finally gone they will have no choice but to leave. But where will they find safety in the desolate wasteland outside?One man has the courage to find out.Thaddeus Thurkell, a free-thinking, educated serf, strikes out in search of supplies and news. A compelling leader, he and his companions quickly throw off the shackles of serfdom and set their minds to ensuring Develish's future - and freedom for its people.But what use is freedom that cannot be gained lawfully? When Lady Anne and Thaddeus conceive an audacious plan to secure her people's independence, neither foresees the life-threatening struggle over power, money and religion that follows...

When Lieutenant Charles Acland is flown home from Iraq with serious head injuries, he faces not only permanent disfigurement but also an apparent change to his previously outgoing personality.Crippled by migraines, and suspicious of his psychiatrist, he begins to display sporadic bouts of aggression, particularly against women, especially his ex-fiancee who seems unable to accept that the relationship is over.After his injuries prevent his return to the army, he cuts all ties with his former life and moves to London. Alone and unmonitored, he sinks into a private world of guilt and paranoid distrust... until a customer annoys him in a Bermondsey pub...Out of control and only prevented from killing the man by the intervention of a 250-pound female weightlifter called Jackson, he attracts the attention of police who are investigating three ‘gay’ murders in the Bermondsey area which appear to have been motivated by extreme rage...Under suspicion, Acland is forced to confront the real issues behind his isolation. How much control does he have over the dark side of his personality? Do his migraines contribute to his rages? Has he always been the duplicitous chameleon that his ex-fiancee claims?And why – if he hates women – does he look to a woman for help?

When the body-count soars at the Whitcomb Funeral Homes, the treasurer suspects foul play and consults detective Archy McNally. He soon learns far more than he wants to about the death-styles of Florida's rich and famous.

The story revolves around an explosive narrative of personal justice and revenge. When a devastating terrorist bomb kills a loved one, the official police investigation stalls and political promises fall short, forcing the protagonist to take matters into their own hands.

Joss le Guern, one-time sea captain and now town crier in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, announces the items of news that are left (with a fee) for him to "cry" three times a day. A number of enigmatic and disturbing messages are being slipped into his box, and he is becoming alarmed. Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is visited by an extremely troubled woman. She keeps finding reversed 4s in black paint on the doors of her building. Between these strange marks and the town crier's frightening bulletins, Adamsberg begins to sense a connection, even a grotesque menace. Then charred and flea-bitten corpses are found. The press seizes on their plague-like symptoms, and the panic sets in. Adamsberg, a detective of formidable intelligence and intuition but with a fragile memory, enlists a mediaeval scholar to help him unravel the messages delivered to the town crier and relayed to the neighbourhood