Fiction

On an autumn day in 2006, on the Isle of Wight, Jack Luxton, former Devon farmer and now the proprietor of a seaside caravan park, receives the news that his soldier brother Tom, not seen for years, has been killed in Iraq. For Jack and his wife Ellie this will have a potentially catastrophic impact. For Jack in particular it means a crucial journey--to receive his brother's remains, but also into his own most secret, troubling memories and into the land of his and Ellie's past.

Richard Beaumont hoped to see the elusive chough on the Dover cliffs. Instead he sees a young woman falling to her death. No-one recognises her, no-one has reported her missing, and Richard returns, shaken, to his new young wife, but instead of finding solace in Lilian's company, he locks himself away and obsessively paints the scene of the woman's broken body on the rocks. His cool behaviour towards her takes Lilian to the flat below and the wordly-wise company of Sarah Fortune. But Sarah, once Richard's lover, is awkward with her and is also preoccupied with her brother's unbreakable habit of cat-burglary, and the suspicious traffic to the penthouse at the top of the mansion block. Unable to forget what he witnessed, Richard returns to the coast and is befriended by the local police surgeon. Recently widowed, John is depressed, not so much by his wife's death but by the realisation that his marriage had been a loveless void. Recognising the symptoms, Richard introduces him to Sarah, so that she can no longer ignore the Beaumonts' troubles and is drawn into helping to trace where the dead girl came from and in so doing reveals a trade which is both breath-takingly lucrative and chillingly cruel.

Jack Tobin is a trial lawyer with a searing-hot reputation in Miami, far removed from his scrappy youth on the streets of New York. But when a young Florida man is railroaded into a murder conviction in the tiny Florida backwater of Bass Creek, Tobin is driven to pay back a debt to his best friend, the boy who once dubbed him 'the Mayor of Lexington Avenue'.In his efforts to get the death penalty overturned, Tobin moves back to South Florida, where he finds himself up against the small-town legal establishment, where favours are routinely traded at the expense of truth, and where police corruption has become an art form.

MGB officer Leo is a man who never questions the Party Line. He arrests whomever he is told to arrest. He dismisses the horrific death of a young boy because he is told to, because he believes the Party stance that there can be no murder in Communist Russia. Leo is the perfect soldier of the regime. But suddenly his confidence that everything he does serves a great good is shaken. He is forced to watch a man he knows to be innocent be brutally tortured. And then he is told to arrest his own wife. Leo understands how the State works: Trust and check, but check particularly on those we trust. He faces a stark choice: his wife or his life. And still the killings of children continue...

The bestselling author of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" describes how we experience the visual world. In "Musicophilia", Oliver Sacks explored music and the brain; now, in "The Mind's Eye", he writes about the myriad ways in which we experience the visual world: how we see in three dimensions; how we recognize individual faces or places; how we use language to communicate verbally; how we translate marks on paper into words and paragraphs, even how we represent the world internally when our eyes are closed. Alongside remarkable stories of people who have lost these abilities but adapted with courage, resilience and ingenuity, there is an added, personal element: one day in late 2005, Sacks became aware of a dazzling, flashing light in one part of his visual field; it was not the familiar migraine aura he had experienced since childhood, and just two days later a malignant tumor in one eye was diagnosed. In subsequent journal entries - some of which are included in "The Mind's Eye" - he chronicled the experience of living with cancer, recording both the effects of the tumor itself, and radiation therapy. In turning himself into a case history, Sacks has given us perhaps his most intimate, impressive and insightful book yet.

There's a caste system even in murder.Seven years ago, Vivek 'Vicky' Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi simply because she refused to serve him a drink. Now Vicky Rai is dead, killed at his farmhouse at a party he had thrown to celebrate his acquittal. The police search each and every guest. Six of them are discovered with guns in their possession. In this elaborate murder mystery we join Arun Advani, India's best-known investigative journalist, as the lives of these six suspects unravel before our eyes: a corrupt bureaucrat; an American tourist; a stone-age tribesman; a Bollywood sex symbol; a mobile phone thief; and an ambitious politician. Each is equally likely to have pulled the trigger. Inspired by actual events, Vikas Swarup's eagerly awaited second novel is both a riveting page turner and an insightful peek into the heart and soul of contemporary India.

The book is a psychological fiction thriller based on a true-life murder. The story follows Portia McTeague, a forensic psychologist, who is called in to evaluate Jimmy Wier. Jimmy is a seemingly naive delivery worker charged with the brutal murder of two elderly women. Portia must examine him to understand the dark impulses that drove him across the line and determine if he is mentally stable.

The novel is a warm, witty coming-of-middle-age story following the life of its protagonist, Larry Weller, between 1977 and 1997. It explores the changing landscape of masculinity and self-discovery at the end of the twentieth century through Larry's unique passion for creating hedge mazes.

A rousingly romantic Mediterranean novel of love and war. 'Even more enchanting than Louis de Bernieres's Captain Correlli's Mandolin, Riotta's novel is a revelation' (Daily Mail). The Second World War has just ended, and Colonel Carlo Terzo, a brilliant military strategist, retires to Sicily with his beautiful Russian wife Emma. There he spends long afternoons tutoring two young lovers -- Salvatore, a poet, and the feisty, aristocratic Fiore. But the Terzo household becomes caught in a standoff between rebel peasants and the murderous private army of Fiore's malicious mother. Will Carlo finally be given the chance to measure his learning on a real battlefield?

It is the story of six very different women who met at college in Boston and swore to be friends for the rest of their lives. They call themselves the Dirty Girls Social Club. The only obvious thing they have in common is that they are all professional women and Latin American, but the real thing about them is that their lives tap into universal truths about women and sisterhood. There is Lauren, a journalist, who is used to getting what she wants and kicking ass when she doesn't, except when it comes to men...- Sara, wife of a corporate lawyer, upstanding member of the Jewish community, one of the best interior designers and party givers around, and seriously uptight...- Elizabeth, the beautiful co-host for a TV morning show and former runway model with a secret which will test the bonds of their friendship to the limit...- Rebecca, owner and founder of the most popular Hispanic woman's magazine in the market; nobody works the room like she does...- Amber, a rock singer waiting for her first big break, the spiritual one of the group...And then there is Usnavys, a big gal who is as showy as Liberace; no-one would guess, meeting her for the first time in her full-length white fur coat with the price tag still on the inside, that she is Vice President for Public Affairs for the United Way of Massachusetts. They all feel perfectly licensed to tell each other what do and how to live their lives, and boy do they ever...

In a boxy apartment building in an American university town, Romola Mitra, a newly arrived young bride, anxiously awaits her first letter from home in India. When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds that letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes, and a way of following their keepers.Amit does not know that Avinash, his dependable and devoted father, lurks on gay Internet groups at times, unable to set aside his lifelong attraction to men. Avinash has no idea that his dutiful wife had once romanced a dashing Bengali filmstar, whose memory she keeps tucked away in a diary amongst her silk saris. Growing up in Calcutta, in a house bustling with feisty grandmothers, Amit has been shielded from his parents' secrets. A successful computer engineer, he settles in San Francisco, torn between his new life and his duties towards the one he has left behind. Moving from adolescent rooftop games to adult encounters in gay bars, from hair salons in Calcutta to McDonald's drive-thrus in California, Don't Let Him Know is an unforgettable story about family, the struggle between having what we want and doing what we feel we must - and the sacrifices we make for those we love.

Set against the backdrop of the ending of apartheid in South Africa, a woman named Kate looks back on her childhood holidays spent on her grandparents' farm in the Eastern Cape. The novel masterfully contrasts her seemingly idyllic early life with the harsh realities of rural farming and the deep, underlying horrors of apartheid, which eventually culminate in an act of revenge

Marc Dane is a MI6 field agent at home behind a computer screen, one step away from the action. But when a brutal attack on his team leaves Marc as the only survivor - and with the shocking knowledge that there are traitors inside MI6 - he's forced into the front line. However the evidence seems to point towards Marc as the perpetrator of the attack. Accused of betraying his country, he must race against time to clear his name. With nowhere to turn to for help and no one left to trust, Marc is forced to rely on the elusive Rubicon group and their operative Lucy Keyes. Ex US Army, Lucy also knows what it's like to be an outsider, and she's got the skills that Marc is sorely lacking.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of ... anything but a wife? The third book in the Swell Valley series by bestselling author Tilly Bagshawe Henry Saxton-Brae has it all - a titled, self-made millionaire, his fiancée just happens to be a supermodel who is as kind and loyal as she is ravishingly beautiful. To top it all, he's just bought Hanborough Castle, the jewel in the crown of the Swell Valley. Life couldn't be better...for someone who was ready to settle down. Could he really be the only man in the world not in love with his future wife? Flora Fitzwilliam has been summoned by legendary designer Graydon James to restore Hanborough to its former glory. She soon discovers that it's not just the house that needs fixing, and Flora seems to be the only person who sees the real Henry Saxton-Brae.