From the author of His Bloody Project shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 There does not appear to be anything remarkable about the fatal car crash on the A35 But one question dogs Inspector Georges Gorski where has the victim an outwardly austere lawyer been on the night of his death? The troubled Gorski finds himself drawn into a mystery that takes him behind the respectable veneer of the sleepy French backwater of Saint-Louis Graeme Macrae Burnet returns with a literary mystery that will beguile fans of His Bloody Project & The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau Darkly humorous subtle & sophisticated The Accident on the A35 burrows deep into the psyches of its characters & explores the forgotten corners of small-town life ...

It's the accident season the same time every year Bones break skin tears bruises bloom The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember Towards the end of October foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-prone They banish knives to locked drawers cover sharp table edges with padding switch off electrical items
- but injuries follow wherever they go & the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession & fear But why are they so cursed? & how can they break free?
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Tracklist Knock Knock Wolves I Can Hear Your Voice Jaw Of A Whale The Closer I Am Slice Open The Day Illuminated Red Birthday Dream For Me The Killing Floor Time & Space ...

Sunday Times bestselling author Caroline Taggart brings her usual gently humorous approach to punctuation pointing out what really matters & what doesn't In Roman times blocks of text were commonly written just as blocks without even wordspacingnevermindpunctuation to help the reader to interpret them Orators using such texts as notes for a speech would prepare carefully so that they were familiar with the content & didn't come a cropper over a confusion between say therapists & the rapists As we entered the Christian era & sacred texts were widely read (by priests if not by the rest of us) it became ever more important to remove any likelihood of misinterpretation To a potential murderer or adulterer for example there is a world of difference between ' If you are tempted yield not resisting the urge to commit a sin' & ' If you are tempted yield not resisting the urge to commit a sin' & the only surface difference is the positioning of a comma So yes you SMS-addicts & 'let it all hang out' Sixties children punctuation does matter & contrary to what people who tear their hair out over apostrophes believe it is there to help
- to clarify meaning to convey emphasis to indicate that you are asking a question or"ing someone else's words It also comes in handy for telling your reader when to pause for breath Caroline Taggart who has made a name for herself expounding on the subjects of grammar usage & words generally (and who for decades made her living putting in the commas in other people's work) takes her usual gently humorous approach to punctuation She points out what matters & what doesn't; why using six exclamation marks where one will do is perfectly OK in a text but will lose you marks at school; why hang glider pilots in training really need a hyphen; & how throwing in the odd semicolon will impress your friends Sometimes opinionated but never dogmatic she is an ideal guide to the (perceived) minefield that is punctuation
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A new hilarious book from author Tom Mc Laughlin creator of the highly-acclaimed The Accidental Prime Minister Funny by Name Funny by Nature Jasper Spam is mad about science the problem is that all of his experiments tend to end in a BANG until one day quite accidentally Jasper manages to invent something that will change the world forever One crazy experiment involving a shed a mallet & a poorly aimed laser beam results in Jasper's cat Rover becoming the world's first talking cat Finally an invention that works
- the Cat Chat 2000! Soon people are handing over all of their cash to get a talking cat With his new found wealth Jasper can finally live the life he's always dreamed of
- buying a mansion sports team & producing a Hollywood blockbuster But is there a huge price to pay for bringing talking cats to the world & money won't be able to solve the problem that the Cat Chat 2000 has caused

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Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who find themselves facing extraordinary circumstances & through courage & a dash of luck cement their place in history Chosen as President Roosevelt's fourth term Vice President for his admired work ethic good judgement & lack of enemies Harry S Truman was the prototypical ordinary man from small-town America That is until he was thrust in over his head following the sudden death of Roosevelt With the world still caught up in the inferno of the Second World War Truman found himself playing the roles of both judge & jury during the founding of the UN the Potsdam Conference the Manhattan Project the German surrender the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps & the decision to drop the Bomb & bring the war to the end Tightly focused meticulously researched & thrillingly told A J Baime's The Accidental President takes readers into the situation room with Truman during these tumultuous history-making few months
- one hundred & twenty days when the stakes were high & the challenges even higher
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The remarkable story of President Harry Truman's first four months in office when this unlikely small-town Washington outsider had to take on Germany Japan Stalin & the atomic bomb with the fate of the world hanging in the balance
- one of the most extraordinary challenges in American presidential history Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who find themselves facing extraordinary circumstances & through courage & a dash of luck cement their place in history Chosen as President Roosevelt's fourth term Vice President for his admired work ethic good judgement & lack of enemies Harry S Truman was the prototypical ordinary man from small-town America That is until he was thrust in over his head following the sudden death of Roosevelt With the world still caught up in the inferno of the Second World War Truman found himself playing the roles of both judge & jury during the founding of the UN the Potsdam Conference the Manhattan Project the German surrender the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps & the decision to drop the Bomb & bring the war to the end Tightly focused meticulously researched & drawing on documentation not available to previous biographers The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during this tumultuous history-making four months
- when the stakes were high & the challenges even higher

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When Joe tells a local news reporter exactly what he would do if he were leader of the country the video goes viral & Joe's speech becomes famous all over the world! Before long people are calling for the current leader to resign & give someone else a go & that's how an ordinary boy like Joe ended up with the most extraordinary job Now the fun can really start Hats for cats! Pet pigs for all! Banana shaped buses! Swimming pools on trains! A hilarious story of one boy's meteoric rise to power! ...

Have you ever wondered how the ideas for some things come about? Surprisingly it is often as much down to chance as a single person's brilliance The Accidental Scientist explores the role of chance & error in scientific medical & commercial innovation outlining exactly how some of the most well-known products gadgets & useful gizmos came to be Encompassing everything from DNA profiling to fingerprinting & TNT to the telephone this book explores many of the discoveries that we are all so familiar with today yet have the most interesting origins because of the story behind them Not all discoveries require brilliance & as The Accidental Scientist demonstrates sometimes a special ingredient is needed luck ...

Schoolboy turns secret agent in this hilarious spy spoof! Before you read this I want you to carefully check that no-one is reading over your shoulder
- go ahead do it now First off that was terrible
- really obvious If I'm going to tell you top secret government information you're going to have to be a bit more stealthy Try again Was anyone looking? No? Right then I'll begin This year the secret service made a major mix up they mistook a 13-year-old boy called Kevin for a secret agent (I know so much for an 'intelligence' agency) This was the sort of kid that would try & zip wire across a building & end up falling head first into a fountain with his bum on show so can you imagine what happened when he was allowed access to the amazing sort of spy gadgets that James Bond would use? Despite this it was up to Kevin to save us all from an evil supervillain It was the most dangerous daring mission in the history of the secret service & also its biggest blunder This top secret book uncovers the entire story of Kevin's fateful & hilarious mission

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