` There`s more crime going on in Carey`s Circus than in the whole underworld of London. Theft, immorality, blackmail
- you`ll
...

The title story of this collection is about a man battling a mysterious illness. His family visit his bedside, their faces masks of concern. His colleagues pay their respects but only think of the advantages created by his death. This intensely moving story of Ivan Ilyich`s lonely end is one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy`s late fiction. The ten other stories in this new collection include ` The Kreutzer Sonata`, ` The Devil`, & ` Hadji Murat` which has been described by Harold Bloom as `the best story in the world`. ...

The master of historical fiction presents the iconic story of King Alfred & the making of a nation. Alfred, the great king, is said to be dying. Rivals for his succession are poised to tear the kingdom apart. The country Alfred has worked thirty years to build is about to disintegrate. Uhtred, the King`s warrior, Viking born but Saxon bred, wants more than anything else to go & fight to reclaim his stolen Northumbrian inheritance. But he knows that if he deserts the King`s cause, Alfred`s dream
- & indeed the very future of the English nation
- will very likely vanish. Death of Kings is an outstanding novel by a master storyteller of how England was made
- & very nearly lost.


...

In an orphanage outside Oslo, a twelve-year-old boy is causing havoc. The institution`s ageing director, Agnes Vestavik, sees something chilling in Olav`s eyes: sheer hatred. When Vestavik is found murdered at her desk late at night, stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife
- with Olav nowhere to be found
- the case goes to Hanne Wilhelmsen, recently promoted to superintendent in the Oslo police. Hanne suspects that Olav witnessed the murder & fled, & she orders an investigation of the orphanage staff. But this, however, is one case where her instincts are leading her astray. Meanwhile, Olav makes his way to his mother`s apartment in central Oslo. When police finally catch up to him, Olav will lead them on a chase that will upend all of their assumptions. A dark & captivating thriller, Death of the Demon examines the murky intersection between crime & justice.

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When Celine's first novel, Journey to the End of the Night was first published in 1932 it created an instant scandal, being extravagantly praised by its supporters & savagely attacked by its horrified opponents. Four years later came the sequel, Death on Credit. Both were a new kind of novel, frank about the author's thoughts & actions in a ways that readers had never encountered, ultra-realistic, & full of incidents that could not possibly be true to life, characters that stretched the imagination in spite of their having obviously been drawn from life. In Death on Credit Ferdinand Bardamu, Celine's alter ego, is a doctor in Paris, treating the poor who seldom pay him but who take every advantage of his availability. The action is not continuous but goes back in time to earlier memories & often moves into fantasy, especially in Bardamu's sexual escapades; the style becomes deliberately rougher & sentences disintegrate to catch the flavour of the teeming world of everyday Parisian tragedies, struggles to make a living, illness, venereal disease, the sordid stories of families whose destiny is governed by their own stupidity, malice, lust & greed. This fascinating book by one of the greatest 20th Century novelists is an unforgettable experience for the reader. ...

For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students, & bad publicity for the college. So her prim & cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon, only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe. The police assume that a student prank got out of h&, but the resourceful Persephone girls suspect foul play, & take the investigation into their own hands. Soon they uncover the tangled secrets that led to the bursar`s death
- & the clues that point to a fellow student. This classic mystery novel, with its evocative setting in an Oxford women`s college, is now republished for the first time since the 1930s.
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Agatha Christie`s most exotic murder mystery, reissued with a striking new cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans & book lovers. The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish & beautiful, a girl who had everything
- until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: `I`d like to put my dear little pistol against her head & just press the trigger.` Yet in this exotic setting` nothing is ever quite what it seems!
...

When a counterfeit currency racket comes to light on the French Riviera, Detective Inspector Meredith is sent speeding southwards
-
...

Larkin Mills: The Birthplace of Death! Larkin Mills is no ordinary town. It`s a place of contradictions & enigma, of secrets & mysteries. A place with an exquisite ice cream parlour, & an awful lot of death. An extraordinary mystery in Larkin Mills is beginning to take shape. First we meet the apparently healthy Albert Dance, although he`s always been called a sickly child, & he`s been booked into Larkin Mills` Hospital for Specially Ill Children. Then there`s his neighbour Ivor, who observes strange goings-on, & begins his own investigations into why his uncle disappeared all those years ago. Next we meet Young Olive, who is given a battered accordion by her father, & unwittingly strikes a dreadful deal with an instrument repair man. Make sure you keep an eye on Mr Morricone, the town ice-cream seller, who has queues snaking around the block for his legendary ice cream flavours Summer Fruits Suicide & The Christmas Massacre. & Mr Milkwell, the undertaker, who has some very dodgy secrets locked up in his hearse. Because if you can piece together what all these strange folks have to do with one another.. .well, you`ll have begun to unlock the dark secrets that keep the little world of Larkin Mills spinning.. . ...

An epic history of the battle of Quebec, the death of General James Wolfe & the beginnings of Britain`s empire in North America. Military history at its best. Perched on top of a tall promontory, surrounded on three sides by the treacherous St Lawrence River, Quebec -- in 1759 France`s capital city in Canada -- forms an almost impregnable natural fortress. That year, with the Seven Years` War raging around the globe, a force of 49 ships & nearly 9, 000 men commanded by the irascible General James Wolfe, navigated the river, scaled the cliffs & laid siege to the town in an audacious attempt to expel the French from North America forever. In this magisterial first solus book, tying into the 250th anniversary of the battle, Dan Snow tells the story of this famous campaign which was to have far-reaching consequences for Britain`s rise to global hegemony, & the world at large. Snow brilliantly sets the battle within its global context & tells a gripping tale of brutal war quite unlike any fought in Europe, where terrain, weather & native Canadian tribes were as fearsome as any enemy.`I never served so disagreeable a campaign as this, ` grumbled one British commander, `it is war of the worst shape.` 1759 was, without question, a year in which the decisions of men changed the world forever. Based on original research & told from all perspectives, this is history -- military, political, human -- on an epic scale. ...