As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor & urges Holmes & Watson to accompany her. & in the ensuing investigation which involves a wronged woman, a stolen hoard of Indian treasure, a wooden-legged ruffian, a helpful dog & a love affair even the jaded Holmes is moved to exclaim, Isn`t it gorgeous!` ...

The Sign of Four is one of Sherlock Holmes`s great adventures, a tale of `an injured lady, half a million in treasure, a black cannibal, & a wooden-legged ruffian`. In the yellow fog of London, a young woman comes to 221b Baker Street with the strange tale of a missing father & the mysterious pearls she is sent anonymously each year. Holmes & Watson are soon swept up in an international puzzle of murder, millions & madness that could cost them their lives ...

Between 1990 & 1994, Colm Toibin made a series of trips through Catholic Europe. His journey led him into close contact with people from all walks of life, from priests to politicians, from the intellectually open to the spiritually bigoted. He then set down his impressions in this beautifully written book, filled with personal detail set within its historical context. ” Colm Toibin writes beautifully in a spare style that allows for plain description, high humour & effects that are carefully toned. He is at once an honest, uncertain pilgrim with a press card & a sense of devilment, & a son on an Oedipal trail”. (” Irish Times”). ”A mixture of autobiography, travelogue & journalism which tantalizes the reader with what it withholds as much as it entertains & instructs with what it describes...” The Sign of the Cross”, like all good writing, is a treat”. (” Independent on Sunday”). ” This book describing Colm Toibin`s journey is written with the novelist`s familiar clarity & wisdom. It is as much a record of the European Catholic psyche in different political climates as it is an introspective pilgrimage to see what stuff Toibin`s own faith is made of”. (” Daily Telegraph”). ...

Every time we choose a route to work, decide whether to go on a second date, or set aside money for a rainy day, we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the financial crisis to ecological disasters, we routinely fail to foresee hugely significant events, often at great cost to society. In ” The Signal & the Noise”, the ” New York Times” political forecaster Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the results of every single state in the 2012 US election, reveals how we can all develop better foresight in an uncertain world. From the stock market to the poker table, from earthquakes to the economy, he takes us on an enthralling insider`s tour of the high-stakes world of forecasting, showing how we can use information in a smarter way amid a noise of data
- & make better predictions in our own lives.
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On the 9th of June 1865, Charles Dickens was travelling aboard the Folkestone to London Boat Train with his mistress & her mother, when it derailed while crossing a viaduct near Staplehurst in Kent. The train plunged down a bank into a dry river bed, killing ten passengers, & badly wounding forty. Dickens was profoundly affected by the disaster, & a year later, he published The Signalman, a supremely atmospheric ghost story in which the narrator, while investigating a dank & lonely railway cutting, meets the signalman who works there. His new acquaintance appears to live under the shadow of an unbearable secret, haunted by an apparition whose appearance prefigures terrible rail accidents. Drawing on Dickens own experiences, & introduced by Simon Bradley, author of The Railways, The Signalman is both an important piece of rail history, & a sinister tale which will make you think twice next time you enter the quiet carriage. ...

Fathi, a writer no longer permitted to write, makes his way through a city churned by parades for an unnamed dictator. It is a day stifled by heat & the noise of the chants, a day of people trampled, & of the brutality & bullying of the party faithful. But Fathi presses treacherously against the crowd, attempting just to visit his mother & his girlfriend. The Silence & the Roar is a personal, urgent, funny & aggrieved novel. It asks what it means to have a conscience, or to laugh, or to endure in a time of the violence, strangeness & roar of tyranny. It is both a true literary achievement & an act of real courage by a brilliant Syrian writer. ...

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration & one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a reimagining of the most famous conflict in literature
- the legendary Trojan War. When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis`s old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. & she`s not alone. On the same day, & on many others in the course of a long & bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes & flung to the fighters. The Trojan War is known as a man`s story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home & spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead? In this magnificent historical novel, Pat Barker charts one woman`s journey through the chaos of the most famous war in history, as she struggles to free herself & to become the author of her own story. Praise for Pat Barker:` Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation` Sunday Telegraph` She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature` Independent` Barker is a writer of crispness & clarity & an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human` Herald` You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline & a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world` Guardian
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The most chilling novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an international bestseller at the height of her powers. ` Mummy dead.` The child`s pure treble was uncomfortably clear. It was the last thing Brynjar
- & doubtless the others
- wanted to hear at that moment. ` Daddy dead.` It got worse. ` Adda dead. Bygga dead.` The child sighed & clutched her grandmother`s leg. ` All dead.` A luxury yacht arrives in Reykjavik harbour with nobody on board. What has happened to the crew, & to the family who were on board when it left Lisbon? Thora Gudmundsdottir is hired by the young father`s parents to investigate, & is soon drawn deeper into the mystery. What should she make of the rumours saying that the vessel was cursed, especially given that when she boards the yacht she thinks she sees one of the missing twins? Where is Karitas, the glamorous young wife of the yacht`s former owner? & whose is the body that has washed up further along the shore?

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A woman on the run from her past. A child on the run from reality. A man on the run from himself. Carofiglio confronts the dark side of the human soul in this captivating story of fall & redemption. Every week, Roberto Marias crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist`s office. There, he often sits in silence, stumped by the ritual
- but sometimes crucial memories come to the surface. He remembers when he was a child & used to surf with his father. He remembers the treacherous years he spent working as an under-cover carabinieri, years that taught him how cynicism & corruption are not merely external influences, but also exist within us. He has lived an intoxicating & crushing life, but now his psychiatrist`s words, the hypnotic strolls through Rome, & a meeting with a woman named Emma
- who like Roberto is ravaged by a profound guilt
- are beginning to revive him. & when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth.


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WINNER SWEDISH CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR. The adrenaline-charged & suspenseful thriller set in a ruthless world where all means are permitted in the fight for power. When a savaged body is found in the waters outside the governing party`s conference centre, the case lands on detective Julia Gabrielsson`s desk. Who is the deceased & why has somebody gone to such trouble to make sure the body is unidentifiable? Officer David Sarac is a man haunted by demons. After a violent showdown that almost cost him his life, the policeman is being treated at a closed ward far from the capital. Soon he will permanently silence the accusing voices in his head. But a mysterious offer has David changing his mind. ...