The year is 1792 & it`s winter in Berkeley Square. As the city sleeps, the night-watchman keeps a cautious eye over the streets & another eye in the back doors of the great & the good. Then one fateful night he comes across the body of Pierre Renard, the eponymous silversmith, lying dead, his throat cut & his valuables missing. It could be common theft, committed by one of the many villains who stalk the square, but as news of the murder spreads, it soon becomes clear that Renard had more than a few enemies, all with their own secrets to hide. At the centre of this web is Mary, the silversmith`s wife. Ostensibly theirs was an excellent pairing, but behind closed doors their relationship was a dark & at times sadistic one & when we meet her, Mary is withdrawn & weak, haunted by her past & near-mad with guilt. Will she attain the redemption she seeks & what, exactly, does she need redemption for…? Rich, intricate & beautifully told, this is a story of murder, love & buried secrets. ...

The story of the man who strung the telegraph across Australia, & the woman who gave her name to Alice Springs. In 1855 an impoverished young scientist from Greenwich told his guardian that he was off to chance his luck in Australia
- as Government Astronomer & Superintendent of Telegraphs for the small colony of South Australia. With him went his young wife Alice
- after whom Alice Springs would be named. For Charles Todd was following a dream
- the near impossible task of stringing a telegraph wire across one of the last uncrossed colonial wilderness, & finally connecting Australia with Britain. In 1997, their great-great-granddaughter Alice followed in their footsteps. Her plan was to track the telegraph & her ancestors, from Adelaide over the thousands of miles of desert, outback, swamp & mountain that Charles Todd had crossed in the 1860s with his 400 men.


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THE SINGLE HELIX is a miscellany of a hundred easy pieces about science. It brings to life a vast diversity of subjects, united under the banner of scientific truth
- the universal solvent that brings clarity to almost all the mysteries of the world we live in. Scientists are trained to know ever more about even less but here Steve Jones sets out deliberately to explore subjects in which he is emphatically not an expert (although his favourite snail, the single Helix of his title, does poke in a tentacle here & there). His insatiable curiosity & enthusiasm as he sheds light on unexpected corners of knowledge combine to produce science writing at its very best. From chaos in the heavens to the fight against creationism, from optical illusions in tartan to the mathematics of elections & what rules the sex lives of cats THE SINGLE HELIX is a scientist`s look at sciences other than his own
- & as a result its author has been forced to make the complicated simple enough for even a biologist to underst&.

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New from the author of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: it`s a match made in hell. How far would you go to reach the top...? When Charlotte ` Charlie` Silver makes a pact with the devil, infamously brutal tennis coach Todd Feltner, she finds herself catapulted into a world of stylists, private parties & secret dates with Hollywood royalty. Under Todd it`s no more good-girl attitude: he wants warrior princess Charlie all the way. After all, no-one ever won by being nice. Celebrity mags & gossip blogs go wild for Charlie, chasing scandal as she jets around the globe. But as the warrior princess`s star rises, both on & off the court, it comes at a high price. Is the real Charlie Silver still inside? Sweeping from Wimbledon to the Caribbean, from LA to mega yachts in the Med, The Singles Game is a brilliantly entertaining romp through a world where the stakes are high
- & no-one plays by the rules.
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The Floating Admiral was the first of the Detection Club`s collaborative novels, in which twelve of its members wrote a single novel. Eighty-five years later, fourteen members of the club have once again collaborated to produce The Sinking Admiral. ` The Admiral` is a pub in the Suffolk seaside village of Crabwell, The Admiral Byng. ` The Admiral` is also the nickname of its landlord, Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, as well as the name of the landlord`s dinghy. None of them are as buoyant as they should be, for the pub is threatened with closure due to falling takings. Tempers are already frayed due to the arrival of a television documentary team when Fitzsimmons is found dead in his tethered boat. The villagers assume a simple case of suicide & fear that their debt-ridden pub will now sink without trace. The journalists seem determined to finish the job by raking up old skeletons, but they weren`t banking on the fact that this story has been written by 14 extremely competitive crime writers
- arch bamboozlers who will stop at nothing to save a good pub. The Sinking Admiral, edited by the Detection Club`s outgoing President
- author & broadcaster Simon Brett, OBE
- continues a tradition established by the Detection Club`s founders in 1931 when Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts & eleven other esteemed authors wrote The Floating Admiral, a `collaborative novel` to challenge themselves, fox their readers & help to pay for the Club`s running costs. Now, 85 years later, 14 of today`s leading crime writers have repeated this unique game of literary consequences, producing an original, ebullient & archetypal whodunit that will keep readers guessing right up to what crime lovers insist on calling the denouement... The contributors to The Sinking Admiral are: SIMON BRETT KATE CHARLES NATASHA COOPER STELLA DUFFY MARTIN EDWARDS RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS TIM HEALD MICHAEL JECKS JANET LAURENCE PETER LOVESEY MICHAEL RIDPATH DAVID ROBERTS L.C. TYLER LAURA WILSON all members of The Detection Club.


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Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli & Charlies Sisters, ride
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` The Sites of Ancient Greece` presents 150 of Georg Gerster`s most spectacular & evocative photographs of the landscapes & architecture
- both ancient & modern
- of Greece, a country he has visited & photographed numerous times in his long career. The photographs in this book were taken between 1996 & 2006. A short preface by Gerster himself & an introductory essay convey a sense of why this country, its history, myths & landscapes, have captured the hearts & minds of so many for thousands of years, from ancient kings & poets to modern holiday-makers. In addition, a map of the featured locations & a timeline listing the key dates, events & eras of the ancient Greek world help set the scene for the picture section to follow. Arranged geographically by region, the images in this book take the viewer on a guided tour of Greece & her islands, from cloud-topped Mount Olympus, home of the Gods, in the northern mainland to the isle of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea. The historical sites featured include the seventeen UNESCO world heritage sites of Greece, such as the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens; Delphi, the site of the most important oracle of the ancient Mediterranean world; the astounding mountain-top monasteries at Mount Athos & Meteora, precariously perched high above the ocean; Olympia, one of the most important sanctuaries of antiquity & the birthplace of the Olympic Games; the beautiful monuments of Thessaloniki & the medieval city of Rhodes, once the site of the Collosus, one of the lost seven wonders of the world; & the fortified town of Mystras. Gerster`s picture also show the wide-ranging landscapes of Greece, from the bustling modern metropolises of Athens & Thessaloniki, studded as they are with ancient jewels, to the arid plains of Sparta, craggy coastlines & jewel-like islands surrounded by calm blue waters. Each photograph is accompanied by an extended caption describing when & where the picture was taken & offering contextual information about the landscapes or monuments pictured, for example noting the key historical (or mythical) events associated with the site.

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By Norway`s bestselling novelist & the author of NORWEGIAN WOOD, a family story of epic scale. Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery
- he has never been told how or where it took place & has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that the fate of his grandfather`s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death
- a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. Edvard`s desperate quest to unlock the family`s tragic secrets takes him on a long journey
- from Norway to the Shetlands, & to the battlefields of France
- to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood & finding your own self, a beautifully intricate & moving tale that spans an entire century. Translated from the Norwegian by Paul Russell Garrett



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By Norway`s bestselling novelist & the author of NORWEGIAN WOOD, a family story of epic scale. ” An intricate story about war, family, secrets &, yes, wood.. . An engaging, satisfying read” The Times” So cleverly plotted, & it builds up such effortless dramatic momentum as it zeroes in on its conclusion” Scotsman Edvard grows up on a remote mountain farmstead in Norway with his taciturn grandfather, Sverre. The death of his parents, when he was three years old, has always been shrouded in mystery
- he has never been told how or where it took place & has only a distant memory of his mother. But he knows that the fate of his grandfather`s brother, Einar, is somehow bound up with this mystery. One day a coffin is delivered for his grandfather long before his death
- a meticulous, beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Perhaps Einar is not dead after all. Edvard`s desperate quest to unlock the family`s tragic secrets takes him on a long journey
- from Norway to the Shetlands, & to the battlefields of France
- to the discovery of a very unusual inheritance. The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is about the love of wood & finding your own self, a beautifully intricate & moving tale that spans an entire century. Mytting`s book is as much a romantic historical thriller as it is a book of promise, a page-turner as it is a reflective journey into selfhood, history, life`s meaning & individual moral responsibility
- Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista Translated from the Norwegian by Paul Russell Garrett




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When Nuria Marti, the beautiful Spanish figure skater, is suddenly dropped from the Olympic team, a besotted admirer builds a secret ice rink for her in the ruins of an old mansion on the outskirts of their seaside town. What he doesn`t tell her is that he paid for it using embezzled public funds. Such deceit is not without repercussions, & the skating rink soon becomes a crime scene.. . Rife with political corruption, sex, jealousy & frustrated passion, The Skating Rink
- narrated in turn by a corrupt & pompous civil servant, a beleaguered romantic poet, & a duplicitous local entrepreneur
- is a darkly atmospheric tale of murder & its motives.

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