The first of the interlinked plotlines is set in Russia during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Fandorin is charged with protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway from Japanese sabotage in a pacy adventure filled with double agents and ticking bombs.Then we travel back to the Japan of the late 1870s. This is the story of Fandorin's arrival and life in Yokohama, his first meeting with Masa and the martial arts education that came in so handy later. He investigates the death of a Russian ship-captain, fights for a woman, exposes double-agents in the Japanese police, fights against, and then with the ninjas, and becomes embroiled in a shocking finale that interweaves the two stories and ties up the series as a whole

Daddy's last chance! Garth Clayton had a beautiful wife and two gorgeous children-and if he didn't do something quick, he'd lose them! He decided to become a better husband. He even promised Faye diamonds for their tenth wedding anniversary. Faye didn't want diamonds, she wanted out. But, how could she keep the kids from their adored dad? What was Garth playing at? Could it be that the diamonds and anniversary celebration were part of a devious plan to help him boost his career? To persuade her to celebrate another year of marriage with him, Garth needed a miracle to happen… and it did… THE BIG EVENT: One special occasion-that changes your life forever!

Dear Reader, What comes to mind when you think of a diamond slipper? Cinderella, perhaps? That's what Cordelia Brandenburg imagines when her godparents arrange a marriage for her with a man she's never met-a marriage that will take her to Versailles, far from the rigid confines of her childhood home. The betrothal gift is a charm bracelet with a tiny, glittering diamond slipper attached…as befits a journey into a fairy-tale future. But Cordelia-young, headstrong, and completely adorable-runs into trouble right away. Her escort to the wedding is the golden-eyed, sensual, teasing Viscount Leo Kierston. For Cordelia, it's love at first sight. Yet Leo seems to see only a spoiled child-perhaps it's the way she cheats at chess-and Cordelia is determined to show him the woman beneath. There is, however, no escaping her arranged marriage. She's devastated to discover that her new husband is an utterly loathsome tyrant who will stop at nothing to satisfy his twisted desires. My heart went out to Cordelia as she struggles courageously against a man determined to break her spirit. But her husband has a secret, one that will bring down the vengeance of Viscount Kierston and all who have reason to hate him. I hope you'll enjoy this love story of two of my very favorite characters. Warmest wishes, Jane Feather

Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye

Weedon Grossmith's 1892 book presents the details of English suburban life through the anxious and accident-prone character of Charles Porter. Porter's diary chronicles his daily routine, which includes small parties, minor embarrassments, home improvements, and his relationship with a troublesome son. The small minded but essentially decent suburban world he inhabits is both hilarious and painfully familiar. This edition features Weedon Grossmith's illustrations and an introduction which discusses the story's social context

Look who's on the "Dick Gibson Radio Show": Arnold the Memory Expert ("I've memorized the entire West Coast shoreline — except for cloud cover and fog banks"). Bernie Perk, the burning pharmacist. Henry Harper, the nine-year old orphan millionaire, terrified of being adopted. The woman whose life revolves around pierced lobes. An evil hypnotist. Swindlers. Con-men. And Dick Gibson himself. Anticipating talk radio and its crazed hosts, Stanley Elkin creates a brilliant comic world held together by American manias and maniacs in all their forms, and a character who perfectly understands what Americans want and gives it to them

A groundbreaking new theory of the real rules of politics: leaders do whatever keeps them in power, regardless of the national interest. As featured on the viral video Rules for Rulers, which has been viewed over 3 million times. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith's canonical book on political science turned conventional wisdom on its head. They started from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the "national interest"-or even their subjects-unless they have to. This clever and accessible book shows that democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ‘People say I am a megalomaniac. It is not true. I am an exceptional being, providence incarnate, envied by the gods, able to make a faith of his cause.’ October 2011. In the dying days of the Libyan civil war, Muammar Gaddafi is hiding out in his home town of Sirte along with his closest advisors. They await a convoy that will take them south, away from encroaching rebel forces and NATO aerial attacks. The mood is sombre. In what will be his final night, Gaddafi reflects on an extraordinary life, whilst still raging against the West, his fellow Arab nations and the ingratitude of the Libyan people. In this gripping imagining of the last hours of President Gaddafi, Yasmina Khadra provides us with fascinating insight into the mind of one of the most complex and controversial figures of recent history

NOW A FILM FROM NETFLIX STARRING LILY JAMES, CAREY MULLIGAN, AND RALPH FIENNES. A succinct and witty literary venture that tells the strange story of a priceless treasure discovered in East Anglia on the eve of World War II In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, the widowed owner of the farm, has had her hunch confirmed that the mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find. This fictional recreation of the famed Sutton Hoo dig follows three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. As the war looms ever closer, engraved gold peeks through the soil, and each character searches for answers in the buried treasure. Their threads of love, loss, and aspiration weave a common awareness of the past as something that can never truly be left behind

This is a searing short novel, built of the interlocking fates of a badger-baiter and a disconsolate farmer, unfolding in a stark rural setting where man, animal, land and weather are at loggerheads. Their two paths converge with tragic inevitability. Jones writes of the physiology of grief and the isolation of loss with brilliance, and about the simple rawness of animal existence with a naturalist's unblinking eye. His is a pared-down prose of resonant simplicity and occasional lushness. His writing about ducks and dogs and cows is axe-sharp. There is not a whiff of the bucolic pastoral or the romanticized sod here. This is a real rural ride. It is short, but crackles with latent compressed energy that makes it swell to fill more space than at first glance it occupies

In 1897, New York City teems with hustlers and freshly made millionaires, fine artists and con artists, criminals and immigrants. Among them is a rabbi's son who calls himself Houdini. He is struggling to make it in the brutal entertainment business when detectives call on him to attempt the most amazing feat of his fledgling career: solve the mystery of a toy tycoon murdered in his posh Fifth Avenue mansion. It's a challenge which Harry-never at a loss for self-confidence-is more than willing to accept. But soon two more murders are linked to the first, and the investigation leads into the strange world of rare curios and the collectors who pay fortunes to own them. Now, the master magician, with the reluctant help of his brother, Dash Hardeen, must uncover a motive for murder adn track a killer to his hidden lair-an appointment with danger from which not even the great Houdini can escape

"We can't help loving sleuth Kylie Kendall… We'll follow her wherever her brunette ambitions take her."-Girlfriends Kylie may still be a private eye in training, and she may still be reeling by the secret her business partner finally revealed to her. But nothing can compare to her family's interference, even from far-away Australia. When her mother asks Kylie to check in on "distant" relative Doug "Dingo" O'Rourke, who has landed a TV gig in Los Angeles, Kylie realizes she has no choice. Dingo, though, wants nothing to do with an interfering private investigator, despite the fact that something dreadful is worrying him

Suspenseful and deeply human, The Dinosaur Feather is a classic of Scandinavian noir, from its richly imagined and deeply flawed characters to its scintillating exploration of one of the most fascinating aspects of contemporary dinosaur and avian research. Biology postgraduate and hopeful PhD Anna Bella Nor is just two weeks away from defending her thesis on the origin of birds when her supervisor, the arrogant and widely despised Lars Helland, is found dead in his office chair at the University of Copenhagen. In the man’s bloody lap is his tongue as well as a copy of Anna’s thesis. When the autopsy suggests that Helland may have been murdered in a fiendishly ingenious way, the brilliant but tormented young Police Superindendent Søren Marhauge begins the challenging task of unraveling the knotted skeins of personal and intellectual intrigue among the scientists at the university. Just as the case seems to be grinding to a halt, another of the scientists working with Helland is murdered. Unfortunately, everyone—from embittered single mom Anna Bella Nor to his own ex-wife, pregnant with her current husband’s child—has something to hide, presenting Marhauge with perhaps the most challenging case of his career

1936: Devastated by the death of her beloved brother Hugh, Emma seeks to keep his memory alive by wholeheartedly embracing his dreams of a communist revolution. But when she marries an ambitious diplomat, she must leave her ideals behind and live within the confines of embassy life in Paris and Nazi Berlin. Then one of Hugh’s old comrades reappears asking her to report on her philandering husband, and her loyalties are torn. 1979: Emma’s grandson, Phil, dreams of a gap-year tour of Cold War Europe, but is nowhere near being able to fund it. So when his beloved grandmother determines to make one last trip to the places she lived as a young diplomatic wife, and to try to solve a mystery that has haunted her since the war, he jumps at the chance to accompany her. But their journey takes them to darker, more dangerous places than either of them could ever have imagined

Johnny Jerome is a hard-nosed Private Detective in a city plagued with crime and vice. When a simple missing person case suddenly escalates into a run in with the local mob and a whole heap of trouble… And that’s when the vampires show up… Classic noir/pulp/hard-boiled detective fiction with a paranormal twist

Jane Tennison has worked hard to become the first female detective ever post to the infamous Flying Squad, or ‘the Sweeney’. But the Dirty Dozen is a notorious boys’ club, and Jane’s new colleagues make it clear that they don’t think a woman is up to the dangers of the job. Dealing with some of London’s most ruthless armed criminals, who think the only good cop is a dead cop, is no joke. Determined to prove she’s as good as the men, Jane discovers from a reliable witness that a gang is going to carry out a massive robbery. But she doesn’t know who they are, or where and when they will strike

Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s irresistible and infamous novel The Dirty Dust is consistently ranked as the most important prose work in modern Irish, yet no translation for English-language readers has ever before been published. Alan Titley’s vigorous new translation, full of the brio and guts of Ó Cadhain’s original, at last brings the pleasures of this great satiric novel to the far wider audience it deserves. In The Dirty Dust all characters lie dead in their graves. This, however, does not impair their banter or their appetite for news of aboveground happenings from the recently arrived. Told entirely in dialogue, Ó Cadhain’s daring novel listens in on the gossip, rumors, backbiting, complaining, and obsessing of the local community. In the afterlife, it seems, the same old life goes on beneath the sod. Only nothing can be done about it — apart from talk. In this merciless yet comical portrayal of a closely bound community, Ó Cadhain remains keenly attuned to the absurdity of human behavior, the lilt of Irish gab, and the nasty, deceptive magic of human connection

**The New York Times bestselling author of A Book of Bones and one of the best thriller writers we have goes back to the very beginning of Private Investigator Charlie Parker’s astonishing career with his first terrifying case.** It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young black women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. He cares only for his own lost family. But that is about to change . . . Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning “horror poet laureate” (Stephen King) When Gary’s girlfriend Joan vanishes, calls to her parents’ home yield only dead air. Her school records are gone. There is no longer any evidence that she even existed. Most disturbing of all is what Gary does find: a warning and a tantalizing clue, leading to a mysterious backward cult known as the Homesteaders. Now Gary may be the next to disappear

Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and perpetually ill at ease, he spends his evenings quietly drinking and surreptitiously observing Adele Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at a drab bistro in the unremarkable small French town of Saint-Louis. But one day, she simply vanishes into thin air. When Georges Gorski, a detective haunted by his failure to solve one of his first murder cases, is called in to investigate the girl's disappearance, Manfred's repressed world is shaken to its core and he is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past. 'The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau' is a literary mystery novel that is, at heart, an engrossing psychological portrayal of an outsider pushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination

Ten years ago: Gabriel Knight, age 11, takes a bike ride to the park and becomes one of the… disappeared. When Teri Knight answers a knock at the front door, she discovers her son Gabriel standing in the doorway. Only it can’t be her son. Gabe took a bike ride to the park ten years ago, at age 11, and became one of the disappeared. He would be 21 now and this boy… this boy is the same age as Gabe was when he went missing. Except for the color of his eyes, he looks exactly like her son. He’s wearing the same clothes her son wore the day he disappeared. He even refers to her as Mom. If he is Gabe, how is that possible? Why hasn’t he aged? Where has he been for ten years? And why is he so weak and in apparent ill health? Teri is struggling with each of these questions and barely getting to know this boy who has arrived so unexpectedly, miraculously at her door, when a team of armed men arrive at the house in search of the boy. For Gabe and Teri the clock is now ticking - and time is running out. Who are these men? What do they want? Is this boy really Teri’s lost son, Gabe? A dark thriller with a highly unusual and inventive twist

In the bestselling tradition of Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, M. R. Hall's heroine Jenny Cooper makes her debut as a coroner with a detective's eye and a woman with a home life as complicated as her cases. In this brilliant debut, Jenny investigates the disappearance of two young Muslim students, who vanished without a trace seven years ago. The police had concluded that the boys, under surveillance for some time for suspicion of terrorism, had fled to Pakistan to traffic in the atrocities of Islamic fanaticism. Now, sufficient time has passed for the law to declare the boys legally dead. A final declaration is left up to a coroner, Jenny Cooper. As Jenny's official inquest progresses, the stench of corruption is unmistakable. Not only does it appear that British Security Services played a role, but the involvement of an American intelligence agent soon makes it clear that a vast conspiracy is in play. As Jenny builds an ever-strengthening case implicating a shocking collection of power and influence, she meets with a determined and increasingly menacing resistance. When she links the students' "vanishing" to the unidentified corpse of a beautiful young woman and the fate of a missing nuclear scientist, Jenny is forced into an arena in which she is pushed to the breaking point and beyond. She must struggle with her own inner demons while fighting a lone and desperate battle to bring an unspeakable crime to justice

Iran is on the verge of obtaining the technology to launch a nuclear weapon and Tommy Carmellini, with Jake Grafton, must undertake a mission to stop them, using commandoes and undercover operatives as the clock ticks down

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen’s tale of growing up, squirming in his own über-sensitive skin, from a “small and fundamentally ridiculous person,” into an adult with strong inconvenient passions. Whether he’s writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka’s fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between bird watching, his all-consuming marriage, and the problem of global warming, Franzen is always feelingly engaged with the world we live in now. The Discomfort Zone is a wise, funny, and gorgeously written self-portrait by one of America’s finest writers

Third volume of Jan Kjaerstad's award-winning trilogy. Jonas Wergeland has served his sentence for the murder of his wife Margrete. He is a free man again, but will he ever be free of his past?

Sharks, shipwreck, and sunken treasure in the latest adventure trilogy from Gordon Korman. Four kids are on a marine expedition for the summer, diving to explore an underwater habitat that’s just been altered by a seismic event. What they find, though, is much more than fish — it’s sunken treasure. Can they salvage it without anyone else getting to it first? Will the prospect of wealth set them against one another? And what about those sharks…. DIVE is another action-packed trilogy from Gordon Korman. The narrative will shift between an account of two kids caught in the shipwreck and the story of the four kids fighting over and desperately trying to get the treasure

This magnificent epic has been compared to works by Umberto Eco, Thomas Mann, and Dostoyevsky. Harry Mulisch's magnum opus is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes — friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, religion, fate, good, and evil — suffuse a suspenseful and resplendent narrative. The story begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together. They share responsibility for the birth of a remarkable and radiant boy who embarks on a mandated quest that takes the reader all over Europe and to the land where all such quests begin and end. Abounding in philosophical, psychological and theological inquiries, yet laced with humor that is as infectious as it is willful, The Discovery of Heaven lingers in the mind long after it has been read. It not only tells an accessible story, but also convinces one that it just might be possible to bring order into the chaos of the world through a story

The latest masterpiece — perceptive, funny, insightful, affecting — from the Nobel Prize — winning author. Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa’s newest novel, The Discreet Hero, follows two fascinating characters whose lives are destined to intersect: neat, endearing Felícito Yanaqué, a small businessman in Piura, Peru, who finds himself the victim of blackmail; and Ismael Carrera, a successful owner of an insurance company in Lima, who cooks up a plan to avenge himself against the two lazy sons who want him dead. Felícito and Ismael are, each in his own way, quiet, discreet rebels: honorable men trying to seize control of their destinies in a social and political climate where all can seem set in stone, predetermined. They are hardly vigilantes, but each is determined to live according to his own personal ideals and desires — which means forcibly rising above the pettiness of their surroundings. The Discreet Hero is also a chance to revisit some of our favorite players from previous Vargas Llosa novels: Sergeant Lituma, Don Rigoberto, Doña Lucrecia, and Fonchito are all here in a prosperous Peru. Vargas Llosa sketches Piura and Lima vividly — and the cities become not merely physical spaces but realms of the imagination populated by his vivid characters. A novel whose humor and pathos shine through in Edith Grossman’s masterly translation, The Discreet Hero is another remarkable achievement from the finest Latin American novelist at work today

"…raw, powerful and eloquent…" – Michael Connelly Bruno Johnson, a tough street cop, member of the elite violent crime task force, feared by the bad guys, admired by the good, finds his life derailed when a personal tragedy forces him to break the law. Now he's an ex-con and his life on parole is not going well. He is hassled by the police at every opportunity and to make matters even more difficult, his former partner, Robby Wicks, now a high-ranking detective, bullies him into helping solve a high profile crime – unofficially, of course. Meantime, Bruno's girlfriend, Marie, brings out the good, the real Bruno, and even though they veer totally outside the law, he and Marie dedicate themselves to saving abused children, creating a type of underground railroad for neglected kids at risk, disposable kids. What they must do is perilous they step far outside the law, battling a warped justice system and Bruno's former partner, with his own evil agenda."

Unwilling to accept that his anarchist world must be separated from the rest of the civilized universe, Shevek, a brilliant physicist, risks his life by traveling to the utopian mother planet of Urras. Won Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974. Won Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1975. Nominated for John W Campbell Memorial Award in 1975

Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Millderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother's emotional distance masks an old secret. Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie's mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, and taken to live at Millderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper, her twin sisters and their father, Raymond. In the grand and glorious Millderhurst Castle, a new world opens up for Edie's mother. She discovers the joys of books and fantasy and writing, but also, ultimately, the dangers. Fifty years later, as Edie chases the answers to her mother's riddle, she, too, is drawn to Millderhurst Castle and the eccentric Sisters Blythe. Old ladies now, the three still live together, the twins nursing Juniper, whose abandonment by her fiance in 1941 plunged her into madness. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother's past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Millderhurst Castle, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in the distant hours has been waiting a long time for someone to find it…

This book concerns a pair of teenagers, one from the Cross-time civilization, one a native, who meet in a Virginia where the United States fell apart, in a North America torn by war between numerous independent states

From the acclaimed author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers comes a tensely drawn, spellbinding literary thriller that gets to the heart of what defines us as human beings — the singular identity we create for ourselves in the world and the myriad alternative identities that lie just below the surface. In Vendela Vida’s taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. Almost immediately, while checking into her hotel, she is robbed, her passport and all identification stolen. The crime is investigated by the police, but the woman feels there is a strange complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities — she knows she’ll never see her possessions again. Stripped of her identity, she feels both burdened by the crime and liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone at all. Then, a chance encounter with a film crew provides an intriguing opportunity: A producer sizes her up and asks, would she be willing to be the body-double for a movie star filming in the city? And so begins a strange journey in which she’ll become a stand-in — both on-set and off — for a reclusive celebrity who can no longer circulate freely in society while gradually moving further away from the person she was when she arrived in Morocco. Infused with vibrant, lush detail and enveloped in an intoxicating atmosphere — while barely pausing to catch its breath—The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty is a riveting, entrancing novel that explores freedom, power and the mutability of identity

The author depicts the plight of John Shaw, a gene-engineered superman, and his alter ego Benjamin. John is the cold genius and Benjamin the engaging “normal” man fighting to survive

The only survivor of royal treachery that eliminates his entire family, Azzad al-Ma'aliq flees to the desert and dedicates himself to vengeance. With the help of the Shagara, a nomadic tribe of powerful magicians, he begins to take his revenge—but at a terrible cost to himself

During one month in the autumn of election year 200, scores of movie-business strivers are focused on one goal: getting a piece of an elusive, but surely huge, television saga. The one that opens with Huns sweeping through Mongolia and closes with a Mormon diviner in the Las Vegas desert; the sure-to-please-everyone multigenerational TV miniseries about diviners, those miracle workers who bring water to perpetually thirsty (and hungry and love-starved) humankind. Among the wannabes: Vanessa Meandro, hot-tempered head of Means of Production, and indie film company; her harried and varied staff; a Sikh cab driver, promoted to the office of theory and practice of TV; a bipolar bicycle messenger, who makes a fateful mis-delivery; two celebrity publicists, the Vanderbilt girls; a thriller writer who gives Botox parties; the daughter of a L.A. big-shot, who is hired to fetch Vanessas Krispy Kremes and more; a word man who coined the phrase inspired by a true story; and a supreme court justice who wants to write the script. A few true artists surface in the course of Moodys rollicking but intricately woven novel, and real emotion eventually blossoms for most of Vanessas staff at Means of Production, even herself. The Diviners is a cautionary tale about pointless ambition; a richly detailed look at the interlocking worlds of money, politics, addiction, sex, work, and family in modern America; and a masterpiece of comedy that will bring Rick Moody to still higher levels of appreciation. QUOTES A spirited, side-splitting romp through the scorpion-ridden wastes of U.S. showbizcool, hip and wickedly funnyA prodigiously talented writer, Moody offers a multitude of pleasures. His edgy prose is superb; his comedic talent raises, at a bare minimum, a giggle a page; his immersion in popular culture never compromises an acute, acerbic intelligence. Globe and Mail (reviewed by Guy Vanderhaeghe) A hugely entertaining social satire, The Diviners represents a real change for the writer, at least in tonethough he wasnt making any special effort to be more accessible, he has done just that.The book has such a lyrical, musical quality that its like an easy-to-read Finnegans Wake. Calgary Herald A rollicking novel about the interlocking worlds of entertainment, money and politics.The cast is huge and colourful, and the summing-up of a confused era is reminiscent of Jonathan Franzens The Corrections. Vancouver Sun