Dickens and Clot Investigations Ltd, a detective agency in a waterlogged, semi-buried Madrid of the near future, has a couple of unusual specialities: helping distraught authors and taking on Manex Chopeitia. The authors are frantically in search of characters who've quit the page and assumed a life of their own.

Teresa Gow is under arrest for a string of offences ranging from prostitution to attempted murder. Lawyer Keira Lynch wants the charges dropped and her client taken into protective custody. The CIA and a Serbian drug trafficker by the name of Fisnik Abazi, want Teresa dead.

Hawkwood's in America for this gripping, action-packed follow up to the bestselling Ratcatcher - for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Conn Igulden and Patrick O'Brian

DI Tom Thorne is back...

Fifteen-year-old Sigurd, son of King Sigmund, is the last surviving member of the Volson clan. His father's kingdom - the former city of London - is gone. And his father's knife, a gift from the gods, has been shattered to dust.

London is in ruins. The once-glorious city is now a gated wasteland cut off from the rest of the country and in the hands of two warring families - the Volsons and the Connors. Val Volson offers the hand of his young daughter, Signy, to Connor as a truce.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HELEN SIMPSON From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

In The Bloody Chamber, Carter's famous collection of deeply unsettling stories inspired by fairy tales, a Beauty is turned into a Beast and Little Red Riding's grandmother is stoned to death as a witch; The early collection, Fireworks, reveals Carter taking her first forays into the fantastic writing that was to become her unforgettable legacy.

One bookshop. Fifty-one rules. Three women who break them all.

Alexander Bruno is a man with expensive problems. Sporting a tuxedo and trotting the globe, he has spent his adult life as a professional gambler. His particular line of work: backgammon, at which he extracts large sums of money from men who think they can challenge his peerless acumen. In Singapore, his luck turned.

The curse of Pharaoh Sinus Nefertop is upon Blotto so it's up to Twinks to banish it! Yet another financial crisis at Tawcester Towers! So this time the Dowager Duchess decides to sell off the less important family possessions, which have, for a long time, been consigned to the attics of the ancestral home.

Another hair-raising adventure featuring the aristocratic brother and sister sleuthing duo!

The second novel in Simon Brett's great fun comedy crime series starring Blotto and Twinks.

A hair-raising adventure set between the wars introduces fabulous brother and sister sleuthing duo, Blotto and Twinks!

Another hair-raising adventure featuring the aristocratic brother and sister sleuthing duo!

* An early novel by one of England's most important contemporary novelists.

'The kind of book that changes readers for the better' GuardianWhen a family tragedy means Mick is sent to the outback to live with his Granpa, it looks as if he has a lonely life ahead of him.

Adultery is always put in terms of thieving. Oliver Orme is a painter who has abandoned his art. His days are now haunted by loss: loss of desire; of artistic vision; of the people he has loved. And only now does he realize that those around him understand him more than he does himself.

1949. Lance Curran is set to prosecute a young man for a brutal murder, in the 'Robert the Painter' case, one which threatens to tear society apart. In the searing July heat, corruption and justice vie as Harry Ferguson, Judge Curran's fixer, contemplates the souls of men adrift, and his own fall from grace with the beautiful and wilful Patricia.