FICTION

First impressions aren't always what they seem . . .

Ruthie Midona is twenty-four (going on ninety-four) and fully committed to her job at a luxury retirement village. Keeping herself busy caring for the eccentric residents means that Ruthie can safely ignore her own life - what little there is of it.
Teddy Prescott is practically allergic to a hard day's work. When he rocks up as the retirement village's newest employee, Ruthie is less than impressed. The last thing she needs is a distraction as irritating (and handsome) as this selfish rich kid. Lucky for Ruthie, her favourite pair of mischievous residents need a new assistant to torture... so she hands over Teddy, ready for them to send him running.
Except Teddy may be about to surprise her - not just by surviving the old women's antics, but by charming Ruthie so much, she starts to remember that there's more to life than work.
And just maybe, her second first impression will lead to the love of a lifetime . . .

Sam was Tate's first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak.

During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate - the long-lost daughter of one of the world's biggest film stars - ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.

Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he's the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it's possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason... and whether 'once in a lifetime' can really come around twice.

Jess is a numbers genius, but when it comes to love she's had to accept there is no magic formula. Juggling a career with raising her daughter, it's not surprising that her love life is. . . non-existent. When yet another date ends in disaster, she's prepared to give up on love for good.

But then she hears about a buzzy new matchmaking company that claims to find you the One using a DNA equation. Suddenly, love doesn't seem quite so far out of reach . . .

Until her test shows an unheard-of 98% compatibility with the company's founder, Dr River Pena. Jess already knows Dr Pena, and this man is 100% not her soulmate. Yet as the pair are dragged from one event to the next as the ultimate 'Diamond' pairing, Jess begins to realise that there might be more to the scientist - and to the science behind a soulmate - than she thought.

Things My Son Needs To Know About The World is a tender and funny series of letters from a new father to his son about one of life's most daunting experiences: parenthood.
Part memoir, part manual, part love letter to his son, this book relays the big and the small lessons in life.

As he watches his son take his first steps into the world, he teaches him how to navigate both love - and IKEA - and tries to explain why, sometimes, his dad might hold his hand just a little bit too tightly.

This is an irresistible and insightful collection from one of the world's most beautiful storytellers - the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Beartown.

TWO FRIENDS
TEN TRIPS
THEIR LAST CHANCE TO FALL IN LOVE

12 YEARS AGO: Poppy and Alex meet. They hate each other, and are pretty confident they'll never speak again.

11 YEARS AGO: They're forced to share a ride home from college and by the end of it a friendship is formed. And a pact: every year, one vacation together.

10 YEARS AGO: Alex discovers his fear of flying on the way to Vancouver.
Poppy holds his hand the whole way.

7 YEARS AGO: They get far too drunk and narrowly avoid getting matching tattoos in New Orleans.

2 YEARS AGO: It all goes wrong.

THIS YEAR: Poppy asks Alex to join her on one last trip. A trip that will determine the rest of their lives.

Read THE razor-sharp satire that everyone is talking about...

On the surface ,our narrator has everything you could want in life. She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance.

But there is a vacuum in her life and she's got the perfect solution. She's going to take a year under sedation to relax and hide away from the world.
What could possibly go wrong?

Blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, is the perfect read for fans of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

This chilling collection of scary stories will keep you awake for hours! Psychological horrors, disturbing dramas, and gruesome ghosts compose this compendium of confessions made in the dead of night.

From vampires and a monkey paw to an unstoppable heart and haunting apparitions, anecdotes of supernatural terror will have you turning pages long past the witching hour. Allow famous authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Henry James, Washington Irving, and more to prey upon your emotions and peace of mind at slumber parties and camping trips, or anytime you want to end the night with a delightful fright!

The Twilight Saga series has entranced millions of readers around the world. Now all 6 books in the series, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, Midnight Sun and The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, are available in this deluxe white-edition paperback boxed set.

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honour they could hope for . . . and the most demeaning. This year, there's a ninth.

And instead of paper, she's made of fire.

Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. Ten years ago, her mother was snatched by the royal guards, and her fate remains unknown. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after - the girl with the golden eyes, whose rumoured beauty has piqued the king's interest.

Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learn the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, Lei does the unthinkable - she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.

When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive on her way to a happily ever after was always going to be tough, scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting woman, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when he agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire and Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support (and his unyielding abs), their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion.

Olive soon discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

A superstar lineup of detectives--including Sherlock Holmes, C. Auguste Dupin, and Hercule Poirot--headlines this elegant leather-bound edition of classic mystery stories. Short stories such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and G. K. Chesterton's "The Blue Cross" are ideal for a cozy evening by the fire, while novels like Agatha Christie's The Murder on the Links and Jules Verne's An Antarctic Mystery will keep you engrossed for days. The eleven works in this volume are preceded by a scholarly introduction that explores the origins of the genre, as well as the development of the modern mystery story and the contributions made by each author.

Works Included
Short stories:
The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe
The Adventure of the Creeping Man," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Blue Cross," G. K. Chesterton
The Coin of Dionysius," Ernest Bramah
The Anthropologist at Large," R. Austin Freeman
The Most Dangerous Game," Richard Connell
Novels:
The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
Whose Body?, Dorothy Sayers
The Thirty-nine Steps, John Buchan
An Antarctic Mystery, Jules Verne
Room 13, Edgar Wallace

Two sisters
One secret
Someone knows what they did...
Leigh doesn't like to talk about her sister about the night that tore them apart.
About what they did.
But someone else is about to.

How far will Leigh go to protect her family?

When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.

Murakami tells the true story behind an act of terrorism that turned an average Monday morning into a national disaster.

In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and many suffered serious after-effects. Murakami interviews the victims to try and establish precisely what happened on the subway that day.

He also interviews members and ex-members of the doomsdays cult responsible, in the hope that they might be able to explain the reason for the attack and how it was that their guru instilled such devotion in his followers.

Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. Shinji is entranced at the sight of Hatsue in the twilight on the beach and they fall in love. When the villagers' gossip threatens to divide them, Shinki must risk his life to prove his worth.

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence, beginning a complex menage-a-quatre. But when Frances and Nick get unexpectedly closer, the sharply witty and emotion-averse Frances is forced to honestly confront her own vulnerabilities for the first time.

Prepare to be dazzled by this new edition of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, designed and illustrated by MinaLima. With over 150 full-colour illustrations and eight exclusive, interactive paper-engineered elements, readers can travel via the Floo Network, encounter the Whomping Willow, reveal the spiral staircase to Dumbledore's office and even pull Mandrakes from their pots!

THE TIKTOK SENSATION

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn's luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the '80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn's story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique's own in tragic and irreversible ways.

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan War whose voice has been silent - until now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . .

Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is a slave to the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?

THE PERFECT GIFT FOR FANS OF MADELINE MILLER'S CIRCE AND THE SONG OF ACHILLES THIS CHRISTMAS!

Tennessee Williams's evocation of loneliness and lost love, The Glass Menagerie is one of his most powerful and moving plays.
Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura, her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romantic illusions are crushed.

Crumbling ruins, undead fiends, dark alleys and forests teeming with horrors seen and unseen: the tendrils of the Gothic have crept out of the architecture of churches, mosques and grand houses and into suburban malls, overcrowded cities, the deserted corners of the world and beyond, taking the shape of monsters from Beowulf to Gojira, Cthulhu or the wendigo to our own terrifying, warped reflections. Across time, form and media, this book traces the weaving path of the Gothic from the shadows of history to the very heart of popular culture today.

With over 350 illustrations

The fourth novel in the Wheel of Time series - one of the most influential and popular fantasy epics ever published.

The Stone of Tear, invulnerable fortress of legend, has fallen. The Children of the Dragon have risen to the call of prophecy and march to the aid of the Light. Callandor, the Sword That Is Not a Sword, is held by Rand al'Thor, the man proclaimed as the Dragon Reborn.

But still the shadows lengthen and still the Forsaken grow in strength. If he is to fight them, Rand must master the male half of the True Source, a power corrupted by the Dark One, a power that drives men to madness, a power that may save or damn the world.

The second novel in the Wheel of Time series - one of the most influential and popular fantasy epics ever published.

The Forsaken are loose, the Horn of Valere has been found and the Dead are rising from their dreamless sleep. The Prophecies are being fulfilled - but Rand al'Thor, the shepherd the Aes Sedai have proclaimed as the Dragon Reborn, desperately seeks to escape his destiny.

Rand cannot run for ever. With every passing day the Dark One grows in strength and strives to shatter his ancient prison, to break the Wheel, to bring an end to Time and sunder the weave of the Pattern.

And the Pattern demands the Dragon.

Prepare to turn the Wheel of Time - discover the first novel in one of the most influential and popular fantasy epics ever published.

When their village is attacked by terrifying creatures, Rand al'Thor and his friends are forced to flee for their lives. An ancient evil is stirring, and its servants are scouring the land for the Dragon Reborn - the prophesised hero who can deliver the world from darkness.

In this Age of myth and legend, the Wheel of Time turns. What was, what may be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. Plus the pair are still battling their feelings for one another, while Robin is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly . . .

From Crickhollow Apple Loaf, Pippin's Minas Tirith Lunch, and Brandywine Fish Pie to Dwarven Spiced Pickled Beetroot, Westfarthing Fairings, and Beorn's Twice-Baked Cakes, Recipes from the World of Tolkien includes over 75 mouth-watering recipes that will take you on a journey through Middle-earth, delivering a treat for your taste buds and your imagination.

Immerse yourself in Tolkien's epic fantasy world with recipes inspired by its places and characters. Whether it's breakfast or second breakfast, elevenses or afternoon tea, lunch or dinner - cook up a feast fit for orcs and elves alike.

An entire race was born when J.R.R. Tolkien scrawled on a leaf, 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' From the invention of that single word (hobbit) Tolkien became the explorer and chronicler of the character, their race and their significant role in his fantastical world, Middle-earth.

Twenty-three illustrated gothic tales from the dark corridors of the imagination of Tim Burton.
Burton - the creative genius behind Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Nightmare Before Christmas, among others - now gives birth to a cast of gruesomely sympathetic children: misunderstood outcasts who struggle to find love and belonging in their cruel, cruel worlds. His lovingly lurid illustrations evoke both the sweetness and tragedy of these hopeful, yet hapless beings.

Ambition will fuel him.
Competition
will drive him.
But power has its price.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth
annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus
Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games.
The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its
fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able
to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuvre his fellow students to mentor
the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment
of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest
of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - ; every
choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favour or failure, triumph
or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside
the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute...
and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire
to survive no matter what it takes.

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON
A RICHARD & JUDY, BETWEEN THE COVERS AND GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
WINNER OF THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD FOR FICTION

Nora's life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth she finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. Which raises the ultimate question: with infinite choices, what is the best way to live?