Half German, half Russian, Hel was raised by a Japanese general and survived Hiroshima to become a mystic, a master of the senses, and the most deadly assassin in the world. Nicholai has left his past behind him to live a life of isolation in a remote mountain fortress, determined to attain a state of effortless perfection known as shibumi. Then Hannah Stern arrives at his door. Hannah needs protection from a sinister organization known as the Mother Company. But, as Hel knows all too well, they are not easy to escape. And now they're coming after him too. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other...shibumi.
AN ACCLAIMED, EMMY-NOMINATED TV SERIES ON AMAZON PRIME VIDEO WINNER OF THE HUGO, LOCUS AND BRAM STOKER AWARDS ''To give him his full title: Neil Gaiman, Architect of Worlds, Svengali of Plot, Shaman of Character, Exploder of Cliche, Master Craftsman of Style, Dreamer Laureate of the Republic of Letters'' DAVID MITCHELL ''Original, engrossing, and endlessly inventive'' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ''Brilliant and unique'' GUARDIAN --- ''This is about the soul of America, the idea that everyone came here from somewhere'' NEIL GAIMAN --- After three years in prison, Shadow Moon is free to go home. But hours before his release, his beloved wife is killed in a freak accident. Numbly, he boards a plane where he meets an enigmatic stranger who seems to know Shadow and claims to be an ancient god - and king of America. Together they embark on a profoundly strange road trip across the USA, encountering a kaleidoscopic cast of characters along the way. But all around them a storm of unnatural proportions is gathering. War is coming, an epic struggle for the very soul of America. And Shadow is standing squarely in its path. NEIL GAIMAN. W ITH STORIES COME POSSIBILITIES. --- **Includes a brand-new author preface, introduction to the author''s preferred text, The Monarch of the Glen novella, reading-group discussion questions, an interview with Neil Gaiman and ''How Dare You'', an essay on American Gods **
THE EXTRAORDINARY FIRST NOVEL BY THE MASTER OF STORYTELLING ACCLAIMED BBC RADIO 4 DRAMATISATION WITH ALL-STAR CAST INCLUDING JAMES MCAVOY, NATALIE DORMER, DAVID HAREWOOD, SOPHIE OKONEDO AND BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH ''Prose that dances and dazzles . . . Gaiman describes the indescribable'' SUSANNA CLARKE ''It''s virtually impossible to read more than ten words by Neil Gaiman and not wish he would tell you the rest of the story'' OBSERVER ''Much too clever to be caught in the net of a single interpretation'' PHILIP PULLMAN --- ''I love doors. Anything that leads to possibilities'' NEIL GAIMAN --- Under the streets of London lies a world most people could never dream of. When Richard Mayhew stops to help a girl he finds bleeding in the street, his unremarkable life changes in an instant. This act of kindness leads him to a place filled with murderers and angels, pale girls in black velvet, a Beast in a labyrinth and an Earl who holds Court in a tube train. It is strangely familiar yet utterly bizarre. Here is London Below, the city of people who have fallen between the cracks. And for Richard Mayhew, it''s just the beginning. NEIL GAIMAN. W ITH STORIES COME POSSIBILITIES. --- **Includes an introduction to the author''s preferred text, How the Marquis Got His Coat Back short story, reading-group discussion questions, an ''Altogether Different Prologue'' and an interview with Neil Gaiman**
In Heartbreak Hotel by New York Times No.1 bestseller Jonathan Kellerman, criminal psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware i nvestigates the death of his most mysterious patient to date. Fans of Michael Connelly and Harlan Coben will revel in this knife- sharp storytelling from the master of psychological suspense. At nearly one hundred years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients child psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at The Aventura - a luxury hotel with a checkered history. What Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions - about guilt, patterns of criminal behaviour, victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. But when he returns the following morning, his question goes unanswered, and new ones arise... In their most puzzling investigation to date, Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis must peel back the layers of a fascinating but elusive woman's life. For Thalia Mars is a victim like no other, an enigma who harboured nearly a century of secrets and whose life and death draw those around her into a vortex of violence. FORTY BESTSELLERS. HUNDREDS OF CASES SOLVED.
Modern fictionAn imaginative and eagerly anticipated new novel from this highly acclaimed and award-winning author. Fat Charlie Nancy is angry, confused and a little scared. He has just found out that his estranged father was a god, as is his brother who is attempted, and doing very well at, taking over Fat Charlie's life.
From the Academy Award-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction. I''ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life''s challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call ''catching greenlights.'' So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it''s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot''s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It''s a love letter. To life. It''s also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too. Good luck.
The Fourth Enemy is the sixth gripping instalment in an exciting new generation of Pitt novels from the pen of highly acclaimed crime writer and New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry.
**'The marker you should judge all other time-travelling narratives by' Guardian** Octavia E. Butler's masterpiece and ground-breaking exploration of power and responsibility, for fans of The Handmaid's Tale, The Power and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing . With an original foreword by AyO²bàmi AdebàyO². '[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human' New York Times ' No novel I've read this year has felt as relevant, as gut-wrenching or as essential' The Pool In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave. When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he's drowning. She saves his life - and it will happen again and again. Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them. And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it's even begun. Octavia E. Butler's ground-breaking masterpiece is the extraordinary story of two people bound by blood, separated by so much more than time. What readers are saying about KINDRED: ' It was written in 1979 but could have been written last year. Incredible. I couldn't put it down ' ' The narrator is us - we see the abomination and humiliation of slavery not through a slave's eyes, but our modern-day eyes , and it makes it all the more powerful ' 'A must-read for everyone' ' Emotionally and viscerally alive and challenging . I don't know how I missed it before now'
New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry''s nineteenth heart-warming Christmas novella. Gracie Tellman is preparing for Christmas with her husband and three young children when Millie Foster calls upon her. As a maid at Harcourt House, Millie is terrified that sinister goings-on, including the disappearance of food from the kitchens, will lead to her unfair dismissal, and she begs Gracie to investigate the situation. With the promise that she will be back in time for Christmas, Gracie takes Millie''s place in the Harcourt household, never imagining the discovery she then makes. For the servants have been keeping a secret and their efforts are about to be rewarded in the most extraordinary way... A Christmas Legacy is a heart-warming festive mystery set in Victorian London from the pen of the New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry.
This first Earthseed novel by ground-breaking writer Octavia E. Butler feel like a prophetic nod to our current world. If you were glued to T he Handmaid's Tale , you'll love this beautiful new edition of a seminal American classic. 'If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it's one written in the past that has already begun to come true. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published' Gloria Steinem We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time. America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal. Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves. Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever. All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. What readers are saying about Octavia Butler: ' Kindred was written in 1979 but could have been written last year. Incredible. I couldn't put it down ' ' Emotionally and viscerally alive and challenging . I don't know how I missed it before now' 'A masterpiece by a matchless artist . Butler is simply sublime ' ' Reading these books will change your life ' 'A finely crafted work , rife with emotional power, horrifying in its believability , with a message that cannot be ignored '
Three Debts Paid is the fifth gripping legal thriller from the pen of highly acclaimed crime writer and New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry. Daniel Pitt is defending an old college professor from Cambridge, who has been accused of plagiarism, when a series of brutal murders occurs on the streets of London. The rainy-day slasher, as the crazed killer becomes known, violently attacks his victims in the pouring rain and then removes one of their fingers before leaving the bodies. Daniel''s dear friend Miriam fford Croft, newly qualified as a pathologist, is tasked with examining the bodies for clues and when Special Branch warn the police to stop investigating one of the victims, Daniel finds himself reluctantly drawn into this haunting mystery...
WINNER OF THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2013 BOOK OF THE YEAR The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the bestselling magical novel from Neil Gaiman, one of the most brilliant storytellers of our generation and author of the epic novel American Gods , and the much-loved Sandman series. 'Possibly Gaiman's most lyrical, scary and beautiful work yet. It's a tale of childhood for grown-ups, a fantasy rooted in the darkest corners of reality' ( Independent on Sunday). If you loved the mesmerising world of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus or were drawn into J.K. Rowling's magical universe, this book is for you. It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond this world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defence is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac - as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly's wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark.
From the internationally bestselling author of Love Her Wild , The Dark Between Stars, and The Truth About Magic comes Love & Poetry , a dazzling new journey into the great unknown by Atticus. Featuring over 250 brand new poems, this sees Atticus take his readers on an enthralling, unforgettable new adventure.
''A book that shifted my life... Epic, game-changing, moving and brilliant'' VIOLA DAVIS ''Will rewire the mind of whoever reads it... you don''t emerge from the journey unaffected'' NNEDI OKORAFOR A PATTERNIST NOVEL: BOOK ONE It begins when two immortals meet in an African forest. Doro is an ancient spirit who, for thousands of years, has cultivated a small village of people in search of perfection. He steals from their bodies to sustain his own life. Doro fears no one - until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is like Doro and yet different. She uses her wisdom to help others, healing injuries, birthing tribes and shifting the shapes of her own body. Anyanwu feels no threat - until she meets Doro. In an epic story of love and hate, Doro and Anyanwu chase each other across continents and centuries - a power struggle that echoes through generations. Together they will change the world.
This sequel to Parable of the Sower by ground-breaking writer Octavia E. Butler feel like a prophetic nod to our current world. If you were glued to T he Handmaid's Tale or couldn't put down The Power , you'll love this beautiful new edition of a seminal American classic. 'In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time... for sheer peculiar prescience, Butler's novel may be unmatched' New Yorker In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was. Asha was born into a broken world. There are many things she needs to know: how her country could embrace a violent, far-right President promising to make America great again, why they turned a blind eye to the suffering - and the truth about her mother. In her journals, Lauren Olamina tells of a great love divided between her young daughter, her community and the revelation that led her to found a new faith that teaches 'God Is Change'. But under a tyrannical religious regime who consider the mere existence of a black female leader a threat, Lauren knows she must soon either sacrifice her daughter and her followers - or forsake the beliefs that could transform human destiny. Octavia E. Butler's award-winning novel is an almost-prophetic take on a shockingly familiar and deeply relevant world. What readers are saying about Octavia Butler: ' Kindred was written in 1979 but could have been written last year. Incredible. I couldn't put it down ' ' Emotionally and viscerally alive and challenging . I don't know how I missed it before now' 'A masterpiece by a matchless artist . Butler is simply sublime ' ' Reading these books will change your life ' 'A finely crafted work , rife with emotional power, horrifying in its believability , with a message that cannot be ignored '
A compelling tale of family ties, with vivid characters and an authentic Cretan background. Through dramatic storytelling, Victoria Hislop charts the fate of four generations rent by war, illicit love, passion and leprosy, from the thirties through to the present day. It is certain to capture the hearts and imaginations of the nation.
Discover Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere , the extraordinary modern classic from the bestselling author of American Gods , illustrated for the first time by 2015-2017 UK Children's Laureate Chris Riddell. This beautiful edition features the fully illustrated short story, 'How the Marquis Got His Coat Back', and will delight fans of Coraline, The Book of Dust and Goth Girl . 'Gaiman is, simply put, a treasure-house of story, and we are lucky to have him' Stephen King Under the streets of London lies a world most people could never dream of. When Richard Mayhew helps a mysterious girl he finds bleeding on the pavement, his boring life changes in an instant. Her name is Door, she's on the run from two assassins in black suits and she comes from London Below. His act of kindness leads him to a place filled with monsters and angels, a Beast in a labyrinth and an Earl who holds Court in a Tube train. It is strangely familiar yet utterly bizarre .
New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry brings us the second exciting instalment in her new thriller series, set in a time of increasing fear and violence across Europe in the 1930s and featuring British photographer and secret agent Elena Standish. It is the autumn of 1933 and, fresh from her exploits in Berlin, young British photographer Elena Standish is chosen for a secret assignment in Trieste to establish contact with an MI6 agent whose handler has gone missing, presumed dead. Elena's mission is to bring back the agent along with top secret information that could save the lives of thousands of people. But the agent is none other than Aiden Strother, the lover who broke Elena's heart six years ago when he betrayed his country. With the revelation from MI6 that Aiden is, in fact, a loyal double agent, Elena knows she must put her sense of duty before her personal pride. But with political tension growing across Europe, the unstoppable rise of Hitler, and an alarming discovery within the very heart of British Intelligence, Elena and her family fear that her life is, once again, in grave danger...
The perfect time period to showcase a family''s impassioned defence of democracy and social justice in the face of rising totalitarianism. . . At turns heartbreaking and action-packed, this gripping and superbly written story proves Perry still has what it takes >
''One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century'' JUNOT DIAZ ''Octavia Butler was playing out our very real possibilities as humans. I think she can help each of us to do the same'' GLORIA STEINEM One woman is called upon to reconstruct humanity in this hopeful, thought-provoking novel by the bestselling, award-winning author. For readers of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Ursula K. Le Guin. When Lilith lyapo wakes in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her. She finds herself living among the Oankali, a strange race who intervened in the fate of humanity hundreds of years before. They spared those they could from the ruined Earth, and suspended them in a long, deep sleep. Over centuries, the Oankali learned from the past, cured disease and healed the world. Now they want Lilith to lead her people back home. But salvation comes at a price - to restore humanity, it must be changed forever... PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ''In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time... for sheer peculiar prescience, Butler''s novel may be unmatched'' NEW YORKER ''Butler''s prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision'' GUARDIAN ''Octavia Butler was a visionary'' VIOLA DAVIS ''Her evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human'' NEW YORK TIMES ''An icon of the Afrofuturism world, envisioning literary realms that placed black characters front and center'' VANITY FAIR ''Butler writes with such a familiarity that the alien is welcome and intriguing. She really artfully exposes our human impulse to self-destruct'' LUPITA NYONG''O
''Octavia Butler was playing out our very real possibilities as humans. I think she can help each of us to do the same'' GLORIA STEINEM ''Her evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human'' NEW YORK TIMES From the groundbreaking, award-winning author of Parable of the Sower : one young man with extraordinary gifts must reconcile his own heritage before he can change the fate of humanity. Lilith''s son Akin looks like an ordinary child. His family live together on Earth, but not in complete peace. The Oankali saved humanity years before, compelled by the desire to create an extraordinary new race of children. But there are those who resist the Oankali and the salvation they offer. The first of his kind, Akin is more powerful than any other being. He understands the desire to fight for the independence of humanity. He also fears that, if left alone, humanity will destroy itself again. And when young Akin is stolen from Lilith and their hybrid family, he soon faces an impossible choice. But first he must reconcile with his own heritage in a world already torn in two. PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR ''In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time... for sheer peculiar prescience, Butler''s novel may be unmatched'' NEW YORKER ''Butler''s prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision'' GUARDIAN ''Octavia Butler was a visionary'' VIOLA DAVIS ''One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had'' JUNOT DIAZ ''An icon of the Afrofuturism world, envisioning literary realms that placed black characters front and center'' VANITY FAIR ''Butler writes with such a familiarity that the alien is welcome and intriguing. She really artfully exposes our human impulse to self-destruct'' LUPITA NYONG''O
