London, 1944. With bombs raining over London, keeping the Battersea Tavern open is no easy feat for owner Winnie Berry - but the community need the warmth and familiarity of the pub more than ever. After marriage, Maureen Fanning had moved out to Wandsworth with her bad-tempered husband Brancher. But when he loses both his job and their lodgings, t...

An inspiring, witty 'East End growing up' memoir by leading Labour MP Wes Streeting. Wes Streeting might have ended up in prison rather than in parliament. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the youn...

The man known as Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action. Though the woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and aided his stratospheric rise, she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone Ska­ffen-A...

The Culture - a utopian human-machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many expert Game Players, and one of the greatest is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. He is Master of every board, computer and strategy - he is The Player of Games. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the cruel and incredibly wealthy Empire of Azad to try their infamous game . . . a gam...

When he's caught stealing, young Alan Dale is forced to leave his family and go to live with a notorious band of outlaws in Sherwood Forest. Their leader is the infamous Robin Hood. A tough, bloodthirsty warrior, Robin is more feared than any man in the county. And he becomes a mentor for Alan; with his fellow outlaws, Robin teaches Alan how to fig...

History’s most dangerous outlaw. England’s most famous ruler. The year’s most exciting adventure. The third crusade is over. Richard the Lion heart is bound for England. But with the princes of Europe united against him, can the greatest warrior in Christendom make it safely home? The Lion is Chained. Captured. Bound. Imprisoned....

Arrows will fly. Swords will swing. Heroes will fall. Legends will survive. And the Holy Land will never be the same.1190 AD: Richard the Lionheart has launched his epic crusade to seize Jerusalem from the cruel Saracens. Marching with the vast royal army is Britain's most famous, most feared, most ferocious warrior: the Outlaw of Nottingham, the E...

Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back. Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the s...

Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. She wants to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin and into the heart of the Williams family, Civil learns th...

In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed writer Alex Wheatle shows how music became his salvation through a childhood marred by abuse and his imprisonment as a young man protesting against systemic racism and police brutality. Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex Wheatle grows up with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family h...

By the Costa Award-winning author of Pure, a profound and tender tale of guilt, a search for atonement and the hard, uncertain work of loving. An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with the daughter he barely knows when he receives a summons - to an inquiry into an incident dur...

Jamesina Ross is long finished with men. But one night a stranger seeking lodgings knocks on the door of her tenement flat. He doesn't recognise her, but she remembers him at once. Not that she plans to mention it. She has no intention of trusting anyone enough to let herself be vulnerable again. A lifetime ago, growing up in a Highland glen, James...

Begin a journey in the footsteps of the mysterious Nancy Moon and piece together the secrets of one extraordinary long-lost summer.... To unravel the story of that long-lost summer, she had to follow the thread.... Florence Connelly is broken-hearted; her beloved grandmother has just died and her marriage has collapsed. But things change when she o...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin . . . Washington Poe has a story to tell. And he needs you to listen. You'll hear how it started with the robber birds. Crows. Dozens of them. Enough for a murder . . . He'll tell you about a man who was tied to a tree and stoned to death, a man who had tattooed himself with a code so obscure, even the g...

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES TOP 5 BESTSELLER AND START OF A THRILLING NEW SERIES: AT MIDNIGHT, ONE OF THEM IS DEAD. BY MORNING, ALL OF THEM ARE SUSPECTS . . . On New Year's Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His lakeside holiday homes are a success, and he's generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbours....

The basis for KILLING EVE, now a major BBC TV series, starring Sandra Oh As Villanelle returns to face her childhood demons and the Russian winter, Eve finds herself on the run from The Twelve, who want her dead. As the action moves between London and St Petersburg, and Eve and Villanelle finally admit their mutual erotic obsession, the chess game...

Cherry, Maggie and Rose are mother, daughter and granddaughter, each with their own hopes, dreams and even sorrows. They have always been close, so when, in a moment of impulse, Cherry buys a gorgeous but rundown pub in the village she grew up in, it soon becomes a family affair. All three women uproot themselves and move to Rushbrook, deep in the...

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce . . . Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake by an angry mob, something makes Jenny decide she's worth saving. Temperance doesn't know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only th...

For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple. She intimately explores her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African-American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the w...

When Pete's parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham in the 1960s in the hope of a better life, they had no money and only a little bit of English. They opened a fish-and-chip shop in Acocks Green. The Great Western Fish Bar is where Pete learned about coin-operated machines, male banter and Britishness. Shy and introverted, Pete stopped speaking fr...

A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse - one woman's furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex and motherhood. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiralling case of postpartum depression. He...