135 Document (s)

AD 75. As a passion for home improvement sweeps through the Roman Empire, Falco struggles to deal with a pair of terrible bath-house contractors who have been causing him misery for months. Far away in Britain, King Togidubnus of the Atrebates tribe is planning his own makeover. His huge new residence (known to us as Fishbourne Palace) will be spectacular û but the sensational refurbishment is beset by ‘accidents’. The frugal Emperor Vespasian is paying for all this; he wants someone to investigate. Falco has a new baby, a new house, and he hates Britain. But his feud with Anacrites the Chief Spy has now reached a dangerous level, so with his own pressing reasons to leave Rome in a hurry, he accepts the task. A thousand miles from home, he starts restoring order to the chaotic building site and realises that someone with murderous intentions is now after himà

'Nobody was poisoned at the dinner for the Society of Olive Oil Producers of Baetica, though in retrospect this was quite a surprise.' Inimitable sleuth Falco is back with a vengeance. On one night, a man is killed and Rome’s Chief Spy left for dead. This leaves no one except Falco to conduct the investigation. Soon he is plunged into the fiercely competitive world of olive oil production. Political intrigue, an exotic Spanish dancer and impending fatherhood all add to Falco’s troubles.

It's Richmond, 1806. Miss Dido Kent has developed rather a taste for mysteries, having solved the riddle at Belsfield Hall. When her quiet holiday with her cousin Flora is disturbed by the suspicious death of a neighbour, Miss Dido is once more at the centre of an unusual investigation. All eyes have fallen on the late Mrs Lansdale's nephew 'for it has not passed without notice that he has lost a remarkably tyrannical relation and gained a very fine inheritance'. Miss Dido is intrigued by the rumours and, at Flora's behest, starts a little investigation of her own. And as she does so, she brings more to light than even she could have imagined.

A God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd û would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather û as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have. This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war û that great fall of Man from grace û and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age.

‘Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block?’ For disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp the answer’s pretty simple: he has, in his own words, ‘pissed his life away’. And on New Year’s Eve, he’s going to end it all à But not, as it happens, alone. Because first single-mum Maureen, then eighteen-year-old Jess and lastly American rock-god JJ turn up and crash Martin’s private party. They’ve stolen his idea û but brought their own reasons. Yet it’s hard to jump when you’ve got an audience queuing impatiently behind you. A few heated words and some slices of cold pizza later and these four strangers are suddenly allies. But is their unlikely friendship a good enough reason to carry on living?

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the first volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries. A MAN LAY DEAD Sir Hubert Handesley's extravagant weekend house-parties are deservedly famous for his exciting Murder Game. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have skilful alibis - so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunità ENTER A MURDERER The crime scene was the stage of the Unicorn Theatre, when prop gun fired a very real bullet; the victim was an actor clawing his way to stardom using bribery instead of talent; and the suspects included two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims. The stage is set for one of Roderick Alleyn's most baffling casesà THE NURSING HOME MURDER A Harley Street surgeon and his attractive nurse are almost too nervous to operate. Their patient is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good personal reasons to want him dead. The operation is a complete success - but he dies within hours, and Inspector Alleyn must find out whyà

Everyone knew about the kind of films they showed at the Calliope Club û once the Residents’ Association and the local Women’s Group had given them some free publicity. But when Peter Pascoe’s dentist suggests that one film in particular is more than just good clean dirty fun, the inspector begins to make a few discreet inquiries. Before they bear fruit, though, the dentist has been accused of having sex with an underage patient, the cinema has been wrecked and its elderly owner murdered. Superintendent Dalziel expects no more from professional men who watch blue films. But Pascoe has a hunch that this time Dalziel is way off targetà

When Tom is awakened by the sound of a "monster," he tells his father what he thinks he heard. By the author of The Cider House Rules

London, the week before Christmas, 2007. Seven wintry days to track the lives of seven characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop. With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life, and the group is forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit. Sweeping, satirical, Dickensian in scope, A Week in December is a thrilling state of the nation novel from a master of literary fiction.

Madderstone Abbey, 1806. When Penelope Lambe suffers a bad fall in Madderstone Abbey, some are sure she must have seen the Grey Nun, the ghost reputed to walk the ruins. Miss Dido Kent is not convinced, and is determined to uncover the real cause of the accident. Then events take a sinister turn when a human skeleton is found nearby. The remains are identified as those of a Miss Elinor Fenn, and letters come to light which hint at the reason for her death. But is Miss Lambe's accident connected to this discovery? Did she see a ghostly warning? Or is there a rational explanation? Everyone is relying on Dido to find out.

With his characteristic enthusiasm and erudition, Peter Ackroyd follows his acclaimed London: A Biography with an inspired look into the heart and the history of the English imagination. To tell the story of its evolution, Ackroyd ranges across literature and painting, philosophy and science, architecture and music, from Anglo-Saxon times to the twentieth-century. Considering what is most English about artists as diverse as Chaucer, William Hogarth, Benjamin Britten and Viriginia Woolf, Ackroyd identifies a host of sometimes contradictory elements: pragmatism and whimsy, blood and gore, a passion for the past, a delight in eccentricity, and much more. A brilliant, engaging and often surprising narrative, Albion reveals the manifold nature of English genius.

Three killers are on the rampage in the capital and dead bodies are piling up. Alex Cross is in charge of all three investigations and has never been under more pressure. But with a crisis at home that threatens to tear his family apart, Alex?s attention is divided. While Cross tracks the killers, he doesn?t notice that someone is tracking him. Can Alex unravel the cases and find the killers in time? Or will he be the next dead body on the list? An engrossing novel that is well worth a read !

Four strong women. All working in a family business. But what happens when they begin to want different things? And what about the men û and the children û in their lives? Susie Moran has always been the breadwinner in her family. Her husband was the one who was there for their three girls. But now he wants something of his past back û the life he had before Susie’s career took off, before they had children. And those children don’t see their mother’s business the way she has always seen it, thereby threatening the balance she has worked so hard to achieve. And then, amidst the simmering tensions, someone significant from the past, someone almost forgotten, turns up. The problems of the past, the present, and the future all become challenges to the stability of both family and work. Which relationships û if any û will survive?

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby... Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day at the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, like flowers in amber, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby's own life.

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - -between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother's tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket. And it is a fable about redemption, in which a bleak house is transformed by the resilience of human love.

To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare woven into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife have led her to the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or to pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fates of two tribes hangs. Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of unprecedented events is about to unfold with potentially devastating, and unfathomable, consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella's life - first discovered in TWILIGHT, then scattered and torn in NEW MOON and ECLIPSE - seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed . . . forever? The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.

Britain's Got Talent is BACK . . . so it's time to get serious with Britain's favourite funny man. Famous comedian and actor, funniest judge on Britain's Got Talent, high-achieving sportsman and BESTSELLING AUTHOR of The World's Worst Children series, David Walliams is a man of many talents . . . Launched to fame with the record-breaking Little Britain, his characters - Lou, Florence, Emily, amongst others - became embedded in our shared popular culture. You couldn't enter a playground for a long while without hearing "eh, eh, eh" or "computer says no". And Walliams is a mystery. Often described as a bundle of contradictions, he is disarming and enigmatic, playing up his campness one minute and hinting about his depression the next. To read Camp David is to be truly shocked, as well as tickled pink: David Walliams bares his soul like never before and reveals a fascinating and complex mind. This searingly honest autobiography is a true roller-coaster ride of emotions, as this nation's sweetheart unlocks closely guarded secrets that until now have remained hidden in his past. 'Will surprise, entertain, and allow fans and newcomers to enter the comic's uniquely brilliant world' GQ Magazine 'Raucously funny and superbly written' Heat 'Hilarious' Telegraph 'A great read. My only criticism is it ended too soon' The Sun 'A fascinating read' Star Magazine 'Brilliantly written' Express 'Fascinating stuff' Closer 'Uproariously great' Guardian

City of Friends is the twentieth novel from the highly acclaimed number one bestselling author, Joanna Trollope. She glanced at her phone again. There were appeals from the girls, from her colleagues, a text from Steve reading with uncharacteristic imperiousness, 'Call me.' She couldn't. She couldn't call anyone . . . She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the bench, and stared at the ground. God, she thought, am I losing my mind? Is this what happens when you lose your job? The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between. But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey's redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits . . .

In the heat of Rome's long summer, the poet Catullus and his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, meet in secret. Living at the heart of sophisticated, brittle and brutal Roman society at the time of Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar, Catullus is obsessed with Clodia, the Lesbia of his most passionate poems. He is jealous of her husband, of her maid, even of her pet sparrow. And Clodia? Catullus is 'her dear poet', but possibly not her only interest . . . Their Rome is a city of extremes. Tenants are packed into ramshackle apartment blocks while palatial villas house the magnificence of the families who control Rome. Armed street gangs clash in struggles for political power. Slaves are the eyes and ears of everything that goes on, while civilization and violence are equals, murder is the easy option and poison the weapon of choice. Catallus' relationship with Clodia is one of the most intense, passionate, tormented and candid in history. In love and in hate, their story exposes the beauty and terrors of Roman life in the late Republic. 'She reels you in . . . Dunmore has a gift for turning every genre she touches to gold' Telegraph `Dunmore at her most innovative and daring . . . a powerful and convincing study of fame and notoriety . . . captivating and compelling' Time Out 'Dunmore's strengths as a novelist have always included her skill in sensuous description and her ability to convey the promises and the dangers of erotic love. The Rome she has so vividly realised in Counting the Stars provides a new stage on which to display those strengths' Sunday Times Helen Dunmore is the author of twelve novels: Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby; House of Orphans; Counting the Stars; The Betrayal, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, and The Greatcoat. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer.