The twenty-first book in the Kay Scarpetta series, from No. 1 bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. 'America's most chilling writer of crime fiction' The Times After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. The body of a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer's first strike. A preliminary examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. As she pieces together the fragments of evidence, Scarpetta discovers that the cases connect, yet also seem to conflict, drawing herself and her team deeper into the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology, organised crime, and shocking corruption at the highest level. Dust is a thrilling, addictive novel featuring one of the most iconic, original and compelling characters in crime fiction today. Praise for the groundbreaking series: 'One of the best crime writers writing today' Guardian 'Devilishly clever' Sunday Times 'The top gun in this field' Daily Telegraph 'Forget the pretenders. Cornwell reigns' Mirror 'The Agatha Christie of the DNA age' Express TRACE was a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller in paperback in April 2005

SFPD Sergeant Lindsay Boxer vows to protect a twenty-year-old victim long enough to see her twenty-first birthday.

Lindsay Boxer has sworn to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. As Lindsay prepares to celebrate her own daughter's birthday, she clashes with rising Chief Charlie Clapper over a family case. When a distraught mother pleads with Chronicle reporter Cindy Thomas to investigate the disappearance of her daughter, Linda, and baby granddaughter, Lorrie, Cindy immediately loops in SFPD. But Linda's schoolteacher husband, Lucas Burke, tells a conflicting story that paints Linda as a wayward wife, not a missing person. And there's reason to believe he may be telling the truth.

While M.E. Claire Washburn harbours theories that run counter to the police investigation of the Burke case, ADA Yuki Castellano sizes Lucas up as a textbook domestic offender - until he puts forward a theory of his own that unexpectedly connects the dots on a constellation of copycat killings. If what Lucas tells law enforcement has even a grain of truth, there isn't a woman in the state of California who's safe from the reach of such an unspeakable threat.

The aftermath of a shocking crime sends Jack Ryan, Jr. down a path that leads to international destruction in the latest entry in this #1 New York Times bestselling series.

The quiet of a Texas night is shattered by the sounds of screeching brakes, crumpling metal and, most shockingly, rapid gunfire. The auto accident Jack Ryan, Jr. thought he witnessed turned out to be a professional hit. Jack may be too late to save the victim, but he'll be damned if he's going to let the hitters escape justice.

He's got just one lead - a meeting the victim was going to. When Jack shows up instead, he's drawn into the seedy underbelly of a small Texas town and the cold case of a college student who vanished from its streets.

Jack is left with nothing but questions. Who wants it to look like the victim was drunk? Why does someone want an innocent witness killed? And most of all, what's a team of South African hitmen doing in the Lone Star State?

His quest for answers will take Jack from a quiet Texas road to the middle of an international conspiracy - and may just cost him his life.

The hotly anticipated second novel from Terry Hayes, author of the internationally bestselling I am Pilgrim.

If, like Kane, you're a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again - by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide - and when to shoot.

But some places don't play by the rules. Some places are too dangerous, even for a man of Kane's experience. The badlands where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet are such a place - a place where violence is the only way to survive.

Kane travels there to exfiltrate a man with vital information for the safety of the West - but instead he meets an adversary who will take the world to the brink of extinction. A frightening, clever, vicious man with blood on his hands and vengeance in his heart.

The Year of the Locust is a voyage to a far-off land to see something no one has ever seen before. A mission to prevent the future happening. An encounter with true evil. And ultimately, a moment when Kane must make the decision to save his own life - or someone else's.

An unputdownable debut charting the thrilling life and heroism of Hannie Schaft, a young-woman-turned-Dutch-Resistance-fighter in Nazi-occupied Netherlands.

Hannie Schaft didn't train to be a soldier: she had dreams of her own. But dreams die in wartime, and her friends are no longer safe.

Hiding them is not enough. Hannie is young but she won't stand aside as the menace of Nazi evil tightens its grip on her country. Recruited into the Resistance, she learns to shoot and is notorious for not missing her targets. As she draws deeper into a web of plots, disguises and assassinations, whispers spread like wildfire amongst enemies and friends alike. They know her name. She's "the Girl with Red Hair." A match for any Nazi soldier, a true threat, a target.

Buzzy Jackson's debut is an unputdownable novel of love, loyalty, and the limits we confront when our deepest values are tested.

The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel's transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy.

It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few.

Drawing upon multiple comic book series, this collection includes Captain America's very first appearances from 1941 alongside key examples of his first solo stories of the 1960s, in which Steve Rogers, the newly resurrected hero of World War II, searches to find his place in a new and unfamiliar world. As the contents reveal, the transformations of this American icon thus mark parallel transformations in the nation itself.

A foreword by Gene Luen Yang and scholarly introductions and apparatus by Ben Saunders offer further insight into the enduring significance of Captain America and classic Marvel comics.

The Penguin Classics black spine paperback features full-colour art throughout.

Wat is ’n menselewe werd as jy minder as niks op jou naam het nie?

Toe die regering besluit om ’n yslike dam in die diep, dorre Noord-Kaap te bou, is die skrif teen die muur vir die vergete dorpie van Bitterwater. Inwoners het ’n jaar tyd om hul dorp te ontruim en voor die groot water uit te vlug.

Konstabel Cheslin Fielies is die een wat moet seker maak die hele storie gebeur betyds. Pas van die Cape Flats oorgeplaas, word hy gou in die dorpstories ingetrek: Hoekom verafsku die gemeenskap die drankwinkeleienaar Braam Pens so? Wat het Jan Boklam een nag in die dorpsdam sien gebeur? En spook dit regtig by die vervalle ou pastorie waar die Van Helsdingens probeer oorleef?

Terwyl hy van sy eie spoke vlug en die Bitterwaters van die sondvloed probeer red, is dit sy onverwagse vriendskap met die dominee se vrou, Miriam, wat die krake in Cheslin se damwal blootlê. Want water is vergifnis, glo sy. Water is vergeet. Maar sommige geheime sal nie deur die vloed weggespoel word nie.

Minder as water is ’n meesleurende tragikomedie wat jou gaan roer, jou gaan laat lag en uiteindelik die vraag vra: Wat gebeur met die mens wanneer hy voor syeinde te staan kom?

his is Salman Rushdie at his best. A magical realist feminist tale in an historical setting that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries - from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.

In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl's mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana's comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga - literally 'victory city' - the wonder of the world.

Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that Parvati set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry - with Pampa Kampana at its center.

Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.

Brace yourself for longing, laughter, and a swoony slow-burn in this brothers best friend sports romance about scoring the love of your life when you least expect to.

Ziggy:
I'm the youngest player on the National Soccer team, the baby of my family, and thoroughly sick of being underestimated, so I've decided to take matters into my own hands. My brother's teammate and best friend Seb needs to save his reputation. I want to give mine an edge. So I propose a fake friendship with real benefits: spending time in the public eye, my good-girl image and his bad-boy notoriety rubbing off on each other. But will it be as easy as I think to keep him in the (fake) friend zone?

Sebastian:
My hockey career and sponsorships are in jeopardy, so when Ziggy Bergman proposes a public "friendship" to rehab my image, it's an offer that even a self-respecting reprobate like myself can't refuse. It's simple: fake a friendship with Ziggy, fix my reputation, and get back to hockey - the one and only thing I love . . . until I find myself falling for the last person I should be: my best friend's sister.

Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they’ve never quite lost touch with each other – or with their former teacher, Libor Sevcik, a Czech always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results.

Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor’s grand, central London apartment.

It’s a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you have less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends’ losses.

And it’s that very evening, at exactly 11:30 pm, as Treslove, walking home, hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country, that he is attacked. And after this, his whole sense of who and what he is, will slowly and ineluctably change.

The Finkler Question has been awarded the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010.

Discover the epic new fantasy inspired by ancient Greek myth...

Deina is trapped. As one of the Soul Severers serving the god Hades on earth, her future is tied to the task of shepherding the dying on from the mortal world - unless she can earn or steal enough to buy her way out.

Then the tyrant ruler Orpheus offers both fortune and freedom to whoever can retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice, from the Underworld. Deina jumps at the chance. But to win, she must enter an uneasy alliance with a group of fellow Severers she neither likes nor trusts.

So begins their perilous journey into the realm of Hades. . . The prize of freedom is before her - but what will it take to reach it?

Including illustrations from bestselling illustrator and political cartoonist, Chris Riddell, Mothtown is the unsettling and eerie new novel by Caroline Hardaker, perfect for fans of Midsommar and Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland.

As a child, David could tell something was wrong.

The kids in school spread rumours of missing people, nests of bones and bodies appearing in the mountains. His sister refused to share what she knew, and his parents turned off the TV whenever he entered the room. Protecting him, they said.

Worse, the only person who shared anything at all with him, his beloved grandpa, disappeared without a goodbye. Mum and Dad said he was dead. But what about the exciting discovery Grandpa had been working on for his whole life?

Now 26, David lives alone and takes each day as it comes. When a strange package arrives on his doorstep, one with instructions not to leave the Earth, a new world is unfurled before David, one he’s been trying to suppress for years…

Blending horror and literary fiction, Mothtown is the strange new novel from celebrated author Caroline Hardaker.

Prepare to be spellbound by Jim Kay's dazzling depiction of the wizarding world and much loved characters in this full-colour illustrated hardback edition of a true classic: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Brimming with rich detail and humour that perfectly complements J.K. Rowling's timeless classic, Jim Kay's glorious illustrations will captivate fans and new readers alike.

When a letter arrives for unhappy but ordinary Harry Potter, a decade-old secret is revealed to him that apparently he's the last to know. His parents were wizards, killed by a Dark Lord's curse when Harry was just a baby, and which he somehow survived. Leaving his unsympathetic aunt and uncle for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry stumbles upon a sinister mystery when he finds a three-headed dog guarding a room on the third floor. Then he hears of a missing stone with astonishing powers, which could be valuable, dangerous - or both.

An incredible adventure is about to begin!

A collection of three gripping stories from the world's bestselling thriller writer.

3 Days to Live
A CIA-agent bride is on her European honeymoon when she and her husband are poisoned - leaving her seventy-two hours to take revenge.

Women and Children First
When a deal goes bad on a tech executive in Washington, DC, he turns an order to kill his family into a chance to relive his military glory days.

The Housekeepers
A Los Angeles doctor trusts her two housekeepers, but when she's murdered in a botched attempt to steal drugs, the pair of grifters vie to control their former employer's estate - facing off against the Russian mob.

From Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time and winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Lords of Uncreation is the final high-octane instalment in the Final Architecture space opera trilogy.

He's found a way to end their war, but will humanity survive to see it?

Idris Telemmier has uncovered a secret that changes everything – the Architects’ greatest weakness. A shadowy Cartel scrambles to turn his discovery into a weapon against these alien destroyers of worlds. But between them and victory stands self-interest. The galaxy’s great powers would rather pursue their own agendas than stand together against this shared terror.

Human and inhuman interests wrestle to control Idris’ discovery, as the galaxy erupts into a mutually destructive and self-defeating war. The other great obstacle to striking against their alien threat is Idris himself. He knows that the Architects, despite their power, are merely tools of a higher intelligence.

Deep within unspace, where time moves differently, and reality isn’t quite what it seems, their masters are the true threat. Masters who are just becoming aware of humanity’s daring – and taking steps to exterminate this annoyance forever.

Mitch Rapp returns to make a mortal enemy of Russia in this high-octane and up-to-the-minute installment in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from “one of the best thriller writers on the planet” (The Real Book Spy).

Mitch Rapp hates owing anyone a favor—especially when it’s the world’s most powerful crime lord. But when Damian Losa calls, Mitch is honor-bound to answer.

The Syrian government appears to have created a highly addictive new narcotic that it plans to distribute throughout Europe. It’s a major threat to Losa’s business and he’s determined to send someone to keep him on top by any means necessary. Rapp is the perfect choice for the mission. Not only does he have extensive experience operating in the Middle East, but he’s also entirely expendable.

As he crosses into war-torn Syria, Rapp quickly discovers a shocking truth. The new drug isn’t being produced by Damascus to prop up the government’s collapsing finances. Instead, it was created by Russia’s asymmetrical warfare unit, not for profit but as a weapon against the West.

With far more than Damian Losa’s interests at stake, Rapp devises a desperate plan that forces him and his team onto a battlefield where the United States is virtually powerless and allegiances shift almost hourly. Further, if Russia uncovers their plot, it will set off a confrontation between the two countries that could change the course of human history.

Killian Carson is a predator cloaked in charm. His charisma fools everyone―except Glyndon King. She sees the psychopath beneath and knows she should run. But a dark part of her craves the danger, knowing he’ll chase her . . . and she might just want to be caught.

Glyndon has never been anyone’s favorite, always falling short of her family's expectations. But Killian? He doesn’t expect anything except that she’s his now. Their schools are rivals, their families lifelong enemies, but none of that matters to him.

Can two broken souls heal each other, or will their twisted desires tear them apart? As their pasts collide in more disturbing ways than they imagined, it could either strengthen their bond or be their undoing.

This book is a dark unconventional romance and contains themes that aren't to everyone's liking. Please check the author's note for content warnings before reading.

She destroys the men she loves—and escapes every time. The most dangerous killer James Patterson has ever created is also his most seductive.

On his first night with Detroit PD, Officer Walter O’Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified twenty-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O’Brien’s veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve—and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget.

By the time Walter’s promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he’s not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn’t begin in his home city—but he’s going to make sure it ends there.

The New York Times bestselling author of Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna, and The Poisonwood Bible returns with a timely novel that interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.

Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart. The magazine where she worked has folded, and the college where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her dutiful debt-ridden, ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development.

In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood.

A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships with a brilliant woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw him into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men. At home, his new wife and status-conscious mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his financial worries and the news that their elegant house is structurally unsound.

Brilliantly executed and compulsively readable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred—whether family or friends—and in the strength of the human spirit.

This is one case Miller won't want to open . . .

Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Still desperate to solve the murder of his wife, a young man has just appeared on his doorstep with a briefcase . . . containing a pair of severed hands.

Miller knows this case is proof of a contract killing commissioned by local ne'er do well Wayne Cutler - a man he suspects might also be responsible for his wife's death. Now Miller has leverage, but unfortunately he also has something that both Cutler and a villainous fast-food kingpin are desperate to get hold of.

Chuck in a Midsomer Murders-obsessed hitman, a psychotic welder and a woman driven over the edge by a wayward Crème Egg, and Miller is in a mess that even he might not be able to dance his way out of.

To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

Katarina Shaw has always known she’s destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating – and each other – to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating fans with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style and rollercoaster relationship.

Until, at the Olympic Games, as the world holds its breath, a shocking incident instantly destroys their partnership.

Ten years later, an unauthorised tell-all documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha. If Kat wants to own her story, she must break her silence. As Kat’s account of her dramatic rise and fall alternates with scandalous interviews from the film, The Favourites spins into a dance between passion, ambition and what it truly means to win.

Sensational rumours have haunted Kat and Heath’s every step for years, but the truth may be even more outrageous than the headlines.

’n Reeksmoordenaar maai bekendes op ’n streep af.

En Kassie en Rooi moet hom vastrek. Maar dit is makliker gesê as gedaan.

Die moordtonele is smetloos, met slegs bisarre boodskappe by die lyke. Die slagoffers se hoë profiele veroorsaak ook ’n ongekende mediaherrie, wat bykomende druk op die ondersoekspan plaas.

Die Spesiale Spookeenheid se elite-speurspan tas behoorlik in die duister rond. Het hulle dié keer hulle meerdere teëgekom?

Deadly secrets lie beneath the murky waters of the Louisiana bayou in this pulse-pounding new romantic suspense novel from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Karen Rose.

Public prosecutor J.P. “Kaj” Cardozo has only lived in New Orleans for six months, and he’s already working on a high-profile celebrity sexual assault case that’s made headlines all over the country. But when his son becomes the target of a kidnapping attempt as a threat to Kaj, he is desperate to keep him safe and turns to a private investigative firm famous for their protection services.

A veteran Marine, Val Sorensen is glad to have found a new career with Broussard Investigations. Her latest assignment as the bodyguard to ten-year-old Elijah Cardozo reminds her why—Val is a kick ass guardian with a tender heart. Through her duties, Val grows fond of the boy—and his handsome father.

But when the high-stakes investigation reveals an explosive network of crime through a revived drug gang, lingering deep-seated corruption in the NOPD, and a group of murderers-for-hire targeting Kaj, Elijah, and his star client, they’re all left scrambling for safety…

Oudrecce André Lombard vlug na ’n Ortodokse kerk in die Oekraïne om sy grensoorlogwonde te gaan lek, maar sy nuutgevonde vrede hou nie lank nie ...

Daar is landswyd onrus en die regering dreig om vryheid van geloof in te perk. Op ’n dag klop die plaaslike mafia aan die kerk se deur op soek na betaling in ruil vir “beskerming”. Wanneer priester Arkadi weier om afgepers te word, plaas hy sy lewe op die spel.

Intussen is die skone Olja uitgelewer aan ongure karakters op Kiëf se koue, ongenaakbare strate. Wanneer André tydens ’n aanval tot Olja se redding kom, bevind hy hom nie net midde-in ’n liefdesdriehoek nie, maar ook verstrengel in ’n oorlog tussen die kerk en die misdaadsindikaat.

Donker vuur, Pieter Stoffberg se vierde roman, neem die leser op ’n ysingwekkende tuimeltrein na ’n tyd van misdadigers en heiliges, antieke boekrolle en vreesaanjaende, moderne wapens.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers.

Hat, ribbon, bird rose.

To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?