Asher Baum is quietly losing his mind. Can you blame him?

'Maybe what I really want is to make sense of all people’s lives. Of everything, the whole shebang'

A middle-aged Jewish journalist turned novelist and playwright, consumed with anxiety about everything under the sun, Baum's turgid philosophical books receive tepid reviews and his prestigious New York publisher has dropped him. His third marriage is on the rocks and he suspects his handsome and successful younger brother may have seduced his Harvard-educated wife. He is uneasy with her close relationship with her son, a more successful author than he, and suspicious of her closeness with their neighbour in Connecticut. And in a moment of irrationality, he has impulsively tried to kiss a pretty young journalist during an interview that she is about to go public with.

Is it any wonder Baum has started talking to himself? Strangers shake their heads and walk around him on the street. Meanwhile he learns a startling secret that could cause havoc should he expose it. Should he keep it to himself or reveal it and blow up his marriage?

What's with Baum? is Woody Allen's first novel and it is everything you would expect of him--and more. A portrait of an intellectual crippled by neurotic concerns about the futility and emptiness of life; an amusing glimpse into the New York publishing establishment; above all, a highly entertaining, tightly plotted, beautifully wrought piece of fiction from one of America's greatest and most versatile cinematic and literary talents.

*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available* Shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life. 'Exquisite.' Guardian 'A feat of imaginative sympathy.' New York Times What readers are saying: 'A book I will return to again and again, and one that keeps me thinking even after finishing it. 5/5 stars' 'I loved it, every single word of it.' 'It took me wholly by surprise.' 'Utterly beautiful.' 'Essentially perfect.'

Jane Austen, one of the nation's most beloved authors, whose face adorns our currency, surely needs no introduction, but while many are familiar with her groundbreaking novels, few have come across her short burlesque work The History of England. Billed a history 'from the reign of Henry IV to Charles I by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian', The History of England pokes fun at the overly verbose and grand histories of Austen's day. Written when she was just fifteen, this is a comic tour de force that shows Austen's wit developing into the satirical prowess she is remembered for.

Plucky fourteen-year-old Adunni is in Lagos, excited to finally enrol in school.

But it's not so simple to run away from your past.

On the night before she is due to join her new classmates , a terrible knocking at the front gate summons Adunni back to her home village, Ikati, where her dramatic story of resilience first began.

There, Adunni must try to not only save herself, but also transform Ikati into a place where girls are allowed to claim the bright futures they deserve - and roar their stories to the world.

See what readers are saying about And So I Roar . . .

Brother Caleb, a Cistercian monk,has lived undisturbed in the Monasteryof the Holy Trinity for many years.When the young, alluring, red-hairedRosa stays on retreat, he becomesobsessed with her. But her presence unearthsthe ghost of an old, pre-monasticromance. Caleb experiences a terriblestruggle between his spiritual andcarnal nature, a struggle that canonly end in tragedy....

Cephus Twala is dying. During his final moments he foresees the arrival of a descendant of his, a man not yet born, January Twala.

Helen Botes, one-time apartheid apparatchik, cannot reach her son. During her anxious marshalling of a home bent on disrepair, she’s attacked by an intruder who wants only to suck on her finger.

And Steven Moyo, environmental refugee and soft-hearted Red Ant, has resolved to seek out the strange squatter who claims to have walked from a fading future to save a neglected past.