Structure is Character. Characters are what they do. Story events impact the characters and the characters impact events. Actions and reactions create revelation and insight, opening the door to a meaningful emotional experience for the audience. Story is what elevates a film, a novel, a play, or teleplay, transforming a good work into a great one. Movie-making in particular is a collaborative endeavour - requiring great skill and talent by the entire cast, crew and creative team - but the screenwriter is the only original artist on a film. Everyone else - the actors, directors, cameramen, production designers, editors, special effects wizards and so on - are interpretive artists, trying to bring alive the world, the events and the characters that the writer has invented and created. Robert McKee's STORY is a comprehensive and superbly organized exploration of all elements, from the basics to advanced concepts. It is a practical course, presenting new perspectives on the craft of storytelling, not just for the screenwriter but for the novelist, playwright, journalist and non-fiction writers of all types.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER The book equivalent of a beach getaway.--PopSugar A stunning debut.--BookRiot The instant national bestseller about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on Maine's rocky coastline, for fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Beatriz Williams 1944: Maren Larsen is a blonde beauty from a small Minnesota farming town, determined to do her part to help the war effort--and to see the world beyond her family's cornfields. As a cadet nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she's swept off her feet by Dr. Oliver Demarest, a handsome Boston Brahmin whose family spends summers in an insular community on the rocky coast of Maine. 1970: As the nation grapples with the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, Oliver and Maren are grappling with their fiercely independent seventeen-year-old daughter, Annie, who has fallen for a young man they don't approve of. Before the summer is over a terrible tragedy will strike the Demarests--and in the aftermath, Annie vows never to return to Haven Point. 2008: Annie's daughter, Skye, has arrived in Maine to help scatter her mother's ashes. Maren knows that her granddaughter inherited Annie's view of Haven Point: despite the wild beauty and quaint customs, the regattas and clambakes and sing-alongs, she finds the place--and the people--snobbish and petty. But Maren also knows that Annie never told Skye the whole truth about what happened during that fateful summer. Over seven decades of a changing America, through wars and storms, betrayals and reconciliations, Virginia Hume's Haven Point explores what it means to belong to a place, and to a family, which holds as tightly to its traditions as it does its secrets.

THE FUN FACTORY is set in the golden decade before the Great War, when the music halls were the people's entertainment, before radio, television or cinema, and bigger than all of them.

Arthur Dandoe is a gifted young comedian trying to make his way within the prestigious Fred Karno theatre company. Determined to thwart him at any cost is another ruthlessly ambitious performer - one Charlie Chaplin. Things turn even nastier when Arthur and Charlie both fall for the same girl, the irresistibly alluring Tilly Beckett.

One of the two rivals is destined to become the most celebrated man on the planet, with more girls than he can shake his famous stick at. The other. . . well, you'll just have to read this book - his book.

It could have been so different.

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize War & War begins at a point of danger: on a dark train platform Korim is on the verge of being attacked and robbed by thuggish teenagers. From here, we are carried along by the insistent voice of this nervous clerk. Desperate, at times almost mad, but also keenly empathic, Korim has discovered in a small Hungarian town's archives an antique manuscript of startling beauty: it narrates the epic tale of brothers-in-arms struggling to return home from a disastrous war. Korim is determined to do away with himself, but before he commits suicide, he feels he must escape to New York with the precious manuscript and commit it to eternity by typing it all out onto the world wide web. Following Korim with obsessive realism through the streets of New York (from his landing in a Bowery flophouse to his move far uptown with a mad interpreter), War and War relates his encounters with a fascinating range of people in a world torn between viciousness and mysterious beauty. Following the eight chapters of War & War is a short 'prequel acting as a sequel', 'Isaiah', which brings us to a dark bar, years before in Hungary, where Korim rants against the world and threatens suicide. Written like nothing else (turning single sentences into chapters), War & War affirms W. G. Sebald's comment that Krasznahorkai's prose far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing.

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize Beauty, in Laszlo Krasznahorkai's new novel, reflects, however fleeting, the sacred - even if we are mostly unable to bear it. In Seiobo There Below we see the Japanese goddess Seiobo returning to mortal realms in search of perfection. An ancient Buddha being restored; the Italian renaissance painter Perugino managing his workshop; a Japanese Noh actor rehearsing; a fanatic of Baroque music lecturing to a handful of old villagers; tourists intruding into the rituals of Japan's most sacred shrine; a heron as it gracefully hunts its prey. Told in chapters that sweep us across the world and through time, covering the furthest reaches of human experience, Krasznahorkai demands that we pause and ask ourselves these questions: What is sacred? How do we define beauty? What makes great art endure? Melancholic and mesmerisingly beautiful, this latest novel by the author of Satantango shows us how to glimpse the divine through extraordinary art and human endeavour. Winner of Best Translated Book of the Year Award 2014 Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

Liyah, a young Congolese woman, living in Johannesburg, takes on the responsibility of supporting her mother and siblings after the passing of her father.

Frustrated from struggling and working minimum wage jobs, Liyah takes a chance and responds to an online advertisement for a surrogate. Rick, a wealthy American, who is known for his impulsive and carefree playboy behaviour, faces losing his inheritance and his family business if he does not produce an heir. Liyah and Rick are the complete opposite of one another, indomitable forces that collide with each other, yet they are about to change each other’s lives.

Dappling in lust, love and lies; Traded is a gamble of the unexpected, a dangerous crossing of boundaries and infinite treachery. Not everyone makes it out alive.

The Little Prince describes his journey from planet to planet, each tiny world populated by a single adult. It's a wonderfully inventive sequence, which evokes not only the great fairy tales but also such monuments of postmodern whimsy.

The author pokes similar fun at a businessman, a geographer, and a lamplighter, all of whom signify some futile aspect of adult existence.

From internationally bestselling author John Boyne, a masterfully reflective story about one woman coming to terms with the demons of her past and finding a new path forward.

The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past.

But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?

Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did - and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.

A special bind-up edition from #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover featuring the second and third instalments in the Hopeless series.

Hopeless was the story of what happened when a troubled girl named Sky encountered a long-lost childhood friend, Dean Holder. Now, in Losing Hope, we discover the truth about Holder. Haunted by the young girl he couldn’t save from imminent danger, his life has been overshadowed by guilt and remorse. He never stopped searching for her, but not once did Holder think that he would face greater pain if they ever reconnected. Holder reveals how Sky’s youth affected him and his family, leading him to seek redemption by saving her. But is it only by loving Sky that he can finally begin to heal?

In Finding Cinderella, a chance encounter in the dark leads eighteen-year-old Daniel and the girl who stumbles across him to profess their love. But this love has conditions: they agree it will only last one hour and be make-believe. When their hour is up and the girl rushes off like Cinderella, Daniel tries to convince himself that it only seemed perfect because they were pretending. Moments like that only happen in fairy tales. One year and one bad relationship later, his disbelief in love at first sight disappears the day he meets Six: a girl with a strange name and an even stranger personality. Unfortunately for Daniel, finding true love doesn’t guarantee a happily ever after . . . it threatens it. Will an unbearable secret from the past jeopardize their last chance at saving each other?

Toe Daan van der Walt, 'n eerstydse Kalahari-boer, 'n vertigo-aanval kry, laai sy vervreemde seun hom by 'n monnikeklooster in China af. Onder leiding van Meester Yang moet Daan tai chi doen in 'n poging om sy balans te herstel. Maar daar is ook iets anders wat aan Daan vreet, iets wat hy van sy hart móét afkry voor hy sy weg na die hiernamaals kan vind. Dalk is dit tyd dat hy aan Magrieta, sy oorlede vrou, skryf en sê dat hy haar liefgehad het.

One of three Signature Select Classics chapbooks steeped in the thrills and chills of the gothic tradition, publishing simultaneously with chapbooks of similarly weird works by Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. This stunning chapbook--perfect for fans of the mysterious and macabre--comprises Mary Shelley's classic tale of a botched experiment in immortality, "The Mortal Immortal," and "On Ghosts: An Essay," her appraisal of popular ghost legends. It features elegantly designed cardstock covers with flaps and intricate foil-stamped designs.

In a burned-out country, a father and his young son head slowly for the coast, with no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind, and cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside, lying in wait.

,P> Attempting to survive in this brave new world, the young boy and his protector have no choice but to keep walking.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Road is the story of a remarkable and profoundly moving journey, and an exemplar of post-apocalyptic writing.

MERIDIAN is 'heteroglossia' which pulls none of its punches. It is as comfortable delivering a disquisition on the semiotics of architectural absence as it is relaying the dialogue between the builders of the conservatory next door. It is truly not glibly, multi-layered, and in its concerns asks much of its readers and by extension, of the literary forms available to the writer in the 21st. century. In a literary landscape of conformity and ardent replication, MERIDIAN is undoubtedly and confidently 'stand alone.' It also manages to be a lot of fun.

From the author of the Booker-shortlisted Small Things Like These, a heartbreaking, haunting story of childhood, loss and love by one of Ireland's most acclaimed writers. 'A real jewel.' Irish Independent 'A small miracle.' Sunday Times 'A thing of finely honed beauty.' Guardian 'Thrilling.' Richard Ford 'As good as Chekhov.' David Mitchell It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. But in a house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers how fragile her idyll is.

His name was Joseph, but for years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story. Panenka has spent 25 years living with the disastrous mistakes of his past, which have made him an exile in his home town and cost him his dearest relationships. Now aged 50, Panenka begins to rebuild an improvised family life with his estranged daughter and her seven year old son. But at night, Panenka suffers crippling headaches that he calls his Iron Mask. Faced with losing everything, he meets Esther, a woman who has come to live in the town to escape her own disappointments. Together, they find resonance in each other's experiences and learn new ways to let love into their broken lives.