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Orion Books
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Joe Abercrombie is the most successful fantasy novelist of his generation, with a remarkable, cynical and powerful voice cutting through the cliches of the fantasy genre to create something compelling and exceptionally commercial. With a strong core readership already behind him, each new novel breaks new ground — the epic fantasy quest in The First Law Trilogy, revenge fantasy with the hit BEST SERVED COLD, and now, with THE HEROES, venturing into the dangerous and topical territory of war. Set over three days, in the same world as BEST SERVED COLD, the action is compelling and fast, the battlefield is muddy, bloody and horrible and Joe Abercrombie uses his fantasy setting to explore violence and ambition, strategy and the truism that no plan survives contact with enemy. The characters are the stars, as ever, and the message is dark: when it comes to war, there are no heroes... |
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Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles with John Knox, and the unruly Scottish nobility; the fatal marriage to Darnley and his mysterious death; her marriage to Bothwell, the chief suspect, that led directly to her long English captivity at the hands of Queen Elizabeth; the poignant and extraordinary story of her long imprisonment that ended with the labyrinthine Babington plot to free her, and her execution at the age of forty-four. |
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For more than 40 years after the Second World War the Iron Curtain divided Europe physically, with 300 km of walls and barbed wire fences; ideologically, between communism and capitalism; psychologically, between people imprisoned under totalitarian dictatorships and their neighbours enjoying democratic freedoms; and militarily, by two mighty, distrustful power blocs, still fighting the cold war. At the start of 1989, ten European nations were still Soviet vassal states. By the end of the year, one after another, they had thrown off communism, declared national independence, and embarked on the road to democracy. One of history's most brutal empires was on its knees. Poets who had been languishing in jails became vice presidents. When the Berlin Wall fell on a chilly November night it seemed as though the open wounds of the cruel twentieth century would at last begin to heal. The Year of Revolutions appeared as a beacon of hope for oppressed people elsewhere who dared to dream that they too could free themselves. In a dizzying few months of almost entirely peaceful revolutions the people's will triumphed over tyranny. An entire way of life was swept away. Now, twenty years on, Victor Sebestyen reassesses this decisive moment in modern history. |
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Max Frei, and the LABYRINTHS OF ECHO series, is a multi-million copy selling Russian literary sensation appearing in English for the first time. Intriguing, original, remarkable and wry... THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO is a piece of absolute enchantment. Splash a bit of enchantment into my glass... there is no better phrase to describe the state that a reader may find themselves in when exposed to this strong, absolutely legal, literary narcotic which goes by the name of Max Frei. Stolichniye Novosti If it weren't for bad luck, Max Frei wouldn't have any luck at all. A self-described twenty-something classic loser, an insomniac, hardened smoker, a glutton and a loafer, there's nothing much going for Max Frei... at least not until he arrives in the magical city of Echo. Summoned to the city by the head of the Department of Absolute Order, Sir Juffin Halli, Max's dreams are becoming a reality. But as with all dreams-come-true its not quite the reality Max expected; he's about to become a secret agent, tasked to solve extravagant, impossible crimes with nothing but his wits and a handful of unexplained magical abilities to recommend him. Max is going to be thrown into the fray — and he can't even have a cigarette first... |
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One hundred years from now, and against all the odds, Earth has found a new stability; the political order has reached some sort of balance, and the new colony on Mars is growing. But the fraught years of the 21st century have left an uneasy legacy... Genetically engineered alpha males, designed to fight the century's wars have no wars to fight and are surplus to requirements. And a man bred and designed to fight is a dangerous man to have around in peacetime. Many of them have left for Mars but now one has come back and killed everyone else on the shuttle he returned in. Only one man, a genengineered ex-soldier himself, can hunt him down and so begins a frenetic man-hunt and a battle survival. And a search for the truth about what was really done with the world's last soldiers. BLACK MAN is an unstoppable SF thriller but it is also a novel about prejudice, about the ramifications of playing with our genetic blue-print. It is about our capacity for violence but more worrying, our capacity for deceit and corruption. This is another landmark of modern SF from one of its most exciting and commercial authors. |
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Jason Bourne takes a mission to rescue his only friend in the CIA, Martin Lindros, who disappeared in Africa while tracking nuclear material. Bourne agrees to help track the money trail of the terrorists, but soon suffers from confusing flashbacks of unfamiliar places and events. Is someone brainwashing him in order to throw him off the trail? Worse still, is the man he saved really Martin Lindros? Now Bourne is on his own — gathering evidence, while trying to stay one step ahead of the terrorists who are determined to destroy the USA... |
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A stinkbomb becomes a deadly weapon in Horrid Henry's longrunning war with Moody Margaret; he uses all his guile to win the school reading competition, only to find the longed-for prize is not what he expected; he goes for a sleepover and retreats in horror when he finds that other people's houses aren't always as nice as his own; and he has the joy of seeing Miss Battle-Axe ticked off by the Head when he knows it was all his fault. In short, another vintage Horrid Henry title! |
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Four hilarious new stories, in which Horrid Henry hits on a brilliant way to write thank you letters, negotiates over vegetables, competes with Perfect Peter over which of them is sickest, and finds himself wearing the wrong underpants, with dreadful consequences. |
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The warm and witty new novel from acclaimed author Veronica Henry will be her best yet. Expect affairs of the heart, lies, scandal and humour — all wrapped up in one perfectly presented Veronica Henry-sized package! This will be a lovely women's fiction read that Ronnie's fans will not want to miss. |
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At Cold Mountain Penitentiary, along the lonely stretch of cells known as the Green Mile, killers await death, whilst their guards watch over them. Good or evil, innocent or guilty, none of them have ever seen the likes of brutal new prisoner John Coffey, seemingly a devil in human form. |
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Readers were first introduced to Jason Bourne's nemesis Leonid Arkadin, a brilliant Russian assassin and fearless international mercenary, in THE BOURNE SANCTION. His girlfriend was killed during a fight for which an enraged Arkadin blames Bourne. In The BOURNE DECEPTION, Arkadin hunted Bourne to take revenge and kill him. Bourne, in a fight for his life, learned that Arkadin's skills mirror Jason's because he received the same original CIA Treadstone training. Now, in THE BOURNE OBJECTIVE, Jason will turn the tables and target Arkadin. Hunter will become hunted. But revenge can cause great psychological devastation. Has this become too personal for Bourne? Will this hunt be Bourne's downfall? |
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David Spaulding is the most feared and efficient Allied agent in wartime Europe. Expert, deadly and professional, he is also high on the Gestapo's 'most wanted' list. Now Spaulding has been selected by the Allied Command to transact an undercover deal in Argentina involving top secret Nazi scientific plans. The dealer is Erich Rhinemann, an exiled German Jew who is awaiting the end of the war with his millions in an impenetrable retreat near Buenos Aires. But there's something Spaulding doesn't know. The other side of the deal. And it involves the most bizarre, horrific intrigue of the Second World War... |
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Bestselling novelist and Holmes expert Anthony Horowitz will bring the great man to life again for a new generation of readers. As the creator of Foyle, recently voted the nation's favourite TV detective at the ITV Crime Thriller Awards 2010, Anthony has already displayed his talent for plotting and characterisation. Having been a lifelong fan of Conan Doyle's novels, he was the perfect choice to return to the original stories and create a new mystery for Holmes and Watson. Interest in Holmes has never been higher than right now. A blockbusting movie adaptation has coincided with the BBC's intriguing modern update and both successes are to be repeated this autumn. Horowitz says: I fell in love with the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was 16 and I've read them many times since. My aim is to produce a first-rate mystery for a modern audience while remaining absolutely true to the spirit of the original. |
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FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast — recently returned to New York — and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta find themselves investigating the murder of a friend when reporter William Smithback and his wife Nora are brutally attacked in their apartment. The assailant is identified by eyewitnesses as their strange, sinister neighbour — a man who, by all accounts, died ten days earlier. Shunning the official inquiry, Pendergast and D'Agosta undertake their own private — and unorthodox — quest for the truth. Their journey takes them deep into the dark and mysterious underbelly of Manhattan, to a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and voodoo which no outsiders have ever survived... |
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1943. As war sweeps across Europe, Max Carver's father moves his family away from the city, to an old wooden house on the coast. But as soon as they arrive, strange things begin to happen: Max discovers a garden filled with eerie statues; his sisters are plagued by unsettling dreams and voices; a box of old films opens a window to the past. Most unsettling of all are rumours about the previous owners and the mysterious disappearance of their son. As Max delves into the past, he encounters the terrifying story of the Prince of Mist, a sinister shadow who emerges from the night to settle old scores, then disappears with the first mists of dawn... Originally published in Spain as a young adult novel, THE PRINCE OF MIST is a mesmerising tale of mystery, romance and adventure. |
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University professor David Webb — forever caught between two identities — is still haunted by the splintered nightmares his former life — as Jason Bourne. Soon he finds himself embroiled in a CIA operation to hunt down a terrorist organisation, and is plunged into the deadliest and most tangled assignment of his double life. With his own side trying to take him down, all the while an assassin as brilliant and damaged as himself is getting closer by the minute... |
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Gerhard Self, the Sweet-Afton smoking, sambuca-swilling, most unlikely of PIs is back in a new tale of deception and intrigue, set against the backdrop of post-reunification Germany. After a chance encounter with the owner of a prestigious private bank, the now septuagenarian detective is enlisted to delve into the institution's history, apparently in the name of a book to commemorate the bank's foundation. But his seemingly anodyne brief — to discover the identity of a sleeping partner from several decades before — throws up far more questions than answers. As it becomes clear that the sleeping partner is in no way the most mysterious aspect of the bank's history, Self begins to suspect his mission may have been but a ruse to lure him into the shady world of the bank's enigmatic masters — a certain Herr Welker and his steely Russian foster brother Samarin. Trying in vain to extricate himself and his increasingly shaky heart from the web of deceit — and to work out who really is the baddie of the piece — Self is thrown headlong into a tale of money-laundering, murder and mafiosi. But who is blackmailing whom? Did Welker's wife really die in a tragic accident? And why is a washed-up old Stasi man pretending to be Self's long-lost son? Join Gerhard, the irascible armchair philosopher, on his most danegrous and far-reaching mission to date. |
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In this exciting new novel from international bestseller Coben, his fans will learn more about Myron Bolitar than they ever have before as Myron's mysterious, estranged younger brother Brad disappears, only to leave Myron with his son — a teenage boy that Myron didn't even know existed... |
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The Duke of Atreides has been manoeuvred by his arch-enemy, Baron Harkonnen, into administering the desert planet of Dune. Although it is almost completely without water, Dune is a planet of fabulous wealth, for it is the only source of a drug prized throughout the Galactic Empire. The Duke and his son, Paul, are expecting treachery, and it duly comes — but from a shockingly unexpected place. Then Paul succeeds his father, and he becomes a catalyst for the native people of Dune, whose knowledge of the ecology of the planet gives them vast power. They have been waiting for a leader like Paul Atreides, a leader who can harness that force... DUNE: one of the most brilliantr science fiction novels ever written, as engrossing and heart-rending today as it was when it was first published half a century ago. |
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When word gets out that Mary-Margaret O'Reilly may have been witness to a miracle, religious mania descends on the Church of the Sacred Heart in Battersea. The consequences will be profound, not only for Mary-Margaret but for others too: Father Diamond, the parish priest, who is in the midst of his own crisis of faith. Stella Morrison, adrift in her marriage and aching for her ten-year old son, away at boarding school. Alice Armitage, counting the days until her soldier son comes home from Afghanistan. Mary-Margaret's mother, Fidelma, imprisoned in a tower block with nothing but her thoughts for company. Mary-Margaret's quest to understand what she has seen grows increasingly desperate — but no one is prepared for the shocking outcome that ensues. |
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