There’s a monster running around Dublin, and it’s up to Ava to catch it. The pressure’s on, and she’s becoming as cynical as Peter. But when a demon marks her friend, and a possible threat from England spells war, Ava’s left with a huge choice to make. The lives of one or many. With a little help, Ava has the chance to win all of her battles… if the darkness doesn’t take her over first.

With brilliant wit, idiosyncratic intelligence, and a bold grasp of intricate political realities, the celebrated author of Flaubert's Parrot turns his satiric glance homeward to England, in a sparkling collection of essays that illustrates the infinite variety of contemporary London life. From the Trade Paperback edition.

A virologist with extreme views on population control has created a new virus - 'Malthus A'. International crime investigator, Daniel Capelli, unravels a plot to help spread the virus in return for profits from treatments and counterfeit drugs. But can Capelli and his colleagues in London, USA, Thailand, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria persuade politicians and international crime agencies to act in time?Daniel Capelli is a private investigator of international commercial crime.Armed with an unusually vague remit from a new client, an American biotechnology company, to investigate the theft of valuable research material but motivated largely by a private desire to see a Thai girlfriend, Anna, he travels to Bangkok for an infectious diseases conference. Here, he discovers that several virologists have also disappeared. One of them, David Solomon, is known for extreme views on the need for direct action to reduce the world's population. As the investigation deepens he rapidly uncovers a sinister plot to deliberately spread a deadly new virus, the Malthus A virus, specifically created by Solomon. But Solomon needs funds and help to spread it.With sporadic outbreaks of the disease already in Thailand, Nigeria and Kenya, Capelli finds two other characters - Doctor Larry Brown, an American doctor working at the USA Embassy in Nigeria, and Kevin Parker, an academic and expert on the history and economics of population control - have also arrived at similar conclusions but from different angles. Calling on help from another close friend, Colin Asher - a London based private investigator - it soon becomes clear that Solomon is being supported by a rich American with a history of fraud, embezzlement and murder and a secretive Arab healthcare company with a ready-made international distribution network. Their plan: To help spread the Malthus A virus and make huge profits by marketing ineffective or counterfeit drugs. But with his cover blown by the murder of another colleague, the charismatic Kenyan detective Jimmy Banda, and with increasing fears that the virus is about to be released Capelli, Anna and his colleagues face another problem - persuading UK and USA politicians and the international agencies responsible for bioterrorism and commercial crime, to believe them and respond in time.

When Nikki's father left her family, she thought all the trouble would be over. No more screaming. No more fighting. No more rages. But now he's coming back one last time, and Nikki isn't sure what's going to happen. Luckily, she has good friends like Flora, Ruby, and Olivia to stand behind her -- and a mom who cares about her kids enough to pull them through a hard time.

A story, based on real events, about a boy and a half-Arabian mare who enter the Palio, an annual race in Siena, Italy, with all the pageantry of a medieval contest.

Thrown by Zenith O'Clock, the writer of wrongs, from the Victorian age into 1998 Manchester, Alice encounters mutant hybrids, sinister gameplay, chaos theory, a robo-Alice, quantum physics, computermites, jigsaw killers, tickling vurt feathers, puzzle poems and an invisible cat called Quark. This edition is newly revised for ebook publication.

This is the prelude to the RON series of stories. The Ron series is a group of stories where Ron is the main character. He lives in a housing development where all the houses are connected by an underground tunnel system and the heating and cooling ducts have viewing ports whereby Ron can look out into the houses of the residents…I hope you enjoy reading these stories...All families have secrets, but some secrets are deadly. In this adventurous treasure hunt, two families’ secrets collide across generations and continents. One family is from the Matabele people defending their very existence and the other from the colonial 'intruders' intent on domination of a wild land. Rumours of a great treasure of diamonds, buried deep in the African bush has swirled around the Braughton clan for generations and an old painting holds clues to these secrets no one understands ... although many have tried.Loves, courage and loyalties are tested across a century of intrigue but James and Tara Braughton decide to solve the family riddle by travelling to southern Africa at a time of political change. Clues left them by Great Aunt Nellie who recently died point them in the direction of the treasure. But they discover more secrets on their journey from comfortable southern England to an untamed and unpredictable southern Africa, where the world of Mlimo, the Matabele spiritual leader still reigns for some.James & Tara are drawn into a dangerous chase, pitted against a proud enemy they neither know of nor comprehend. They soon discover disturbing truths that could either change lives – or end them.

Acer Sansom is back from the dead. He's looking for people. He's looking for revenge.Acer Sansom, a British soldier believed long dead, resurfaces, shot in the guts in the home of a still-warm dead man.With the help of a high-profile British politician, Acer becomes embroiled in a mission for retribution and justice for the loved ones and the life he has lost.Acer’s search takes him from the south of England to the teeming metropolis of Istanbul and beyond where the action twists and turns as the story builds to an explosive climax.

Part 1 of 3Sometimes monsters are born, and sometimes they fall from the sky.As Summer fades into Autumn over a small Ohio Farm, Will McAllister settles down on his porch with his wife to watch the sunset like they always have. But twenty years of familiarity is shattered as the sky suddenly lights up and a fireball tears across it, disappearing behind the trees at the back of their property.-Part One of Three in the second installment in The Woods Series-Sometimes monsters are born, and sometimes they fall from the sky.As Summer fades into Autumn over a small Ohio Farm, Will McAllister settles down on his porch with his wife to watch the sunset like they always have. But twenty years of familiarity is shattered as the sky suddenly lights up and a fireball tears across it, disappearing behind the trees at the back of their property.With an already fragile psyche, Ruby McAllister's anxiety is thrown into overdrive, plunging her into nightmares and a deep depression as Will struggles to pick up the pieces. He wants to believe it's all in her head but everyday day he's pulled deeper into a mystery. No one else seems to have seen the fireball, a neighboring farmer's animals are being stalked, and Ruby's precious goats aren't acting like themselves.Thinking things couldn't get worse, Will's life crumbles around him as Ruby suddenly makes a startling declaration: she knows what's at the center of it all, and she's agreed to meet with it out by the barn at sunset...In ORIGINS, Milo Abrams brings the monster from his 2016 hit THE WOODS into the light, weaving a story of unnerving vulnerability and heart-pounding suspense that will leave readers questioning the possibilities of real life beyond the pages of the story.Parts 2 and 3 can be found on Amazon's Kindle store.

In this short story enhanced with beautiful illustrations, the bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Beartown delivers an insightful and poignant tale about finding out what is truly important in life. A father and a son are seeing each other for the first time in years. The father has a story to share before it’s too late. He tells his son about a courageous little girl lying in a hospital bed a few miles away. She’s a smart kid—smart enough to know that she won’t beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it. As he talks about this plucky little girl, the father also reveals more about himself: his triumphs in business, his failures as a parent, his past regrets, his hopes for the future. Now, on a cold winter’s night, the father has been given an unexpected chance to do something remarkable that could change the destiny of a little girl he hardly knows. But before he can make the deal of a lifetime, he must find out what his own life has actually been worth, and only his son can reveal that answer. With humor and compassion, Fredrik Backman’s The Deal of a Lifetime reminds us that life is a fleeting gift, and our legacy rests in how we share that gift with others.

Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the complex erotic games and stratagems employed by women and especially men as they try to come to terms with needs and impulses that can start a terrifying train of events. Sexual attraction is shown as a game that often turns sour, an experience that brings with it painful insights and releases uncertainty, panic, vanity and a constant need for reassurance. Thus a young couple on holiday start a game of pretence that threatens to destroy their relationship, two middle-aged men go in search of girls they don't really want, a young man renews contact with an older woman who feels humiliated by her ageing body, an elderly doctor uses his beautiful wife to increase his attraction and minister to his sexual vanity. In Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera shows himself, once again, as a master of fiction's most graceful illusions and surprises.

It is eight years after the tours from offworld have stopped. High Chancellor Querida has retired, leaving Wizard Corkoran in charge of the Wizards' University. Although Wizard Corkoran's obsession is to be the first man on the moon, and most of his time is devoted to this project, he decides he will teach the new first years himself in hopes of currying the favor of the new students' families—for surely they must all come from wealth, important families—and obtaining money for the University (which it so desperately needs). But Wizard Corkoran is dismayed to discover that one of those students—indeed, one he had such high hopes for, Wizard Derk's own daughter Elda—is a huge golden griffin, and that none of the others has any money at all. Wizard Corkoran's money-making scheme backfires, and when Elda and her new friends start working magic on their own, the schemes go wronger still. And when, at length, Elda ropes in her brothers Kit and Blade to send Corkoran to the moon... well... life at the Wizards' University spins magically and magnificently out of control. This breathtakingly brilliant sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm is all one would expect from this master of genre.

Saved from a life of suffering, Paloma Delacroix is determined to make the best life possible for herself, and for the four men she loves. Loving them is a challenge she never dreamed she’d be up for and one she refuses to fail. Before they can kickstart the life they all dream of, Thomas, Clay, Keith and Quinn McQueen will take Paloma back to Mars Station. They have the whole of the Sandler armada to defeat. With the help of family, friends, and lost allies, they just might make it work…if they can survive their wedding day. Content warning: Reverse Harem. Intense

At the spinster age of 26, the independent, wealthy and imminently sensible Isabella Latham had forgotten about marriage hopes long ago. Ever aware of duty, Isabella accompanies her two young cousins to oversee their debut in London...only to find that it's Isabella who is attracting all the suitors...all of whom do seem to have quite an excess of creditors. There's the sinfully sexy Basil Trevelyan, a rake through and through - the kind of rake that even sensible Isabella can barely resist. And then there's his maddeningly handsome cousin, the Earl of Hartleigh, who makes her heart nearly leap out of her chest, with just a glance of his eye. Poor, poor Isabella. What's a girl to do? But more importantly...who's a girl to choose? Never did prim and proper Isabella think that having two rakish suitors would cause a scandal so earth shattering that it would rattle all her family skeletons, get one over on all those vile gossip mongers and --- land her an ideal husband!

After nearly twenty years of living in California, March Murray, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the sleepy Massachusetts town where she grew up to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her. Yet returning to her hometown also brings her back to Hollis, March’s former soul mate and lover. March’s father had taken the teenaged Hollis, an abandoned child, and the product of a series of detention homes, into his house as a boarder, and treated him like a son. Yet March and Hollis’s passionate love was hardly a normal sibling relationship. When Hollis left her after a petty fight, March waited for him three long years, wondering what she had done wrong. Encountering Hollis again makes March acutely aware of the choices that she has made, and the choices everyone around her has made—including Mrs. Dale, who knew more of love than March could ever have suspected, and her brother Alan, whose tragic history has left him grief-struck, with alcohol as his only solace. Her attraction to Hollis is overwhelming—and March jeopardizes her marriage, her relationship with her daughter and her own happiness in an attempt to reclaim the past.

Sharp Ends is the ultimate collection of award winning tales and exclusive new short stories from the master of grimdark fantasy, Joe Abercrombie. Violence explodes, treachery abounds, and the words are as deadly as the weapons in this rogue's gallery of side-shows, back-stories, and sharp endings from the world of the First Law. The Union army may be full of bastards, but there's only one who thinks he can save the day single-handed when the Gurkish come calling: the incomparable Colonel Sand dan Glokta. Curnden Craw and his dozen are out to recover a mysterious item from beyond the Crinna. Only one small problem: no one seems to know what the item is. Shevedieh, the self-styled best thief in Styria, lurches from disaster to catastrophe alongside her best friend and greatest enemy, Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp. And after years of bloodshed, the idealistic chieftain Bethod is desperate to bring peace to the North. There's only one obstacle left - his own lunatic champion, the most feared man in the North: the Bloody-Nine . . .

Alex Rider, teen spy, has always been told he is the spitting image of the father he never knew. But when Alex learns that his father may have been an assassin for the most lethal and powerful terrorist organization in the world, Scorpia, his world shatters. Now Scorpia wants Alex on their side, and Alex no longer has the strength to fight them. That is, until he learns of Scorpia’s latest plot: an operation known only as “Invisible Sword” that will result in the death of thousands of people. Can Alex prevent the slaughter, or will Scorpia prove once and for all that the terror will not be stopped?

The New York Times bestselling author of Bet Me, Tell Me Lies and Welcome to Temptation *delivers her long-awaited novel * Andie Miller is ready to move on in life. She wants to marry her fiancé and leave behind everything in her past, especially her ex-husband, North Archer. But when Andie tries to gain closure with him, he asks one final favor of her before they go their separate ways forever. A very distant cousin of his has died and left North as the guardian of two orphans who have driven out three nannies already, and things are getting worse. He needs a very special person to take care of the situation and he knows Andie can handle anything. When Andie meets the two children she quickly realizes things are much worse than she feared. The place is a mess, the children, Carter and Alice, aren't your average delinquents, and the creepy old house where they live is being run by the worst housekeeper since Mrs. Danvers. What's worse, Andie's fiancé thinks this is all a plan by North to get Andie back, and he may be right. Andie's dreams have been haunted by North since she arrived at the old house. And that's not the only haunting. What follows is a hilarious adventure in exorcism, including a self-doubting parapsychologist, an annoyed medium, her Tarot-card reading mother, an avenging ex-mother-inlaw, and, of course, her jealous fiancé. And just when she thinks things couldn't get more complicated, North shows up on the doorstep making her wonder if maybe this time things could be different between them. If Andie can just get rid of all the guests and ghosts, she's pretty sure she can save the kids, and herself, from the past. But fate might just have another thing in mind…

Once again Violet Eden faces an impossible choice ... and the consequences are unimaginable. Violet has come to terms with the fact that being part angel, part human, means her life will never be as it was. Now Violet has something Phoenix - the exiled angel who betrayed her - will do anything for, and she has no intention of letting it fall into his hands. The only problem is that he has something she needs too. Not afraid to raise the stakes, Phoenix seemingly holds all the power, always one step ahead. And when he puts the final pieces of the prophecy together, it doesn't take him long to realise exactly who he needs in order to open the gates of Hell. With the help of surprising new allies, ancient prophecies are deciphered, a destination set and, after a shattering confrontation with her father, Violet leaves for the islands of Greece without knowing if she will have a home to return to...

Struck off and hooked on prescription pills, disgraced American surgeon Ryan Burkett flies to the war-torn Middle East to identify his murdered twin's body. Staring down at the lifeless form in the mortuary, it is as though Burkett is gazing at his own failings. His brother was first and best - the better athlete, better doctor, better son.With little reason to go home, Burkett agrees to take over his brother's charitable surgical clinic. Within weeks, however, he is taken hostage by Islamic fundamentalists. Forced into withdrawal - from both drugs and his own self-loathing - Burkett becomes convinced that his captors are his brother's murderers, and that revenge may be the only path to redemption.