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A QUESTION OF BELIEF
by DONNA LEON The moral façade of Venetian society is cracking under a debilitating heatwave. There are discrepancies at the Courthouse involving a prominent judge and a respectable usher. The latter is soon found murdered. But by whom? Why? Meanwhile, unofficial surveillance finds a woman obsessed with horoscopes emptying her bank account into the pockets of a stranger. Intrepid Commissario Brunetti will have to use all his skills to uncover the truth.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9780434020201 Available Now
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AND THEREBY HANGS A TALE
by JEFFREY ARCHER Jeffrey Archer's writing career has spanned almost 30 years, and this is his sixth collection of short stories. Combining skilled characterisation with often unexpected twists, he manages to create small 'prose pictures' that remain in the reader's memory long after the book is put down. Inspired by his own favourite short story writers, from Maupassant to Somerset Maugham, And Thereby Hangs a Tale is witty and entertaining.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9780230531451 Available Now
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AT THE CHIME OF A CITY CLOCK
by D.J. TAYLOR James Ross might be selling carpet cleaner door-to-door, but he is actually an aspiring writer down on his luck in 1930s London. The glamorous Suzi is a welcome fillip, but she seems to be leading him into strange society: her mysterious boss Mr Schmiegelow, for example, looks like one of the portraits in the Police News. From bedsitters to Lyons teashops and a grand society country house weekend, D.J. Taylor's comedy noir leads to an astonishing climax.
£ 12.99 Hardback 9781849010245 Available Now
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BEATRICE AND VIRGIL
by YANN MARTEL Perhaps only Yann Martel, famous of course for Life of Pi, could raise philosophical questions on the reconciliatory power of words amidst the forces of love and evil with a tale that unfolds after a letter from a crazy taxidermist arrives on Henry's doormat. Enter Beatrice the donkey and Virgil the howler monkey who, together with Henry, undertake an epic journey. Charming, profound and quite extraordinary.
£ 15.99 Hardback 9781847677655 Available Now
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FINAL DEMANDS
by FREDERIC RAPHAEL From Glittering Prizes to Fame and Fortune, the Cambridge graduates of Frederic Raphael's trilogy must now confront the consequences and compensations of life's Final Demands. As middle age encroaches and New Labour comes to power, there is a vital need for this generation to make its mark. With unnerving satire, Raphael portrays the setting sun of an apparently golden age.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9781906779849 Available Now
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NEMESIS
by LINDSEY DAVIS This is the twentieth volume of the bestselling Falco detective series. It portrays, as always, a scene of intrigue and murder. It is the summer of 77AD. Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco, along with his friend Petronius, enter the pestilential swamplands that are home to the notorious group, the Claudii, who it seems have corrupt friends in high places. Nevertheless, with a psychotic killer on the loose, our heroes remain doggedly determined to pursue the truth.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9781846056123 Available Now
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PARROT AND OLIVIER IN AMERICA
by PETER CAREY Please see VIPs for details.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780571253296 Available Now
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SOLAR
by IAN McEWAN Please see VIPs for details.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780224090490 Available Now
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THE BREAKING OF EGGS
by JIM POWELL Feliks Zhukovski, a 61-year-old Pole, gave up love, family and friendship for politics and ideas. His life's work has been to write a travel guide to the East European bloc. However, it is now 1991, and all he knew has collapsed with the fall of Communism. Having learnt some disarming truths from a long-lost brother and getting a second-chance at love, could he start afresh? A moving and uplifting novel from a debut talent.
£ 12.99 Hardback 9780297859697 Available Now
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THE CAPTIVE QUEEN
by ALISON WEIR In this epic historical tale of love, lust and the birth of a royal dynasty, we meet Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. The year is 1152 and she is escaping on horseback from her marriage with Louis of France and riding to the man she loves: the future King of England, Henry Plantagenet. Their union will found a great empire and spawn a devil's brood. Passion, conflict and murder will be the tempestuous legacy of Eleanor's desire.
£ 14.99 Hardback 9780091926212 Available Now
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THE DOG WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH Back in Corduroy Mansions, the crumbling four-storey house in Pimlico with its assortment of quirky but mostly friendly residents, wine merchant William French is surveying his top floor flat. Furnished in 1970s lack-of-design style, he is considering a radical refurbishment. In the kitchen, gazing up at his master, sits one Freddie de la Hay: a vegetarian and cat-loving Pimlico Terrier. Both will be sorely tested in the adventure that awaits them.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9781846971617 Available Now
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THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST
by PHILIP PULLMAN In a radical retelling of the story of Jesus - part novel, part history and part fairy tale - Philip Pullman (an atheist) exercises his magical storytelling and subversive wit. Rewiring the mysteries of the Gospel and two millennia of church orthodoxy, this is as controversial and thought-provoking as it is entertaining. A powerful addition to the already classic Canongate Myths series.
£ 14.99 Hardback 9781847678256 Available Now
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THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE
by MAGGIE O'FARRELL Two women's lives, separated by 50 years, coalesce in this powerful story of love and motherhood. Lexie is living at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, carving out a bohemian life as a journalist. Elina, a present day painter, has just had her first child and is struggling to combine work with motherhood. The birth leads her partner Ted to unravel mismatched memories of his own childhood. And it is through him that Lexie and Elina's lives unexpectedly connect.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9780755308453 Available Now
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THE PREGNANT WIDOW
by MARTIN AMIS It was Alexander Herzen who recognised that a cultural revolution does not immediately deliver an heir - it is a pregnant widow. And the time between the death of the old regime and the birth of a new age is a period of flux. It is this pre-partum landscape - in the wake of the sexual revolution - that Martin Amis explores here, in a comedy of manners that combines with nightmare, as his characters deal with the promises and consequences of 1960s liberation.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780224076128 Available Now
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THE RELUCTANT HERO
by MICHAEL DOBBS In this heart-racing thriller, Zac Kravitz has been tortured beyond sensibility and cast into a prison in the former Soviet republic of Ta'argistan. Execution is imminent, but Harry Jones (hero of The Edge of Madness) is honour-bound to undertake a perilous rescue mission. With the stubborn and tough-talking MP Martha Riley as unlikely ally, Jones reaches the snow-bound capital's ancient prison only to realise that he has been lured into a trap of international conspiracy.
£ 17.99 Hardback 9781847372864 Available Now
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THE SECRET HISTORY OF COSTAGUANA
by JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ When José Altamirano arrives in London in 1903, he tells his life story of struggle and suffering to Joseph Conrad who is working on a novel set in South America. On the book's publication however, Altamarino is outraged: he has been written out of his own story. As riposte, he writes his own book. Interlacing tragedy and comedy, Juan Gabriel Vásquez presents a compelling counter-narrative to European modernity.
£ 16.99 Hardback 9781408800188 Available Now
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THE SHADOWS IN THE STREET
by SUSAN HILL Drawing the reader into a breathless atmosphere weighted with suspense and tension, Susan Hill's fifth crime novel featuring Simon Serrailler is a sharp psychological drama. Women are being murdered: first sex workers, then the Dean's wife, then a young woman on her way to work. There is public panic and anger. Leads in the investigation are dead-ends. Time is running out. Will a chance stroke of luck end the savage nightmare?
£ 12.99 Hardback 9780701179977 Available Now
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THE SPIES OF THE BALKANS
by ALAN FURST It is at our own peril that we readers enter the fragmented Balkan landscape of the Second World War. The British SIS are inspiring a coup in Macedonia and plotting something similar in Salonika, during the invasion of Greece. It is a nest of dubious operatives and their double-dealing practices. But as their grip pulls us in, two heroes emerge. One is a British travel writer, the other a local police officer in the anti-Nazi resistance. A heart-stopping thriller from spy-master Alan Furst.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780297858881 Available Now
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THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET
by DAVID MITCHELL Limning the late-18th-century cusp of the Western world and Japan's closed society, David Mitchell takes us along with Jacob de Zoet to the remote island-outpost of the Dutch East India Company, Dejima. Jacob's job is to investigate allegations of corruption in the upper ranks. But when he meets a local interpreter and a midwife, a disastrous story of betrayal and murder unfolds as integrity is pitted against duplicity, and love against lust.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780340921562 Available Now
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TIGERLILY'S ORCHIDS
by RUTH RENDELL With all the people of the building invited, it was meant to be a flat-warming party to remember - for all the right reasons. Instead, it marked a dramatic twist in the lives of the Lichfield House residents. And when Stuart Font's beautiful but reclusive neighbour Tigerlily emerges to cast a terrible spell, a compelling urban fairytale unfolds. Dark humour and piercing observation from the fabled pen of Ruth Rendell.
£ 18.99 Hardback 9780091936860 Available Now
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TRESPASS
by ROSE TREMAIN Leaving his life in London behind, antiques dealer Anthony Verey arrives in southern France hoping for a new start. His appearance disrupts a fragile and fraught emotional landscape. In one isolated farmhouse lives an alcoholic haunted by his violent past. His sister seethes with dreams of retribution in a nearby modern bungalow. Cultures collide with devastating consequences, while the bleak hills and gorges of the Cévennes lour cruel, seductive and silent.
£ 17.99 Hardback 9780701177942 Available Now
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