EVEN ANGELS HAVE THEIR DEMONS . . .
PARIS, CHRISTMAS 2021. After a heart attack, Mathias Taillefer wakes up in hospital with a stranger at his bedside. The mysterious girl reveals herself to be Louise Collange, a volunteer who has come to play the cello for patients. When she finds out Mathias is a cop, she asks him to take charge of a very special case.
Her mother, a former ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet, died last year after falling from her balcony, and Louise has a hunch she was pushed. Though hesitant at first, Mathias agrees to help her, sending them both headfirst into a deadly chain of events. And at the centre of it all, a woman named Angélique, whose angelic intentions may not be all they seem . . .
Feverous, surprising and uplifting, Musso's newest novel is a labyrinth of emotions where nothing is certain from one page to the next.
PRAISE FOR THE ICONIC BESTSELLER GUILLAUME MUSSO:
'THE FRENCH SUSPENSE KING' NEW YORK TIMES
'ONE OF THE GREAT THRILLER WRITERS OF OUR AGE' DAILY EXPRESS
'THE KING OF EUROPEAN NOIR' LA REPUBBLICA, ITALY
'IT'S NO WONDER THAT GUILLAUME MUSSO IS ONE OF FRANCE'S MOST LOVED, BESTSELLING AUTHORS' HARLAN COBEN
Moby Dick in half the time
Moby Dick is the tale of one man's fatal obsession and his willingness to sacrifice his life and that of his crew to achieve his goal. The story follows the fortunes of Captain Ahab and the eccentric crew of a whaling ship, The Pequod. The ship is on its last voyage in pursuit of Moby Dick - the great white whale which wounded Ahab in the past is his quarry now. The battle with the elements, the sea, the dangerous confrontations of the whale hunts are embodied in the thrilling narration of the survivor Ishmael.
'A brilliant contemporary novel' Colm Tóibín
'I am fully in awe of Dolan's talent' Douglas Stuart
'I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed it' Marian Keyes
'Dazzling. Not a word is out of place' Katherine Heiny
Meet Celine and Luke. To all intents and purposes, the happy couple.
But Celine's more interested in playing the piano, and Luke's a serial cheater.
And as their big day approaches, the complicated lives of the wedding party begin to unravel. A fed-up bridesmaid, a lovesick best man, guests and family members all find themselves searching for their own happily ever afters.
From the author of Exciting Times, this is a sparkling ensemble novel about love and marriage, fidelity and betrayal.
Orphaned at an early age, Jane Eyre survives an unhappy childhood at the grim Lowood School. Despite Jane's deprived background, her intelligence and courage earn her a position as a governess at the imposing home of Mr Rochester. Overcoming her sense that all at Thornfield Hall is not as it seems, Jane finds herself becoming fond of her new life. But she finds it increasingly hard to maintain her composure. As her cautious friendship with her often moody master deepens, Jane opens herself up to the possibility of happiness at last. But Thornfield Hall conceals secrets that are conspiring against their happiness.
Subtitled “A Study of Provincial Life,” George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch is a chronicle of the titular nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of political and social change. Eliot explores the upheaval and transformation brought about by these changes through their impact on the lives of a richly varied cast of characters that includes the pious young Dorothea Brooke, her suitor the Reverend Edward Casaubon, the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate, and the mysterious schemer John Raffles. Middlemarch is one of Barnes & Noble's Collectible Editions classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world's greatest authors in an exquisitely designed bonded-leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and a ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offer hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for every home library.
Compact editions - David Copperfield in half the time.
David Copperfield's happy childhood is abruptly ended by his mother's remarriage to Mr Murdstone. After enduring the misery of Salem House Academy and a life of drudgery in his step father's business, he runs away to his eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood, in Dover, and transforms his life a second time - finding friendship with the ever optimistic Mr Micawber and falling in love with the adorable but spoilt Dora. But David has to face tragedy, and outface the scheming Uriah Heep before he finds ultimate happiness.
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
'Bernhard Schlink speaks straight to the heart' New York Times
'Brilliant... A tale of love and loss in 20th century Germany' Evening Standard
'A cleverly-constructed tale of cross-class romance' Mail on Sunday
'A poignant portrait of a woman out of step with her time' Observer
Olga is an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village around the turn of the 20th century. Smart and precocious, she fights against the prejudices of the time to find her place in a world that sees her as second-best.
When she falls in love with Herbert, a local aristocrat obsessed with the era's dreams of power, glory and greatness, her life is irremediably changed.
Theirs is a love against all odds, entwined with the twisting paths of German history, leading us from the late 19th to the early 21st century, from Germany to Africa and the Arctic, from the Baltic Sea to the German south-west.
This is the story of that love, of Olga's devotion to a restless man - told in thought, letters and in a fateful moment of great rebellion.
'Fifteen years on, the remembrance of that day has returned to me. I have seen that boy wandering through the mist of the railway station, and the name of Marina has flared up again like a fresh wound. We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine...'
In May 1980, 15-year-old Óscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in the old quarter of Barcelona. For seven days and nights no one knows his whereabouts...
His story begins in the heart of old Barcelona, when he meets Marina and her father German Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Óscar to a cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the fourth Sunday of each month. At 10 a.m. precisely a coach pulled by black horses appears. From it descends a woman dressed in black, her face shrouded, wearing gloves, holding a single rose. She walks over to a gravestone that bears no name, only the mysterious emblem of a black butterfly with open wings.
When Óscar and Marina decide to follow her they begin a journey that will take them to the heights of a forgotten, post-war Barcelona, a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons; and a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón was born in Barcelona and is the author of seven novels including THE SHADOW OF THE WIND. He is one of the world's most read and best-loved writers. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages and published around the world, garnering numerous international prizes and reaching millions of readers. He divides his time between Barcelona and Los Angeles.
WATERSTONES FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR OCTOBER 2024
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER
BARACK OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK
AMAZON.COM NO.1 BOOK OF THE YEAR
'I loved this book' BONNIE GARMUS
'A generous, compassionate book about the power of love and community' LOUISE KENNEDY
'I can't recommend this one highly enough ' HARLAN COBEN
'THIS is his best book' ANN PATCHETT
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where Jewish immigrants and African Americans lived side by side through the 1920s and '30s.
In this novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them, James McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community - heaven and earth - that sustain us.
How to live a better life. One of the most important books on Western philosophy - a powerful and inspirational guide for the complicated world of today
'Refreshing and restorative' GUARDIAN
'An ancient work of spiritual reflection which remains a powerful reminder of how we could live a more dignified life by avoiding deceit, vanity and greed' OK MAGAZINE
Few ancient works have been as influential as the MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius. Filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behaviour, it remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. Marcus's insights and advice - on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others - have made the MEDITATIONS required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style.
In Gregory Hays's translation Marcus's thoughts speak with a new immediacy. Never before have Marcus's insights been so directly and powerfully presented.
The classic tale of Odysseus's return home in a stunning new translation.
THE ODYSSEY, which tells of Odysseus's long voyage home after the battle of Troy, is one of the defining masterpieces of Western literature.
Populated by one-eyed man-eating giants, beautiful seductive goddesses, and lavishly hospitable kings and queens, it is an extraordinary work of the imagination, the original epic voyage into the unknown that has inspired other writing down through the ages - from ancient poems to modern fiction and films.
With its consummately modern hero, full of guile and wit, THE ODYSSEY is perfectly suited to our times.
Thanks to the scholarship and poetic power of the highly acclaimed Stephen Mitchell, this new translation recreates the energy and simplicity, the speed, the grace, and continual thrust and pull of the original, so that THE ODYSSEY's ancient story bursts vividly into new life.
A GUARDIAN AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
'The most exquisite kind of literature... I've put it on a special shelf in my library that I reserve for books that demand to be revisited every now and then. '
OLGA TOKARCZUK, author of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
'Could not be more timely... It's funny and absurd, but it's also frightening, because even as Gospodinov plays with the idea as fiction, the reader begins to recognise something rather closer to home... A writer of great warmth as well as skill'
GUARDIAN
'In equal measure playful and profound, Time Shelter renders the philosophical mesmerizing, and the everyday extraordinary. I loved it'
CLAIRE MESSUD, author of The Woman Upstairs
'A genrebusting novel of ideas... Gospodinov's vision of tomorrow is the nightmare from which Europe knows it must awake. And accident, in combination with the book's own merits, may just have created a classic'
THE TIMES
'Gospodinov is one of Europe's most fascinating and irreplaceable novelists, and this his most expansive, soulful and mind-bending book'
DAVE EGGERS, author of The Circle
'Touching and intelligent'
NEW YORK TIMES
'A powerful and brilliant novel: clear-sighted, foreboding, enigmatic'
SANDRO VERONESI, author of The Hummingbird
'An immensely enjoyable book which achieves depth with an affable narrative voice'
IRISH TIMES
In Time Shelter, an enigmatic flâneur named Gaustine opens a 'clinic for the past' that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.
As Gaustine's assistant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a 'time shelter', hoping to escape from the horrors of our present - a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.
Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov's reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, a major voice in international literature.
Georgi Gospodinov is one of Europe's most acclaimed writers. Originally from Bulgaria, his novels have won his country's most prestigious literary prize twice and have been shortlisted for more than a dozen international prizes - including the 2015 PEN Literary Award for Translation, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the Premio Strega Europeo, the Bruecke Berlin Preis, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Literaturpreis. He has won the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the 2019 Angelus Literature Central Europe Prize and the 2021 Premio Strega Europeo, among others.
Bleak House in half the time
Esther Summerson finds herself caught up in the frustrations of a seemingly unending law-case involving her generous guardian Mr Jarndyce and her wards Ada and Richard.Brought into contact with poverty and disease, Esther suffers a serious illness.
Meanwhile the unscrupulous lawyer Tulkinghorn seeks to expose the past of the wife of a rich aristocrat, and the secret of Esther's birth is revealed. But in the midst of tumultuous events, will she ever find love?
There's the world you can see. And then there's the one you can't. Welcome to The Morningside.
When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia's aunt, Ena, serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place she was born and spent her early years; nor does she know why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give a young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.
Enchanted by Ena's stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities, and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building; she has her own elevator entrance, and only leaves to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia's mission to unravel the truth about this woman's life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.
Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, THE MORNINGSIDE is a novel about the stories we tell, and the stories we refuse to tell, to make sense of where we came from, and who we hope we might become.
Hera is in her mid-twenties, which seems young to everyone except people in their mid-twenties.
Since leaving school, she has been trying to kick and scream into existence a life she cares about, but with little success so far.
Until she meets Arthur.
He works with her, he is older than her, he is also married. But in her soulless office - the large cold room she feels destined to spend her life in - he is a source of much-needed sustenance.
And though Hera has previously dated women, she soon falls headlong into a workplace romance that will quickly consume her life.
Laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving and whip smart, Green Dot is a story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing and the winding, torturous, often hilarious journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.
ONE OF THE BBC'S 100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD
'Seductive as hell. Brilliant, unusual, breathtaking' Lauren Groff
'There are very few writers that I admire more than Helen Garner' David Nicholls
'A revelation. Its pages radiate sex and heat, chlorine and rock'n'roll' Madelaine Lucas
In 1970s Melbourne, Nora is a happy woman.
She is happy moving between the city's communal households, with her little daughter. Happy with days spent at the public pool, and nights spent dancing and drinking and talking and smoking and loving freely.
But then Nora meets Javo. Javo, with his crooked, wrecked, wild face and his violently blue eyes. And soon she is trapped in the monkey grip of his drug addiction and her own obsessive love for him.
On its first publication in 1977, Monkey Grip was both a sensation and a lightning rod in its frank portrayal of the lives of a generation. Now a modern classic, it shows Helen Garner's dazzling and radical literary voice.
A W&N Essential with an Introduction by Lauren Groff
Once-in-a-generation memoir of a rock legend - the No. 1 SUNDAY TIMES bestseller.
'Electrifying' New York Times
'A masterpiece' The Word
'Funny, poignant, brutally honest' Sunday Telegraph
With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that no one before him had ever done.
Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane. And what a life. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records as a child in post-war Kent. Learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones' first fame and success as a bad-boy band. The notorious Redlands drug bust and subsequent series of confrontations with a nervous establishment that led to his enduring image as outlaw and folk hero.
Creating immortal riffs such as the ones in 'Jumping Jack Flash' and 'Street Fighting Man' and 'Honky Tonk Women'. Falling in love with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the US, 'Exile on Main Street' and 'Some Girls'. Ever increasing fame, isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Mick Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Solo albums and performances with his band the Xpensive Winos. Marriage, family and the road that goes on for ever.
In a voice that is uniquely and intimately his own, with the disarming honesty that has always been his trademark, Keith Richards brings us the essential life story of our times.
'Complex, intelligent, hugely intriguing - Alan Furst is in a class of his own' William Boyd
'Furst's ability to recreate the terrors of espionage is matchless' Robert Harris
'Furst never stops astounding me' Tom Hanks
Chosen as one of the 50 Best Modern Crime Novels by Marcel Berlins, crime reviewer, The Times
Bulgaria, 1934. Khristo Stoianev sees his brother kicked to death by a gang of fascist thugs. Taking a risk on the promise of Communism, he flees to Moscow and is trained as an agent of the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service. His first mission is to go to Catalonia, where he is soon caught up in the bloody horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo must again take flight, this time to Paris, where he is a small player on the wrong end of a social scene that is simultaneously decadent and doomed.
One of the twentieth century's greatest spy novels, Night Soldiers is a thrilling portrait of one man's extraordinary adventures and of Europe teetering on the brink of the Second World War.
'Alan Furst's mastery of the espionage novel puts him beyond any would-be rival' Literary Review
'A spy novel, a war story, an adventure, a survivor's tale - Night Soldiers is all this and more' Seattle Times
NOW A MAJOR GOLDEN GLOBE-WINNING NETFLIX SERIES STARRING ANYA TAYLOR-JOY
When she is sent to an orphanage at the age of eight, Beth Harmon soon discovers two ways to escape her surroundings: playing chess with the janitor and taking the little green pills given to the children to keep them subdued.
Before long, it becomes apparent that hers is an unusual talent, and as she progresses to the top of the US chess rankings she is able to forge a new life for herself. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting . . .
'Superb' Time Out
'Mesmerizing' Newsweek
'Gripping' Financial Times
'Sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years - for the pure pleasure and skill of it' Michael Ondaatje
'Don't pick this up if you want a night's sleep' Scotsman
'Few novelists have written about genius - and addiction - as acutely as Walter Tevis' The Telegraph
The last collection of true-life nursing stories from the No.1 bestselling author of the CALL THE MIDWIFE series.
Jennifer Worth's bestselling memoirs of her time as a midwife have inspired and moved readers of all ages.
Now, in IN THE MIDST OF LIFE she documents her experiences as a nurse and ward sister, treating patients who were nearing the end of their lives. Interspersed with these stories from Jennifer's post-midwife career are the histories of her patients, from the family divided by a decision nobody could bear to make, to the mother who comes to her son's adopted country and joins his family without being able to speak a word of English.
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE also gives moving insights not just into Jennifer's life and career, but also of a period of time which seems very different to today's, fast-paced world.
The stunning new novel from the internationally bestselling author of THE SHADOW OF THE WIND.
In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man - David Martin - makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books, and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city's underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner. Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love.
Then David receives the offer of a lifetime: he is to write a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realises that there is a connection between this haunting book and the shadows that surround his home...
'One of the most memorable characters of post-war fiction' Daily Express
A classic novel set in the siege of Malta 1940-1942 from the bestselling author of The Cruel Sea
Father Salvatore was a simple, lumbering priest, a Kappillan serving the poor Valetta, when war came out of the blue skies to pound the island to dust.
Now amid the catacombs discovered by a chance bomb, he cared for the flood of homeless, starving, frightened people who sought shelter from the death that fell unceasingly from the sky.
His story, and the story of Malta, is told in superbly graphic pictures of six days during the siege. Each of those days brought forth from the Kappillan a message of inspiration to keep them going - the legendary tales of six mighty events of Malta's history which shone through the centuries and gathered them together in a fervent belief in their survival.
Six women - mothers, daughters, sisters - gone missing.
Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this is the story of two sisters, both of whom could be the next victims.
Arcade and Daffodil are twin sisters born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for an escape, they form an unbreakable bond nurtured by their grandmother's stories. Together they disappear into their imagination and forge a world where a patch of grass reveals an archaeologist's dig, the smoke emerging from the local paper mill becomes the dust rising from wild horses galloping deep beneath the earth, and an abandoned 1950s convertible transforms into a time machine that can take them anywhere.
But no matter how hard they try, Arc and Daffy can't escape the generational ghosts that haunt their family. And so, left to fend for themselves in the shadow of their rural Ohio town, the two sisters cling tight to one another.
Years later, as the sisters wrestle with the memories of their early life, a local woman is discovered dead in the river. Soon, more bodies are left floating in the water, and as the killer circles ever closer, Arc's promise to keep herself and her sister safe becomes increasingly desperate - and the powerful riptide of the savage side more difficult to survive.
Drawing from the true story of women killed in Chillicothe, Ohio, acclaimed novelist and poet Tiffany McDaniel has written a moving literary testament and fearless elegy for missing women everywhere.
PRAISE FOR TIFFANY McDANIEL'S BETTY
'A coming-of-age story filled with magic in language and plot' Observer
'Breahtaking' Vogue
'I felt consumed by this book. I loved it, you will love it' Daisy Johnson
'A page-turning Appalachian coming-of-age story told in undulating prose that settles right into you' Naoise Dolan
'Vivid and lucid, Betty has stayed with me' Kiran Millwood Hargrave
