Elizabeth Gilbert?s first novel in twelve years is an extraordinary story of botany, exploration and desire, spanning across much of the 19th century. The novel follows the fortunes of the brilliant Alma Whittaker (daughter of a bold and charismatic botanical explorer) as she comes into her own within the world of plants and science. As Alma?s careful studies of moss take her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, the man she loves draws her in the...

BERLIN, NOVEMBER 1938. With storm troopers battering against his door, Otto Silbermann must flee out the back of his own home. He emerges onto streets thrumming with violence: it is Kristallnacht, and synagogues are being burnt, Jews rounded up and their businesses destroyed. Turned away from establishments he had long patronised, betrayed by friends and colleagues, Otto finds his life as a respected businessman has dissolved overnight. Desperately...

France 1562. As the Wars of Religion begin to take hold, a courageous Catholic woman and a passionate Huguenot believer find themselves united in possession of a priceless relic and set upon a quest to uncover a long-buried secret hidden in the haunting Chateau de Puivert in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand. On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother's resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother - how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness. When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving...

Set in the murky backstage world of late Victorian theatreland,�The Industry of Human Happiness is about the obsessive characters who dreamed of bringing recorded music to the masses. Max and his younger cousin Rusty have a vision of launching the gramophone industry from a Covent Garden basement. But a renowned opera singer is brutally murdered in his hotel bed and they are thrust into the underworld of opium dens, brothels and extortion. Ghosts...

When a boy is found drowned in the River Thames at Hungerford Stairs, novelist Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones of Bow Street are mystified to discover the child is not the missing youngster for whom they have been searching. But when two more boys are brutally murdered, the trail leads them on a hunt for a serial killer in a complicated case that tests their wits-but can they solve the clues and rescue another child before the murderer strikes...

London, 1861: Ten-year-old Nell belongs to a crew of mudlarks who work a stretch of the Thames along the Ratcliffe Highway. An orphan since her mother died four years past, leaving Nell with only broken dreams and a pair of satin slippers in her possession, she spends her days dredging up coals, copper and pieces of iron spilled by the river barges - searching for treasure in the mud in order to appease her master, Benjamin Murdstone. But one day,...

Part ghost story, part detective novel, Mr Godley?s Phantom has its own distinctive fifties flavour of cigarettes, petrol and musty interiors. As always, Mal Peet?s timing and pacing are faultless, with cinematic cutting between scenes, pitch-perfect dialogue and deftly brilliant sentences. It?s 1945 and Martin Heath, like many men at that time, is struggling to settle, to find his place again after the horrors of war. But an old comrade sends him...

England, 1936. The reign of Edward VIII has begun, but danger for the monarchy already looms on the horizon. At home in Morland Place, Polly Morland feels alone and abandoned, with her brother summoned to France by his old employer. James soon finds himself travelling to Russia, whereas Polly will voyage on the Queen Mary with New York - and a long-lost love - her destination. Soon the family are scattered to the four winds, from Hollywood to war-torn...

Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna?s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?s masterpiece, winner...