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"Normal people are extremely unusual. Think of all the people you know and ask yourself how many are normal. None of them! In fact you're probably the most normal of the lot and, let's face it, even you're not that normal. All normal people believe they are a little bit different, a little bit unique and a little bit special. On the other hand no one wants to be abnormal, so it's a fine line to tread. Happily, this brilliantly funny book shows everyone exactly how to be uniquely normally normal. Is it normal to: ...hold the banister with both hands? ...find the green man at crossings mildly attractive? ...drive a shopping trolley on the right? ...be afraid of aggressive hand dryers? ...wonder what coconut milk is actually for? Find out the answers to these and a million other perfectly normal questions in another beautifully funny, surprisingly wise and consistently heart-warming book from the best-selling Guy Browning."

Today, Dubai is a city of shimmering skyscrapers attracting thousands of tourists every year. Yet just sixty years ago Dubai's population scraped a living by picking dates, diving for pearls, or sailing in wooden dhows to trade with Iran and India. Dubai is everything the rest of the Arab world is not.Until recently it was the fastest-growing city in the world, with an economy whose growth outpaced China's while luring more tourists than all of India. The city has become a metaphor for the lush life, where the wealthy mingle in gilded splendour and luxury cars fill the streets, yet it is also beset by a backwash of bad design, environmental degradation and controversial labour practices. Dubai tells its unique story.

A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. Each couple has a 15 year old son; the two boys are united in their accountability for a single horrific act, caught on CCTV, an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the insulated worlds of their families. How far will each couple go to protect their child?

Operation Meltwater: FreeFlow, a group of internet activists committed to the freedom of information have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and have chosen Iceland as their HQ while they prepare to unleash their greatest coup on the world's media. On the glacial rim of erupting volcano Eyjafjallajoekull, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later, in the steam and mist, one of them is murdered. The list of people Freeflow has antagonized is long - the Chinese government, Israeli military, a German Bank, Italian politicians, even American College Fraternities. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he's getting precious little help from FreeFlow - for an organization dedicated to the transparency of information, they're a secretive bunch. But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with information about a scandal in the church. Her involvement with FreeFlow will cost her dear. And with the return of Magnus's brother Ollie to Iceland, the feud that has haunted their family for three generations is about to reignite.

A “beautiful story of a brotherhood between enemies” emerges from the horrors of World War II in this New York Times bestseller by the author of Devotion, now a Major Motion Picture. December, 1943: A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler—and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... What happened next would defy imagination and later be called “the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.” The U.S. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention for fear of facing a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search the world for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever.

The Internet, in the memorable words of EDGE founder John Brockman, is 'the infinite oscillation of our collective consciousness interacting with itself. It's not about computers. It's not about what it means to be human - in fact, it challenges, renders trite, our cherished assumptions on that score. It is about thinking'. In How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?, the latest volume in Brockman's cutting-edge Edge questions series, 154 of the world's leading intellectuals - scientists, artists and creative thinkers - explore exactly what it means to think in the new age of the Internet: from Nicholas Carr's reflections on what the Internet is doing to our brains, to Richard Dawkins's sanguine assessment of its long-term potential for good; and from Clay Shirky's assessment of the impact of the Internet on the dissemination and sharing of knowledge, to Ian and Joel Gold's observations on the seismic social changes it has brought about. Editor John Brockman has assembled a world-class array of contributors, which includes (in addition to those mentioned above) Daniel C. Dennett, Martin Rees, Steven Pinker, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sean Carroll, Brian Eno, Douglas Coupland, Matt Ridley, and scores of others at the epicentre of research in their respective disciplines.

Nestling on India's southern coast lies the town of Kittur. Ranging through the city's streets and schoolyards, bedrooms and businesses, its inner workings and its outer limits, through the myriad and distinctive voices of its inhabitants, Aravind Adiga brings an entire world vividly and unforgettably to life.

You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the Forest's lantern trees. Beyond the forest lie mountains so forbidding that no one has ever crossed them. The Oldest recount legends of a time when men and women made boats that could travel between worlds. One day, they will come back for you. You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, in the warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of an alien, sunless world. You are John Redlantern. You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to kill another, the first to venture into the Dark and the first to discover the truth about Eden.

WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2008Balram Halwai is the White Tiger - the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India - by murdering his master. The White Tiger presents a raw and unromanticised India, both thrilling and shocking - from the desperate, almost lawless villages along the Ganges, to the booming Wild South of Bangalore and its technology and outsourcing centres. The first-person confession of a murderer, The White Tiger is as compelling for its subject matter as for the voice of its narrator - amoral, cynical, unrepentant, yet deeply endearing.

Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman; and as the Parisian spring advances, he himself succumbs to the allure of the 'vast bright Babylon' and to the mysterious charm of Madame de Vionnet.

Snowdrops. That's what the Russians call them - the bodies that float up into the light in the thaw. Drunks, most of them, and homeless people who just give up and lie down into the whiteness, and murder victims hidden in the drifts by their killers. Nick has a confession. When he worked as a high-flying British lawyer in Moscow, he was seduced by Masha, an enigmatic woman who led him through her city: the electric nightclubs and intimate dachas, the human kindnesses and state-wide corruption. Y et as Nick fell for Masha, he found that he fell away from himself; he knew that she was dangerous, but life in Russia was addictive, and it was too easy to bury secrets - and corpses - in the winter snows...

London has long been a magnet for aspiring artists and writers, musicians and fashion designers seeking inspiration and success. In London Calling, Barry Miles explores the counter-culture - creative, avant garde, permissive, anarchic - that sprang u p in this great city in the decades following the Second World War. Here are the heady post-war days when suddenly everything seemed possible, the jazz bars and clubs of the fifties, the teddy boys and the Angry Young Men, Francis Bacon and the legen dary Colony Club, the 1960s and the Summer of Love, the rise of punk and the early days of the YBAs. The vitality and excitement of this time and years of change - and the sheer creative energy in the throbbing heart of London - leap off the pages of this evocative and original book.

'I ADORE cold-war novels and I live for love stories - The Museum of Broken Promises is a perfect combination of both. It's a gem of a book... beautiful, elegant.' Marian Keyes _________ Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated - a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby's shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest. Laure, the owner and curator, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display. Prague, 1985. Recovering from the sudden death of her father, Laure flees to Prague. But life behind the Iron Curtain is a complex thing: drab and grey yet charged with danger. Laure cannot begin to comprehend the dark, political currents that run beneath the surface of this communist city. Until, that is, she meets a young dissident musician. Her love for him will have terrible and unforeseen consequences. It is only years later, having created the museum, that Laure can finally face up to her past and celebrate the passionate love which has directed her life.

From the bestselling authority on connecting children with nature, a one-of-a-kind guide chock-full of practical ideas, advice and inspiration for creating a nature-rich life - for kids and grown-ups. In his groundbreaking international bestseller Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv spotlighted the alienation of children from the natural world, coining the term 'nature-deficit disorder'. Vitamin N is the comprehensive practical handbook, a complete prescription for enjoying the natural world. Includes: Five hundred activities Scores of informational websites An abundance of down-to-earth advice Dozens of thought-provoking essays. Unlike other guidebooks, Vitamin N (for 'nature') addresses the whole family and the wider community, encouraging parents eager to share nature with their kids. It is a dose of pure inspiration, reminding us that looking up at the stars or taking a walk in the woods is as joyful as it is essential, at any age.