John Murray Publisher

I relish every second of my sexual encounters: the good, the bad, the bizarre. Most of my serious relationships have started out as one-night stands.' Catherine Townsend describes herself as 'part slut, part hopeless romantic'. Her quest is to have h er cake and eat it -- an intelligent dinner date followed by a passionate one-night stand; to combine sleeping around with finding a soul mate. Sex in the City meets Girl With a One Track Mind in this candid, sexy, funny take on looking for love in u nexpected places and how to find Mr Right -- or at least Mr Right Now.

A boy watches his mother hooked and reeled ashore by a fisherman. A man builds a swing in the backyard to sit between his wife and her lover. A couple gives up their seat on a bus for lovers soon to be parted. A boy sees his mother come to life glidi ng on roller skates. Lloyd Jones's The Man in the Shed is a haunting collection of stories about family and longing. Jones's extraordinary tales take conventional family situations and tilts them sideways, delivering a memorable, beautiful blend of t he suburban and the surreal.

The history of science is often seen as a story of advancement but nothing could be further from the truth. Science, it is true, has progressed, but rarely in the direction intended and seldom for the reasons given. This has a lot to do with the peop le responsible. Meet Thales, credited as 'the father of science', whose only real claim to fame is that he often fell into ditches, discover how Archimedes never said Eureka and hated baths anyway and how the most lucrative ancient Greek invention wa s not democracy but the slot machine. Justin Pollard also fills us in on Issac Newton who liked to disguise himself and lurk in London's less salubrious pubs, how eleven people claimed to have invented the steam engine and why the first website was t welve foot across and made of wood.

The English language is a battlefield. Since the age of Shakespeare, arguments over correct usage have been acrimonious, and those involved have always really been contesting values - to do with morality, politics and class. THE LANGUAGE WARS examine s the present state of the conflict, its history and its future. Above all, it uses the past as a way of illuminating the present. Moving chronologically, the book explores the most persistent issues to do with English and unpacks the history of 'pro per' usage. Where did these ideas spring from? Which of today's bugbears and annoyances are actually venerable? Who has been on the front line in the language wars? THE LANGUAGE WARS examines grammar rules, regional accents, swearing, spelling, dicti onaries, political correctness, and the role of electronic media in reshaping language. It also takes a look at such niggling concerns as the split infinitive, elocution and text messaging. Peopled with intriguing characters such as Jonathan Swift, H . W. Fowler and George Orwell as well as the more disparate figures of Lewis Carroll, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lenny Bruce, THE LANGUAGE WARS is an essential volume for anyone interested in the state of the English language today or intrigued abo ut its future.

London, 1892. Oscar Wilde is at the height of his fame and fortune. But even the greatest wit of the Victorian age cannot know where his parlour game of 'Murder' will lead, as one by one the fourteen 'victims' chosen by his dinner guests begin to die ... A murderer is among their party. In a race against time, Wilde must take action before he becomes the next victim.

On the morning his headline-grabbing divorce trial is due to begin, multi-millionaire Terrance Wyler is found dead on his kitchen floor. He's been stabbed seven times. Detective Ari Greene arrives minutes before the international press and finds Wyler's four-year-old son asleep upstairs. When Wyler's ex-wife shows up at her lawyer's office with a bloody knife, it looks as if the case is over. But Greene soon discovers the Wyler family has secrets they'd like to keep hidden, and they're not the only ones. And if there's one thing Greene knows, it's that the truth is never simple.

The latest mystery novel from Brandreth, featuring Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle as sleuths. Oscar and Arthur must penetrate the innermost circle of the Catholic Church to solve a macabre mystery. The series is being developed for TV by Stephen Fry's Sprout Pictures. 'A cast of historical characters to die for' "Sunday Times"

Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16th century Venice, she's a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entree to this all-male profession, and inspired in her a shared mission to understand the secrets of the human body. Then her father disappears and Gabriella faces a crisis: without her father's patronage, she is no longer permitted to treat her patients. So she sets out across Europe to find her father. Following clues from his occasional enigmatic letters, Gabriella crosses Switzerland, Germany and France, entering strange and forbidding cities. She travels to Scotland, the Netherlands, and finally to Morocco. In each new land, she uncovers details of her father's unexplained flight, and opens new mysteries of her own. Not just the mysteries of ailments and treatments, but the ultimate mysteries of mortality, love, and the timeless human spirit. Filled with medical lore and sensuous, vivid details of Renaissance life, The Book of Madness and Cures is an intoxicating, unforgetable debut.

In INSIDE APPLE, Adam Lashinsky provides readers with an insight on leadership and innovation. He introduces Apple business concepts like the 'DRI' (Apple's practice of assigning a Directly Responsible Individual to every task) and the Top 100 (an annual event where that year's top 100 up-and-coming executives are surreptitiously transported to a secret retreat with company founder Steve Jobs). Based on numerous interviews, the book reveals exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers, and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era. While INSIDE APPLE provides a detailed investigation into the unique company, its lessons about leadership, product design and marketing are universal. INSIDE APPLE will appeal to anyone hoping to bring some of the Apple magic to their own company, career, or creative endeavour.

The digital age. An age of isolation, warped communication, disintegrating community. Where unfiltered and unregulated information pours relentlessly into our lives, destroying what it means to be human. Or an age of marvels. Where there is a world of wonder at our fingertips. Where we can communicate across the globe, learn in the blink of an eye, pull down the barriers that divide us and move forward together. Whatever your reaction to technological culture, the speed with which our world is changing is both mesmerising and challenging. In The Blind Giant, novelist and tech blogger Nick Harkaway draws together fascinating and disparate ideas to challenge the notion that digital culture is the source of all our modern ills, while at the same time showing where the dangers are real and suggesting how they can be combated. Ultimately, the choice is ours: engage with the machines that we have created, or risk creating a world which is designed for corporations and computers rather than people. This is an essential handbook for everyone trying to be human in a digital age.

Since Aristotle, we have fought to understand the causes behind everything. But this ideology is fading. In the age of big data, we can crunch an incomprehensible amount of information, providing us with invaluable insights about the what rather than the why. We're just starting to reap the benefits: tracking vital signs to foresee deadly infections, predicting building fires, anticipating the best moment to buy a plane ticket, seeing inflation in real time and monitoring social media in order to identify trends. But there is a dark side to big data. Will it be machines, rather than people, that make the decisions? How do you regulate an algorithm? What will happen to privacy? Will individuals be punished for acts they have yet to commit? In this groundbreaking and fascinating book, two of the world's most-respected data experts reveal the reality of a big data world and outline clear and actionable steps that will equip the reader with the tools needed for this next phase of human evolution.

On the morning his headline-grabbing divorce trial is due to begin, multi-millionaire Terrance Wyler is found dead on his kitchen floor. He's been stabbed seven times. Detective Ari Greene arrives minutes before the international press and finds Wyler's four-year-old son asleep upstairs. When Wyler's ex-wife shows up at her lawyer's office with a bloody knife, it looks as if the case is over. But Greene soon discovers the Wyler family has secrets they'd like to keep hidden, and they're not the only ones. And if there's one thing Greene knows, it's that the truth is never simple ...

This biography of Ataturk aims to strip away the myth to show the complexities of the man beneath. Born plain Mustafa in Ottoman Salonica in 1881, he trained as an army officer but was virtually unknown until 1919, when he took the lead in thwarting the victorious Allies' plan to partition the Turkish core of the Ottoman Empire. He divided the Allies, defeated the last Sultan and secured the territory of the Turkish national state, becoming the first president of the new republic in 1923. He imposed coherence, order and mordernity and in the process, created his own legend and his own cult.

Cecilia Banks has a great deal on her plate. But when her son Ian turns up on her doostep with the unexpected consequence of a brief fling, she feels she has no choice but to take the baby into her life. Cephas's arrival is the latest of many challenges Cecilia has to face. There is the matter of her cancer, for a start, an illness shared with her novelist friend Helen. Then there is Helen herself, whose observations of Cecilia's family life reveal a somewhat ambivalent attitude to motherhood. Meanwhile Tim, Cecilia's husband, is taking self-effacement to extremes, and Ian, unless he gets on with it, will throw away his best chance at happiness. Cecilia, however, does not have to manage alone. In a convent in Hastings sits Sister Diana Clegg who holds the ties that bind everyone not only to each other, but to strangers as yet unmet. As events unfold and as the truth about Cephas is revealed, we are invited to look closely at madness, guilt, mortal dread and the gift of resilience. No one will remain unchanged. 'Frank, courageous and entertaining. I felt better for reading it' Margaret Drabble.

YOU WANT LESS. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what's the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller pay cheques, fewer promotions-and lots of stress. AND YOU WANT MORE. You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends. NOW YOU CAN HAVE BOTH-LESS AND MORE. In The ONE Thing, you'll learn to cut through the clutter achieve better results in less time build momentum toward your goal dial down the stress overcome that overwhelmed feeling revive your energy stay on track master what matters to you The ONE Thing is the New York Times bestseller which delivers extraordinary results in every area of your life-work, personal, family, and spiritual. WHAT'S YOUR ONE THING?

A New York Times bestseller. Longlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Since Aristotle, we have fought to understand the causes behind everything. But this ideology is fading. In the age of big data, we can crunch an incomprehensible amount of information, providing us with invaluable insights about the what rather than the why. We're just starting to reap the benefits: tracking vital signs to foresee deadly infections, predicting building fires, anticipating the best moment to buy a plane ticket, seeing inflation in real time and monitoring social media in order to identify trends. But there is a dark side to big data. Will it be machines, rather than people, that make the decisions? How do you regulate an algorithm? What will happen to privacy? Will individuals be punished for acts they have yet to commit? In this groundbreaking and fascinating book, two of the world's most-respected data experts reveal the reality of a big data world and outline clear and actionable steps that will equip the reader with the tools needed for this next phase of human evolution.