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Life as a writer is colder, hungrier work than John Kendall bargained for. Not even the survival guides he's written can help him. So when notorious racehorse trainer Tremayne Vickers approaches Kendall to write his biography, it's an offer he can't turn down. Kendall becomes immersed in his host's lifestyle: riding racehorses and getting to know the family. But then a local stable girl is found dead - and the party's over. A killer is lurking in the shadows. And Kendall's survival tips are about to become more useful - and more deadly - than he could ever have imagined.

This is a classic mystery from Dick Francis, the champion of English storytellers. Jockey Kit Fielding's patron, Princess Casilia, is in trouble. Her invalid husband is being threatened by a ruthless business partner who wants to use the firm to manufacture arms. At the same time, some of the Princess' best horses are being killed - shot by a bolt. The only person the Princess can turn to is Kit - but he has problems of his own. His fiance Danielle has taken a shine to another man. And his old feud with Maynard Allardeck, racing steward and hereditary enemy of the Fieldings, might lose him his license to race. Between riding winners (and trying to save his impending marriage) Kit has somehow to find out and stop who is slaughtering the horses. But, as he's about to discover, the killer has more than horses in his sights...Praise for Dick Francis: "As a jockey, Dick Francis was unbeatable when he got into his stride. The same is true of his crime writing". (Daily Mirror). "Dick Francis' fiction has a secret ingredient - his inimitable knack of grabbing the reader's attention on page one and holding it tight until the very end". (Sunday Telegraph). "The narrative is brisk and gripping and the background researched with care ...the entire story is a pleasure to relish". (Scotsman). "Francis writing at his best". (Evening Standard). "A regular winner ...as smooth, swift and lean as ever". (Sunday Express). Dick Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys. The winner of over 350 races, he was champion jockey in 1953/1954 and rode for HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, most famously on Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National. On his retirement from the saddle, he published his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, before going on to write forty-three bestselling novels, a volume of short stories (Field of 13), and the biography of Lester Piggott. During his lifetime Dick Francis received many awards, amongst them the prestigious Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the genre, and three 'best novel' Edgar Allan Poe awards from The Mystery Writers of America. In 1996 he was named by them as Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List of 2000. Dick Francis died in February 2010, at the age of eighty-nine, but he remains one of the greatest thriller writers of all time.

A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life

The Keeper of Lost Causes (originally published in the UK as Mercy) is the nail-biting first book in the internationally bestselling Department Q series. It is now a major movie, released in the UK in August 2014. At first the prisoner scratches at the walls until her fingers bleed. But there is no escaping the room. With no way of measuring time, her days, weeks, months go unrecorded. She vows not to go mad. She will not give her captors the satisfaction. She will die first. Copenhagen detective Carl Morck has been taken off homicide to run a newly created department for unsolved crimes. His first case concerns Merete Lynggaard, who vanished five years ago. Everyone says she's dead. Everyone says it's a waste of time. He thinks they're right. The voice in the dark is distorted, harsh and without mercy. It says the prisoner's torture will only end when she answers one simple question. It is one she has asked herself a million times: Why is this happening? Praise for Jussi Adler-Olsen: "Gripping storytelling". (Guardian). "Engrossing". (Sunday Express). "As impressive as it is unnerving". (Independent). Jussi Adler-Olsen has sold over 10 million books worldwide. He is the internationally bestselling author of the Department Q series (Disgrace, Redemption, Guilt and Buried) featuring Carl Morck. The Keeper of Lost Causes was originally published in the UK as Mercy, and is now a major Danish language movie.

With the brilliant Palace of Treason, CIA veteran Jason Matthews confirms his position as the most exciting spy writer alive. This is as good as it gets. 'Portrays the heart-pounding rhythms of on-the-street espionage better than any novelist in recent memory' Daily Mail *** PARIS A young woman is cornered on a deserted boulevard. Moments later she walks away, leaving her assailant for dead. ATHENS An elderly man walks into the American embassy with a story to tell. MOSCOW The most unlikely of traitors is uncovered by the most dangerous of men. WASHINGTON A brilliant, unorthodox CIA agent must single-handedly connect the dots to stop an intricate house of cards from toppling in a cold war that's taken a terrifying new twist. *** 'The greatest ever female character in spy fiction' Sunday Times 'Superb. Enthralling. Shimmers with authenticity' New York Times 'A dazzling thrill-filled journey across the globe' Sunday Mirror 'The best espionage novel you've ever read' Huffington Post 'Taut, fast paced and authentic. A great American spy novel' Charles Cumming 'Sublime and sophisticated . . . a fast-paced thriller as noteworthy for its superior style as for its gripping depiction of a secretive world' Washington Post 'The narrative bristles with reality' Daily Mail 'Matthews is the insider's insider. He knows the secrets. And he is also a master storyteller' Vince Flynn 'Terrifically good' New York Times Book Review 'Thrilling, absorbing and brilliantly descriptive . . . you won't fail to be won over' Sunday Mirror

Featuring dozens of new activities as well as some of the most popular prompts from the original, Wreck This Journal Everywhere will have you travelling the city streets and country byways, filling the pages with man-made and natural objects, recording what you see, drawing, doodling - and destroying pages as you go. Perfect for sliding in your pocket or stuffing in your bag, Wreck This Journal Everywhere is the ideal creative companion!

The Wimpy Kid is back! In the most hotly-anticipated children's book release of the year, the hilarious, globally-bestselling and award-winning Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, sees BOOK 8 hit our shelves this November! Greg Heffley's on a losing streak. His best friend, Rowley Jefferson, has ditched him, and finding new friends in middle school is proving to be a tough task. To change his fortunes, Greg decides to take a leap of faith and turn his decisions over to chance. Will a roll of the dice turn things around, or is Greg's life destined to be just another hard-luck story? Perfect for readers of 8+ and also reluctant readers. You can also discover Greg on the big screen in any one of the three Wimpy Kid Movie box office smashes. Praise for Jeff Kinney: 'The world has gone crazy for Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid' - Sun 'Kinney is right up there with J K Rowling as one of the bestselling children's authors on the planet' - Independent 'The most hotly anticipated children's book of the year is here - Diary of a Wimpy Kid' - Big Issue 'Hilarious' - Telegraph As well as being the international bestselling author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney is also an online developer and designer. He is the creator of the children's virtual world, Poptropica. Jeff has been named one of TIME magazine's most influential people in the world. His original Diary of a Wimpy Kid was voted 'Best Children's Book of the Last 10 Years' by UK readers. Jeff lives with his family in Massachusetts, USA.

As a child, Landon Lucas Maxfield believed his life was perfect and looked forward to a future filled with promise - until tragedy tore his family apart and made him doubt everything he ever believed. All he wanted was to leave the past behind. When he met Jacqueline Wallace, his desire to be everything she needed came so easy...As easy as it could be for a man who learned that the soul is breakable and that everything you hoped for could be ripped away in a heartbeat. Tammara Webber, New York Times bestselling author of Easy, is a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life. Before writing full time, she was an undergraduate academic advisor, economics tutor, planetarium office manager, radiology call center representative, and the palest person to ever work at a tanning salon. She married her high school sweetheart, and is Mom to three adult kids and four very immature cats.

Baby Touch: Words is a bold, bright board book from Ladybird's best-selling Baby Touch series, perfect for little hands to explore. With a big touch-and-feel patch on every double page and bright, high-contrast colours, it helps to stimulate your baby's senses as well as gently helping to teach first key words such as mummy, daddy, dog and teddy.

The extraordinary letters of Italo Calvino, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, translated into English for the first time by Martin McLaughlin, with an introduction by Michael Wood. Italo Calvino, novelist, literary critic and editor, was also a masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This collection of his extraordinary letters, the first in English, gives an illuminating insight into his work and life. They include correspondence with fellow authors, generous encouragement to young writers, responses to critics, thoughts on literary criticism and literature in general, as well as giving glimpses of Calvino's role in the antifascist Resistance, his disenchantment with Communism and his travels to America and Cuba. Together they reveal the searching intellect, clarity and passionate commitment of a great writer at work.

Baby Touch: Numbers is part of Ladybird's best-selling Baby Touch series, helping to stimulate a baby's growing mind and senses from birth. Baby Touch: Numbers is a bold, bright board book perfect for little hands to explore. With touch-and-feel patches on every double page to help count the friendly animals, it helps to stimulate a baby's senses as well as gently helping to teach the numbers 1 to 5. Place your child's hand on the stimulating touch-and-feels and and count the bright animals on every spread.

Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, tells a powerful tale of poverty and undying hope in his moving novel No One Writes to the Colonel. 'The Colonel took the top off the coffee can and saw that there was only one spoonful left.' Fridays are different. Every other day of the week, the Colonel and his ailing wife fight a constant battle against poverty and monotony, scraping together the dregs of their savings for the food and medicine that keeps them alive. But on Fridays the postman comes - and that sets a fleeting wave of hope rushing through the Colonel's ageing heart. For fifteen years he's watched the mail launch come into harbour, hoping he'll be handed an envelope containing the army pension promised to him all those years ago. Whilst he waits for the cheque, his hopes are pinned on his prize bird and the upcoming cockfighting season. But until then the bird - like the Colonel and his wife - must somehow be fed...

In Living to Tell the Tale Gabriel Garcia Marquez - winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude - recounts his personal experience of returning to the house in which he grew up and the memories that this visit conjured. 'My mother asked me to go with her to sell the house'. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was twenty-three, a young man experimenting with his writing when this mother asked him to come back with her to the village of his grandparents and the memories of his Colombian childhood. In the first part of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir, the Nobel Prize-winning author returns to the atmosphere and influences that shaped his formidable imagination and formed the basis of his world-famous, and much-loved, fiction.

Nobel Prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez blends the natural with supernatural in Of Love and Other Demons - a novel which explores community, superstition and collective hysteria. 'An ash-grey dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst on to the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December.' When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesising a plague of rabies in the Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Maria, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive. Sierva Maria appears completely unscathed - but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it's not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town's woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcizing the evil spirit recognises the girl's sanity, but can he convince the town that it's not her that needs healing?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's News of a Kidnapping is a powerful retelling of actual events from a turbulent period of Colombian history. 'She looked over her shoulder before getting into the car to be sure no one was following her.' Pablo Escobar: billionaire drugs baron, ruthless manipulator brutal killer and jefe of the infamous Madellin cartel. A man whose importance in the international drug trade and renown for his charitable work among the poor brought him influence and power in his home country of Colombia, and the unwanted attention of the American courts. Terrified of the new Colombian President's determination to extradite him to America, Escobar found the best bargaining tools he could find: hostages. In the winter of 1990, ten relatives of Colombian politicians, mostly women, were abducted and held hostage as Escobar attempted to strong-arm the government into blocking his extradition. Two died, the rest survived, and from their harrowing stories Marquez retells, with vivid clarity, the terror and uncertainty of those dark an volatile months.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, explores the loneliness of power in Autumn of the Patriarch. 'Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside.' As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man lying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their arrogant, manically violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal? Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.