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This is a collection of four comical stories by Roald Dahl. It includes "The Visitor" and "Bitch", two extracts from the notorious diairies of Oswald Hendryks Cornelius. In "The Great Switcheroo" and "The Last Act", the danger and power of desire is explored.

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I'm a lucky woman, thinks Susanna Greenfield. And why wouldn't she? Her handsome, successful husband is a loving father to their two teenage children. Her mother is her dearest friend, and her scatty but adored younger sister seems to have finally found some stability in her life. Susanna has a solid career as an art teacher, and if, as she has recently discovered, there's a hole inside her where her creative spirit used to be is that really such a big price to pay? But beneath the carefully maintained surface, seismic forces are a... read more

Standing on the fringes of life... offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor. This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is wri... read more

The wind is whispering in Woody CreekChange is in the air It's 1958 and Woody Creek is being dragged kicking and screaming into the swinging sixties. Jenny's daughters, Cara and Georgie, are now young women. They have inherited their mother's hands, but that is where their similarity ends. Raised separately, they have never met. A mistake from Cara's teenage years looms over her future, but she believes emphatically in the white wedding and happily ever after myth. Georgie has seen enough of marriage and motherhood. She plans to li... read more

Fat and ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate. Infuriatingly, all his fellow journalists cannot stop talking about the beloved Bear, who is no longer lighting up their work lives. Yet all is not as it appears. Os Sold... read more

Jonathan Evison opens his electrifying epic, "West of Here", at the Elwha River dam, where over a hundred years since settlers of the fictional town of Port Bonita tamed the river, their descendants gather in anticipation of the dam's blasting, and a new era of restoration. Across the next five hundred pages, Evison's story moves between 2006 and the town's earliest days at the close of the 19th century, overlaying stories of the people who passed through or dug in at Port Bonita, which swelled from settlement to town on the ragged... read more

Edward Warren, twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: his dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara. With her father's chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father's organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge? And to what lengths will his sister go ... read more

This is a story of right and wrong, and how sometimes they look the same. 1926: Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western Australia. The only inhabitants of Janus Rock, he and his wife Isabel live a quiet life, cocooned from the rest of the world. One April morning a boat washes ashore carrying a dead man and a crying infant - and the path of the couple's lives hits an unthinkable crossroads. Only years later do they discover the devastating consequences of the decision they made that day - as the b... read more

Explores the moral dilemmas faced by the parents of a severely disabled child. At which point should an obstetrician counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love?

In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together. Sunny, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan - and fast - to keep her cafe and customers safe...Yazmina, a young pregnant woman stolen from her remote village and now abandoned on Kabul's violent streets...Candace, a wealthy American who has finally left her husband for her Afghan lover, the enigmatic Wakil...Isabel, a determined journalist with a secret that might keep her from the biggest story of her life...... read more

The perfect summer read from a glorious new voice in commercial literary fiction. Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel. Inside is a letter informing her that her long-estranged mother has died, and a scrapbook Beth has never seen before. Entitled The Book of Summers, it's stuffed with photographs and mementos complied by her mother to record the seven glorious childhood summers Beth spent in rural Hungary. It was a time when she trod the tightrope between separated parents and two very different countries; her bewitching but imperfect... read more

When Dorothy came back from the dead, Aaron noticed that some people simply ignored the fact; some seemed to have forgotten she'd died in the first place; and others just walked straight on by.
The accident that killed Dorothy - involving an oak tree, a sun porch and some elusive biscuits - leaves Aaron bereft and the house a wreck. As those around him fuss and flap and bring him casserole after casserole, Aaron ploughs on. He busies himself with work at the family firm, a publisher with a successful line in "Beginner's Guide... read more

This title is winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011. Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. May be Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imper... read more

The new novel from Patrick Gale, author of Richard & Judy-bestseller Notes from an Exhibition, returning readers to his beloved Cornish coastline.
"Do you need me to pray for you now for a specific reason?" "I'm going to die." "We're all going to die. Does dying frighten you?" "I mean I'm going to kill myself."
When 20-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralysed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in the presence of Barnaby Johnson, the much-loved priest of a West Cornwall parish, the tragedy's reverberations open up the faul... read more

Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he had promised to find Rose Janko. Rose was married to the charismatic son of a travelling gypsy family, Ivo Janko. When Ray starts to investigate her disappearance, he's surprised that her family are so hostile towards him. The Jankos have not had an easy past. They are a clan touched by tragedy - either they are cursed, or they are hiding a terrible secret. Could it be that Rose's disc... read more

A bewitching tale of heartbreak and hope set in 1920s Alaska. Jack and Mabel hope that a fresh start in 'Alaska, our newest homeland' will enable them to put the strain of their childless marriage behind them. But the northern wilderness proves as unforgiving as it is beautiful: Jack fears that he will collapse under the strain of creating a farm, and the lonely winter eats its way into Mabel's soul. When the first snow falls, the couple find themselves building a small figure - a snow girl. The next morning, their creation has gon... read more

This is the story of Dr Alfred Jones, a fisheries scientist - for whom diary-notable events include the acquisition of a new electric toothbrush and getting his article on caddis fly larvae published in 'Trout and Salmon' - who finds himself reluctantly involved in a project to bring salmon fishing to the Highlands of the Yemen - a project that will change his life, and the course of British political history forever. With a wickedly wonderful cast of characters - including a visionary Sheikh, a weasely spin doctor, Fred's devilish... read more