The ​Prize in the Game

Lucinda Edmonds - Lovers ​& Players
From ​Rep to Hollywood, from the boulevards of Paris to the gardens of English country homes, Lucinda Edmonds' first novel sweeps the reader into the lives of three aspiring actresses. Jenna Shaw meets Frankie Duvall and Bettina Langdale at drama school and as she struggles to build her career and find love little seems certain, except for her friendship with them. However, as their lives take shape in the glamourous but always hazardous world of acting they are forced to confront feelings about themselves and each other that will change their lives forever.

Paulo Coelho - The ​witch of Portobello
How ​do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves--even if we are unsure of whom we are? That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho's profound new work, "The Witch of Portobello," It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well--or hardly at all. Among them: ""People create a reality and then become the victims of that reality. Athena rebelled against that--and paid a high price."" Heron Ryan, journalist ""I was used and manipulated by Athena, with no consideration for my feelings. She was my teacher, charged with passing on the sacred mysteries, with awakening the unknown energy we all possess. When we venture into that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do."" Andrea McCain, actress ""Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about 'what other people might think, ' always saying, 'I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream, ' always complaining 'that the conditions are never quite right.'"" Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda Like "The Alchemist," "The Witch of Portobello" is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice.

Stephen King - It
"A ​group of kids from Derry, Maine are terrorized by "IT". And now, 30 years later, they are being summond by "IT". And are faced with one final showdown with the evil that lives below Derry, and doesn't have a name..." William Henning, Resident Scholar "Little boy gets killed by monster brother remembers and wants revenge. him and his friends want to kill the monster because it is killing children" Gary Moles, Resident Scholar ""It" is your worst fear--literally. An ancient evil that returns periodically to feed upon the populace of a small town in Maine, the monstrous entity known as "It" can, and will, be everyone's worst nightmare come true. It attacked Derry years ago, but a group of kids defeated the monster--or so they'd believed. Now, they are adults, and "It" has come back. In fighting the monster, the adults recall what it was like to have fought it years before. The last time, they'd been lucky in one respect, at least. None of them had been killed. This time, one of them will die. A scary and suspenseful horror story that creates the world as it was in the late 1950's and early 1960's and as it was in the 1990's. " Gary Pullman, Resident Scholar "A group of friends faced a cruel monster dressed up like a clown when they were just kids. It killed children, because only children believed their fears. They thought they had killed it. They were wrong. 30 years later it is killing children again and the friends decide to meet again to destroy it." Katy, Resident Scholar "In this very discripted book these kids are all connected to "IT". And struggle to kill "IT"." Maggie Von, Resident Scholar "Kids in a small town called Derry are killed by "It". George, Bills brother, is one of these victims. Bill wants revenge. He and his other freinds try to kill it by going into the sewers. They think they killed it. They were wrong. Thirty years later they all find themselves back in Derry to fight It again." Janet Johnson, Resident Scholar

Kelley Armstrong - Bitten
An ​erotically charged, addictive thriller from the future queen of suspense. Living in Toronto for a year, Elena is leading the normal life she has always dreamed of, including a stable job as a journalist and a nice apartment shared with her boyfriend. As the lone female werewolf in existence, only her secret midnight prowls and her occasional inhuman cravings set her apart. Just one year ago, life was very different. Adopted by the Pack when bitten, Elena had spent years struggling with her resentment at having her life stolen away. Torn between two worlds, and overwhelmed by the new passions coursing through her body, her only option for control was to deny her awakening needs and escape. But now the Pack has called Elena home to help them fight an alliance of renegade werewolves who are bent on exposing and annihilating the Pack. And although Elena is obliged to rejoin her "family," she vows not to be swept up in Pack life again, no matter how natural it might feel. She has made her choice. Trouble is, she's increasingly uncertain if it's the right one. An erotically charged thriller, Bitten will awaken the voracious appetite of every reader, as the age-old battle between man and beast, between human and inhuman forces, comes to a head in one small town and within one woman's body.

Alison Weir - The ​Lady Elizabeth
England, ​1536. Home to the greatest, most glittering court in English history. But beneath the dazzling façade lies treachery... Elizabeth Tudor is daughter to Henry VIII, the most powerful king England has ever known. She is destined to ascend the throne, and deferred to as the King's heiress, but that all changes when her mother Anne Boleyn - Henry's great passion and folly - is executed for treason. Elizabeth 's life alters in a heartbeat. A pawn in the savage game of Tudor power politics, she is disinherited, declared a bastard, and left with only her quick wits to rely on for her very existence. But Elizabeth is determined to survive, to foil those who want to destroy her, or who are determined to use her as a puppet for their own lethal ambition, and to reclaim her birthright...

Cassandra Clare - Clockwork ​Angel
Magic ​is dangerous—but love is more dangerous still. When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London's Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos. Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What's more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa's power for his own. Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by—and torn between—two best friends: Jem, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm's length...everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realizes that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world...and that love may be the most dangerous magic of all.

Nicholas Sparks - The ​Lucky One
When ​U.S. Marine Logan Thibault finds a photograph of a smiling young woman half-buried in the dirt during his third tour of duty in Iraq, his first instinct is to toss it aside. Instead, he brings it back to the base for someone to claim, but when no one does, he finds himself always carrying the photo in his pocket. Soon Thibault experiences a sudden streak of luck—winning poker games and even surviving deadly combat that kills two of his closest buddies. Only his best friend, Victor, seems to have an explanation for his good fortune: the photograph—his lucky charm. Back home in Colorado, Thibault can’t seem to get the photo—and the woman in it—out of his mind. Believing that she somehow holds the key to his destiny, he sets out on a journey across the country to find her, never expecting the strong but vulnerable woman he encounters in Hampton, North Carolina—Elizabeth, a divorced mother with a young son—to be the girl he’s been waiting his whole life to meet. Caught off guard by the attraction he feels, Thibault keeps the story of the photo, and his luck, a secret. As he and Elizabeth embark upon a passionate and all-consuming love affair, the secret he is keeping will soon threaten to tear them apart—destroying not only their love, but also their lives. Filled with tender romance and terrific suspense, The Lucky One is Nicholas Sparks at his best—an unforgettable story about the surprising paths our lives often take and the power of fate to guide us to true and everlasting love.

Christopher Moore - Lamb
The ​birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiahs best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Saviors pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But theres no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isnt about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.

Jennifer Weiner - Best ​Friends Forever
Some ​bonds can never be broken... Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they're both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school's scapegoat. Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents' house in their small hometown of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She's just returned from Bad Date #6 when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. "Something horrible has happened," Val tells Addie, "and you're the only one who can help." Best Friends Forever is a grand, hilarious, edge-of-your-seat adventure; a story about betrayal and loyalty, family history and small-town secrets. It's about living through tragedy, finding love where you least expect it, and the ties that keep best friends together.

Ben Elton - This ​Other Eden
Small, ​well appointed future. Semi detached. If the end of the world is nigh, then surely it’s only sensible to make alternative arrangements. Certainly the Earth has its good points, but what most people need is something smaller and more manageable. Of course there are those who say that’s planetary treason, but who cares what the weirdos and terrorists think? Not Nathan. All he cares is that his movie gets made and that’s there’s somebody left to see it. In marketing terms the end of the world will be very big. Anyone trying to save it should remember that.

Paolo Giordano - The ​Solitude of Prime Numbers
A ​prime number is inherently a solitary thing: it can only be divided by itself, or by one; it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia also move on their own axes, alone with their personal tragedies. As a child Alice's overbearing father drove her first to a terrible skiing accident, and then to anorexia. When she meets Mattia she recognises a kindred spirit, and Mattia reveals to Alice his terrible secret: that as a boy he abandoned his mentally-disabled twin sister in a park to go to a party, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found. These two irreversible episodes mark Alice and Mattia's lives for ever, and as they grow into adulthood their destinies seem irrevocably intertwined. But then a chance sighting of a woman who could be Mattia's sister forces a lifetime of secret emotion to the surface. A meditation on loneliness and love, The Solitude of Prime Numbers asks, can we ever truly be whole when we’re in love with another?

George Mann - The ​Affinity Bridge
Welcome ​to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by new inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, whilst ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen and journalists. But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side. For this is also a world where lycanthropy is a rampant disease that plagues the dirty whorehouses of Whitechapel, where poltergeist infestations create havoc in old country seats, where cadavers can rise from the dead and where nobody ever goes near the Natural History Museum.

Charles Dickens - A ​Tale of Two Cities
It ​is the latter part of the eighteenth century, France and England are at war. Then the French Revolution begins and some people who were friends become enemies. But strange things happen in such turbulent times.

Louisa May Alcott - Good ​Wives
The ​novel is a sequel to L. M. Alcott's other novel "Little Women." This story follows the little girls into adult hood. There are autobiographical elements in the book as Jo's struggles in her writing career and other events are depicted. The novel created four most beloved women in American Literature.

Colleen McCullough - The ​Thorn Birds
A ​phenomenal worldwide bestseller since 1977 THE THORN BIRDS is a robust, romantic saga of three generations. It begins in the early years of this century when Paddy Cleary moves his wife and seven children to Drogheda, an Australian sheep station, owned by his autocratic and childless older sister. For more than half a century we follow their fates, particularly those of Meggie, the only Cleary daughter, and the one man she truly loves, Ralph de Bricassart - stunningly handsome, ambitious, and a priest. As background to the Cleary family's lives there is the land itself: relentless in its demands, brilliant in its flowering.

Scott Westerfeld - Leviathan
It ​is the cusp of World War I. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ genetically fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet. Aleksandar Ferdinand, a Clanker, and Deryn Sharp, a Darwinist, are on opposite sides of the war. But their paths cross in the most unexpected way, taking them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure… One that will change both their lives forever.

Charles Dickens - Hard ​Times
Coketown ​is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from any young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and ‘bully of humanity’ Mr Bounderby, and his son Tom rebels to become embroiled in gambling and robbery. And, as their fortunes cross with those of free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe and victimized weaver Stephen Blackpool, Gradgrind is eventually forced to recognize the value of the human heart in an age of materialism and machinery. This edition of Hard Times is based on the text of the first volume publication of 1854. Kate Flint’s introduction sheds light on the frequently overlooked character interplay in Dickens’s great critique of Victorian industrial society.

Stephen Fry - The ​Liar
The ​spirits of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh glower benignly over this very funny first novel by Stephen Fry. The novel has an ingenious plot filled with surprises and glittering with hilarious, often indecent inventions: a pugnacious faculty meeting that collapses into an exchange of obscenities, the fabrication of a 'lost' pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, and an exercise in intellectual gamesmanship that engages some of the finest minds and blackest hearts in England. Stephen Fry's sympathetic portrayal of his defiantly unconventional hero makes for an outrageously entertaining debut.

Jane Green - The ​Love Verb
Number ​one best-seller Jane Green - author of "The Beach House" and "Spellbound" - explores changes in relationships when a family member is struck with illness in her heartbreaking novel "The Love Verb". Love means being there - through everything. Everyone in Callie's family is busy; her sister is a free-spirited Manhattan chef, her best friend Lila is coping with the vitriol of her new man's ex-wife, and her parents, Walter and Honor, have rich though separate lives. But when Callie discovers the breast cancer she thought she'd beaten has returned, they all find that their lives shift to focus on caring for Callie. "A beautifully written and intensely sad lesson in what it really means to love someone you know you're going to lose." ("Daily Telegraph"). "Stylish, wickedly insightful...family, friends and love is truly, heartwrenchingly tested." ("Mirror"). "A moving account of a family faced with a heartbreaking situation. I defy anyone to get through to the end without crying." ("Sunday Express"). Jane Green's internationally best-selling novels, including "The Other Woman", "Jemima J." , "Babyville", "The Patchwork Marriage" (published as "Another Piece of My Heart" in the USA), "Girl Friday (Dune Road)", "Life Swap (Swapping Lives)", "Second Chance", "Straight Talking", "Mr. Maybe", and "Bookends", are moving and true to life. "The Love Verb" is published as "Promises to Keep" in the USA.

Stephen Fry - Making ​History
Michael ​Young is convinced his brilliant history thesis will win him a doctorate, a pleasant academic post, a venerable academic publisher and his beloved girlfriend Jane. A historian should know better than to imagine that he can predict the future. Leo Zuckerman is an ageing physicist obsessed with the darkest period in human history, utterly driven by his fanatical hatred of one man. A lover's childish revenge and the breaking of a rotten clasp cause the two men to meet in a blizzard of swirling pages. Pages of history. When they come together nothing - past, present or future - will ever be the same again.