The ​Lost World

Josie Lloyd - Emlyn Rees - Love ​Lives
In ​1871 Appleforth House was burned to the ground. Now, over a hundred years later, the house is being rebuilt - and so the lives of four very different people converge. Ned, a successful architect, is obsessed with restoring the house to its former glory. Focussed and determined - and bruised by a past relationship - he's not looking for distractions. But then Ellen, a documentary-maker, arrives to make a film about one of the local landmarks, leaving her boyfriend and some tough decisions temporarily behind her. But as pieces of the past start to fall into place, the restoration also brings together Jimmy and Verity, two local teenagers: one falling in love for the first time, the other an incurable romantic, determined to find her fairy-tale hero. And as their hopes and fears come together they all learn some surprising lessons about finding love in the most unlikely places ...

Katie Fforde - Paradise ​Fields
It's ​not as if Nel hadn't enough on her plate already: organising a farmers' market in the picturesque Paradise Fields and keeping track of her unnervingly beautiful teenage daughter - plus sorting out a houseful of animals - are quite enough to keep her busy. The last thing she needs is another complication in her life, but when her old friend Sir Gerald dies and his son, Pierce - accompanied by his glamorous American wife - takes possession of The Big House, it seems that preserving the Fields is not on his list of priorities. Nel takes up arms, determined to fight for the meadow and the market she loves. But whom can she trust? She's pretty sure her friends Sacha and Vivian are on her side, but her sensible boyfriend Simon, an estate agent, is less encouraging. And then there's Jake, the exaspering yet attractive stranger who kissed her under the mistletoe. Maybe she's been a not-so-merry widow for far too long.

Katie Fforde - Wedding ​Season
Sarah ​is a wedding planner hiding a rather inconvenient truth - she doesn't believe in love. Or not for herself, anyway. But as the confetti flutters away on the June breeze of yet another successful wedding she somehow finds herself agreeing to organise two more, on the same day and only two months away. And whilst her celebrity bride is all sweetness and light, her own sister soon starts driving her mad with her high expectations but very limited budget. Luckily Sara has two tried and tested friends on hand to help her. Elsa, an accomplished dress designer who likes to keep a very low profile, and Bron, a multi-talented hairdresser who lives with her unreconstructed boyfriend and who'd like to go solo in more ways than one. They may be very good at their work but romance doesn't feature very highly in any of their lives. As the big day draws near all three women find that patience is definitely a virtue in the marriage game. And as all their working hours are spent preparing for the wedding of the year plus one they certainly haven't got any time to even think about love . Or have they?

Tim Vicary - White ​Death (Oxford Bookworms)
White ​Death - Sarah Harland is nineteen, and she is in prison. At the airport, they find heroin in her bag. So, now she is waiting to go to court. If the court decides that it was her heroin, then she must die. She says she did not do it. But if she did not, who did? Only two people can help Sarah: her mother, and an old boyfriend who does not love her now. Can they work together? Can they find the real criminal before it is too late? (Word count 6,600)

Georgia Byng - Molly ​Moon stops the World
Georgia ​Byng's mind-bending heroine makes a California-bound comeback, this time heading to L.A. to stop a power-hungry businessman from hypnotizing his way into the presidency of the United States. When Molly learns that Lucy Logan has a dangerous job for her -- stop multibillionaire (and ultra-strong hypnotist) Primo Cell in his tracks -- the orphan thinks this task might be more than she can handle. Thankfully, she has Rocky and other characters along for the trip, and Molly soon finds herself hobnobbing with Hollywood stars. But Molly learns that Primo has the power of permanent hypnotism that can only be broken by a secret password -- how can she reverse his effects? Molly discovers a startling surprise -- she has time-stopping powers of her own -- and after Primo's son saves them from near death, she finds out that her problems have only just begun. Glittering with even more action and adventure than Byng's first book, Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism, this sequel will have readers starry-eyed for more. Plot-twisting turns of events keep coming throughout, and with all of Molly's personal revelations, fans will feel like their world has stopped, too, until the last page. Shana Taylor

Jacqueline Wilson - The ​Dare Game
Tracey ​Beaker, the Great Inventor of Extremely Outrageous Dares - and I dare YOU not to say this is the most brilliant story ever! I thought I was going to live happily ever after with Cam as my foster-mum. Well, ha ha! It hasn't turned out like that. Cam's so MEAN! She won't buy me designer clothes so all the other kids at my new school laugh at me. No wonder I bunk off and go to this special secret place. There are these two boys I meet there, Alexander and Football. We play the Dare Game - and I always win. I'm the greatest. I AM!

Lewis Carroll - Alice ​In Wonderland
When ​Alice tumbles down, down, down a rabbit-hole one hot summer's afternoon in pursuit of a White Rabbit, she finds herself in Wonderland. And here begin the fantastical adventures that will see her experiencing extraordinary changes in size, swimming in a pool of her own tears and attending the very maddest of tea parties. For Wonderland is no ordinary place and the characters that populate it are quite unlike anybody young Alice has ever met before.

Drew Karpyshyn - Path ​of Destruction
Once ​the Sith Order teemed with followers. But their rivalries divided them in endless battles for supremacy. Until one dark lord at last united the Sith in the quest to enslave the galaxy—and exterminate the Jedi. Yet it would fall to another, far more powerful than the entire Brotherhood of Darkness, to ultimately realize the full potential of the Sith, and wield the awesome power of the dark side as never before. Since childhood, Dessel has known only the abuse of his hateful father and the dangerous, soul-crushing labor of a cortosis miner. Deep in the tunnels of the desolate planet Apatros, endlessly excavating the rare mineral valued throughout the galaxy, Dessel dreams of the day he can escape — a day he fears may never come. But when a high-stakes card game ends in deadly violence, Dessel suddenly finds himself a wanted man. On the run from vengeful Republic forces, Dessel vanishes into the ranks of the Sith army, and ships out to join the bloody war against the Republic and its Jedi champions. There, Dessel’s brutality, cunning, and exceptional command of the Force swiftly win him renown as a warrior. But in the eyes of his watchful masters, he is destined for a far greater role in the ultimate Sith plan for the galaxy – if he can prove himself truly worthy. As an acolyte in the Sith academy, studying the secrets and skills of the dark side at the feet of its greatest masters, Dessel embraces his new Sith identity: Bane. However the true test is yet to come. In order to gain acceptance into the Brotherhood of Darkness one must fully surrender to the dark side through a trial by fire that Bane, for all his unquenchable fury and lust for power, may not be strong enough to endure...especially since deception, treachery, and murder run rampant among the Sith disciples, and utter ruthlessness alone is the key to survival. Only by defying the most sacred traditions, rejecting all he has been taught, and drawing upon the long-forgotten wisdom of the very first Sith can Bane hope to triumph — and forge from the ashes of that which he must destroy a new era of absolute dark power.

Katie Fforde - Restoring ​Grace
Ellie ​Summers' life is unravelling. Finding herself pregnant - and her sexy but idle boyfriend Rick less than enthusiastic about parenthood - she needs a plan. Fast. Grace Soudley's life is also coming apart at the seams - her only security is the beautiful yet crumbling old house she was left by her godmother. But unless she can find a fortune, Luckenham House will disintegrate around her. When Ellie and Grace meet, the two very different women find they can help each other out. Ellie needs a place to stay; Grace needs a lodger. Both of them need a friend. But then the disconcertingly engaging Flynn Cormack arrives on the scene, apparently determined to help. And when Grace discovers some beautiful painted panels hidden behind the tattered dining-room curtains, the whole business of restoration starts to get serious...

E. M. Forster - A ​Room with a View
Lucy ​has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, eccentric Mr Emerson and. most of all, his passionate son George. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Victorian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse, until she finally learns to follow the power of her own heart. A Room with a View was brought to life in a film starring Helena Bonham Carter.

Jacqueline Wilson - Mark ​Spark in the Dark
Everyone ​thinks Mark is the bravest boy in the whole school. But secretly Mark is afraid of the dark! One night, when he thinks his gran is in trouble, Mark is the only one who can help. But can Mark be brave enough to help his gran in the pitch black night-time...?

Nick Hornby - 31 ​Songs
Most ​of them loved, some of them once loved, all of them significant to him - beginning with Teenage Fanclub's 'Your Love Is the Place That I Come From', ending with Patti Smith's 'Pissing in a River', and encompassing singers as varied as Van Morrison and Nelly Furtado, songs as different as 'Thunder Road' and 'Puff the Magic Dragon' (reggae style). He discusses, among other things, guitar solos and singers whose teeth whistle and the sort of music you hear in the Body Shop. Together with additional writings on music from his column in the New Yorker - seen in the UK for the first time - 31 Songs is for Hornby what many of us have always wanted: a soundtrack to accompany life.

Yehudi Menuhin - A ​király, a macska és a hegedű / The King, the Cat and the Fiddle
A ​jól ismert angol meseíró szövetkezett a 20. század egyik legnagyobb zeneművészével ennek a szívet melengető mesekönyvnek a megalkotására. Ennél a történetnél aligha lehet a gyerekek számára ügyesebben, érzékletesebben elmondani, hogy milyen nagy szerepe van a művészetnek a leghétköznapibb életünkben is. Nem elég, ha nem lyukas a tető, nem gurulnak el a koronaékszer gyöngyei, vagy nem fázunk. A testünk-lelkünk akkor is didereg, ha hiányzik az életünkből a szépség.

Muriel Spark - The ​Driver's Seat
Lise ​leaves her home in northern Europe for a holiday, but it is not rest and relaxation that she is looking for... Driven to distraction by an office job, she leaves everything and flies south on holiday—in search of passionate adventure, the obsessional experience and sex. Infinity and eternity attend Lise's last terrible day in the unnamed southern city that is her final destination.

Muriel Spark - Memento ​Mori (angol)
Unforgettably ​astounding and a joy to read, Memento Mori is considered by many to be the greatest novel by the wizardly Dame Muriel Spark. In late 1950s London, something uncanny besets a group of elderly friends: an insinuating voice on the telephone informs each, "Remember you must die." Their geriatric feathers are soon thoroughly ruffled by these seemingly supernatural phone calls, and in the resulting flurry many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed. As spooky as it is witty, poignant and wickedly hilarious, Memento Mori may ostensibly concern death, but it is a book which leaves one relishing life all the more.

Muriel Spark - The ​Finishing School
(from ​Publishers Weekly) A swift, blithe comedy of sexual and creative jealousy plays out on the grounds of a dubious finishing school in Dame Spark's gem of a novel, her 22nd. College Sunrise, founded by would-be novelist Rowland Mahler and his practical wife, Nina Parker, is a mobile institution (currently situated in Lausanne) at which very little of use is taught. Rowland does preside over a popular creative writing class (with five students, it boasts more than half the school's enrollment), while Nina takes care of the office business and dispenses delicious advice in her informal etiquette seminars ("[I]f you, as a U.N. employee, are chased by an elephant stand still and wave a white handkerchief. This confuses the elephant's legs"). Trouble arrives in the form of redheaded, 18-year-old Chris Wiley, who has come to College Sunrise to work on his novel about Mary, Queen of Scots. Chris's authorial insouciance—he is supremely confident of his talents and rather dismissive of historical fact—infuriates Rowland, whose ego was inflated by minor early successes and who has a terrible case of writer's block. Rowland becomes obsessed with the novel and its creator, and their struggle—" 'I could kill him,' thought Rowland. 'But would that be enough?' "—forms the heart of the book, even as other players, sketched briefly but brilliantly (the "tall and lonely" Tilly, princess of an unknown and perhaps fictitious country; the sweet, stupid Mary Foot, who wants to own a "sahramix" [sic] shop) fall in and out of love and beds. Spark, who is 86, writes in a polished, rather old-fashioned tone (references to "punk music," laptops and other things of the modern world surprise), but this is a cool, delightful little book of bad deeds and good manners. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Muriel Spark - The ​Ballad of Peckham Rye
The ​Ballad of Peckham Rye is the wickedly farcical fable of a blue-collar town turned upside down. When the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley hires Dougal Douglas (a.k.a. Douglas Dougal) to do "human research" into the private lives of its workforce, they are in no way prepared for the mayhem, mutiny, and murder he will stir up. "Not only funny but startlingly original," declared The Washington Post, "the legendary character of Dougal Douglas...may not have been boasting when he referred so blithely to his association with the devil." In fact this Music Man of the thoroughly modern corporation changes the lives of all the eccentric characters he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to V.R. Druce, unsuspecting Managing Director.

Graham Swift - Waterland ​/ Last Orders
In ​Waterland, Tom Crick, a history teacher in the Fenlands, is driven by a marital crisis and the provocation of one of his pupils to forsake his teaching and relate the story of his family, who have lived in the Fens since the eighteenth century. In Last Orders, four men once close to jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them. On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day's outing, Last Orders is Graham Swift's most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.

William Boyd - The ​New Confessions
The ​New Confessions is equal parts Laurence Sterne, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies and Saul Bellow, with a wry 1980s touch that is pure Boyd.The New Confessions is the outrageous, extraordinary, hilarious and heartbreaking autobiography of John James Todd, Scotsman born in 1899 and one of the great self-appointed (and failed) geniuses of the twentieth century.The New Confessions takes us from Todd's boyhood in Scotland to the trenches of World War I, to his fretful progress as film maker in the Weimar Republic, to deportation and exile in Mexico and the Allied invasion of St. Tropez, and finally to dark Hollywood days, and the obscurity of the blacklist, during the McCarthy era.The New Confessions is told from the questionable vantage point of not-so-serene old age and self-imposed exile in Mediterranean. Charming and exasperating, shrewd and foolish, vain and disarmingly candid, Todd lets us in on the secrets of his chaotic and beguiling life.The New Confessions is one man's astonishing march through chaos and adventure of three quarters of a century.

Penelope Lively - The ​Photograph
Searching ​through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years earlier, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's work as a historian should have inured him to unexpected findings and reversals, but he is ill-prepared for this radical shift in perception. His mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Had Kath planned for him to find out all along? As Glyn begins to search for answers, he, and those around him, find the certainties of the past and present slip away, and the picture of the beautiful woman they all thought they knew distort.