Doubleday The Flames Haydock Sophie

Vienna, 1912. Behind every painting, there is a story • A new century is dawning. Vienna is at its zenith, an opulent, extravagant city teeming with art, music and radical ideas. It is a place where anything seems possible • Edith and Adele are sisters, the daughters of a wealthy bourgeois family. They are expected to follow the rules, to marry well, and produce children. Gertrude is in thrall to her flamboyant older brother. Marked by a traumatic childhood, she envies the freedom he so readily commands. Vally was born into poverty but is making her way in the world as a model for the eminent artist Gustav Klimt • Fierce, passionate and determined, none of these women is quite what they seem. But their lives are set on a collision course when they become entangled with the controversial young artist Egon Schiele whose work - and private life - are sending shockwaves through Viennese society

'The oak is the wooden tie between heaven and earth. It is the lynch pin of the British landscape.' • The oak is our most beloved and most common tree. It has roots that stretch back to all the old European cultures but Britain has more ancient oaks than all the other European countries put together. More than half the ancient oaks in the world are in Britain • Many of our ancestors - the Angles, the Saxons, the Norse - came to the British Isles in longships made of oak. For centuries the oak touched every part of a Briton's life - from cradle to coffin It was oak that made the 'wooden walls' of Nelson's navy, and the navy that allowed Britain to rule the world. Even in the digital Apple age, the real oak has resonance - the word speaks of fortitude, antiquity, pastoralism

The Salpetriere asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope • Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family

The season's just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time • Frankie is haunted by his daughter's death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist, makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie-obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they've lost • With trademark wit and playfulness, in this stunning linked short-story collection Jan Carson explores complex family dynamics, ageing, immigration, gender politics, the decline of the Church and the legacy of the Troubles

The village cleaning lady who holds everyone's house-keys opens a boot to find some unexpectedly dead contents; a vengeful dinner party host serves more than just a roast to her six guests; and driven to distraction by his new young wife, a man resorts to two grisly acts, in a gripping re-imagining of a famous Irish ballad • Ripping away the polite facade of small communities, these stories of love, lies and revenge reveal the roiling emotions and frustration that can lead seemingly good people to do bad things. Rich in compassion, pathos and humour, Anne Youngson offers us her dark take on human foibles, pettiness and rivalry in this sparkling, unputdownable collection

"How to describe the ecstatic song of larks? How the writers and poets have tried..." • Skylarks are the heralds of our countryside. Their music is the quintessential sound of spring. The spirit of English pastoralism, they inspire poets, composers and farmers alike. In the trenches of World War I they were a reminder of the chattering meadows of home • Perhaps you were up with the lark, or as happy as one. History has seen us poeticise and musicise the bird, but also capture and eat them. We watch as they climb the sky, delight in their joyful singing, and yet we harm them too • The Soaring life of the Lark explores the music and poetry; the breath-taking heights and struggle to survive of one of Britain's most iconic songbirds

I look at the Ryeland ewes, white and fat with fecundity. Replete with contentment • Contentment is a transmissible condition. I catch it off the sheep • The old time shepherds used to sleep with their sheep, out in the fields. I do it sometimes too, on the dry nights, the sheep lying down around me. I'm not sure on those nights who is protecting whom • Everybody thinks they know what sheep are like: they're stupid, noisy, cowardly ('lambs to the slaughter'), and they're 'sheepwrecking' the environment • Or maybe not. Contrary to popular prejudice, sheep are among the smartest animals in the farmyard, fiercely loyal, forming long and lasting friendships. Sheep, farmed properly, are boons to biodiversity. They also happen to taste good and their fleeces warm us through the winter - indeed, John Lewis-Stempel's family supplied the wool for Queen Elizabeth's 'hose'

'Dusk is filling the valley. It is the time of the gloaming, the owl-light • Out in the wood, the resident tawny has started calling, Hoo-hoo-hoo-h-o-o-o.' • There is something about owls. They feature in every major culture from the Stone Age onwards. They are creatures of the night, and thus of magic. They are the birds of ill-tidings, the avian messengers from the Other Side • But owls - with the sapient flatness of their faces, their big, round eyes, their paternal expressions - are also reassuringly familiar. We see them as wise, like Athena's owl, and loyal, like Harry Potter's Hedwig. Human-like, in other words • No other species has so captivated us

‘To see a hare sit still as stone, to watch a hare boxing on a frosty March morning, to witness a hare bolt . . . these are great things. Every field should have a hare.’ • The hare, a night creature and country-dweller, is a rare sight for most people. We know them only from legends and stories. They are shape-shifters, witches’ familiars and symbols of fertility. They are arrogant, as in Aesop’s The Hare and the Tortoise, and absurd, as in Lewis Carroll’s Mad March Hare. In the absence of observed facts, speculation and fantasy have flourished. But real hares? What are they like? • In The Private Life of the Hare, John Lewis-Stempel explores myths, history and the reality of the hare. And in vivid, elegant prose he celebrates how, in an age when television cameras have revealed so much in our landscape, the hare remains as elusive and magical as ever

Haunting, intense and irresistible, The Illness Lesson is an extraordinary debut about women's minds and bodies, and the time-honoured tradition of doubting both • In 1871, at an elite new school designed to shape the minds of young women, the inscrutable and defiant Eliza Bell has been overwhelmed by an inexplicable illness • Before long, the other girls start to succumb to its peculiar symptoms - rashes, tics, • night wanderings and fits • As the disease takes hold, teacher Caroline Hood tries desperately to hide her own symptoms, but • the powers-that-be turn to a sinister physician with dubious methods • Does Caroline have the courage to confront the all-male, all-knowing authorities of her world • and protect the young women in her care?

Zachary Cloudesley is gifted in a remarkable way. But not all gifts are a blessing • Leadenhall Street, London, 1754 • Raised amongst the cogs and springs of his father's workshop, Zachary Cloudesley has grown up surrounded by strange and enchanting clockwork automata. He is a happy child, beloved by his father Abel and the workmen who help bring his father's creations to life • He is also the bearer of an extraordinary gift; at the touch of a hand, Zachary can see into the hearts and minds of the people he meets • But then a near-fatal accident will take Zachary away from the workshop and his family. His father will have to make a journey that he will never return from. And, years later, only Zachary can find out what happened • A beautifully crafted historical mystery of love and hope, and the adventure of finding your place in the world

What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds - and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept • The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen • Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant