Sceptre Pig Cowan Andrew

She is sailing. She is alone. Ahead of her is the world's curve and beyond that, everything else. The known, the imagined, the imagined known • Who else has entered Tim's life the way Maud did? This young woman who fell past him, lay seemingly dead on the ground, then stood and walked. That was where it all began • As magnetic as she is inscrutable, Maud defies expectations and evades explanation - a daughter, girlfriend and mother who, in the wake of a tragedy, embarks on a dangerous voyage across the Atlantic, not knowing where it will lead • By the Costa Award-winning author of PURE, this is a viscerally honest, hypnotic portrait of modern love and motherhood, the lure of the sea and the ultimate unknowability of others. This pitch-perfect novel confirms Andrew Miller's position as one of the finest writers of his generation

You aren't stupid. You know there's no such thing as a perfect mother. Plenty of other books will tell you there is, but this one won't lie to you. I was weak and I cheated and I was punished, but my god I loved my child through all of it. Love means you never break, and it means you're stronger than the things they do to you. I know this is true because I have been through fire, and I am the proof that love survives. I am not a perfect mother but I will tell you the perfect truth, because this is you and me talking. This is my story

Melvyn Bragg gives new life to one of the most remarkable love stories in history: the passionate, enduring romance between Heloise and Abelard • Within the Cloisters of Notre-Dame, a charismatic philosopher and a young woman renowned for her scholarship embark on an ardent, secret affair. It will send shockwaves through Paris, incur savage retribution and lead to years of separation, though nothing will break the bond between them • Bringing the true story of Heloise and Abelard to vivid life, this engrossing novel conveys the powerful emotions and beliefs that drove them. It captures a couple who defied the conventions and religious orthodoxies of their times with striking audacity, and illuminates why their extraordinary tale still resonates today

David is only fourteen when he first tries crack cocaine. He is instantly hooked, and spends the next decade fighting his way out of jail and rehab. Though he reaches a tenuous sobriety, it is only when he takes a literature class at the local community college that something within him ignites • Set on Florida's Gulf Coast, All Day Is a Long Time is a spectacular account of what it takes to return from the brink to the world around us. In this unforgettable debut, David Sanchez demonstrates the importance of hope, and the redemptive power of the written word

As the sun begins to set over Louisiana one October day in 1943, a young black man faces the final hours of his life: at midnight, eighteen-year-old Willie Jones will be executed by electric chair for raping a white girl - a crime some believe he did not commit • In a tale taut with tension, events unfold hour by hour from the perspectives of nine people involved. They include Willie himself, who knows what really happened, and his father, desperately trying to reach the town jail to see his son one last time; the prosecuting lawyer, haunted by being forced to seek the death penalty against his convictions, and his wife, who believes Willie to be innocent; the priest who has become a friend to Willie; and a mother whose only son is fighting in the Pacific, bent on befriending her black neighbours in defiance of her husband

Iris Vegan, a graduate student living alone and impoverished in New York, encounters four strong characters who fascinate and in different ways subordinate her: an inscrutable urban recluse who employs her to record the possessions of a murdered woman; a photographer whose eerie portrait of Iris takes on a life of its own; an old woman in hospital who tries to claim a remnant of the ailing Iris; and a professor she has an affair with. An exploration of female identity in an age when the old definitions as some man s daughter/wife/mother no longer apply, fuelled with eroticism and a sense of menace

Jeanie Masterson has a gift: she can hear the recently dead and give voice to their final wishes and revelations. Inherited from her father, this gift has enabled the family undertakers to flourish in their small Irish town. Yet she has always been uneasy about censoring some of the dead's last messages to the living. Unsure, too, about the choice she made when she left school seventeen years ago: to stay or leave for a new life in London with her charismatic teenage sweetheart • So when Jeanie's parents unexpectedly announce their plan to retire, she is jolted out of her limbo. In this captivating successor to her bestselling debut, Anne Griffin portrays a young woman who is torn between duty, a comfortable marriage and a role she both loves and hates and her last chance to break free, unaware she has not been alone in softening the truth for a long while

Youth is wasted on the young, isn't it? • In this version of London, there is a small, private clinic. Behind its layers of security, procedures are taking place on poor, robust teenagers from northern Estates in exchange for thousands of pounds - procedures that will bring the wealthy dead back to life in these young supple bodies for fourteen days • It's an opportunity for wrongs to be righted, for fathers to meet grandsons, for scientists to see their work completed. Old wine in new bottles • But at what cost?

Nicolas Mathieu's gripping first novel is the story of a world that has come to an end. With a girl, a gun and acres of snow • When a factory that employs most of a small town is scheduled to close - to the despair of the workers and disdain of the overlords - things start to fall apart. The disenfranchised factory workers have nothing left to lose. Martel, the trade union rep with innumerable tattoos and Bruce, the body-builder addicted to steroids resort to desperate measures. A bungled kidnapping on the streets of Strasbourg goes horribly wrong and they find themselves falling prey to the machinations of the criminal underworld

A dazzling, shocking novel that speaks to our times, drawing on the 16th-century case of the witches of Warboys • Alice Samuel might be old and sharp-tongued, but she's no fool. Visiting her new neighbours in her Fenland village, she suspects Squire Throckmorton's household is not as God-fearing as it seems and finds the children troubled. Yet when one of the daughters accuses her of witchcraft, Alice has no inkling of how quickly matters will escalate and fails to grasp the danger she is in • As evidence mounts against Alice, soon the entire village is swept up in the frenzied persecution of one of their own community • Exploring a neglected episode of English history to powerful effect, The Bewitching vividly conveys the brutal tribalism that can erupt in a closed society and how victims can be made to believe in their own wickedness

The last time Ree saw her father he didn t bring food or money but promised he d be back soon with a paper sack of cash and a truckload of delights. Since he left, she s had to look after her mother sedated and losing her looks and her two younger brothers. Ree hopes the boys won t turn out like the others in the Ozark mountains hard and mean before they ve learnt to shave • One cold winter s day, Ree discovers that her father has put up their house as bail and that it ll be sold from under them if he doesn t show up for his trial. Ree knows she needs to find her father to save her family but in a culture riven with secrecy and paranoia her questions are unwelcome and the answers painful • As Ree faces violence and a strange kind of loyalty she learns about courage and resilience

Mercury is at once a tense psychological drama and a taut emotional thriller exploring love, obsession, and the deceits that pull a family apart • An optometrist in suburban Boston, Donald is sure that he and his wife, Viv, are both devoted to their two children and each other. Then Mercury - a gorgeous young thoroughbred with a murky past - arrives at Viv's stables, and as she begins to ride him, dreams she had harboured and relinquished for the sake of her family are rekindled; dreams that soon morph into consuming desire • As her infatuation with the thoroughbred escalates to obsession, it seems there is nothing - and no one - she will allow to stop her this time around • Though Donald may have 20/20 vision, he is slow to notice how profoundly Viv has changed, and how much these changes threaten their quiet, secure world