Weidenfeld & Nicolson The Boy Made of Snow Mayer Chloe

The President tells the story of a ruthless dictator and his schemes to dispose of a political adversary in an unnamed country usually identified as Guatemala. Drawing on his experience as a journalist writing under repressive conditions, Miguel Angel Asturias provides a blazing indictment of totalitarian government and its damaging psychological effects on society - from the harvest of terror to cowardice, to sycophancy, to treachery and intrigue, and the total sacrifice of human values to lust for power • Written in a language of freedom and originality, full of extraordinary symbolism, biting satire, poetry and dream sequences, with an imagination that is both lyrical and ferocious, The President is a surrealist masterpiece and one of the most influential books of the twentieth century

The false cold of the theatre makes it hard to imagine the heavy wind outside in the real world, the ash air pressing onto the city from the nearby hills where bushfires are taking hold • The house lights lower • The auditorium feels hopeful in the darkness • As bushfires rage outside the city, three women watch a performance of a Beckett play • Margot is a successful professor, preoccupied by her fraught relationship with her ailing husband. Ivy is a philanthropist with a troubled past, distracted by the snoring man beside her. Summer is a young theatre usher, anxious about the safety of her girlfriend in the fire zone • As the performance unfolds, so does each woman's story. By the time the curtain falls, they will all have a new understanding of the world beyond the stage

I was twelve when the coat was made. Nathan, our tailor and dear friend, cut it for Grandfather in the first week of March 1938. It was the last week of freedom for Warsaw and for us • Even in the most difficult of lives, there is hope. When Mika's grandfather dies in the Warsaw ghetto, he inherits not only his great coat, but its treasure trove of secrets. In one remote pocket, he finds a papier mache head, a scrap of cloth... a puppet prince. And what better way to cheer the cousin who has lost her father, the little boy who is ill, the neighbours living in one cramped room, than a puppet show? Soon the whole ghetto is talking about the puppet boy - until the day when Mika is stopped by a German officer and is forced into a secret life

A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall - but for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic • Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages in the war-torn Balkans when she receives word of her beloved grandfather's death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery • Compelled to unravel the truth, Natalia stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of The Jungle Book, and then to the most extraordinary story her grandfather never told her - the legend of the tiger's wife

In 2011, the peace of the Syrian city of Homs is disturbed by protests and shelling. A young girl, Nour, is forced to flee across the Levant and North Africa in search of safety • 800 years before, Rawiya, disguised as a boy and apprenticed to a famous map maker, set out on an epic quest to chart the globe, following the very same route • In The Map of Salt & Stars, the tales of these two heroines coming of age in perilous times interweave, and shine a light on a country in turmoil, human resilience and the power of stories

As a child, Daniel Sempere discovered among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books an extraordinary novel that would change the course of his life. Now a young man in the Barcelona of the late 1950s, Daniel runs the Sempere & Sons bookshop and enjoys a seemingly fulfilling life with his loving wife and son. Yet the mystery surrounding the death of his mother continues to plague his soul • Just when Daniel believes he is close to solving this enigma, a conspiracy more sinister than he could have imagined spreads its tentacles from the hellish Franco regime. That is when Alicia Gris appears, a soul born out of the nightmare of the war. She is the one who will lead Daniel to the edge of the abyss and reveal the secret history of his family, although at a terrifying price

Set in a shuttered pub - The Paper Lantern - in a village in the very middle of the country adjacent to the Prime Minister's Chequers Estate, an unnamed narrator embarks on a series of walks in the Chiltern Hills. As he charts and interrogates the shifts in mood and understanding that have defined a transformative period in his own history and that of the surrounding area, he reveals a past scarred with trauma and a present lacking compass. Traversing local raves in secret valleys, to climate change and capitalism, The Paper Lantern creates a tangible, lived-in complicated rendering of a place, at the moment when the very sense of place itself is being questioned

1916, Calcutta. A man pauses for breath outside the ruins of Jheeter’s Gate station knowing he has only hours to live. Pursued by assassins, he must ensure the safety of two newborn twins, before disappearing into the night to meet his fate • 1932. Ben and his friends are due to leave the orphanage which has been their home for sixteen years. Tonight will be the final meeting of their secret club, in the old ruin they christened The Midnight Palace. Then Ben discovers he has a sister – and together they learn the tragic story of their past, as a shadowy figures lures them to a terrifying showdown in the ruins of Jheeter’s Gate station

'But the whole deal, staying and going along with her idea, both, depended really on how much nerve he had. Which she would have to find out...' • Nancy Hayes has plenty of feminine charm - and the instincts of a shark. Jack Ryan is handy with his fists and has all the cunning of an ex-con. Now, in a Michigan resort town, a rich man wants Jack gone and Nancy for himself • For Jack, the choice is clear: Nancy's promises of pleasure, her crazy, thrill-seeking schemes of breaking into homes, shooting guns and maybe stealing a whole lot of money is driving him mad • But there is one thing Jack doesn't know yet. Nancy is planning the deadliest thrill of all

In the streets of Rome, Vicki Wilson's lovers keep turning up dead • Vittoria, as she's known in Italy, is a small-time actress who left behind a dark past in her native Texas and followed her fading writer husband to the Eternal City • Guided by her controlling brother Johnny, Vittoria soon enters the upper circles of Roman society, mingling with shady cardinals and corrupt senators. Among them is Paolo Orsini, who quickly falls prey to Vittoria's charms. Too bad he's married; too bad his wife, an aging film icon, is murdered • From the ravishing beauty of Rome to the pristine beaches of Malibu, Vittoria finds herself at the heart of a lethal chase, spiralling dangerously out of control

'We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us... but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?' • Krishnapur, 1857: India is on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny. In this remote town on the vast North Indian plain, life for the British is still orderly and genteel. But when the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt, the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster • As food and ammunition grow short when the British find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion - at once brutal, blundering and wistful - is soon revealed

There's something in the water of Con Dao • To the locals, a monster • To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity • To the team of three sent to study and protect, a revelation • Their minds are unlike ours • Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting • They can communicate • And they want us to leave • When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn't pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA- a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence - has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research