Weidenfeld & Nicolson The Death of an Owl Torday Piers, Torday Paul

The echo of the novels of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series resonates in the stories of Carlos Ruiz Zafon: gathered here for the first time – and some never before published in English – these stories are a celebration of one of the world’s great storytellers • A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart • A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time • A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves • And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudi reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece

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

The Color of Money was adapted for the screen by Martin Scorsese and starred Paul Newman and Tom Cruise • It has been twenty years since the epic match-up between Eddie Felson and Minnesota Fats. Having gone from bona fide stardom to playing in exhibition matches for cable television, Eddie decides that he'd like to give the game one more shot. With a failed marriage behind him and a new generation of competitors in his way, Eddie must face his demons and find the will to succeed once more

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

What if you had said yes . . . ? • Eva and Jim are nineteen, and students at Cambridge, when their paths first cross in 1958. Jim is walking along a lane when a woman approaching him on a bicycle swerves to avoid a dog. What happens next will determine the rest of their lives. We follow three different versions of their future - together, and apart - as their love story takes on different incarnations and twists and turns to the conclusion in the present day • The Versions of Us is an outstanding debut novel about the choices we make and the different paths that our lives might follow. What if one small decision could change the rest of your life?

'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

Arky Levin, a film composer in New York, has promised his wife that he will not visit her in hospital, where she is suffering in the final stages of a terminal illness. She wants to spare him a burden that would curtail his creativity, but the promise is tearing him apart. One day he finds his way to MOMA and sees Mariana Abramovic in The Artist is Present. The performance continues for seventy-five days and, as it unfolds, so does Arky. As he watches and meets other people drawn to the exhibit, he slowly starts to understand what might be missing in his life and what he must do

Marco Carrera is 'the hummingbird,' a man with the almost supernatural ability to stay still as the world around him continues to change • As he navigates the challenges of life - confronting the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; taking care of his parents; raising his granddaughter; coming to terms with his love for the enigmatic Luisa - Marco Carrera comes to represent the quiet heroism that pervades so much of our everyday existence • A surprising and deeply moving reinvention of the family saga, this is a thrilling novel about the need to look to the future with hope and live with intensity to the very end

'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

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