Weidenfeld & Nicolson The House on Vesper Sands О`Доннелл Парэк

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

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 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

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

The African Queen is C.S Forester's sublime story of how Rose Sayer, a straitlaced missionary and Charlie Allnut, a gin-swilling riverboat owner, sail down a dangerous African river in a rusty old tub, The African Queen and outwit the Germans is a classic tale of derring-do. Made into a Hollywood movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, it remains one of the most popular films ever made

It all began with the whale • When a young man washes up on the sands of St Piran in Cornwall, it is clear to the villagers that this is not a regular day. What has brought him here? And what is the crisis only he understands, that threatens not only their community but all of civilisation? • With a global pandemic on the horizon, and a whale lurking in the bay, the villagers of St Piran must band together to survive. Intimate, funny and heart-warming, John Ironmonger tells a compelling story about the important things that hold us together, and how hope can be found, even at the end of the world

A mysterious toymaker who lives as a recluse in an old mansion, surrounded by the mechanical beings he has created… an enigma surrounding strange lights that shine through the mists that envelop the small island on which the old lighthouse stands… a shadowy creature that hides deep in the woods… these are the elements of a mystery that bind 14-year-old Irene to Ismael during one magical summer spent in the Blue Bay. Irene’s mother has taken a job as a housekeeper for the toymaker, Lazarus, but his house contains more secrets than Irene and Ishmael have bargained for

'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

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?

Sylvie, Jude, Wendy and Adele have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three • These women couldn’t be more different: Jude, a once-famous restaurateur with a spotless life and a long-standing affair with a married man; Wendy, an acclaimed feminist intellectual; Adele, a former star of the stage, now practically homeless • Struggling to recall exactly why they’ve remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for one last weekend at Sylvie’s old beach house. But fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that threatens to sweep away their friendship for good

Leyli Maal is a beautiful Malian woman, mother of three, living in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Marseille • Her quiet life as a well-integrated immigrant is suddenly shaken when her beautiful eldest daughter, Bamby, becomes the main suspect in two murders linked to a lethal illegal immigration racket • Is Bamby really involved? And why is everyone desperate to get their hands on Leyli's mysterious red notebook?