Weidenfeld & Nicolson The Hummingbird Veronesi Sandro

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 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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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