McArthur and Company Publishing

Friday Nights - Joanna Trollope
Fiction April
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-701-4 $24.95
Hardcover 978-1-55278-702-1 $34.95
6 x 9 336 pp

It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely - and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.

Memories of the Storm - Marcia Willett
Fiction March
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-700-7 $24.95
6 x 9 304 pp

Clio is staying with her aunt, Hester, at Bridge House on the edge of Exmoor. A beautiful, remote house, where the sound of the rushing stream is never far distant, is the scene of many happy childhood memories, and Clio has no idea that it was the setting for a terrible incident after the second world war. She only - gradually - learns the truth when she meets Jonah, whose mother Lucy spent time at Bridge House as a child. Lucy has never spoken about her life there, and only Hester remembers that tragic day when innocence turned to tragedy. Hester's beloved elder brother, Ed, had come to live at Bridge House to recover from his time as a prisoner of war. His best friend from Cambridge, Michael, had also come to the house with his daughter Lucy - Lucy's mother had died in an air raid. There, in the fevered wartime atmosphere, passions ran high, culminating in an accident which affected all their lives, and only now can Clio and Jonah learn the truth

Road Grill - Chris Knight, Matt Dunigan
Cooking May
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-703-8 $29.95
7 x 9

Road grill is the latest hit cooking series on Food Network featuring host Matt Dunigan. In each episode, he and his Grill Team set up at a different event, spreading good food and a party wherever they go. The series features real people joining Matt on camera to help prepare (and of course sample) some amazing BBQ treats.

Scrapbook - Nadine Bismuth
Fiction May
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-704-5 $24.95
6 x 9

During the run up to the publication of her first novel, creative writing student Annie Brire meets Laurent Viau, her publishing house’s copy editor. Her charms do not go unnoticed by Laurent and a romance begins. Yet Annie learns after a first night of passion that Laurent, although ringless, is married with a child. So begins her search for the meaning of emotional commitment, a search hampered by the sentimental entanglements of the novel’s many characters. Will Annie ever find what she’s looking for?

The Tsunami File - Michael E. Rose
Fiction/Mystery
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-705-2 $24.95
6 x 9

Frank Delaney, investigative journalist and sometime spy, is on assignment in Phuket, Thailand, in the aftermath of the tsunami that killed thousands, foreigners and locals alike. Disaster victim identification teams from police forces across the globe have descended on this idyllic holiday location to carry out their gruesome work. Delaney discovers that, against all logic, someone is trying to prevent identification of one of the bodies lying in makeshift beachside morgues. His search for the reason follows a trail through Thailand’s seedy child sex trade to an elaborate cover-up in Germany and France, where those with everything to lose use increasingly desperate measures to stop him

Transgressions - James Nichol
Fiction/Mystery March
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-717-5 $24.95
6 x 9 356 pp

Paris, Canada, Winter 1946: While playing in the woods, children discover a severed finger and soon the corpse of a man who is the victim of a terrible crime. The murder connects to the past: it’s linked with the fate of the young Frenchwoman Adele who, during the war, fell in love with a German soldier and was branded a collaborator. In Canada, she hopes to forget her dark secret. But then the past rears its head - with a deadly consequences ...

Callisto - Torsten Krol
Fiction March
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-698-7 $24.95
6 x 9 437 pp

This darkly funny novel of our times follows what happens when Odell Deefus takes one wrong turn on the journey of his life and crashes into a world of oddballs, misfits, drug dealers, religious fanatics and crooked cops. Hypocrisy. Torture. Bloody murder. In Callisto, Odell Deefus discovers a vast web of corruption and deceit leading to the dark heart of America.

Margarita Nights - Phyllis Smallman
Fiction/Mystery April
Trade Paperback 978-1-55278-699-4 $24.95
6 x 9 348 pp

The bar in Jacaranda, Florida may be upscale but bartender Sherri Travis is from a side of town where luxury is an extra wide trailer which isn’t actually in the swamp. Jimmy Travis, Sherri’s lying, cheating scam artist husband, comes from Jacaranda’s social registry and there’s only one thing Sherri and her mother in law can agree on – Sherri and Jimmy don’t belong together. Sherri wants Jimmy out of her life, but he won’t stay gone , so when Jimmy and his boat explode in an orange ball of fire, the police come calling.

Tyrant - Christian Cameron
Fiction March
Cased/Trade paperback
$37.95/$24.95 384pp
234 x 153mm
978 0 7528 9040 1/978 0 7528 9041 8

After fighting against the Persian hordes with Alexander the Great, Athenian cavalryman Kineas is exiled by his native city. Forced to become a mercenary for the Tyrant of Olbia, he stumbles into a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy that will require all his guile and courage to survive

Do Not Disturb -Tilly Bagshawe
Fiction April
Cased/Trade paperback $37.95/$24.95 496pp
234 x 153mm
978 0 7528 7419 7/978 0 7528 8490 5

A beautiful Boston heiress; a penniless Ibizan boy working in a hotel laundry; a billionaire hedge-fund guru with a mysterious past. Three lives that should never have crossed. But they all share the same dream: to own the best, most talked-about hotel in the world.

Painted Blood - Pip Vaughan-Hughes
Fiction July
Cased/Trade paperback $34.95/$24.95 352pp 234 x 153mm
978 0 7528 9197 2/978 0 7528 9198 9

The epic conclusion to the Petroc trilogy1242 AD, and King Louis of France is determined to stamp out the Cathars. Petroc’s mentor, Captain de Montalhac, can no longer ignore his roots and heads for the Languedoc and for war. It seems only Petroc can save his friend – and perhaps the most sacred relic of all...

Writers’ Journal - Maeve Binchy’s
Non-fiction May $24.95
272pp 216 x 135mm
978 0 7528 8307 6

An interactive journal for budding writers, full of Maeve Binchy’s warm, down-to-earth advice and contributions from other publishers and writers such as Marian Keyes.

On Some Faraway Beach - David Sheppard
Authorised Biography of Brian Eno
Biography, Music May
Cased $38.95 288pp
216 x 135mm 16pp colour photos
978 0 7528 7570 5

For some a pretentious art-school type and founding father of ambient music; for others a lightning rod or touchstone for directions in popular music and culture. Always entertaining, David Sheppard’s revealing portrait includes interviews with those who have worked closely with Eno – including Talking Heads and Roxy Music.

Vote for Caesar - Peter Jones
How the Romans Got it Right and Why We Don’t
Humour/History   May
Cased $19.95   192pp
198 x 129mm   20 b/w illustrations
978 0 7528 9140 8

In Peter Jones’s fascinating and amusing look at the problems of the modern world, he shows how there are no new difficulties. In fact, the problems that still baffle politicians today were solved by the Greeks and the Romans 2000 years ago, and we would do much better if we just voted for Caesar.

Tick Tock, Kill the Clock - Robert Rankin
Fiction August
Cased/Trade paperback $37.95/$24.95 388pp
234 x 156mm
978 0 575 0871 0/978 0 575 08240 3

The latest fast and furious extravaganza from the master of far fetched fiction
Robert Rankin’s writing has been described as ‘like Douglas Adams on a sugar high’ (Kirkus); the Observer calls it ‘stark, raving genius’. The Morning Star heralds him as ‘the master of silliness, the English Spike Milligan.’ With accolades like this, his new book is guaranteed to be another winner, pleasing old fans and winning new.

The Ninth Stone - Kylie Fitzpatrick
Fiction March
Cased/Trade paperback
$37.95/$24.95 320pp
234 x 153mm
978 0 297 85276 6/978 0 297 85301 5

A jewel thief is on the loose in old London town and is murdering his victims; Sarah O’Reilly, who works as a typesetter in a newspaper office, becomes embroiled in the mystery that will eventually lead to India and a jewel with terrifying and occult powers.

The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce - Paul Torday
Fiction April
Cased/Trade paperback $37.95/$24.95 320pp
198 x 135mm
978 0 297 85159 2/978 0 297 85293 3

When Wilberforce takes an unusual detour home he discovers Caerlyon Hall, where a board announces: ‘Francis Black: Fine Bordeaux Wines. Visitors Welcome’. Through Francis, he develops a new set of friends, and a growing addiction to the contents of the hall’s vast cellar, which contributes to his downfall, and to heartbreak.

The Sistine Chapel - Andrew Graham-Dixon
History  May
Cased $34.95   192pp
234 x 156mm   32pp colour Illustrations
978 0 297 85365 7

This new study of Michelangelo’s immortal work tells the fascinating human story behind its creation. Andrew Graham-Dixon analyses its many layers of meaning and teases out the multitude of ambiguities that lurk within its magnificent imagery. The result is an
essential guide to one of the artistic wonders of the world.

Snowdon: The Biography - Anne de Courcy
Biography August
Cased $39.95 350pp
234 x 153mm 24pp b/w & colour illus
978 0 297 85275 9

Anthony Armstrong-Jones, later Lord Snowdon, has had an extraordinary life, not just because he was married to Princess Margaret for twenty years. Anne de Courcy’s sources include friends, courtiers, servants, girlfriends and ex-mistresses for this portrait of a man at the heart of glamour, royalty and fashion from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Meerkat Manor Flower of the Kalahari - Tim Clutton-Brock
Natural History/Environment, Cinema, TV February
$39.95 240pp 264 x 187mm 200 colour illust + 2 maps
978 0 297 84484 6

Based on the story of Flower, the matriarch of Whiskers group and star of the TV series of the same name, this engaging and informative book offers an insight into the meerkats’ world – one which appears to mirror our own but is in fact driven by the sometimes savage instincts of self-interest and survival

The Last Gospel - David Gibbins
Fiction April
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 3515 2 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 3514 5 $34.95
Royal 352 pp

Enter Jack Howard, one of the greatest archaeologists of his day, a man who never stops believing, never gives up hope that out there might be the next big discovery. But when he and his best friend Costas are interrupted during a dive off the coast of Sicily that might possibly reveal the final journey of St. Paul, Jack has no idea what lies in store...

In a Far Country - Linda Holeman
Fiction March
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 3189 5 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 3188 8 $37.95
Royal 512 pp

From the internationally bestselling author of The Linnet Bird and The Moonlit Cage comes a dazzling new epic

Pree Fincastle, daughter of impoverished British missionaries in India, is left alone and destitute when tragedy strikes. Turned away by the Church, she embarks on a journey in search of Kai, the son of her mother’s ayah, and the only person she can trust. But Kai is not the man Pree thought he was, and the secrets he holds will unlock the door to another world, another time – and, shockingly, another life.

Haunting, powerful, heartbreaking and magnificent, IN A FAR COUNTRY tells of one young woman’s enthralling journey. A passage through penury and prostitution, tragedy and bloodshed, secrets and love, it is ultimately a story of hope; a story that, once read, will never be forgotten...

Pretty Dead Things - Barbara Nadel
Fiction March
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 3562 6 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 3561 9 $34.95
Royal 320 pp

When Emine Aksu, the flamboyant wife of an Istanbul style guru, suddenly goes missing, Inspector Cetin Ikmen’s investigation leads him deep into her strange and colourful past.

Emine was a hippie when she was younger, who wholeheartedly enjoyed the liberated lifestyle that swept across the city when the western Europeans flooded into Istanbul in the sixties. According to her husband, Emine never really left behind the free love pleasures she discovered back then and he suspects she was visiting an old friend at the time of her disappearance. Meanwhile, Inspector Mehmet Suleyman is called to a terrifying scene at the art deco Kamondo Stairs in the old banking district of Karakoy. The skeleton of a woman has been discovered in one of the large plant containers. Could these two bizarre incidents be linked?

Aftershock - Quintin Jardine
Fiction/Mystery July
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 2913 7 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 2912 0 $37.95
Royal 380 pp

Still reeling from the tragic death of their much-loved colleague, Skinner's men are about to discover that a disturbed serial killer is still at large and very close to home.

It’s the second week of July Trades Holiday in Edinburgh and things seem very quiet. Until, that is, DCC Bob Skinner and his men get a call informing them that the body of a young woman has been found on a golf course. It’s been there for ten days so she’s not a pretty sight. But the way she has been laid out is uncannily familiar.

The Ingenious Edgar Jones - Elizabeth Garner
Fiction January
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 4360 7 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 0253 6 $37.95
Royal 352 pp

Set in nineteenth-century Oxford, and shot through with a powerful sense of magic, Elizabeth Garner's new novel will appeal both to fans of historical fiction and to the huge Susanna Clarke/Philip Pullman fanbase.

In nineteenth-century Oxford, an extraordinary child is born - Edgar Jones, a porter's son with a magical talent. Though his father cannot see beyond his academic slowness, his abilities as a metalworker and designer are quickly noticed, and become a source of tension within the family. When Edgar comes to the attention of a maverick professor at work on a museum of the natural sciences, Edgar is at once plucked from obscurity and plunged into the heart of a debate which threatens to tear apart the university.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse - Jill Mansell
Fiction April
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 2815 4 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 2814 7 $37.95
Royal 416 pp

Lola has no intention of accepting when her boyfriend Dougie's snobbish mother offers her £10,000 to break up with him. Then she discovers a secret that makes her think again. Dougie would probably have broken up with her in the long run, and this way she can help one of the people she loves most in the world.

Ten years later, though, when Lola meets Dougie again, her feelings for him are as strong as ever. But she broke Dougie's heart – and he's about to discover that she was paid to do it. She can never tell him the truth, so can she get him back? Well, Lola's very attractive and very persuasive. But even she's got her work cut out this time…

Glitz - Louise Bagshawe
Fiction June
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 3605 0 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 3604 3 $34.95
Royal 544 pp

Haughty, social climber Juno, her ditzy, style-free sister Athena and their cousins, IT girl
Hester and wannabe actress Helen are accustomed to living the high life, thanks to a trust fund set up by their super-rich, reclusive Uncle Clem. But when Uncle Clem summons his nieces to his mansion in the Seychelles to announce his engagement to Bai-Ling, a woman young enough to be their baby sister, the four girls instantly know trouble's afoot...

Can they stop the wedding? What happens when four pampered princesses have to cope without their trust fund? Who will learn to stand on their own two feet... and who will fall?

Filthy Rich - Wendy Holden
Fiction March
Trade Paperback 978 0 7553 2512 2 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7553 2511 5 $34.95
Royal 576 pp

When Mary meets gorgeous Monty, heir to a stately pile, romantic bliss seems assured. But after the roof falls in and the pictures are flogged, happiness is thin on the ground.
Beth exchanges Holland Park for simple weekends at the country cottage her banker husband’s bonus has bought. They only offered a little over the asking price – why don’t the locals like them?
Uber-WAG Alexandra needs a country mansion – fast. Her footballer boyfriend is being transferred and time is running out. There must be a Hello!-tastic pile somewhere?
Morag is the terror of the village. She’s a Stalin against slug pellets who wears hemp trousers and makes her own Weetabix.
When the village launches an allotment project they become dramatically embroiled in a bitter struggle over sex, power and money, which threatens to blight more than everyone’s carrots.

The Point of Rescue - Sophie Hannah
Fiction April
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 93311 4 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 93310 7 $34.95
Royal 416 pp

Sally is watching the news with her husband when she hears a name she ought not to recognise: Mark Bretherick. Last year, a work trip Sally had planned was cancelled at the last minute. Desperate for a break from her busy life juggling work and a young family, Sally didn’t tell her husband that the trip had fallen through. Instead, she booked a week off work and treated herself to a secret holiday. All she wanted was a bit of peace – some time to herself – but it didn’t work out that way. Because Lucy met a man – Mark Bretherick. All the details are the same: where he lives, his job, his wife Geraldine and daughter Lucy. Except that the man on the news is a man Lucy has never seen before. And Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick are both dead

Spa Wars - Chris Manby
Fiction April
Trade paperback 978 0 340 93700 6 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 93699 3 $34.95
Royal 418 pp

When Emily Brown’s life – and business – is turned around by a surprise visit from Carina Lees, immaculately-groomed reality TV star and Z-list celebrity, she can’t believe her luck.With just one other member of staff to help her out at her Essex salon ‘The Beauty Spot’, Emily is pushed for time as well as money, and so Carina’s patronage – and the subsequent financial success of the salon is more welcome than a sunbed session in December.
But even with the assistance of skilled-yet-shabby new girl Natalie, things start to go mysteriously wrong, and it soon becomes clear that someone’s got it in for the salon. And with tactics dirtier than a gardener’s fingernails, the battle of the beauticians commences

Enough - John Naish
Non-fiction March
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 93591 0 $29.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 93590 3 $39.95
Demy 320 pp

For millions of years, humankind has used a brilliantly successful survival strategy. If we like something, we chase after more of it: more status, more food, more info, more stuff. Then we chase again. It’s how we survived famine, disease and disaster to colonise the world. But now, thanks to technology, we’ve suddenly got more of everything than we can ever use, enjoy or afford. That doesn’t stop us from striving though and it’s making us sick, tired, overweight, angry and in debt. It burns up our personal ecologies and the planet’s ecology too. We urgently need to develop a sense of ‘enough’.

Crap at the Environment - Mark Watson
Humour/Current Affairs June
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 96255 8 $29.95
Demt 300 pp

What the environmental movement really needs is a hard-travelling, blissfully ignorant comedian with no credibility whatsoever to talk on serious issues. No seriously.
On the principle of ‘go on, do it, I will’ non-expert Mark Watson set up a blog announcing his intentions to halve his carbon footprint in a year. Within 24 hours, 500 had joined him. This is the story of the year that followed, when one environmental novice, green you could say in all senses of the word, tried to save the planet.

Casanova - Ian Kelly
Biography August
Hardcover 978 0 340 92214 9 $39.95
Royal 400 pp

Giacomo Casanova: one of the most beguiling and controversial individuals of his or any age. Braggart or perfect lover? Conman or genius? He made and lost fortunes, founded two state lotteries, wrote various plays, philosophical and mathematical treatises, opera libretti, poetry, and forty-two books. His 3,600 pages of memoirs recorded hundreds of meals – as well, of course, as his affairs and sexual encounters with dozens of women and a handful of men – and have bought him two centuries of notoriety.

Now, in CASANOVA, Ian Kelly reveals previously unpublished documents by Giacomo himself, as well as his friends and lovers, which give new insights into his life and his world. From his devotion to the Kaballah to his collaboration with Mozart on his opera Don Giovanni, from his vast appetite for food and sex to his training for priesthood, this is the fascinating story of an icon of his age – and ours. The definitive history of the world's greatest lover, from the author of the bestselling BEAU BRUMMELL.

Cleopatra the Great - Joann Fletcher
Biography/History July
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 92068 8 $29.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 83155 7 $39.95
Royal 482 pp

Cleopatra is a truly iconic figure: the last Egyptian Pharaoh and arguably the greatest. But she is also a mythical figure, mainly known through Shakespearean tragedy and Roman propaganda. There has been little attempt to tell her true story – until now .
In this, the first biography for over thirty years, Joann Fletcher draws on a wealth of overlooked detail that reveals Cleopatra as she truly was: a brilliant politician, erudite scholar and mother of four children. Queen of Egypt at seventeen, she restored her country to its former glory and was the only Mediterranean ruler to manage to resist the Romans for over twenty years, before her final defeat and suicide.

The book brilliantly evokes Cleopatra's life from Alexandria to Rome, and is full of tantalising details about her famous banquets, her massive library, her goddess outfits, beauty regimes and hairstyles. Fletcher also explodes a series of long-standing myths and addresses her heritage, with some exciting results

Confessions of a Fallen Angel - Ronan O’Brien
Fiction April
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 95249 8 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 95244 3 $24.95
Demy 288 pp

Following a near-death experience as a child, the narrator becomes cursed with the ability to foresee the deaths of the people closest to him. These visions come to him in his dreams and, following a disastrous attempt to save a childhood friend from drowning, a set of terrifying events begins to unfold. As a young man, he finds redemption in the arms of Aisling, his beautiful wife. But then the visions return.

This is a story about one man’s struggle to live an ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances; about love lost and found and the vast range of emotions that can be weathered by the human heart. This is a story where dreams come true but where dreams can turn into nightmares; a place where true love will prevail and where death is only the beginning.

Remember Me… - Melvyn Bragg
Fiction June
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 95122 4 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 95121 7 $34.95
Royal 560 pp

REMEMBER ME... takes one of the oldest stories in the world and gives it renewed, visceral force. Here are characters who spring from the page, brought to vivid life with exceptional empathy and insight into the workings of the heart and mind. And here, captured in intimate, telling detail, are the emotions that bind two people together, and the subtle shifts in thought and feeling that can prise them apart. This is a novel of great emotional intensity, which leaves an unforgettable impression.

Paradise Lost - Giles Milton
History July
Trade Paperback 978 0 340 96234 3 $29.95
Hardcover 978 0 340 83786 3 $39.95
Royal 388 pp

On Saturday 9th September, 1922, the victorious Turkish cavalry rode into Smyrna, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. What happened over the next two weeks must rank as one of the most compelling human dramas of the twentieth century. Almost two million people were caught up in a disaster of truly epic proportions.

PARADISE LOST is told with the narrative verve that has made Giles Milton a bestselling historian. It unfolds through the memories of the survivors, many of them interviewed for the first time, and the eyewitness accounts of those who found themselves caught up in one of the greatest catastrophes of the modern age.

Hotel Juliet - Belinda Seward
Fiction March
Trade Paperback 978 0 7195 2460 8 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7195 2440 0 $34.95
Royal 352 pp

Memory Cougan, black and in her twenties, has a successful career and an adoring fiancé. But at her engagement party, she panics. Brought to London aged five, she has no recollection of Africa, or why she left. Leaving Adam behind, she returns to a place she no longer recognises – and to Max, the coffee planter who may have the answers. But Memory’s journey of discovery is not hers alone to make. For Max, hardened by years in the bush, her arrival will reawaken memories of the most intense time in his life and of his beloved aeroplane, Hotel Juliet. For Elise, her adoptive mother, Memory’s flight threatens to reveal the truth of what really happened in Africa all those years ago.

The Dying Breed - Declan Hughes
Fiction/Mystery June
Trade Paperback 978 0 7195 6842 8 $24.95
Hardcover 978 0 7195 6749 0 $34.95
Royal 368 pp

Even the best private eye needs more than a name to find a missing person, but that’s all that Father Vincent Tyrrell, the brother of prominent racehorse trainer FX Tyrrell, will offer Loy when he comes to him for help.
A dwindling bank account convinces Loy to delve into the deadly underworld of horse racing, but fortune soon smiles on him: while working another case, he discovers a phone number linked to FX on a badly beaten body left at an illegal dump. Loy’s been around long enough to know that there’s more to the Tyrrell family than meets the eye – and then a third body appears.

The Scribes from Alexandria - Caroline Lawrence
Fiction/Mystery – Ages 9-12 – August
Hardcover 978-1-84255-190-5 $18.95

A desperate quest begins in the Romano-Egyptian port of Alexandria: site of the great lighthouse, the Library and the tomb of Alexander the Great.

Codes, riddles, anagrams and hieroglyphics lead the search parties down the river Nile to pyramids and sphinxes, temples and tombs, crocodiles and hippos. But what lies at the end of the journey? Treasure? Or death? Crocodiles, codes, shipwrecks, and a missing detective - all in the fifteenth title in the bestselling series.

Puppet Master - Joanne Owen
Fiction – Ages 9-12 – July
Hardcover 978-1-84255- 584-2 $19.95

From riches to rags, Milena is growing up in the city of Prague at the turn of the twentieth century. Her parents' once prosperous theatre lies in disrepair and her life seems to be in ruins, and has been since that fateful night her father died in a tragic accident and Milena's beautiful, talented Mother went missing. No trace of her has been found. But Milena has never lost hope that she will come back.

The day she meets the flamboyant Puppet Master and his menacing protégés, the twins Zdenko and Zdenka, under the shadow of Prague's famous Astronomical Clock in the Old Town square is, coincidentally, the date of her mother's birthday. And it's the day Milena's grandmother chooses to reveal to her the story of her ancestors... and of her legacy. Or perhaps it's not such a coincidence.

City of Screams - John Brindley
Fiction – Ages 11+ – July
Hardcover 978-1-84255- 588-0 $19.95

It's been some years since Ash and her friends battled against the raptors and the Adults, but they couldn't halt the powerful progress of evolution. Still, the legacy of the Agles pervades new generations of wild and wilful teens. This is the story of Phoenix, earthbound and to her own mind deformed, but who is in love with the image of perfection, the air Agle, Gabriel. What will she risk to be with him? The stakes are high: a delicate balance has been formed between the rodents, raptors and Agles in the rebuilt city. Is Phoenix willing to jeopardise their safety? What chance does she have when the Adults return, claiming civilisation for themselves once and for all. Instead of forging ahead, it seems they want evolution to travel in reverse.

Philippa Fisher’s Fairy Godsister - Liz Kessler
Fiction – Ages 7-12 – April
Hardcover 978-1-84255- 120-2 $18.95

Philippa Fisher tries and fails to summon a fairy, but is taken aback when Daisy, the new girl at school, announces that she is her fairy godmother – or godsister, since they are the same age. Daisy is not pleased with Philippa, but she has a mission to fulfil and is obliged to stick with her until she has granted her three wishes.
The three wishes are at the heart of a traditional story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, which touches on friendship, luck and how we decide what we really want. It sparkles with magic and has the same warmth, charm and quirky characterization that Liz Kessler brought to her bestselling Emily Windsnap books.

Hootcat Hill - Lucy Coats
Fiction – Ages 7-12 – May
Hardcover 978-1-84255-614-6 $18.95

Linnet Perry is 13-year-old girl living in Wyrmesbury. When the ancient worldwyrm stirs, fear spreads throughout the town. People begin to disappear. Unless the wyrm is returned to sleep, there will be natural disasters and worse - too much old magic will leak into the world, disturbing the careful balance of modern life. Only Linnet has the rare combination of magics needed to embark on the dangerous quest through the natural and spiritual world to restore order. But is she strong enough to confront her gifts, especially since all she has ever wanted was to fit in and be like everyone else?

Iron Hand - Charlie Fletcher
Fiction – Ages 9+ - February
Hardcover 978-0-340-91164-8 $21.95

"Edie, " said George, "we're going to do this together. I'll be right there with you. Anything, anyone trying to get you is going to have to come past me first."

But when George makes his promise he is not aware that high on the rooftops an unseen gargoyle is watching them hungrily, quivering with anticipation for the moment when it will unfold its stone wings and pounce. The thing on the roof knows that nothing is over; nothing is finished.

Ironhand takes us deeper into the layers of un-London, the place where the good and the bad statues, the spits and the taints, walk and war. George and Edie must repay the debt which they owe the Gunner for his sacrifice. They must face unspeakable danger and doubt if they are to save him.

This second title in the Stoneheart sequence by Charlie Fletcher will shake you with its imaginative grasp and breathtaking vision. It is an epic excitement, not to be missed.

A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons - Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (a.k.a. Cressida Cowell)
Fiction – Ages 7+ - February
Hardcover 978-0-340-95034-0 $17.95

Delve into this special volume of Hiccup’s memoirs to find a brand new exciting adventure, a detailed map of the Archipelago and lots more dragon profiles! Also contains a comprehensive Dragonese Dictionary for those who’d like to dragon-whisper as well as the dragon-whisperer himself.