Michael Swarbrick's pathetic existence had just got better. He was on a date with the girl of his dreams - a romantic donkey ride on the beach, followed by some daring skinny dipping in the sea. Delightful! Only things never really get better for Michael, and one small moment of bliss ends with him getting arrested, becoming local celebrity and becoming an internet sensation because they think he's a nudist. (He isn't.) Michael is swept up in a sequence...

FROM THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR Philip Noble is an eleven-year-old in crisis. His pub landlord father has died in a road accident, and his mother is succumbing to the greasy charms of her dead husband's brother, Uncle Alan. The remaining certainties of Philip's life crumble away when his father's ghost appears in the pub and declares Uncle Alan murdered him. Arming himself with weapons from the school chemistry cupboard, Philip...

This hilarious coming-of-age novel follows Oliver Tate as he tries to find out why his father sometimes stays in bed for days at a time, why his mother is getting surfing lessons - and probably more - from a hippy-looking twonk, and as he tries to lose his virginity before it becomes legal - in just over a year.

It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint. Rooted as it is in the author?s own disturbing experience of war in our time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged. ?An extraordinary achievement. ? Angela Carter ?A remarkable journey into the mind of a growing boy? horror and humanity are blended into a unique and unforgettable fiction....

Christine, blood-red, fat and finned, was 20. Her promise lay all in her past. There was still power in her - a frightening power that leaked like sump oil, staining and corrupting. A malign power that corroded and turned ownership into possession.

It's Jack's birthday and he's excited about turning five. Jack lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside.

Who is to blame for teenage atrocity? Narrator Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and the much-loved teacher who tried to befriend him. This novel is an examination of the effect tragedy has on a town, a marriage and a family.

Journalist Peter Maguire has been kidnapped in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. He does not know where he is or what is going to happen to him. As the days go by, his fear is shot through with remorse for the mistakes of his past... Peter's mother Nina comes to Somalia to wait for her son's release. His plight forces her to relive another trauma - the fatal shooting in Liberia of Shaun Ridge, a young photographer she once loved, and Peter's real father......

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France. This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from STEAK HACHE to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael's ease with tech and...

When Derrick's missionary parents are murdered, he is entrusted to his gruff Uncle Sullivan, captain aboard the Wanderer. After surviving a killer typhoon on the South China Sea, they set off across land to discover the treasures of Central Asia.