An award winning and moving tale of growing up in a Maoist cult, and the traumatic aftermath which explores ideas of freedom, control and identity. Nina X has never been outside. She had never met another child. Nina X has no books, no toys and no privacy. Nina X has no idea what the outside world is like. Nina X has a lot to learn. She has no mother and no father, she has Comrade Chen, and Comrades Uma, Jeni and Ruth. Her closest emotional connection is with the birds she sees when she removes the plasterboard that covers her bedroom window. Comrade Chen has named her The Project. She is being raised entirely separated from the false gods of capitalism and the cult of the self. He has her record everything in her journal to track her thoughts. To keep her ideology pure, her words are erased, over and over again. But that was before. Now Nina is in Freedom, and all the rules have changed. She has to remember that everything is opposite to what she was told, and yet Freedom seems to be a very confusing and dangerous place. A world that doesn't make sense. She is now 28 years old and on the second day of Freedom she writes: 'Today is the 30th September. A new kind of dog has been invented that doesn't make people allergic and a new kind of dinosaur has been discovered in Wales.' When Nina is treated badly by Social Services she encounters she finds herself behind new bars, sectioned. A tearful yet at times touches of humour, this novel is deeply moving. 273pp.

The heroically proportioned Fatty can normally take life as it comes. Right at home in easy-going Fayetteville, Arkansas, he is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Betty and likes nothing better than chewing the fat with his good friends Tubby O'Rourke and Porky Flanagan. But when Fatty and Betty head off to Ireland on the trip of a lifetime, they find that they have left their comfort zone far behind. Calamity and mayhem ensue as one mishap after another befalls the beleaguered couple. Can Fatty's broad shoulders take the strain, or will he suffer one indignity too many? Will he get his just deserts, or just dessert? We are delighted to see that this book is dedicated to our friend Hugh Andrew, the publisher at Birlinn Ltd. Woodcut illus., 174pp, paperback.

'Combining the sensibilities of a Joseph Conrad or a Cormac McCarthy with the poetic intensity of an Emily Dickinson, this rich, raw, and powerful seascape by Paul Lynch throws the sea's storms and the sea's light into the darkest corners of human consciousness. An astonishing achievement.' - Jane Urquhart. With its echoes of Greek mythology, the pages sing in this powerful new novel from the author of Grace. When fishermen Bolivar and Hector set sail from their South American village, they soon find themselves cast adrift in the Pacific Ocean by a sudden storm. As the days pass and no rescue materialises, the two men must come to terms with their environment and with each other if they are to survive. Part survival story, part fearless existential parable, the novel is a meditation on what it means to be a man, a friend, a father and a sinner in our fallen world, from a master of lyrical prose. 181pp, paperback, apologies for sticker.

Sparce, lyrical, more writing from David Park, one of the quiet men of Irish writing with one of the truest voices. Three women, each destined to play the role of a poet's wife - Catherine Blake, the wife of William Blake, a poet, painter and engraver who struggles for recognition in a society that dismisses him as a madman. Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry costs him his life under Stalin's terror. And the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her marriage during the days after her husband's death as she seeks to fulfil his final wish. Set across continents and centuries, and in very different circumstances, these three women confront the contradictions between art and life, contemplate their emotional and physical sacrifices for another's creativity, and struggle with infidelities that involve not only the flesh, but ultimately poetry itself. They find themselves custodians of their husbands' work, work that has been woven with love's intimacies and which has shaped their own lives in the most unexpected ways. Deeply insightful and moving with lush and starling imagery. 296pp, paperback.

A brave and ambitious novel set in Ireland and Africa, and a definitive comment on the Ulster struggles written by David Park, born in Belfast in 1953. The explorations of the protagonist's childhood in Donegal are moving. Haunted by the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and trapped in a land between the mountains and the sea, Naomi dreams of another life far away from the rainy sands of Donegal. When she moves to work in a refugee camp in the burning heat of Africa, she exchanges the city streets of Belfast for the arid desert. But before she leaves behind the land where she was born, escaping her past is not so easy. A powerful novel about guilt and absolution. 278pp, paperback.

With deft charm, affection and wit, these now familiar characters from the 44 Scotland Street series come alive on each page. At the bottom of a sharply descending street, in the topographical sense, in Edinburgh's Georgian New Town, new residents have moved in joining the already well-known and much-loved denizens of that remarkable building, 44 Scotland Street. What exactly did Sister Maria-Fiore, the aphorism-coining socialite nun, find on the No. 23 bus? Could it be the remains of a hitherto unknown Neanderthal, homo Watsoniensis? On the romantic front, long-suffering Stuart's hopes of kindling a new relationship are dashed thanks to chino-wearing narcissist Bruce, effortlessly exercising his powers of charm. The Promised Land beckons for Bertie who is off to Glasgow for a school exchange that takes him doon the watter. Back in Edinburgh, the Duke of Johannesburg's desire to learn a new language involving his Gaelic-speaking driver Pádruig has gone horribly wrong - to be immersed in a language it seems can be a captivating linguistic mistake. And the patrons of Big Lou's café are in for a gastronomic treat. In other words, everything in Edinburgh is absolutely normal. Glamorous hardback, 297pp.

A bright Coney Island Jew tries to rise in the gin-soaked world of WASP publishing, where his job is to mash the tragedy of the Rosenberg executions into pulp. This cunning and engrossing book is set in 1953. Simon Putnam is a recent Harvard graduate, newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm. He has entered a glittering milieu of three-martini lunches, exclusive literary parties, and old-money aristocrats in exquisitely tailored suits, a far cry from his loving, middle-class Jewish family on Coney Island. But his first assignment, editing "The Vixen, the Patriotic and the Frantic", a steamy bodice-ripper improbably based on a recent trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, makes him question the cost of admission into this exciting new profession, because Simon has a secret - his beloved mother was a childhood friend of Ethel's. His dilemma grows thornier when he meets the author, the startlingly beautiful, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. As mysteries deepen, as the confluence of sex, money, politics and power spirals out of Simon's control, he must face what he's lost by exchanging the loving safety of his home for the witty, whiskey-soaked orbit of his charismatic boss, the legendary Warren Landry. But everyone is keeping secrets and ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot. Includes passages from Anya's hilariously bad novel and illuminates a period of history with striking similarities to the current moment, plus timeless questions like how do we balance ambition and conscience, social mobility and cultural assimilation? Desirable roughcut edges to the 318pp in this US first edition.

A companion to The Secret Life of Bees code 93129 comes an extraordinary novel about two exceptional women. Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On her 11th birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept and so the trouble begins. Like her beloved mother Charlotte, Handful knows the rules, in all their brutality, but no one can stop her pushing them to the limit. She is ten years old when presented to Sarah as her birthday present and then the sparks begin to fly. Enthralling, shocking, sometimes humorous, this powerful and sweeping novel is inspired by real events set in the American Deep South in the 19th century, a novel of contrasts, beauty and ugliness, of righteous people living daily with the cruelty they fail to recognise and a story of two girls who grow up never doing anything they are told. It?s a celebration of the power of friendship. 437pp, paperback.

The multi-million copy bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love from the award-winning author of 'The Invention of Wings' (code 93102). Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old. Now aged 14 she yearns for forgiveness and a mother's love. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh and unforgiving father, she has only one friend, Rosaleen, a black servant. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily chooses to flee with her. Fugitives from justice, the pair follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a poignant and uplifting journey as much about her understanding of the world as the mystery surrounding her mother. By turns sad, full of incident and shot through with a grown-up magic reminiscent of the novels of Joanne Harris, and full of love, hope and forgiveness, the writing is humorous and deliciously eccentric. 374pp, fairly large print, paperback.

'Frankenstein meets The Shadow of the Wind in a Gothic thriller set in the diabolical city of fin-de-siècle Barcelona.' Daniel Amat has left Spain and all that happened there behind him. Having just achieved a brilliant role in Ancient Languages at Oxford University and an even more advantageous engagement, the arrival of a letter - a demand - stamped Barcelona comes like a cold hand from behind. He arrives back in that old, labyrinthine and near-mythic city a few days before the great 1888 World Fair, amid dread whispers of murder - the injuries reminiscent of an ancient curse, and bearing the signs of the genius 16th century anatomist Vesalius. Daniel is soon pulled into the depths of the crime and eventually into the tunnels below Barcelona where his own dark past and the future of science are joined in a terrible venture, to bring the secret of Vesalius to life. A gripping historical thriller which makes of Barcelona a diabolical character, emerging out of the dark into a new electrical age, aflame with spirit, superstition and science. A bestselling novel published in 18 countries which mixes a passionate setting and cryptic mystery. 582pp, paperback.