Once I'd been Daddy's favourite before something terrible happened. Violet Rue is the baby of the seven Kerrigan children and adores her big brothers. What's more she knows that a family protects its own and to betray the family is unforgiveable, so when she overhears a conversation not meant for her ears, and discovers that her brothers have committed a heinous crime, Violet is torn between her loyalty to her family and her sense of justice. The decision she takes will change her life for ever. Exploring racism, misogyny, community, family, loyalty, sexuality and identity, rape and murder, this is the dark side of American history and 12 year old Violet is cruelly exiled from her family. Joyce Carol Oates writes with a deep-felt rawness and is one of America's most respected literary figures. 415 pages, paperback.

This long-neglected Edwardian classic, set in the shabby world of England's theatricals, populated by hack writers, drunken actors, pushy stage mothers and unscrupulous directors, is a tale full of drama, greed, ambition and love and one man's quest as an actor for a secure wage and fame. Christopher Tatham is trying to 'make it' in acting, surviving on third-rate bit parts and the charity of his uncle, continuing to hope for the elusive leading-man role. A chance encounter with the enchanting Peggy Harper seems to herald a change of fortune. But Tatham is soon forced to give up his flagging career for a dispiriting position as a clerk in the City as he wanders nostalgically through the West End in his lunchbreak, still filled with longing for a life denied him. In a London daubed with greasepaint and filled with hungry actors, will Peggy and Tatham manage to carve out a life for themselves and attain the success and stability they crave? Toasting engagements with ginger beer, living hand to mouth, Merrick's seedy world makes for grim reading and when Peggy turns out to a fame-hungry, vain and vacant as she first appears, Christopher's lot looks unlikely to improve. In an age in which fame and celebrity are widely courted and craved, this book is still an intriguing and potentially cautionary tale. 164 page paperback.

'One forenoon I met Porson in Covent Garden, dressed in a pea-green coat: he had been married that morning, as I afterward learned from Raine, for he himself said nothing about it.' A poet and banker who knew everybody, Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) was a brilliant recorder of things said by his famous and powerful contemporaries from Edmund Burke to Talleyrand, Henry Grattan, Lord Grenville to Richard Porson and John Horne Tooke, from Charles James Fox to the Duke of Wellington. He was all ears, very good at hearing what was said and assiduous about recording it in a kind of laconic shorthand. Originally published in the 1830s and not edited since, and unreprinted since the 1850s, his energetic, entertaining and occasionally eye-popping 'table-talk' gives phenomenal texture to our understanding of Regency high life. Reading it is like eavesdropping on the past. Introduced by the distinguished literary critic Professor Christopher Ricks who has created this new selection, glamorous bottle green clothbound gold tooled edition with publisher's bookmark, 134pp.

12 bodies riddled with bullets in the sewers of Hong Kong, and one evil genius who outwits the cops at every turn. His threat - a continued escalation of terrorism until his blackmailing demands are met. For Chief Harry Feiffer and his crew at the Yellowthread Street Police Station in the most notorious section of Hong Kong, that is only the beginning of the nightmare. As the city is paralysed with fear and tempers reach breaking point, Feiffer is thrust into the spotlight as the prime suspect. The fourth title in this classic series of suspense, atmosphere and pungent fun. 288 page paperback.

The author of such classic novels as The Portrait of A Lady, The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller, Henry James (1843-1916) here takes readers from the American towns of upstate New York to villages in rural Tuscany. Our guide is a curious, engaged observer not only of streets and landscapes and cathedrals but also of paintings and plays and the characteristics, national, social and individual of the people we encounter at his side. He is a formidable travel companion whether on a trip to Lake George or an afternoon visit to an art exhibition in Paris from Burlington, Newport and Niagara, a European summer in Lichfield and Warwick, North Devon, Wells and Salisbury, from Chambery to Milan, from Venice to "Strassburg", the after-season at Rome, autumn in Florence, Tuscan cities, Ravenna, London sights and theatres and Scotland. The period of travel around Europe in 1869 lasted 15 months and when he came home again to Cambridge Massachusetts, Henry James was 27. He writes particularly lovingly of Italy and we travel with James in these pages in an unhurried holiday with a thoroughly seasoned, supremely cultivated, acutely intelligent companion. Word by word, phrase by phrase, James's long, purposefully meandering, beautifully detailed sentences will guide you around the curves of country roads, up the steps of a mouldering castle, into the quiet of a rural inn or the bustle of a grand hotel. Don't forget your deerstalker hat, bonnet and steamship tickets! US first edition 2016 with 280 desirable roughcut pages and chapter heading illus.

Whitaker Wright has been dubbed the world's most shameless swindler. He was one of the great characters of the Victorian age - Methodist, minister, businessman, swindler and symbol of excess, whose life inspired some of H. G. Wells's finest books. Henry Macrory has found a glorious subject in telling the forgotten story of an extraordinary man, a roguish hustler with a genius for self-reinvention who was for a time the richest man in Britain. Beginning his career as an impoverished preacher, Wright crossed the Atlantic to prospect for gold, surviving a Native American massacre before he made his fortune. Then the bubble burst. Leaving behind a string of angry investors, he fled to England to start again and soon he was one of the world's richest men. At his 10,000 acre estate in Surrey he employed an entourage of 77 staff, moved a hill that blocked his view, and built an underwater glass smoking room. On his vast steam yacht, he entertained the Prince of Wales, the Kaiser, and half of Britain's aristocracy. His downfall was as dramatic as his ascent. On the last trading day of the 19th century his financial empire, which he had propped up by cooking the books, went belly up. This time, the trail of furious investors stretched all the way to the Prime Minister. With the police in hot pursuit, Wright fled to New York, but his escape was short-lived. At the end of what the press dubbed 'the most dramatic trial of modern times' he was sentenced to seven years in jail. Minutes later, he sprang a last dreadful surprise. 356pp.

New updated edition, the greatest books are distilled in this curious reader's guide to popular psychology. We are invited to embark on a journey through excerpts from 50 books covering hundreds of ground-breaking ideas. Explore William James's The Principals of Psychology, as well as contemporary writings like Malcom Gladwell's Blink. Topics included are the science of the brain, tapping the unconscious mind, happiness and mental health, personality and the self, human motivation, the dynamics of relationships, creative power and communication skills. In effect this is your shortcut to the most important ideas on the mind, personality and human nature with ideas from the great thinkers like Alfred Adler, Hans Eysenck on the four dimensions of personality, Anna Freud on defence mechanisms, Sigmund Freud on dreams, Eric Hoffer on mass psychology, Karen Horney on inner conflicts, Alfred Kinsey on sexual psychology, Ivan Pavlov on conditioning, and B. S. Skinner on the power of environment among them. Discover the findings of contemporary research and practice on introversion, marriage, self-control and the burden of choice, and gain the essence of the greatest writings like A Guide to Rational Living and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat among them. 319pp, paperback.

Beginner level for ages eight to adult and with real tools inside, the 120 pieces which are Mecanno-style and compatible are easy to assemble. Illustrations and assembly instructions are included, the parts are made from sturdy metal plate, shiny silver and with red, green and yellow plastic screws, a blue pilot?s seat. Develop your problem solving skills and learn basic engineering concepts. Look out for more in the series.

Discover the late Ursula Le Guin's passionate and enthralling story of a young boy sent to a school of wizardry to learn the ways of magic in the opening quartet of the Earthsea story. One of the literary greats, the collection features: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. Ged is but a goat herd on the island of Gont when he comes by his strange powers over nature. Sent to the School of Wizards on Roke, he learns the true way of magic and proves himself a powerful magician. It is as the Archmaje Sparrow Hawk that he helps the High Priestess Tenar escape the labyrinth of darkness. But over the years, Ged witnesses true magic and the ancient ways submit to the forces of evil and death. Will he too succumb, or can he hold them back? Penguin paperback, 691pp in facsimile reprint for ages 12 to adult, previously published as 'The Earthsea Quartet'.

If you love Planet Earth, you will certainly appreciate the birth, death and family lives of giant elephants. Watching a family out for a swim on a hot day, Hannah Mumby sees grandmothers, mothers and sisters exchanging noisy greetings and affectionate touches, keeping up a constant stream of chat as they play with their young children and frequently pause for snack breaks. An interconnected and close family like any other, except that in this family the adults way several tonnes each and the babies wave trunks playfully at one another. This is a family or herd of elephants. Intelligent, sentient beings, much about their day to day lives and abilities remains unknown. How do they communicate with one another over seemingly impossible distances? How do males spend their lives once they have left their mothers' herds? How much do elephants really remember? 'Elephants are keepers of secrets. A rather big secret being that if you can see past the grey skin and the bulk and the majesty and fear of them, then sometimes, in some ways, they are just like you.' Combining lyrical writing with popular science and sensibility, chapters include Samburu Families, Oozies and Elephants, Sex and Baby Hannah, Elephant in the Mirror, Growing Old, and Death and Ivory. Hannah Mumby reverently describes her own elephant encounters alongside an exploration of the most up-to-date discoveries about how elephants live, travel, have sex, raise children and relate to one another as we gain a sense of how they think and feel. 296pp, photos in colour.