At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England's history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England-until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. Bu...

Hailed as one of the world’s masterpieces of psychological realism, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high-court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?The first part of the story portrays Ivan Ilyich...

In his eleventh novel, Tim Powers takes his unique brand of speculative fiction into uncharted territory, instilling the old-fashioned espionage novel with a healthy dose of the supernatural.As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, a coded message draws Professor Andrew Hale back into Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Elements from his past are gatherin...

Romance Writers of America RITA Award FinalistNew York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens knows Regency London, and outside the exclusive enclave in which the aristocracy lived in wealth and comfort, lay another world …An intriguing manHandsome, enigmatic, and deliciously dangerous, Barnaby Adair has made his name by solving crimes within the ton. When Penelope Ashford appeals for his aid, he is moved by her plight—and capt...

One of the world’s greatest novelists, Leo Tolstoy was also the author of a number of superb short stories, one of his best-known being “The Kreutzer Sonata.” This macabre story involves the murder of a wife by her husband. It is a penetrating study of jealousy as well as a piercing complaint about the way in which society educates men and women in matters of sex—a serious condemnation of the mores and attitudes of the wealthy, educated class.

On a deserted road, late at night, Scotland Yard’s Ian Rutledge encounters a frightened woman standing over a body, launching an inquiry that leads him into the lair of a stealthy killer and the dangerous recesses of his own memories in this twentieth installment of the acclaimed New York Times bestselling series.Hours after his sister’s wedding, a restless Ian Rutledge drives aimlessly, haunted by the past, and narrowly misses a motorcar stopped in the middle of a desolat...

From the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers, comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale.A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt’s long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers.Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic...

Bread, cash, dough, loot, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is, in fact, the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential back story behind all history.Through Ferguson's expert lens, familiar historica...

A jockey unravels nasty secrets of corruption, blackmail, and murder in this mystery from grand master of crime fiction Dick Francis.Longtime jockey Philip Nore is no hero. But when he begins to suspect that a racetrack photographer’s fatal accident was really murder, he sets out to discover the truth and trap the killer. Slowly, he unravels some nasty secrets of corruption, blackmailand murder—and unwittingly sets himself up as the killer’s next target …“Reflex enth...

No military figure in history has been quite as polarizing as Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he a monster, driven by an endless, ruinous quest for military glory? Or a social and political visionary brought down by petty, reactionary kings of Europe?In the most definitive account to date, respected historian Charles Esdaile argues that the chief motivating factor for Napoleon was his insatiable desire for fame. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, this volume offers a p...

Essential listening for all those who want to understandthe universe in which we liveStephen Hawking is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, an intellectual icon, known not only for the adventurousness of his ideas but also for the clarity with which he expresses them. Seeking to uncover the holy grail of science: the elusive Theory of Everything that lies at the heart of the cosmos, Professor Hawking takes us the cutting edge of theoretical physics, where truth is often stran...

As the Nazi hold tightens over Germany in 1939, British journalist John Russell is living in Berlin, where he has spent fifteen years working as a freelancer.Despite his hatred for fascism and the signs of coming war, Russell is determined to stay in Berlin to be near his son, Paul, and his long-time girlfriend, the Germanfilm actress Effi Koenen. For paying work, which has become hard to find, Russell agrees to take on jobs that take him increasingly deeper into a web of esp...