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Vintage Elmore Leonard – a searing tale of gambling, gangsters, hidden agendas and a whole heap of trouble from the virtuoso of American crime fiction.

Daredevil Dennis Lenahan has brought his act to the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi – diving off an eighty-foot ladder into nine feet of water for the amusement of gamblers, gangsters, and luscious belles. His riskiest feat, however, was witnessing a Dixie-style mob execution while atop his diving platform.

Robert Taylor saw the hit also. A blues-loving Detroit hustler touring the Southland, Taylor’s got his own secret agenda and he wants Dennis in on the game. And high-diver Dennis could be about to take a long, fatal fall – right into a mess of hoop skirts, Civil War play-acting… and more trouble than he ever dreamed possible.

An explosive thriller from the ‘greatest living writer of crime fiction’ [NEW YORK TIMES].

Way back when revolution was the thing, bombs were Robin Abbott and Skip Gibbs’s bag – until they were sent to prison. Now they’re out and looking to put their skills to profitable use. Their target: Woody Ricks – who Robin thinks ratted them out to the Feds. But Motown cop Chris Mankowski has his eye on Woody, and as a former golden boy of the bomb squad, it’s only fitting he’ll be around when the nasty stuff starts going down¿ or blowing up.

‘A masterpiece’ Martin Amis

‘The coolest, hottest writer in America’ Chicago Tribune

A major Hollywood film starring John Travolta, GET SHORTY has also been adapted for TV with Chris O’Dowd and Ray Romano.

Miami loan shark Chili Palmer is ice-cool, whether he’s retrieving stolen property or collecting money for the mob. Chasing a bad debt leads him to the bright lights of Hollywood – and to a true story that would make a great movie. Soon he’s pitching to Harry Zimm, a B-grade horror flick producer trying to make a comeback.

As the lure of Tinseltown’s dream-makers and gorgeous wannabe starlets becomes increasingly hard to resist, Chili gets caught up in murder,revenge and romance. Will his killer movie ever get made, or will it just get him killed . . . ?

‘In Hollywood, home of movies, gorgeous women, players and fast operators – every move you make is a potential scene … Nerve-shattering suspense, crackling dialogue and scathing wit from ‘the hottest thriller writer in the US’ Time Magazine

‘One of the most hilarious and cynical Hollywood revenge novels ever written’ Playboy

‘Extremely funny, bursting with sustained passages of black comedy . . . a major American novel’ Guardian

The sequel to Chili Palmer’s hit movie tanked and now Chili’s itching for a comeback. So when a power lunch with record-label executive and former associate Tommy Athens ends in a mob hit, he soon finds himself in an unlikely alliance with organized-crime detective Darryl Holmes and the likely next target of Russian gangsters. But where others see danger, Chili Palmer sees story possibilities.

Enter Linda Moon, a singer with aspirations that go further than her current gig in a Spice Girls cover band. Chili takes over as Linda’s manager, entering the world of rock stars, pop divas, and hip-hop gangstas. As he wings his way to success in the music business with his trademark cool, Chili manipulates his adversaries and advances his friends, all the while basing the plot of his new film on the action that results.

Michael Palin’s bestselling diaries before, during and after Monty Python.

Michael Palin’s diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner . . .

Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films THE HOLY GRAIL and LIFE OF BRIAN. Living through the three-day week and the miners strike, and all the trials of a peripatetic life are also essential ingredients of these perceptive and funny diaries.

No. 1 bestseller and superstar doing what he does best, introducing millions of avid readers to little-known peoples and places.

Until the early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, travelling behind the iron curtain was never easy. In undertaking his new journey through Eastern Europe, breathing in its rich history, and exquisite sights and talking to its diverse peoples, Michael fills what has been a void in his own experience and that of very many others.

NEW EUROPE is very much a voyage of discovery, from the snows of the Julian Alps to the beauty of the Baltic sea, he finds himself in countries he’d barely heard of, many unfamiliar and mysterious, all with tragic histories and much brighter futures.

During his 20-country adventure Palin meets Romanian lumberjacks, drives the 8.58 stopping train from Poznan to Wolsztyn, treads the catwalk at a Budapest fashion show, learns about mine-clearing in Bosnia and watches Turkish gents wrestling in olive oil.

As with all his bestselling books, in his uniquely entertaining style, Palin opens up a new and undiscovered world to millions of readers.

Michael Palin tackles the full length of the Himalaya in this terrific number one bestseller.

Having risen to the challenge of seas, poles, dhows and deserts, the highest mountains in the world were a natural target for Michael Palin. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna and Everest, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh.

Facing altitudes as high as 17,500 feet as well as some of the world’s deepest gorges, Palin also passed through political flashpoints like Pakistan’s remote north-west frontier, terrorist-torn Kashmir and the mountains of Nagaland, only recently open to visitors.

Michael Palin’s superb No. 1 bestseller about his incredible voyage across the Sahara.

Michael Palin’s epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean, but this was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert.

As the journey unfolds, the Sahara reveals not the emptiness of endless sand dunes, but a huge and diverse range of cultures and landscapes and a long history of commerce and conquest stretching from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the oil-rich Islamic republics of today.

On his way, he encounters dangers such as camel stew, being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally and Dakar nightlife, as well as returning to the original spot where THE LIFE OF BRIAN was filmed.

No.1 bestseller Michael Palin’s epic journey from the North Pole to the South Pole.

‘The cracked and fissured ice-pack offers no comfortable reassurance – no glimmer of any reward to the traveller who has made his way to the top of the world. The Arctic Ocean, known to the Victorians as the Sea of Ancient Ice, stares balefully back as we descend towards it, reflecting nothing but the question: Why?’

Michael Palin’s adventure begins when he is enrolled in the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society…

Travelling by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, Michael Palin experiences every extreme the world has to offer. Braving the cold grip of the Arctic Circle, and the swirling snowstorms of Spitsbergen, Palin has to cope with friendly locals, occasional gunfire and his own unruly digestive system before he can finally stand in Scott’s shoes at the South Pole, in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Michael Palin’s terrific account of his journey through 18 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean, published by Phoenix for the first time.

For almost a year, Michael Palin travelled through 18 countries on the perimeter of the world’s largest ocean, in a spectacular journey of contrasts, drama and beauty.

From head-hunters in Borneo to a meal of maggots in Mexico, his route takes him to some of the most politically volatile and physically demanding places on Earth. Whether climbing the Exalted Mountains in China, dodging icebergs in Chile, or being taken short on the banks of the Amazon, Michael Palin paints a vivid picture of the people and places around him.

‘It was a journey of dazzling surprises and jarring extremes. Beauty and ugliness, sophistication and squalor, unceasing urban noise and monastic tranquility … This is a record of a year of wonder’ Michael Palin.

‘The pace of this kind of travel has not much changed since Fogg set out in 1872. Trains may be a little faster, but there are certainly no high-speed rail links yet across India, China or the USA. Passenger services have practically disappeared from the world’s shipping lanes … Recourse to air travel, even as a convenient means of escape, was not allowed.’

Following the route taken by Phileas Fogg 115 years earlier, Michael Palin set out from the Reform Club to circumnavigate the world. The rules were simple, but nothing else about the trip was straightforward…

From a tour of Venice on a rubbish barge to ship spotting at the Suez Canal and the bicycle rush hour and snake snacks in China, this is an unparalleled tribute to man’s ability to make life difficult for himself.

A winning combination of No.1 travel writer Michael Palin and one of the great literary figures of the century.

When Michael Palin was researching for his novel HEMINGWAY’S CHAIR his interest was stimulated by Hemingway’s appetite for travel and ‘Papa’s’ evocations of the places he knew. Hemingway remains a compelling figure, and Palin’s goal was to revisit Hemingway’s world.

This book includes the American West (‘wide lawns and narrow minds’), Idaho, Michigan (‘fly fishing, hunting’), Europe in the First World (where Hemingway was wounded serving in the Ambulance Brigade), Cuba (where Hemingway wrote FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS), Paris in the Roaring Twenties and Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Sun Valley and Key West – where the Hemingway lookalike competition is an annual event.

An explosive and perceptive biography of the British novelist J.G. Ballard

To many people, J.G. Ballard will always be the schoolboy in Steven Spielberg’s movie Empire of the Sun, struggling to survive as an internee of the Japanese during World War II. Others remember him as the author of CRASH, a meditation on the eroticism of the automobile and the car crash, which also became a film and a cause celebre for its frank depiction of a fetish which, as this book reveals, was no literary conceit but a lifelong preoccupation.

In this first biography, John Baxter draws on an admiration of and acquaintance with Ballard that began when they were writers for the same 1960s science fiction magazines. With the help of the few people whom he admitted to his often hermit-like existence, it illuminates the troubled reality behind the urbane and amiable facade of a man who was proud to describe himself as ‘psychopathic’.

DEADLY DEFENCE covers every important aspect in bridge to make good bridge players into excellent defenders. It deals with opening leads (how to convey maximum information), defensive play when playing second hand, third hand and also when you are first to play to a trick, how to use signals more effectively and how to think on defence like an expert.

The first hilarious volume of comedy writer, journalist, radio DJ and screenwriter Danny Baker’s memoir, and now the inspiration for the major BBC series CRADLE TO GRAVE, starring Peter Kay.

‘And what was our life like in this noisy, dangerous and polluted industrial pock-mark wedged into one of the capital’s toughest neighbourhoods? It was, of course, utterly magnificent and I’d give anything to climb inside it again for just one day.’

In the first volume of his memoirs, Danny Baker brings his early years to life as only he knows how. With his trademark humour and eye for a killer anecdote, he takes us all the way from the council house in south-east London that he shared with his mum Betty and dad ‘Spud’ (played by Peter Kay) to the music-biz excesses of Los Angeles, where he famously interviewed Michael Jackson for the NME. Laugh-out-loud funny, it is also an affectionate but unsentimental hymn to a bygone era.

An exceptionally dramatic life of Joan of Arc and her previously unchronicled mentor, Yolande of Aragon.

How did an illiterate seventeen-year-old peasant girl manage to become one of histories most salient females? It is almost 600 years since Joan of Arc heard the voices of angels that would change her life for ever: in a breathtaking story her quest saved France from English domination and restored France’s hereditary monarchy.

Just thirteen when her life was turned upside down, Joan’s holy guidance led her on an arduous eleven-day journey into the unknown, restoring the Dauphin back to his original birthright in an official coronation, allowing him to resume his rule as France’s legitimate king. Joan summoned and led an impressive army of French loyalists against the English; the siege at Orleans was an exhilarating English defeat that liberated the city. The following year witnessed Joan’s capture by the enemy. After a series of heroic endeavours to escape cruel adversaries, she was subjected to trial by inquisition and then in Rouen, the heart of France, Joan’s courageous journey came to a heartbreaking conclusion. This is the story at the core of centuries of myth-making.

But what if we no longer accept this tale? What if we question whether the Heavens and their angels were truly Joan’s only source of strength and power? What if we demand a different narrative? This revisionist biography unearths the secular and verifiable basis for Joan’s heroic exploits: Yolande of Aragon, a forgotten mentor. This is a story of not one life, but two; two lives that together were intertwined in the restoration of France’s greatness.

A brilliant survey of the history and civilisations of the Middle East by one of the world’s greatest authorities on the subject

In this immensely readable and wide-ranging book, Bernard Lewis charts the successive transformations of the Middle East, beginning with the two great empires, the Roman and the Persian, and covering the growth of Christianity, the rise and spread of Islam, the waves of invaders from the east, the Mongol hordes of Jengiz Khan, the rise of the Ottoman Turks, and the changing balance of power between the Muslim and Christian worlds.

‘This book is a masterpiece’ Sir Anthony Parsons, Daily Telegraph

The history of an extremist Islamic sect in the 11th-12th centuries whose terrorist methods gave the English language a new word: assassin.

The word ‘Assassin’ was brought back from Syria by the Crusaders, and in time acquired the meaning of murderer. Originally it was applied to the members of a Muslim religious sect – a branch of the Ismailis, and the followers of a leader known as the Old Man of the Mountain. Their beliefs and their methods made them a by-word for both fanaticism and terrorism in Syria and Persia in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the subject of a luxuriant growth of myth and legend.

In this book, Bernard Lewis begins by tracing the development of these legends in medieval and modern Europe and the gradual percolation of accurate knowledge concerning the Ismailis. He then examines the origins and activities of the sect, on the basis of contemporary Persian and Arabic sources, and against the background of Middle Eastern and Islamic history. In a final chapter he discusses some of the political, social and economic implications of the Ismailis, and examines the significance of the Assassins in the history of revolutionary and terrorist movements.

‘Think The Devil Wears Prada with paintbrushes’ Grazia

Lacey Yeager is beautiful, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the New York art world by storm.

She sparkles in auction houses, selling Old Master paintings to the fabulously wealthy, and in edgy Downtown galleries, filled with Hirsts and Warhols. Charming men and women, old and young, rich and even richer, Lacey’s ascendancy seems assured.

But when the art world bubble looks set to burst, a secret from her past rears its head, threatening to undermine everything she has worked for . . .

The long-awaited baking bible from the Hairy Bikers AKA Si King and Dave Myers.

With their irrepressible enthusiasm for great food, Si King and Dave Myers, AKA the Hairy Bikers, travel the length and breadth of Europe to discover the best baking recipes from the Continent.

From Norway to Southern Spain, the boys eat their way across ten countries, making friends and swapping recipes along the way. They discover the ultimate Black Forest Gateau in Germany, the most incredible pastries in Southern France and cook cakes that will tickle the tastebuds of all home bakers.

This is a welcome return of the Hairy Bakers. These recipes will delight and will bring a freshness to all home baking.

‘There’s nothing quite so comforting as a really well-made pie. From classic favourites to new combinations, the BBC’s Hairy Bikers have got it covered’ BBC GOOD FOOD

‘There are more than 140 drool-inducing recipes bubbling out of this book like steaming filling escaping through a gap in the pastry…easy to follow and delicious’ COUNTRYFILE

This is the definitive Pie Bible from the Kings of Pie, The Hairy Bikers.

In their culinary homecoming, Si and Dave celebrate a dish close to their hearts. This beautifully illustrated cookbook brings together the Great British classic in 150 brand-new recipes. Featuring an extraordinary range of pies – from the sweet and savoury, deep and small, and to the pies that are puddings – The Hairy Bikers will inspire you to cook and share the mighty dish with the ones you love.

With top tips on pastry, the failsafe methods, the secrets and the cheats, the boys will teach you how to choose the right type of pastry and filling for any occasion. Learn the rules of pastry making and how to add the right pickles, relishes and sauces to make your pie an unforgettable dish. And of course, how to make the most of those little left over bits and turn them into delicious cheese straws, jam tarts and turnovers.

This is a heart-warming, delicious and nostalgic recipe book that can be enjoyed by families, friends and fans of the nation’s favourite dish.

The biggest non-fiction book of spring 2011 from Hairy Bikers Si & Dave, No.1 bestselling authors and stars of BBC’S MUMS KNOWS BEST.

When Hairy Bikers, Si and Dave, toured the country in search of ordinary Mums and their families’ favourite recipes, they had no idea they would unearth such a wealth of talent, tradition and nostalgia. So began their search for the dishes we love best.

This beautiful cookbook brings together over 100 of the nation’s favourite recipes from the second series of BBC2’s MUMS KNOW BEST. It includes Si and Dave’s personal family recipes as well as their favourite recipes that they discover through the mums they meet and the recipe fairs they hold. Episodes include Comforting Food, High Tea, School Dinners and Al Fresco. An irresistible collection of recipes that will inspire you to keep cooking with love for the people that matter to you most.

Hartlepool Hall has been in Ed’s family for generations – but is that about to change, and who is the mysterious Lady Alice?

‘A deliciously dark comedy about class, snobbery and a vanishing way of life’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘Gloriously enjoyable’ DAILY MAIL

‘Excellent’ METRO

Ed Hartlepool has been living in self-imposed exile for five years, but with a settlement regarding his inheritance looming, he must return to his ancestral seat, Hartlepool Hall. On his return, he discovers that his father has left him, along with the house, a seven million pound tax bill, two massive overdrafts, an 80-year-old butler, and a vast country estate that is creaking at the seams. Not only that, but there is a strange woman in residence – Lady Alice – who seems to have made herself very much at home.

With the debts mounting, it seems that Ed’s only recourse is to turn to his friend Annabel’s new boyfriend, a property developer who plans to turn Hartlepool Hall into luxury flats and a golf course. But can Ed save his inheritance without such a drastic move? And is Lady Alice really the person she claims to be?

The author of international phenomenon THE READER returns with a tale of old jealousies, explosive politics and uncertain futures. Meet the Baader-Meinhof Group, 25 years on…

Old friends and lovers reunite for a weekend in a secluded country home after spending decades apart. They plumb their memories of each other and pass quiet judgements on the life decisions each has made since their youth. This isn’t, however, just any old reunion, and their conversations of the old days aren’t typical reminiscences. After 24 years, Joerg – a convicted murderer and terrorist, is released from prison on a pardon.

A former member of the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof Group), the announcement of Joerg’s release is sure to send shock waves throughout Germany. But before this happens, his group of friends – most of whom had been RAF sympathizers – gather for his first weekend of freedom. They are invited by Christiane, Joerg’s devoted sister, whose suffocating concern for her brother is matched only by the unrelenting pull of Marcko, a dangerously passionate young man intent on using Joerg to continue the cause.