THE WINNER STANDS ALONE

The Winner Stands Alone is the enthralling new novel by the incomparable Paulo Coelho. The story is set during the Cannes International Film Festival and the entire action plays out over 24 hours. Igor is a wealthy Russian businessman.

His wife Ewa left him two years ago and Igor has never really come to terms with their break up, especially as Ewa is now remarried to a famous fashion designer, Hamid Hussein. Igor is insanely jealous and when Ewa left him he told her that he would destroy 'whole worlds' in order to get her back, and he intends to keep his promise! Igor has followed Ewa and her new husband to Cannes and his plan is to cause as much violence and destruction as possible until Ewa realises how much he loves her and comes back to him. Ewa loved Igor but she was absolutely terrified of him.

She knows that Igor has killed people in the past when he was a soldier, but she also knows a dark secret - that he once cold bloodedly murdered a beggar who was bothering them in a restaurant. Igor is clearly unhinged and he will stop at nothing to regain her love and so he goes on a ruthless killing spree until he tracks down Ewa...The star-studded film festival acts as a backdrop to Igor's maniacal murdering spree and we are ntroduced to various characters along the way, all of whom are desperately trying to get their big break in the shallow world of show business; Gabriela a young and naive actress who is being exploited by her agent and Jasmine a troubled young Rwandan refugee working as a model. The Winner Stands Alone is a gripping, fast-paced thriller, and Coelho cleverly weaves in elements of social satire, poking fun at our celebrity and money obsessed culture.

PAULO COELHO

Original title:

O VENCEDOR ESTA SO

400 pages

BOOK OF SOULS

A shocking truth lies within the pages of an ancient library, locked inside a high-security complex deep beneath the Nevada desert. And the US government will stop at nothing to keep it classified. But now a shadowy group of ex-employees want the world to know - however terrifying the disclosure might prove to be.

And when a single volume missing from the original collection mysteriously surfaces at a London auction house, they persuade former FBI agent Will Piper to help them obtain it and unlock the ultimate secret of the library, once and for all. Travelling to England, Will discovers the text contains a sonnet that holds a series of clues - clues that reveal the book has had a profound effect on the history of mankind. But all the time he is being watched.

And as he gets nearer to the final revelation, he and his young family become a direct target for a deadly group of men whose duty it is to guard the library's secret - whatever it takes. However, the truth is too powerful to keep hidden...

GLENN COOPER

Original title:

BOOK OF SOULS

448 pages

THE BRADSHAW VARIATIONS

Since leaving his job to look after Alexa, his eight-year-old daughter, Thomas Bradshaw has found the structure of his daily piano practice and the study of musical form brings a nourishment to these difficult middle years. His pursuit of a more artistic way of life shocks and irritates his parents and his in-laws. Why has he swapped roles with Tonie Swann, his intense, intellectual wife who has accepted a demanding full-time University job? How can this be good for Alexa and for the family as a whole? Meanwhile Tonie tunes herself out of domestic life, into the harder, headier world of work where long-since forgotten memories of herself are awakened.

She soon finds herself outside their tight family circle and alive to previously unimaginable possibilities...

RACHEL CUSK

Original title:

THE BRADSHAW VARIATIONS

242 pages

EATING ANIMALS

"Eating Animals" is a riveting expose which presents the gut-wrenching truth about the price paid by the environment, the government, the Third World and the animals themselves in order to put meat on our tables more quickly and conveniently than ever before. Interweaving a variety of monologues and balancing humour and suspense with informed rationalism, "Eating Animals" is as much a novelistic account of an intellectual journey as it is a fresh and open look at the ethical debate around meat-eating. Unlike most other books on the subject, "Eating Animals" also explores the possibilities for those who do eat meat to do so more responsibly, making this an important book not just for vegetarians, but for anyone who is concerned about the ramifications and significance of their chosen lifestyle.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Original title:

EATING ANIMALS

340 pages

WE WERE THERE

What was it like to be there at the very moment when great events took place; when great figures strode onto the world stage; when the wonderful, the terrible, the diverting and the just plain curious happened? In this acclaimed collection of eyewitness reportage, Robert Fox brings together accounts from soldiers, journalists, poets, scientists, adventurers, chance bystanders and many more to create a vivid, compelling history of the twentieth century as it happened. Covering two world wars, revolutions, discoveries and the rise and fall of empires across the globe, "We Were There" reports on the defining moments of the last hundred or so years, from the turn of the last century through the Wall Street Crash and D-Day, to the Vietnam War, Tiananmen Square and 9/11. These evocative reports from around the world - by figures including Vera Brittain, Neil Armstrong, Rosa Parks and the Baghdad blogger - show that the best eyewitness reporting is as gripping as it is invaluable.

ROBERT FOX

Original title:

WE WERE THERE

320 pages

A SINGLE MAN

In this brilliantly perceptive novel, a middle aged professor living in California, is alienated from his students by differences in age and nationality, and from the rest of society by his homosexuality. Isherwood explores the depths of the human soul and its ability to triumph over loneliness, alienation and loss.

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD

Original title:

A SINGLE MAN

160 pages

I HEART HOLLYWOOD

Angela Clark fell head over heels for New York, but will the sun-drenched glamour of Hollywood win her heart?Angela Clark can't believe her luck... she's an English girl living in New York with a dream job at hip magazine The Look and a sexy boyfriend.Her latest assignment takes her to Hollywood to interview hot actor and fellow Brit James Jacobs.Thrown in at the deep end she heads west with best friend Jenny dreaming of Rodeo Drive and Malibu beach.Soon Angela discovers that celebrity life in Hollywood is not all glamour, gloss and sunshine. Despite his lady-killer reputation, the only person who seems genuine is James.Then a paparazzi snaps them in an uncompromising position and suddenly Angela is thrust into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons...Can she convince all those close to her - especially her boss and her boyfriend - not to believe everything they read? And will Hollywood ever win Angela's heart?

LINDSEY KELK

Original title:

I HEART HOLLYWOOD

336 pages

LEAVING THE WORLD

On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents - she would never get married and she would never have children. But life, as Jane discovers, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo.

And then she falls pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise - but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world. Just when Jane has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for personal redemption.

Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision - stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth. Like Kennedy's previous highly acclaimed novels, "Leaving the World", speaks volumes about the dilemmas we face in trying to navigate our way through all that fate throws in our path.

DOUGLAS KENNEDY

Original title:

LEAVING THE WORLD

592 pages

UP IN THE AIR

Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor (he fires people) has kept him airborne for years. He hates his job, but loves 'Airworld', finding happiness in pressurized cabins and anonymous hotel rooms, and pursuing a noble ultimate goal: one million frequent flier miles. With sharp wit, and wisdom, 'Up in the Air' combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the modern mind.

It is a story for unsettled times.

WALTER KIRN

Original title:

UP IN THE AIR

304 pages

THE SWAN THIEVES

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life - solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, Marlowe embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.

Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy; from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve hope.

ELIZABETH KOSTOVA

Original title:

THE SWAN THIEVES

576 pages

WOLF HALL

England, the 1520s, Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Published to coincide with the 500th Anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne, this is a truly English historical novel.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2009.

HILARY MANTEL

Original title:

WOLF HALL

672 pages

TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT

It is a troublesome fact on which even Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi agree: there are things that men know and ladies do not, and vice versa. It is unfortunate, for example, when Mma Ramotswe's newest client is the big-shot owner of the ailing Kalahari Swoopers, that one thing lady detectives know very little about is football. And when the glamorous Violet Sephotho sets her sights on Mma Makutsi's unsuspecting fiance, it becomes exasperatingly clear that some men do not know how to recognise a ruthless Jezebel even when she is bouncing up and down on the best bed in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop.

In her attempt to foster understanding between the sexes and find the traitor on Mr Football's team, Mma Ramotswe ventures into new territory, drinks tea in unfamiliar kitchens and learns to trust in the observational powers of small boys. And, as wise and warm-hearted as his heroine, Alexander McCall Smith reminds us that we must dig deep to uncover the goodness of the human heart.

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

Original title:

TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT

272 pages

EVEN THE DOGS

They break down the door at the end of December and carry his body away. On a still and frozen day between Christmas and New Year, a man's body is found lying in his ruined flat. Found, and then taken away, examined, investigated and cremated.

As the state begins its detailed, dispassionate inquest, the man embarks on his last journey through a world he has not ventured into, alive, for years. In his wake, a series of fractured narratives emerge from squats and alleyways across the city: the short and stark story of the man, and of his friends who look on from the shadows, keeping vigil as the hours pass, paying their own particular homage. As they watch, their stories unfurl layer by layer; stories of lives fallen through the cracks, hopes flaring and dying, love overwhelmed by a stronger need, and the havoc wrought by drugs, distress and the disregard of the wider world.

Intense, exhilarating, and shot through with hope and fury, "Even the Dogs" is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society; littered with love, loss, despair and a glimpse of redemption.

JON MCGREGOR

Original title:

EVEN THE DOGS

208 pages

THINGS I'VE BEEN SILENT ABOUT

In her bestselling memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran", Azar Nafisi opened her world to us, offering a vibrant portrait of women's lives in Iran. In this stunning new book, Nafisi returns to Iran and her childhood to deliver an exquisite and moving portrait of a family's life, a life lived in thrall to Nafisi's powerful mother. She describes the mesmerizing fictions she created about herself, her past, and the family's life.

Part detective story and part portrait of an exceptional marriage and mother-daughter struggle, the book is also a deeply personal reflection on women's choices, and on how Azar Nafisi found inspiration for a different kind of life in the stories of women in "The Persian Book of Kings".Writing of the women who came to her mother's coffee salons, Nafisi explores the perverse effects of society's restrictions, in things everyone knew but were silent about. In this wonderful book, a gifted storyteller once again masterfully uses her own life to transform the way we see the world, and reminds us why we read in the first place.

AZAR NAFISI

Original title:

THINGS I'VE BEEN SILENT ABOUT

320 pages

FRIENDS LOVERS AND OTHER INDISCRETIONS

It's early 2008 and the credit crunch is starting to bite. Sam and Laura Diamond - and their friends - are circling forty and all feeling a lot less certain about life than when they first met in their twenties. Laura wants to work part-time and have a third child - an appalling prospect for her husband Sam, whose secret ambition is to give up his job as a struggling scriptwriter and have a vasectomy.

Life's no more straightforward for wild child turned corporate lawyer Janey Dart. Having finally given up on Patrick, the love of her life, she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and hastily married to a wealthy hedge fund manager who loathes her friends. And Sam's oldest friend, trendy restaurant owner Jonathan Sleet, is about to hit the big time with a TV series and cookbook, but can't control his roving eye.

So it's no surprise that back on their organic farm in Suffolk, his once glamorous wife Hannah is finding distractions of her own. Determined to reunite the group, Jonathan brings everyone together for a holiday to celebrate his fortieth birthday. But six friends, two decades of tangled fortunes and an explosive secret from the past make for an unforgettable week.

FIONA NEILL

Original title:

FRIENDS LOVERS AND OTHER INDISCRETIONS

400 pages

THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE

Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent ' and suddenly her life is transformed. Her first assignment is to read a novel about the ancient Sufi mystic, Rumi, who was transformed by the whirling dervish into a passionate poet and advocate of love. Slowly she realizes that his thirteenth-century life is starting to mirror her own, and in doing so it opens up exciting opportunities for her to embrace the dervish's timeless message for herself.

This is a mesmerizing novel about finding love and inspiration in the most unlikely of places.

ELIF SHAFAK

Original title:

THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE

368 pages

THE SPIRIT LEVEL : WHY EQUALITY IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE

Large inequalities of income in a society have often been regarded as divisive and corrosive, and it is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. This groundbreaking book, based on thirty years' research, demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them - the well-off as well as the poor. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses are like a spirit level which we can hold up to compare the conditions of different societies.

The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking.Almost every modern social and environmental problem - ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations - is more likely to occur in a less equal society. The book goes to the heart of the apparent contrast between the material success and social failings of many modern societies. "The Spirit Level" does not simply provide a key to diagnosing our ills.

It tells us how to shift the balance from self-interested 'consumerism' to a friendlier and more collaborative society. It shows a way out of the social and environmental problems which beset us and opens up a major new approach to improving the real quality of life, not just for the poor but for everyone. It is, in its conclusion, an optimistic book, which should revitalise politics and provide a new way of thinking about how we organise human communities.

RICHARD WILKINSON

Original title:

THE SPIRIT LEVEL : WHY EQUALITY IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE

368 pages