Go beyond the original Shondaland series on Netflix, Queen Charlotte, with this lushly romantic Bridgerton prequel novel written by New York Times bestselling authors Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhimes as the marriage of Queen Charlotte and King George of England leads to an unexpected love story and a union that transforms society. In 1761, on a sunny day in September, a King and Queen met for the very first time. They were married within hours. Born a German Princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was beautiful, headstrong, and fiercely intelligent... not precisely the attributes the British Court had been seeking in a spouse for the young King George III. But her fire and independence were exactly what she, and her King, needed. Because George has secrets... secrets with the potential to shake the very foundations of the monarchy. Thrust into her new role, Charlotte must navigate the intricate politics of the court--with the newly-titled Lady Danbury at her side--all the while guarding her heart, because she is falling in love with the King...even as he pushes her away. Now, Charlotte must learn to rule, and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society, fulfilling her destiny as Queen. But she also has to fight for the love growing between her and George as people first, royals second. As she says to him: "Fight with me! Fight for me!"

"In a tale of corruption, assassination, thievery, and magic, Wendy Deere must navigate rotting mansions that lead to distant pasts, evil tycoons, corrupt government officials, lethal curses, and her own moral qualms in order to make it out of this chase alive"--Dust jacket flap

A TV tie-in edition of Dead Simple, the stunning first novel in the number one bestselling Roy Grace series from award-winning author, Peter James.Now a major ITV series, adapted for television by screenwriter Russell Lewis and starring John Simm as Roy Grace.Detective Superintendent Roy Grace's first major case is one he'll never forget.It was meant to be a harmless stag-night prank. But a few hours later, the groom has disappeared and his friends are dead.With only three days to the wedding, Grace is contacted by the man's distraught fiancée to unearth what happened on that fateful night.Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know of the groom's whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot more to gain than anyone realizes, for one man's disaster is another man's fortune...[Bokinfo]

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace exposes the dark side of internet dating in the intriguing crime novel Dead at First Sight , by award winning author Peter James. A man waits at a London airport for the love of his life to arrive. Across the Atlantic, a retired cop waits in a bar in Florida’s Key West for his first date with the lady who is his soulmate. The two men are about to discover they’ve been scammed out of almost every penny they have in the world – and that neither women exist. In the same week, Roy Grace is called to investigate the suicide of a woman in Brighton, that is clearly not what it seems. As his investigations continue, a handsome motivational speaker comes forward. He’s discovered his identity is being used to scam eleven different women online. The first he knew of it was a phone call from one of them saying, ‘You don’t know me, but I thought I knew you’. That woman is now dead. Roy Grace realizes he is looking at the tip of an iceberg. Can he bring down the murderous global empire built on clever, cruel internet scams? Although the Roy Grace novels can be read in any order, Dead at First Sight is the fifteenth title in the bestselling series. Discover more of the Brighton detective’s investigations with Find Them Dead and Left You Dead . Now a major BRITBOX series, Grace , starring John Simm.

An international bestseller. Andrea Levy's Small Island won the Orange Prize for Fiction, The Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best, The Whitbread Novel Award, The Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace thinks he's found a serial killer, but not everything is as it seems in Not Dead Enough , by award winning crime author Peter James. A beautiful socialite is dead. Roy Grace’s leading suspect, her husband, was sixty miles away when she died, but all other evidence points to him. Has someone stolen his identity or is he simply a very clever liar? Grace’s investigation and his budding new relationship are derailed after a reported sighting of his wife, Sandy, who has been missing for nine years. Grace desperately tries to cast light on the truth in both cases as his emotional turmoil – and the body count – grows . . . Although the Roy Grace novels can be read in any order, Not Dead Enough is the third thrilling title in the bestselling series. Enjoy more of the Brighton detective’s investigations with Dead Man's Footsteps and Dead Tomorrow . Now a major BRITBOX series, Grace , starring John Simm.

The return of a Brighton girl turned movie star spells nothing but trouble for Detective Superintendent Roy Grace in the gripping crime novel Not Dead Yet , by award winning author Peter James. Gaia Lafayette has a movie to shoot back home and Grace is in charge of her security. Yet when a vicious gangster is released from prison and an unidentifiable headless torso is found, a nightmare unfolds before Grace’s eyes. An obsessed stalker is after Gaia – and Grace knows that they may be at large in his city, waiting, watching, planning . . . Although the Roy Grace novels can be read in any order, Not Dead Yet is the eighth thrilling title in the bestselling series. Enjoy more of the Brighton detective’s investigations with Dead Man's Time and Want You Dead . Now a major BRITBOX series, Grace , starring John Simm.

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace faces his most mysterious case yet in the gripping crime novel Need You Dead , by award winning author Peter James. Lorna Belling, desperate to escape the marriage from hell, falls for the charms of a man who promises her the earth. But, as Lorna soon finds, life seldom follows the plans you’ve made. When the body of a woman is found, Grace is called to the scene. At first it looks an open-and-shut case with a clear prime suspect. That is, until Grace realizes there is a darker, far more terrifying alternative . . Although the Roy Grace novels can be read in any order, Need You Dead is the thirteenth title in the bestselling series. Enjoy more of the Brighton detective’s investigations with Dead If You Don’t and Dead at First Sight . Now a major BRITBOX series, Grace , starring John Simm.

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace investigates the case of a missing woman in the seventeenth novel of the series, from the highly acclaimed number one bestselling author, Peter James. Is this Roy Grace's most challenging case yet? A mystery that is leaving him totally confounded for the first time in his career.Most Sundays, Niall and Eden Paternoster like to go for a drive and visit country houses. She likes to look at them, he likes to dream that one day...However, most weeks they end up bickering about something or other. This particular Sunday he wants to get back to catch the start of the French Grand Prix, but she insists they stop somewhere to buy cat litter. Reluctantly, he pulls into the car park of a large supermarket and waits while she dashes in.He waits. And waits. But Eden doesn't come back out, she's gone. When he gets home she's not there either, and none of their friends or family have heard from her.A few days later Niall is arrested on suspicion of her murder despite vigorously protesting his innocence. But as Roy Grace is called in to investigate the disappearance of Eden Paternoster, it soon transpires that nothing is as it seems.

"It's December 19, 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are looking forward to a much-needed, restful Christmas holiday, when they are called upon to investigate the murder of a man in a Norfolk hospital ward. Cynthia Catchpool, Edward's mother, insists that Poirot stay with her in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while he solves the case. As Poirot digs into the mystery, he discovers that the murdered man was a retired post office master, and by all accounts very well-liked. The local constabulary's investigation failed to uncover how someone could have entered a hospital room and killed him under the noses of the staff. Cynthia's friend Arnold is soon to be admitted to that same hospital, and his wife is convinced he will be the killer's next victim, though she refuses to explain why. With no obvious motive or suspect, Poirot has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders, if he is to escape from this nightmare scenario and get home in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, someone else also has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot"--

Perfectly preserving the tone and mood of the novel whilst condensing it into two acts, David Malouf, with the gift for language already evident from his novels and poetry, presents afresh the timeless story of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, one of the most enduring literary classics of all time. The love between Jane and Mr Rochester, and the mystery of the woman behind the locked door, are here set to music in the opera composed by Michael Berkeley.

"Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded. Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them. Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer's wife; and when Lottie's innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another. By the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever. Part black comedy, part psychological suspense, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside, and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage"--Publisher's description.

"Taking as his point of departure the authors, the audience, and the texts of Victorian writings on sex in general and of Victorian pornography in particular, Steven Marcus offers a startling and revolutionary perspective on the underside of Victorian culture. The way these subjects were regarded--and the way our notions of the Victorians continue to change, as the efforts of contemporary scholarship restore them to their full historical dimensions--are matters today of some surprise and wonder. Marcus first examines the writings of Dr. William Acton, who may be said to represent the "official views" of sexuality held by Victorian society, and Henry Spencer Ashby, the first and most important bibliographer-scholar of pornography. He then turns to the most significant work of its kind from the period, the eleven-volume anonymous autobiography My Secret Life. There follows an analysis of four pornographic Victorian novels--an analysis that throws an oblique but fascinating light on the classics of Victorian literature--and a review of the odd flood of Victorian publications devoted to flagellation. The books concludes with a chapter propounding a general theory of pornography as a sociological phenomenon. Most of the writers and writing being discussed by Marcus belong to Victorian sub-literature rather than to literature proper; in this way the work remains connected to a consideration of the exotic sub-literature. A brilliantly written book in its own right, this work transformed the study of the Victorian period as did no other." -- Provided by publisher

A sly, funny novel about an American girl trying to make it in 1960s London–and discovering that she's in over head. In The Dud Avocado , Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. With The Old Man and Me , written when Dundy was living in England in the early 1960s, she tackles the American girl in London, a bit older but certainly no wiser. Honey Flood (if that’s her real name) arrives in London with only her quick wits and a scheme. To get what she wants, she’ll have to seduce the city’s brightest literary star, no matter how many would-be bohemians she has to charm, how many smoky jazz clubs she has to brave, or how many Lady Something-Somethings she has to humor. But with success within her reach, Honey finds that in making the Soho scene, she’s made a big mistake.

In the spring of 1938 Elise Landau arrives at Tyneford, the great house on the bay. A bright young thing from Vienna forced to become a parlour-maid, she knows nothing about England, except that she won't like it. As servants polish silver and serve drinks on the lawn, Elise wears her mother's pearls beneath her uniform, and causes outrage by dancing with a boy called Kit. But war is coming and the world is changing. And Elise must change with it. At Tyneford she learns that you can be more than one person. And that you can love more than once.

Hidden away in an Oxford back street is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to any but the few who possess a key to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters, whose rackety trust-fund upbringing has left him as troubled and unpredictable as he is wildly promiscuous. Mark gathers around him an impressionable group of students- glamorous Emmanuella, who always has a new boyfriend in tow; Franny and Simon, best friends and occasional lovers; musician Jess, whose calm exterior hides passionate depths. And James, already damaged by Oxford and looking for a group to belong to. For a time the group lives in a charmed world of learning and parties and love affairs. But university is no grounding for adult life, and when, years later, tragedy strikes they are entirely unprepared. Universal in its themes of ambition, desire and betrayal, this spellbinding novel reflects the truth that the lessons life teaches often come too late. 'The naïve sense of indestructibility possessed by a close-knit group of students is expertly balanced with the suspense of what threatens to unfold.' Sophie Morris Saturday Independent 'Naomi Alderman's second novel examines the warping effects of wealth.' Joanna Briscoe, Observer 'Alderman's premise is familiar - trust-funder going to the bad - but this is, nonetheless, a dark spell of a book, with brooding disenchantment at its heart.' Eithne Farry. Daily Mail 'As the novel progresses, we are forced to look at how people are driven by impulses they're not even aware of, and the most brutal lesson of all- that love doesn't come without pain or sacrifice.' Alastair Mabbott, The Herald 'The Lessons is sturdily plotted and hooks you in- it's a good read if not unique.' Alice Fisher, Observer 'Alderman packs a punch with her opening line', Lianne Kolirin , Daily Express 'The Lessons has more insight into human nature than Martin Amis's The Pregnant Widow , and is more intellectually sustained. This is a second novel from a young writer of huge talent, ambition and energy.' Amanda Craig, Independent 'No one writes about pain better than Alderman. Lose yourself in 278 pages and you enter another world.' Liz Hoggard, Evening Standard 'Naomi Alderman is, evidently, not afraid of ghosts. She courts them and flirts with them and defies them in her darkly seductive second novel, The Lessons .' Damian Barr, Independent on Sunday 'Beautifully written . . . satisfyingly complex exploration of the characters and their relationships.' Samira Shackle , New Statesman 'This is a remarkable novel, which portrays with uncomfortable accuracy the feted world of the Oxford undergraduate. It reminds me a great deal of Donna Tartt's The Secret History in that it has the same brooding sense of menace and the same lightening characterisation. Naomi is a supremely talented writer.' Joanne Harris, 'Witty, dark and compelling.' Charlotte Mendelson 'Wise, compassionate and heart-rending, a novel that conveys all the cruelty and pain of gilded youth.' Liz Jensen author of Chocolat Praise for Disobedience - 'Rich, fresh, fascinating. A wonderful novel' Sunday Times 'Sharp, funny and poignant' Hilary Mantel

"A witty, entertaining mystery featuring a hilarious, sharp as a tack new amateur sleuth from the critically acclaimed author of The Invention of Murder. It's just another day at the office for book editor Samantha Clair. Checking jacket copy for howlers, wondering how to break it to her star novelist that her latest effort is utterly unpublishable, lunch scheduled with gossipy author Kit Lowell, whose new book will deliciously dish the dirt on the fashion industry. But little does she know how much trouble Kit's book is about to cause. Before it even goes to print. When police inspector Field turns up at the venerable offices of Timmins & Ross, asking questions about an undelivered package that was addressed to Sam, she knows something is wrong. The messenger sent to deliver the package was murdered, and then Kit goes missing. Suddenly, Sam's nine-to-five life is turned upside down and she is propelled into a criminal investigation. Someone doesn't want Kit's scandalous manuscript published and unless Sam can put the pieces together in time, they'll do anything to stop it. With her deliciously fun, cleverly written debut novel, acclaimed author Judith Flanders introduces readers to an enormously enjoyable, too-smart-for-her-own-good new amateur sleuth, as well as a colorful cast of characters including Sam's witty assistant, effortlessly glamorous mother, and the handsome inspector Field. A whip-smart, impeccably crafted mystery, this tremendously entertaining novel will have readers flying through the pages"--

By the award-winning and bestselling author of Journey to the River Sea, a novel that sings with characteristic Ibbotson warmth and wit.Eva Ibbotson's charming and warm-hearted tale, A Secret Countess was originally published as A Countess Below Stairs.Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion. The staff and the family are sure there is something not quite right about their new maid - but she soon wins them over with her warmth and dedication.Then the young Earl returns home from the war - and Anna falls hopelessly in love. But they can never be together: Rupert is engaged to the snobbish and awful Muriel - and anyway, Anna is only a servant. Or so everybody thinks . . .

"When Penguin released a new, unexpurgated edition of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 they were charged with the crime of publishing obscene material. Penguin was forced to defend the book's literary merit in a court of law -- thus beginning one of the most famous trials of the 20th century. There to take it all in, armed with her pencil and paper, was Sybille Bedford -- who wastes no time complaining about the claustrophobia of Courtroom 1 at the Old Bailey. With her trademark wit and flair, Bedford presents us with a play-by-play of the trial: from the prosecution's questioning of the novel's thirteen sexual encounters and their listing of all 66 instances of swear words, to the dozens of witnesses who testified -- including the Bishop of Woolwich and E. M. Forster. Bedford gives us a timeless and dramatic account that captures one of the most fascinating and absurd moments in both legal and publishing history, when attitudes and morals shifted forever."--Inside cover

"A frustrated academic still reeling from her husband's betrayal moves into Ashton Hall with her young son and tries to come up with answers after they discover the remains of a woman walled into a forgotten part of the manor"--