Katherine Woodrow is fey, and all she wants is to graduate from the Institute of Magic. But when the prejudiced mortal council threaten her position at the institute, she is left with only one option: accept a Mage Partnership with the elusive Lord Blackthorn. Emrys Blackthorn is a riddle Kat is fearful of solving. The mysterious, cursed war hero w...

After Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as Princess Discordia - heir to the galaxy's most ruthless empire - behind. But joining the Novantaen Resistance, an organisation opposed to the Empire's voracious expansion, throws her right back into the fray. Resistance fighter pilot Clo has been given a mission: infiltrate an Emp...

He travelled through time to capture her heart. Ivar Thoresson is desperate for adventure. As an archaeologist specialising in Viking times, he wants nothing more than to travel back to the ninth century as his loved ones have done, to learn everything he can about the era which fascinates him. And whilst his adopted family have always made him fee...

After an ambush leaves the Novantae resistance in tatters, the survivors scatter across the galaxy. Wanted by two great empires, the bounty on any rebel's head is enough to make a captor filthy rich. And the Seven Devils? Biggest score of them all. The Devils take refuge on Fortuna where Ariadne gets a message with unimaginable consequences: the Or...

Nick, Seth, Gibby and Jazz are back in action bringing justice, protection and disaster energy to the people of Nova City. An unexpected hero returns to Nova City and crash lands into Nick's home, upturning his life, his family and his understanding of what it means to be a hero, in the explosive finale of the thrilling and hilarious Extraordinarie...

The wait is over... Million-copy bestseller Joanne Harris is back with her first fantasy novel in 6 years - and this time it's a love story. Orphaned, lonely, and lost in his photography work, Tom has no intention of falling in love. And yet, love finds him in the shape of beautiful Vanessa, who lives a dangerous double life in the heart of London'...

It has been a year since Penny first walked through the doors of DallerGut Dream Department Store. She is now an official employee of the dream industry! She can finally take the express commuter train to the Company District, where all the dream production companies are located and discover how all raw dream materials and testing equipment are pro...

Winter is drawing thick in 1932 Shanghai, as is the ever-nearing threat of invasion. Rosalind Lang has encountered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she's been exposed. With the media storm camped outside her apartment, she's barely left her bedroom in weeks, plotting her next course of action after Orion was taken and his memories of Ros...

In A Foul Thing, Roma and Juliette have established themselves as the heads of an underground weapons ring in Zhouzhuang, making a living the way they do best while remaining anonymous in their peaceful, quiet life. But when they hear about several Russian girls showing up dead in nearby towns, they decide to investigate-and ultimately discover tha...

A long time ago Magic faded away, leaving behind only yo-yos, the extremely useful compass-pointing-to-North enchantment and the spell that keeps bicycles from falling over. Things are about to change. Magical power is on the rise and King Snodd IV of Hereford has realised that he who controls Magic controls almost anything. Only one person stands...

In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in magic release form B1-7g. Then the magic started fading away.... Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for soothsayers and sorcerers. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper than a sp...

Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defence is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness). Worse than being eaten by Tr...

The Mighty Shandar, the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, returns to the Ununited Kingdoms. Clearly, he didn't solve the Dragon Problem, and must hand over his fee: Eighteen dray-weights of gold. But the Mighty Shandar doesn't do refunds, and vows to eliminate the dragons once and for all - unless sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and h...

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre. The "War in Heaven", a simulated war game, rages between civilisations. Its virt...

The intricate structure of a Shellworld - an arti­ficial planet of spheres-within-spheres - is matched only by the machinations of its inhabitants. On the eighth sphere of Sursamen, a man witnesses the murder of his father and flees, searching for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother, this means a life lived un...

The man known as Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action. Though the woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and aided his stratospheric rise, she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone Ska­ffen-A...

The Culture - a utopian human-machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many expert Game Players, and one of the greatest is Jernau Morat Gurgeh. He is Master of every board, computer and strategy - he is The Player of Games. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the cruel and incredibly wealthy Empire of Azad to try their infamous game . . . a gam...

Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back. Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the s...

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce . . . Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake by an angry mob, something makes Jenny decide she's worth saving. Temperance doesn't know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only th...

The State of the Art is the only collection of Iain M. Banks's short ­fiction and includes the acclaimed Culture novella of the same name. From science ­fiction to horror, dark fantasy to twisted comedy, all eight stories bear the inde­finable stamp of Banks's staggering talent.

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre. It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war. It led to atrocitie...