The uncommon reader is none other that HM The Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace.

In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for her namesake, the goddess Pampa, who begins to speak out of the girl?s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana?s comprehension, the goddess tells her that...

Deep beneath the floorboards of a house he's renovating, Chris Flynn discovers a hidden bag full of cash. Chris has learned life's lessons the hard way so, resisting the temptation of easy money, he puts the fortune back. But Chris has a troubled past and this find could bring his new life tumbling down.

It occurred to him that he might not have had anything to do with Strangio's death. It was a voice in the night, an anonymous voice, that had told him this. A voice in the night that could easily have been the voice of his conscience. Feeling his age, as his birthday rolls round once again, Inspector Montalbano decides to cheer himself up by dealing with a young driver's road rage in his own unique way. But his joy is short-lived, as at police headquarters...

Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this, 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and never has to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else. He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the Others are. Along with the rest of his squad, he will endure cold and fear...

Walter Hartright's mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, & international intrigue. In this new edition, John Sutherland examines Collins's contribution to Victorian fiction, traces his practices as a creator of plot, & provides a chronology of the novel's complicated events.

In 'Little Dorrit', Dickens paints a portrait of a prison world in which the shadow of the Marshalsea reaches far beyond its high enclosing walls.

Jeanette Winterson's version of Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale' vibrates with echoes of the original but tells a contemporary story of betrayal, paranoia, redemption and hope. Time itself is a player in this game of high stakes that will either end in tragedy or forgiveness, showing us that, however far we have been separated, whatever is lost shall be found.

When Arthur Kipps attends the funeral of Alice Drablow he is unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind her house. It is not until he glimpses a woman dressed all in black at the funeral that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold.