A rare view from inside the House of Commons and Westminster of the Machiavellian machinations for power, this is a snappy page turner by the slimmed down MP. Once allies, Labour MP Owen McKenna and Conservative Minister Philip Bickford now face each other across the House of Commons as bitter enemies. Then the reappearance of a figure from their past forces them to confront the choices that led to the tragic downfall of their former housemate, Jay. Late one night, Owen receives a visit from a lobbyist who promises to protect him from the consequences of his actions in exchange for a small favour, or to have his reputation and career utterly destroyed if he refuses. But that favour will sell out everything Owen believes in. As rivals gather and whispers of wrongdoing fill the corridors of Westminster, it's clear that someone knows the truth about Jay's Icarus-like fall from grace and now the former friends must face one terrible truth. Someone is responsible, and a reckoning is overdue. This was the landmark, headline-making debut novel from the former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and bestselling novelist Imogen Robertson, a prescient political thriller about secrets, lies, ruthless ambition and betrayal. 373 pages in large softback with fairly large print.

In 29 intimate, brilliant and funny essays, Claire Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia, the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt, and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk and Valeria Luiselli and examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger. She tours her favourite paintings at Boston Museum of Fine Arts and in the luminous title essay explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of 'a single successful sentence'. With a peripatetic upbringing, a warm and complicated family, her devotion to art and literature shines through and she proves once again she is 'an absolute master storyteller'. The essays have been collected from her other published work and include Our Dogs, Teenage Girls and How to be a Better Woman in the 21st Century. 306pp.

Filthy and ferociously funny, according to the OED Lush has two meanings - as a noun a habitual drunkard and as an adjective 'very rich and providing great sensory pleasure'. The novel is both, full of raucous stories and eye-watering honesty. Gabby and Emma have been best friends since primary school in Wales. Emma has a stable job, a nice home and has just got engaged. Gabby has had a succession of disastrous one-night stands and awful jobs since drama school, and she has just been diagnosed with scurvy. She has one year until the wedding to pull herself together and prove to her friends and family that she can be a proper grown-up. Can she? Based on the author?s popular blog of her life as a struggling actress with a taste for gin. Very modern, be prepared for swearing and projectile vomit and cuddly toys and more. 287pp, paperback.

An award winning and moving tale of growing up in a Maoist cult, and the traumatic aftermath which explores ideas of freedom, control and identity. Nina X has never been outside. She had never met another child. Nina X has no books, no toys and no privacy. Nina X has no idea what the outside world is like. Nina X has a lot to learn. She has no mother and no father, she has Comrade Chen, and Comrades Uma, Jeni and Ruth. Her closest emotional connection is with the birds she sees when she removes the plasterboard that covers her bedroom window. Comrade Chen has named her The Project. She is being raised entirely separated from the false gods of capitalism and the cult of the self. He has her record everything in her journal to track her thoughts. To keep her ideology pure, her words are erased, over and over again. But that was before. Now Nina is in Freedom, and all the rules have changed. She has to remember that everything is opposite to what she was told, and yet Freedom seems to be a very confusing and dangerous place. A world that doesn't make sense. She is now 28 years old and on the second day of Freedom she writes: 'Today is the 30th September. A new kind of dog has been invented that doesn't make people allergic and a new kind of dinosaur has been discovered in Wales.' When Nina is treated badly by Social Services she encounters she finds herself behind new bars, sectioned. A tearful yet at times touches of humour, this novel is deeply moving. 273pp.

Mathematic student G is trying to resurrect his studies which is proving difficult as he finds himself drawn into investigating a series of mysterious crimes. When Kristen, a researcher hired by the Lewis Carroll Brotherhood, makes a startling new discovery concerning pages torn from Carroll's diary, she hesitates to reveal to her employers a hitherto unknown chapter in his life. Oxford would be rocked to the core if the truth about Lewis Carroll's relationship with Alice Liddell, the real Alice, were brought to light. After Kristen is involved in a surreal accident, and members of the Brotherhood are anonymously sent salacious photographs of Alice, G joins forces with Kristen as they begin to realise that dark powers are at work. More pictures are received and it becomes clear that a murderer is stalking anyone who shows too much interest in Carroll's life. G must stretch his mathematical mind to its limits to solve the mystery and understand the cryptic workings of the Brotherhood. Until then nobody, not even G, is safe. 'To make the DEAD LIVE' which was buried among the Wonderland creator's history of participating in spiritualist gatherings, claiming he had been able to photograph ghosts. Explore G's watering holes across Oxford, from a meeting with an inspector at The Eagle and Child or greeting a professor at the Little Clarendon pub who is holding court with an eager student over a pint of beer. Inspired by true strange stories, this is a novel to make you curiouser and curiouser. 278pp, large softback with fairly large print.

For fans of Iain M. Banks, this is in fact the final part of a trilogy which we hope will give you a taster of this author?s work to go back to. It is the 147th century and the mighty era of Homo Sapiens is at an end. In the Westerly Provinces of the Old World, the hunt is on for the young queen Arabis, and the beast that holds her captive. In the brutal hominid Investiture, revolution has come. The warlord Cunctus, having seized the Vulgar worlds, invites every Prism to pick a side. In the Firmament, once the kingdom of the Immortal Amaranthine, all ships converge on the foundry of Gliese. The grandest battle in the history of the mammalian kind has begun. Perception, ancient machine spirit, must take back its mortal remains in a contest for the Firmament itself. The Grand Marshal must travel to the deepest lagoon in the Investiture, a place where monsters dwell. Lost amongst the Hedron Stars, he finds himself caught between colossal powers. And for Aaron the Long-Life, he who has waited so very, very long for his revenge, things are only getting started. Described as 'Among the most significant works of science fiction released in recent years.' 421pp, glossary, paperback.

Roger Mortimer was born in 1909 and educated at Eton and RMC Sandhurst. In 1930 he was commissioned into the Cold Stream Guards and saw action in Palestine eight years later. He fought with the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium in 1940 and was taken as a POW for the remainder of the war. He left the army in 1947 and became, among other things, Racing Correspondent for the Sunday Times for almost 30 years. He died in 1991. 'I think prison has done me very little harm and some good. I am now far better read, far less smug and conceited, far more tolerant and considerably more capable of looking after myself.' 21 year old Roger Mortimer spent eight years stationed at Chelsea Barracks and lived a leisurely existence, with his parents' house in Cadogan Square a stone's throw away, and pleasant afternoons were whiled away at the race course or a members' club. As a captain in 1938 in Palestine he found himself amid the action in the Arab Revolt. In May 1940, while fighting the Germans in the Battle of Belgium, Roger was knocked unconscious by an exploding shell. When he came round, he was less than delighted to find that he was a prisoner of war. Thus began a period of incarceration that would last five years, and which for Roger there seemed no conceivable end in sight. Here he is at his witty and irreverent best, exuding charm and good humour which captured the nation's hearts in Dear Lupin and Dear Lumpy. Optimistic and captivating, these letters written to his good friend Peggy Dunne from May 1940 to late 1944 paint a vivid portrait of life as a POW. Here are the toadstools and damp cellars, opinions on Peggy's husband being mean, and of 'exhibitions': 'The proprietor of this place is a retired trollop called Madame Koko who built up a snug little business by catering for the carnal needs of German GHQ during the last war'. Lots of 'good general gossip with an occasional twinge of vulgarity', insanity and frank descriptions of his fellow prisoners and surroundings. 182pp.

Actually the second book of two in the Corvis Rebaine series, we hope this gives you a flavour to go back to this author. Corvis Rebaine is no hero. In his trademark suit of black armour and skull-like helm, armed with a demon-forged axe and with allies that include a bloodthirsty ogre, he has twice brought death and destruction to Imphallion in pursuit of a more equitable society. If he had to kill countless innocents, so be it. That was before he slew the mad warlord Audriss and banished the demon Khanda, lost his wife and children who would neither forgive nor forget his violent crimes. Now years later Rebaine lives in a distant city under a false name and is member of one of the Guilds he despises and trying to achieve change from within the power structure. But his old nemesis Baron Jassion is hunting him once more, aided by a mysterious sorcerer named Kaleb, and a young woman who hates him, his own daughter Mellorin. 388pp, paperback.

This handy history of Mr. Whippy takes readers from the introduction of mobile soft ice cream on the streets of Britain in the spring of 1959, to the beloved brand's acquisition by an industry giant in the mid-1960s and its final demise as part of the Wall's empire in the 1990s. The story of Mr. Whippy begins in 19th century Italy where Enrico Facchino and his wife, Angela Maria, made the decision to move from Sora outside Rome to Birmingham where they began selling ice cream traded from handcarts. It was Enrico's third son, Dominic Facchino, who became the driving force behind the launch of the Mr. Whippy brand and in 1958 decided to use the advertising agency Longleys & Hoffman to help create a professional and uniquely identifiable image which was most notable for the choice of pink and cream livery on their ice cream vans - a direct contrast to the rival, Mister Softee's blue and white vans. The book celebrates Mr. Whippy's success overseas, including in Australia where people were 'enthusiastic' at the arrival of the first Mr. Whippy vans and, in January 1963, a new depot in Sydney had to be opened to receive a second batch of 24 vans. The author uses information, advertising and promotional material from the 1960s and 1970s and the book includes news published pictures. Admire a photo of early Mr. Whippy vans which were hand-painted, a portrait photo of Dominic Facchimo, and a shot of Warwick House, Leamington Spa, which was the hub of Mr. Whippy's operations in the mid-1960s. Paperback, colour and black and white images, 64pp.

Images include mules and donkeys, one of whom survived a 14oz time fuse which was pulled from his head, and Ragtime, a grey Arab horse displaying his service medals on his brow band. A Canadian staff officer bids farewell to his horse after being demobbed, soldiers risk their lives to free horses or winch them via a sling on the Italian front in the Alps, July 1915, and a poster for Our Dumb Friends League encourages kindness to animals. A regiment of healing horses at Elstree were responsible for the supply of tetanus serum and horses were rehabilitated by listening to gramophone records and trained to wear gasmasks. A kangaroo used as a mascot for Australian troops; the strength and power of the British Empire symbolised by a pride of lions in a recruitment poster of 1915; a ferocious cat used in a recruitment poster for the US Tanks Corps 1917 and the real life-saving cat Pitoutchi who became the mascot of a big-gun crew on the Western Front. Used as symbols and propaganda as political animals, here are daring rescues of canaries in France, a pet thrush, a tame blackbird, and of course dogs who went into the trenches with their masters and afterwards accompanied battalions when it went into billets behind the line. Rin-Tin-Tin was the rescued wartime pup turned world-famous dog film star and also pictured is the Red Baron with his crew and beloved dog Moritz. Here is Lassie at Crufts framed with a life belt and pictured with the sailor whom she miraculously revived. Dogs of the French Canine Corps wore special harnesses for transporting ammunition or were used for pulling the wheelchairs of wounded soldiers. See a rare picture of a terraced colony of dug-outs for French ambulance dogs and famous mascots like Peggy the bulldog on HMS Iron Duke. Dogs have helped substantially in the winning of the war as mascots, sentinels, despatch carriers, and Red Cross dogs have played their parts bravely to the finish. There was a British War Dog School at Shoeburyness in Essex which used gentle ways and encouragement rather than punishment for undesirable behaviour and the dogs were trained to overcome obstacles such as fences and streams and to dash fearlessly through a line of attacking infantry or clouds of smoke and gas. Through unrivalled access to rarely seen illustrated wartime magazines, books and postcards including the Illustrated London News Archive. 160pp in large softback, over 100 illus. reproduced to the best possible quality given their age, plus artworks.