A haunting Victorian novel which weaves a spellbinding web of deluded dreams and dark deceptions in a fast-paced gothic fantasy. 1851. When Lily Bell is sold by her father to a 'Ghosts Professor' to settle a bad debt, she dreams of finding fame on the London stage. But Erasmus Salt wants Lily not as an actress but as his very own ghost - the heart of his elaborate illusion for those desperate for a glimpse of the spirit world. Obsessed with perfection, Erasmus goes to extreme lengths to ensure his illusion is realistic. When Lily comes across her own obituary in the paper, and then her headstone in the cemetery, she begins to realise that she is trapped, her parents think she is dead, and that her fate is soon to become ever darker. Her fate was decided. Her death was foretold. Her past is about to be unforgotten... The book was inspired by a real invention by illusionist John Henry Pepper whereby the image of a ghost could, by means of lights and mirrors, be thrown onto a stage. 359pp, fairly large print.

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.

The wonder horse Tiberius, tipped for future greatness, is being kept literally under wraps in a Lincolnshire stable by his bemused owner Davenant, who is powerless to prevent the flamboyant arch-chancer Mr Happerton from manoeuvring him into bankruptcy. But Happerton lacks the readies to purchase the horse, and his desperation takes him into marriage with an inscrutable red-haired heiress Rebecca Gresham, who he often thinks resembles that calculating and shrewish heroine with the same name, Becky Sharp of the best-selling novel Vanity Fair. Happerton is slightly afraid of Rebecca and is completely unable to tell whether she supports him in his shady endeavours. In any case, Rebecca's father disapproves of flashy Mr Happerton, so will Rebecca be able to talk him into a loan? Happerton finds himself returning to the associates of his past life, including his disreputable sidekick Captain Raff, the ill-assorted safebreakers Lythgoe and Pardew and eventually his theatrical former mistress Rosa. Meanwhile, up in Lincolnshire, the young governess Miss Ellington takes charge of Davenant's strange daughter Evie, with unexpected results. As Derby Day approaches, everyone's life is turned upside down. And will Tiberius win? A great read with a superbly created Victorian underworld, brilliantly juxtaposing high and low life. 405pp, paperback.

Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess's international bestseller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator, caught between societal and familial expectations, and her unique ability to speak truth to power - as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation's past. For 24 year old Eva Bruhn, WWII is just a foggy childhood memory, but everything changes when investigator David Miller shows up at her door with an unexpected job opportunity - court interpreter. Eva, used to translating business contracts, must familiarise herself with shocking words: asphyxiated, prison block, Auschwitz. With each subsequent interview, the horrors of the war become more and more undeniable and caught between her own moral reckoning and the wishes of her family, Eva joins a team of fiery prosecutors fighting to bring the Nazis to justice, and in the process, changes both the present and the past of her country. The author is a filmmaker and we truly are transported to 1960s Germany with great realism. Remainder mark, 332pp, paperback.

'A violent, superbly lyrical Western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making (and) the most fascinating line-by-line first person narration I've come across in years.' - Kazuo Ishiguro. Winona is a young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole. Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, she is educated and loved, forging a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of her unlikely family unit, in the aftermath of the American Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which she struggles to confront, let alone understand. 'Horrifying, thrilling and enchanting in equal measure', ultimately theirs is a world 'so knotted with evil that good could only hope to unknot a tiny few threads of it'. Written by the master craftsman, this is a richly poetic read concerned with shifting sexual, personal and political boundaries and with the effects of tumultuous times, or rivalry, lawlessness and broken families and communities. Unmissable. 251pp in large softback.

The confession of Laurence Jago, clerk, gentleman, reluctant spy. July 1794 and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for treason, the war against the French is not going in Britain's favour, and negotiations with the independent American colonies are on a knife edge. Laurence Jago, clerk to the Foreign Office, is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press which may lead to the destruction of the British Army, and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly suicide. Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but even as the body is taken to the anatomists, Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, and at a time when even the slightest hint of treason can lead to the gallows, how can Laurence find the true culprit without incriminating himself? With historical note on the year when war against Revolutionary France was one year old. 340pp and cast of characters in Downing Street, the Americans, the lawyers, the accused, the French and the writers like Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man.

A sweeping work of historical fiction which winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey, America's first movie town, and the battlefields of Belgium during World War One. It tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man's doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder. For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films who started out as a concession agent for the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days taking photographs of Sunset Boulevard. But when a film-history student comes to interview him about 'The Electric Hotel', the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended his career of his muse, Sabine Montrose, the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated - celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claude's memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him. The novel is a portrait of a man entranced by the magic of movie-making, a luminous romance, and a whirlwind trip through the heady, endlessly inventive days of early cinema. 449pp, paperback.

A sweeping 14th century saga. It is June 1348 and the Black Death enters England through the port of Melcombe in the county of Dorsetshire. Unprepared for the virulence of the disease, and the speed with which it spreads, people start to die in their thousands. In the estate of Develish, Lady Anne takes control of her people's future, including the lives of 200 bonded serfs. Strong, compassionate and resourceful, she chooses a bastard slave named Thaddeus Thurkell to act as her steward. Together they decide to quarantine Develish by bringing the serfs inside the walls. With this sudden overturning of the accepted social order, where serfs exist only to serve their lords, conflicts soon arise. Ignorant of what is happening in the world outside, they wrestle with themselves, with God, and with the terrible uncertainty of their futures. Lady Anne's people fear starvation but they fear the pestilence more. Who amongst them has the courage to leave the security of the walls? How safe is anyone when a dreadful event threatens the uneasy status quo? An enthralling read, 545 magnificent pages in softback. Map.

'They've wrecked the world, these men, and still they're not done. They'd take the sky if they could.' A heartbreakingly tortured history, we are brought into a world of pure yearning, determination, struggle and hope in this blazingly lucid depiction of Nazi Germany and how a fanatical political regime was encountered, accommodated, rejected and survived by ordinary people. Germany 1945 and the bombs are falling. In rural Heidenfeld, Etta awaits news from her sons - her eldest, Max is fighting on the frontlines, while 15 year old Georg is at school for the Hitler Youth. When Max is unexpectedly discharged, Etta knows something isn't right. With Georg a world away and a husband gripped by patriotic duty, Etta alone must gather the pieces of their splintering lives, determined to hold them together in the face of an uncertain future. The author was born in Germany herself and evokes great sympathy for Etta and her painfully fractured family while opening up unusual angles on the terrible conflict in her moving tale of a family destroyed by war which is inspired by her own family's history. 278pp, paperback.

'A gripping wartime thriller driven by two memorable heroines'. England 1943. Lost in fog, pilot Vee Katchatourian is forced to make an emergency landing where she meets enigmatic RAF airman Stefan Bergel, and then can't get him out of her mind. In occupied Poland, Ewa Hartman hosts German officers in her father's guest house while secretly gathering intelligence for the Polish resistance. Mourning her lover, Stefan, who was captured by the Soviets at the start of the war, she is shocked to see him on the street one day. Haunted by a terrible choice he made in captivity, Stefan asks Vee and Ewa to help him expose one of the darkest secrets of the war, but it is not clear where everyone's loyalties lie until they are tested. The novel captures the terrifying frailties of truth and trust in this tense and tender work. 317pp, paperback.