Maybe some people just like to keep things private. Secret, I guess you’d say.

Love came late to Meri, but in a rush: she met Nathan at thirty-six, he moved in a month later, and they married a month after that. Now they are moving to New England and a house of their own – a new life that Meri is not sure she even wants. She loves her husband, but feels there may be trouble ahead.

Nathan, however, is boyishly excited that their next-door neighbour is the eminent Senator Tom Naughton, a political hero of his, now in his seventies. The Senator is nowhere to be seen, but Meri strikes up an unexpected friendship with his wife, the elegant Delia, sensing that she has much to learn from her – about marriage, love and motherhood. But soon she comes close to a terrible breach of trust that could ruin everything.

‘Remember me when I’m gone’ just took on a whole new meaning . . .

Laura Byrd is in trouble. Three weeks ago she and her friends found themselves alone in one of the coldest, most remote places on earth. Her friends set out in search of help, and now Laura realises that they are not coming back. So she gathers her remaining supplies and sets out on an extraordinary journey.

Meanwhile in another city, more and more people arrive every day. Each has a different story to tell, but their accounts have one thing in common – it was their final journey. For this is the city of the dead. And the link between this city and Laura’s journey lies at the heart of this remarkable novel.

The Brief History of the Dead tells a magical story about our lives – about our place in the world, our connections with each other, and what happens to us all after our deaths. It is a story of spellbinding power and imagination, which resonates long after the final page.

Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.

It will stretch from the south, where heat breeds plot, lusts and intrigues; to the vast and savage eastern lands; all the way to the frozen north, where an 800-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond. Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men… all will play the Game of Thrones.

When the Thorne family gather for the annual Christmas festivities – the arguments, jealousies and long-held enmities that make every family Christmas so special – they think they’ve only got to endure each other for three days, and then they can return to normality.

But then the snows come, along with the ninety-mile-an-hour winds and the plunging temperatures, and the Thornes get cut off with only each other for support, or to blame. It promises to be a Christmas like no other …

The Three Day Rule is a moving, funny and ultimately optimistic story about a family riddled with secrets who are literally forced into facing up to their problems with each other and themselves. Get to know a family you’re never going to forget.

Francesca Felizzi, former mistress of the Duke of Ferrara, is now an aspiring courtesan. Astonishingly beautiful and ambitious, she revels in the power she wields over men.

But when she is visited by an inexperienced young man, it becomes horribly clear to Fracesca that despite her many admiring patrons, she has never truly been loved. Suddenly, her glittering and sumptuous life becomes a gaudy facade.

And then another unexpected encounter brings with it devastating implications that plunge Francesca and her two young daughters into the sort of danger she has dreaded ever since she began to work the streets all those years ago.

Home Place, Sussex, 1937. The English family at home…

For two unforgettable summers they gathered together, safe from the advancing storm clouds of war. In the heart of the Sussex countryside these were still sunlit days of childish games, lavish family meals and picnics on the beach.

Three generations of the Cazalet family played out their lives – with their relatives, their children and their servants – and the fascinating triangle of their affairs…

Ken Follett’s World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep, beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families-American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh-as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage.

Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man’s world in the Welsh mining pits… Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House… two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution… Billy’s sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London…

These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic.

“Spectacular! Very, very funny, moving and revealing.” — Jonathan Ross

“I have been waiting for this book my whole life.” — Claudia Winkleman

“I adore, admire and – more – am addicted to Caitin Moran’s writing.” — Nigella Lawson

“Moran’s writing sparkles with wit and warmth. Like the confidences of your smartest friend.” — Simon Pegg

“Ever since I was eighteen I’ve wanted to be as cool as Caitlin Moran. Now this book has shown me how. Witty, wise and wonderful, this is an indispensable guide to Ladyhood. I laughed. I cried. I found out what my favourite writer calls her vagina.” — Lauren Laverne

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.

The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.

And it’s what happens afterwards that is most important.

Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

Sweet, bookish Neve Slater always plays by the rules. And the number one rule is that good-natured fat girls like her don’t get guys like gorgeous, handsome William, heir to Neve’s heart since university. But William’s been in LA for three years, and Neve’s been slimming down and re-inventing herself so that when he returns, he’ll fall head over heels in love with the new, improved her.

So she’s not that interested in other men. Until her sister Celia points out that if Neve wants William to think she’s an experienced love-goddess and not the fumbling, awkward girl he left behind, then she’d better get some, well, experience.

What Neve needs is someone to show her the ropes, someone like Celia’s colleague Max. Wicked, shallow, sexy Max. And since he’s such a man-slut, and so not Neve’s type, she certainly won’t fall for him. Because William is the man for her… right?

Somewhere between losing weight and losing her inhibitions, Neve’s lost her heart – but to who?

Major Ernest Pettigrew (Ret’d) is not interested in the frivolity of the modern world. Since his wife’s death, he has tried to avoid the constant bother of the village women, his ambitious son and the suburbanisation of the English countryside. He prefers to lead a quiet life, upholding the values that people have lived by for generations – respectability, duty and a properly brewed cup of tea (very much not served in a polystyrene cup with teabag left in). But when his brother’s death, and a love of Kipling, sparks an unexpected friendship with the widowed village shopkeeper, Mrs Ali, the Major is forced to confront the realities of the twenty first century.

Written with a delightfully dry sense of humour, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a charming, against-all-odds love story that introduces unforgettable characters and questions how much risk one should take for personal happiness in the face of family obligation and tradition.

A day like any other for security chief Tracy Waterhouse, until she makes a shocking impulse purchase. That one moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy’s humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger at every turn.

Witnesses to Tracy’s outrageous exchange in the Merrion Centre in Leeds are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie who has returned to his home county in search of someone else’s roots. All three characters learn that the past is never history and that no good deed goes unpunished.

Kate Atkinson dovetails and counterpoints her plots with Dickensian brilliance in a tale peopled with unlikely heroes and villains. Started Early, Took My Dog is freighted with wit, wisdom and a fierce moral intelligence. It confirms Kate Atkinson’s position as one of the great writers of our time.

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later, Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the truth of his father’s life and reconcile his divided inheritance.

Written at the age of thirty-three, Dreams from my Father is an unforgettable read. It illuminates not only Obama’s journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history, and what makes us the people we are.

In 1968 Stephen Newman arrives in England from California. Sent down from Oxford, he hurriedly marries his English girlfriend Andrea to avoid returning to America and the draft board.

Over the next forty years they and their friends build lives of middle-class success, until the events of late middle-age and the new century force them to realise that their fortunate generation has always lived in a fool’s paradise.