They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's car confirm the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Enlisted to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the best-selling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful.

International best-selling author Anthony Horowitz's short story collection expands the universe of teen spy Alex Rider with more thrilling action, espionage, and pulse-pounding heroics. Inspired by Horowitz's millions of fans worldwide, Secret Weapon expands the world of Alex Rider with more thrilling action and pulse-pounding heroics. Follow Alex as he infiltrates a terrorist hideout in Afghanistan, fights to prevent an assassination attempt at a ski resort over Christmas, and much more!

A spy is dead. A legend is born. This is how it all began. The explosive prequel to Casino Royale, from best-selling author Anthony Horowitz. Forever and a Day is the story of the birth of a legend, in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera, taking listeners into the very beginning of James Bond’s illustrious career and the formation of his identity.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry - known to her friends as the Cuckoo - famously fell to her death a few months earlier.

Jason has a problem. He doesn't remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently she's his girlfriend Piper, his best friend is a kid named Leo, and they're all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for "bad kids." What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.

The victory was hollow for Alan. He had been running a close second behind his good friend Bill Davidson, when Bill’s horse unexpectedly jerked as he soared over the steeplechase fence. Now, Bill was dead from his injuries, and Alan knew it wasn’t an accident. A small menacing thread of wire dangled from the top of the fence—a carefully constructed plot of malice. Curious, Alan begins an investigation that points to corruption that transcends the racing circuit—seeping into the town surrounding the track.

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

Henry Grey is a man who needs a change. His job as an office worker is as tedious as the women his mother sets him up with. His new job transporting thoroughbred racehorses to exotic international destinations should perk up his mundane existence. However, when he intercepts a cryptic message hidden in the bottom of a smuggled bottle of birth control pills, Grey learns that horses are not his only cargo.

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

Sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail.

Only Thomas Ward is left. He's the last hope; the last apprentice. Can Thomas succeed? Will he learn the difference between a benign witch and a malevolent one? Does the Spook's warning against girls with pointy shoes include Alice? And what will happen if Thomas accidentally frees Mother Malkin, the most evil witch in the county?

For three days battle has raged in the snow around the great city of Tar Valon. In the city, a foretelling of the future is uttered. On the slopes of Dragonmount, the immense mountain that looms over the city, a child is born, an infant prophesied to change the world. That child must be found before he can be killed by the forces of the Shadow.

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born". An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy - abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued, and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape - but he can’t stop society’s collapse.

This set includes the first two books in the Hamish Macbeth cozy mystery series set in the Scottish Highlands. Death of a Gossip: When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joined the fishing class, she wasted no time in ruffling the feathers—or was it the fins?—of those around her. Death of a Cad: When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiancé home to Lochdubh, everybody in town is delighted…except for love-smitten Constable Hamish Macbeth. Yet his affairs of the heart will have to wait.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears - an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife, Max, have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day, Max’s shadow disappears, too.

It was the last peace, the great peace, the deep breath before the storm. The Golden Age was closing and the heavens paused and waited for the long plunge ahead. Some people saw it coming. But they were few. The first episode of this geopolitical thriller sets up the start of an epic battle between Light and Darkness. Taking listeners from Saudi Arabia to Israel to Washington D.C. and Chicago, Wrath & Righteousness is a frightening, torn-from-the-headlines peek into the future.

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions - until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

What does it take to become the greatest secret agent the world has ever known? In this thrilling prequel to the James Bond series, readers meet a 13-year-old schoolboy whose inquisitive mind and determination set him on a path that will one day take him all over the world, in pursuit of the most dangerous criminals known to man.

Earth is being invaded by the shetani - spirit creatures so small and stealthy that only one man knows about the increasing peril. The potential savior is an African elder named Olkeloki who is capable of fighting evil both in this world and the spirit one. But to be successful he must recruit the help of two others: government agent Joshua Oak, and a feisty young woman named Merry Sharrow. Only the three of them can keep the shetani from destroying reality as we know it.

The book that began the series that became the legend.... Now a major television series. Somewhere out there Ellie and her friends are hiding. They're shocked, they're frightened, they're alone. Their world has changed with the speed of a slamming door. They've got no weapons - except courage. They've got no help - except themselves. They've got nothing - except friendship. How strong can you be when the world is full of people trying to kill you?

Lester Ferris needs a rest. He's spent his life being shot at, and Afghanistan was the last stop on his road to exhaustion. Mancreu is the ideal place for Lester to relax. A former British colony, soon to be destroyed because of its very special version of toxic pollution. But Lester Ferris makes a friend: a street kid with a comicbook fixation who will need a home - who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. But in a place like Mancreu, just what sort of hero will the boy need?

In the post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval city of Ark, speech is constrained to 500 sanctioned words. If somewhere were to speak outside that approved lexicon, they'd face banishment. The only exceptions to this rule are the Wordsmith and his apprentice, Letta. Together, they are the keepers and archivists of all language. But when Letta's master dies, she is suddenly promoted to Wordsmith and finds the situation more complicated than she knew.

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.

The new novel by the author of the best-selling The World Walker series. 'My name is Daniel Harbin, and I'm a child of The Deterrent.' What if a superhuman turned out not to be so super...or even human? Britain's superhero, The Deterrent, was unveiled to the world in 1979 and disappeared two years later. The truth about his origins has never been revealed. The rumours about his children - those that survived - and their mysterious abilities have never been confirmed. Until now....

Magic, adventure, mystery, and romance combine in this epic debut in which a young princess must reclaim her dead mother’s throne, learn to be a ruler - and defeat the Red Queen, a powerful and malevolent sorceress determined to destroy her. On her 19th birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa.

Ruthless and supremely powerful, the Great Library is now a presence in every major city, governing the flow of knowledge to the masses. Alchemy allows the library to deliver the content of the greatest works of history instantly - but the personal ownership of books is expressly forbidden. Jess Brightwell believes in the value of the library, but the majority of his knowledge comes from illegal books obtained by his family, who are involved in the thriving black market.

Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his Maserati, has hit a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, obsessed with all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. So begins a fateful dalliance with the African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.