Brussels 1969: Oskar Lenkeit is a fish out of water at the EEC.He's about to find out how far. Echoes from the past are threatening to disturb the three-year-old truce between France and Germany over the direction of the EEC. At the request of some unlikely sponsors, Lenkeit takes on an Internal Affairs investigation intended to restore the peace, but ends up with a foot on either side of a widening rift.With corruption at the pinnacle of European society, can the project s...

WINNER OF THE BSFA AWARD FOR BEST NOVELJack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged.Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden ...

One of the most popular genres of modern times, fantasy literature has as rich a cultural and literary heritage as the magical worlds that so enrapture its readers. In this book, a concise history of the genre, Adam Roberts traces the central forms and influences on fantasy through the centuries to arrive at our understanding of the fantastic today.Pinning the evolution of fantasy on three key moments - the 19th-century resurgence of interest in Arthurian legend, t...

The Chaotic Love Life of a Woman Named HannahLet me say something about Hannah My girl is a winner, real winner. She has that career, independence, lifestyle everyone wants — no strings, no messes, no nonsense. Her life is inexplicably perfect on every front,right on time. Why? She does that to it.Hannah is very intelligent and quick, two thoughts ahead of everyone else, efficient and never lets feelings hinder her progress. She was results orientated, no t...

Sprung from a prison in the centre of a star, the universe's last criminal is employed to kill the population of a planet. It is a crime that will tear apart an interstellar utopia. Keeping ahead of detection and preparing the crime, the killer voyages to numerous worlds and hones the instincts required for murder. And wonders who is behind the contract.Roberts' new novel is an extraordinary fusing of ideas, exotic locations, personal drama and an enquiry into the nature of crime i...

Good is a construct. Evil is a virus.The Starship Sa Niro and the Starship Sß Oubliette were in orbit around a black hole, one afternoon... by the end of the day, the crews of both starships were dead, victims of a single killer: Captain Alpha Raine.Raine claims he's acting under the command of a voice emanating from the black hole: Mr Modo. No one believes him.Everyone knows that things go into black holes; nothing comes out.But something in...

For fans of Alison Espach's The Wedding People and Dolly Alderton's Good Material, a delectable comedy of manners about cooking, ambition, and friendship set in the food world as a young and socially awkward writer takes a job ghostwriting the cookbook for a famous (and famously chaotic) Hollywood starlet.Isabella Pasternack is a food person. She revels in the beauty of a perfectly cooked egg, she daydreams about her first meal at Chez Panisse, an...

SARA MAITLAND on NATHANIEL HAWTHORNESEAN O'BRIEN on EDGAR ALLAN POEJANE ROGERS on FYODOR DOSTOYEYSKYBRIAN ALDISS on THOMAS HARDYMARTIN EDWARDS on ARTHUR CONAN DOYLEFRANK COTTRELL BOYCE on ANTON CHEKHOVADAM ROBERTS on RUDYARD KIPLINGSTEPHEN BAXTER on H.G. WELLSSTUART EVERS on SHERWOOD ANDERSONALI SMITH on JAMES JOYCETOBY LITT on FRANZ KAFKADAVID CONSTANTINE on D.H. LAWRENCEALISON MACLEOD on KATHERINE MANSFIE...

Brussels, 1970: Oskar Lenkeit has been enthralled by the darling of the Berlaymont, right from the first day he met her.But for reasons of his own, he bitterly hates her too.As if life isn’t complicated enough, he has to work out why a wartime Italian special forces commander is in cahoots with the Mafia. And then get the East German Stasi to do something about it.'The author has depicted with great care the atmosphere in the Italy of the "Years of Lead" ' - Jérôme

Dublin, 1970: Oskar Lenkeit is a man on a mission, or rather two missions.The East German Stasi want to know why the Irish government have changed their minds about arming the IRA. The French want to know too - just in case they might want to pick up where Jack Lynch’s government left off.Thankfully, for the sake of Cold War peace, each side thinks it should be Lenkeit’s employer, the EEC, which takes the blame if he gets found out.But when Lenkeit gets to Ireland h...

The story of the EEC and the EU, up to 2009, told in the allegorical style of Animal Farm."As a higher animal, he knew it was his duty not to tax the brains of the lower animals with thoughts which would be too complex for them, and only cause distress." - Sunflower the Goat"She had sought to make economies in the farm's outgoings wherever possible, cutting the milk ration to the younger animals and even going to the extent of selling Korolsky's family silver." - Duchess th...

Russia, 1946, the Nazis recently defeated. Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside somewhere. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away, and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together, to give it purpose and direction, he tells the writers: 'I want you to concoct a story about aliens poised to invade earth ... I want it to be massively detailed, and completely be...