Two unlikely flatmates.One decade-old murder.Can thinking like a fictional detective . . . solve a real crime?Sycamore Bell is obsessed with the world’s greatest (fictional) detective, and loves his job: answering the letters that arrive addressed to his hero at his employer’s Baker Street address.Then a young girl writes from Texas begging Sherlock Holmes to save her father from death row, and Sycamore is convinced he can help. He knows all o...

How do you apologise when you're not sorry? Where can you make a fortune out of pretending to know the future? What's the best way to steal credit and avoid blame? These are the vital life skills that people need if they're going to make their way in the world. And they all involve one ingredient: flannel, the art of not saying what you mean. It's not exactly lying, but it's definitely not telling the truth. In Romps, Tots and Boffins, Robert Hutton brilliantly 'laid bare' the true meaning...

You may not recognise the phrase, but if you have ever picked up a paper you'll have come across 'journalese'. Essentially, it covers words and phrases that are only found in newspapers - whether tabloid or broadsheet. Without them, how would our intrepid journalists be able to describe a world in which late-night revellers go on booze-fuelled rampages, where tots in peril are saved by have-a-go heroes, and where troubled stars lash out in foul-mouthed tirades? When Rob Hutton began collec...

Cairo, 1942: If you had asked a British officer who Colonel Clarke was, they would have been able to point him out: always ready with a drink and a story, he was a well-known figure in the local bars. If you then asked what he did, you would have less success. Those who knew didn't tell, and almost no one really knew at all.Clarke thought of himself as developing a new kind of weapon. Its components? Rumour, stagecraft, a sense of fun. Its target? The mind of Erwin Rommel, Hitler's...

Fans and scholars have long regarded the 1980s as a significant turning point in the history of comics in the United States, but most critical discussions of the period still focus on books from prominent creators such as Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Art Spiegelman, eclipsing the work of others who also played a key role in shaping comics as we know them today. The Other 1980s offers a more complicated and multivalent picture of this robust era of ambitious comics publishing....

'Highly readable' Ben Macintyre'Pacy, original and frequently chilling' Henry HemmingJune 1940. Britain is Europe's final bastion of freedom - and Hitler's next target. But not everyone fears a Nazi invasion. In factories, offices and suburban homes are men and women determined to do all they can to hasten it.Throughout the Second World War, Britain's defence against the enemy within was Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk from Epsom. ...

**'Totally joyous' Ann CleevesA new game is afoot . . .Sherlock Holmes’s No. 1 fan attempts to solve a murder - and drags his reluctant flat-mate with him, in the feelgood mystery of the Summer.**Sycamore Bell is obsessed with the world’s greatest (fictional) detective, and loves his job: answering the letters that arrive addressed to his hero at his employer’s Baker Street address.Then a young girl writes from Texas begging Sherlock Holmes to save ...

June 1940. Britain is Europe's final bastion of freedom - and Hitler's next target. But not everyone fears a Nazi invasion. In factories, offices and suburban homes are men and women determined to do all they can to hasten it.Throughout the Second World War, Britain's defence against the enemy within was Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk from Epsom. Equipped with an extraordinary ability to make people trust him, he was recruited into the shadowy world of espionage by the great spy...

Cairo, 1942: If you had asked a British officer who Colonel Clarke was, they would have been able to point him out: always ready with a drink and a story, he was a well-known figure in the local bars. If you then asked what he did, you would have less success. Those who knew didn't tell, and almost no one really knew at all.Clarke thought of himself as developing a new kind of weapon. Its components? Rumour, stagecraft, a sense of fun. Its target? The mind of Erwin Rommel, Hitler's...

The stunning final story in the one-of-a-kind mystery series, the last mission in the iconic career of John Shakespeare, Queen's Spy.-------------------------------------------------------'Sixteenth-century London comes alive in all its tawdriness' Daily Mail'Beautifully done . . . alive and tremendously engrossing' Daily Telegraph'Plot and dialogue that hums with Elizabethan slang,...

*THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN, Matt Haig's new novel from the world of The Midnight Library, is out now*10th anniversary edition, r****evised and updated with a new introduction from the authorTHE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD FOR NON-FICTIONWHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE?Aged 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He c...

'Enthralling' Guardian'A superb achievement' Ian McEwan'Incredibly absorbing . . . astonishingly candid' Bill BrysonWinner of the PEN Ackerley Prize and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for LiteratureWhat is it like to be a brain surgeon?How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut through the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason?How do you li...