IAIN BANKS was one of the finest writers of his generation. The Wasp Factory appeared in 1984, to great and gratifying controversy (one reviewer helpfully described it as “a work of unparalleled depravity”). There were a further 27 works of fiction from the prolific Banks before his untimely death in June 2013 at the age of 59, his customary method being to alternate between contemporary fiction and science fiction – the latter genre published under the name of Iain M. Banks. In 2008 The T...

Anthropophagy - humans eating their fellow-humans - creates a curious blend of revulsion and fascination in the ‘civilised’ Western world. When the perpetrator is a murderer - most commonly a sadistic serial killer - the crime not only shocks but it causes bewilderment. With this 2015 update of her comprehensive 1993 study of cannibalistic killers, Moira Martingale expands her original research about the making of such monsters. Cannibal Killers tracked the phenomenon from five hun...

Anthropophagy – humans eating their fellow-humans – creates a curious blend of revulsion and fascination. When the perpetrator is a murderer – most commonly a sadistic serial killer – the crime is not only shocking, but also bewildering.Moira Martingale’s comprehensive study, Cannibal Killers: The Impossible Monsters, was originally written in 1993, when the Internet was in its infancy, when few homes had computers and when the character Hannibal Lecter from the book and movie The ...

'A stunning book. Banks' powerful imagination is joined to a rare ability to be truly funny while exploring a nightmare world' Sunday TimesA man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse.Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive?...

Friends and family delve into the secrets of a dying man's past in this literary novel by the award-winning author of The Wasp Factory."A goodbye letter to the world and all of its wonder and terror." ―Cory Doctorow, boingboing.netEighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy...

The New York Times bestselling Culture novel. . .The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization.An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the...

The first book in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces readers to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fou...

Bestselling science fiction master Peter F. Hamilton delivers the first of a two-book saga set in his popular Commonwealth universe. Distinguished by deft plotting, a teeming cast of characters, dazzling scientific speculation, and imagination that brings the truly alien to life, The Abyss Beyond Dreams reveals Hamilton as a storyteller of astonishing ingenuity and power.The year is 3326. Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a v...

A young ensign, recently graduated from the Northern Hemisphere Space Academy, is awakened abruptly in the middle of the night by alarms, flashing lights, and dire messages to abandon ship. The petite blonde pulls on some clothes and races through the spaceship in a desperate search for an available life pod-- but it appears all have already departed. So begins the epic story of Jenetta Carver. Get a tight grip on your book and prepare for an exciting adventure like few others because Jene...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREA mission to Mars. A freak accident. One man’s struggle to survive. From the author of Project Hail Mary comes “a hugely entertaining novel that reads like a rocket ship afire” (Chicago Tribune).“Brilliant . . . a celebration of human ingenuity [and] the purest example of real-science sci-fi for many years . . . utterly compelling.”—The Wall Stre...

We have all wondered about the meaning of life. But is there an answer? And do we even really know what we're asking? Terry Eagleton takes a stimulating and quirky look at this most compelling of questions: at the answers explored in philosophy and literature; at the crisis of meaning in modern times; and suggests his own solution to how we might rediscover meaning in our lives.

In this memoir, a forensic psychiatrist chronicles her work with more than 80 serial killers and her thoughts on what compels them.Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is more than that. She is one of the world's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in rooms with depraved...