General & Literary Fiction

In this joyful novel, our narrator is Charles Dickens's tenth child, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn. Sent, as his brother Alfred had been before him, at sixteen years of age, to Australia to learn to 'apply himself', we follow his early Australian adventures in outb...ack NSW learning to become a man from the most diverse and toughest of men. Part of Dickens' motivation was to separate these younger of his children from the Dickens family schism, where Charles had expelled his wife from the family home, keeping her sister Georgie there to run the household and taking up with the actress Ellen Tiernan. Plorn arrived in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father's work. After a very brief stopover he is sent out to become a gentleman stockman on a 2000 square mile station in remotest, semi-arid parts of NSW. Here he inevitably gets enmeshed in a tribe named the Paakintji and various other folk, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women - though he is struck by each one he does encounter. Plorn did not expect he would encounter the same veneration of his father and familiarity with his work in Australia that was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushranging, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women we follow Plorn, and sometimes his brother Alfred, through wonderful adventures as he works to apply himself. This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a romp.
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The chilling new novel from Norwegian superstar Jorn Lier Horst. This is Nordic Noir at its spine-tingling best After four years behind bars notorious serial killer, Thomas Kerr, is ready to talk. And Chief Inspector, William Wisting has been waiting to listen. Kerr has finally a...greed to lead the police to his final victim's grave. But the expedition goes horribly wrong after his escape deep into the Norwegian forest. Wisting must launch a frantic search to find this cold-blooded killer before he strikes again. But the body of another woman, killed weeks before, has been found. Murdered in the same way as Kerr's victims. Is there a copycat killer on the loose? And what will happen once Kerr and his apprentice are reunited? As the clock counts down to the next murder, Wisting must put everything on the line to stop a terrifying evil which threatens to engulf his city. Praise for Jorn Lier Horst 'Jorn Lier Horst writes some of the best Scandinavian crime fiction . . . His books are superbly plotted and addictive, the characters wonderfully realized' Yrsa Sigurdardottir 'Jorn Lier Horst is one of the most brilliantly understated crime novelists writing today' Sunday Times 'Up there with the best of the Nordic crime writers' Marcel Berlin, The Times 'A well-crafted, atmospheric, character-driven thriller - I couldn't put it down!' Alex Dahl, author of The Boy At The Door 'A good Nordic police procedural with well-drawn characters' Choice Magazine SOON TO BE A BBC TV SERIES FROM THE PRODUCERS BEHIND WALLANDER AND THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
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The new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author

Ms Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the book which is changing the world one country at a time. A cultural phenomenon in its native South Korea, this book has effectively created the #metoo movement in Japan and soon everybody in Britain will be talking about it, too.

February 29, 1944: I am about to jump out of an aeroplane for the first time ... I don't care that every man is looking at me as though I don't belong. Besides, I'm hungover. And I think I might throw up ... In 1936 Nancy Wake is living in Paris after bluffing her way into a job ...as a foreign correspondent and witnessing firsthand the terror of Hitler's rise in Europe, firing her determination to do anything she could to fight the Nazis. When Nancy falls unexpectedly in love with handsome French industrialist and playboy Henri Fiocca in Marseilles, no sooner has she agreed to become Mrs Fiocca than the Germans invade France and Nancy takes yet another name, a code name - the first of many. As Lucienne Carlier Nancy helps smuggle people across borders and creates such a successful escape network for Allied soldiers that the Nazis hunting down an elusive female operative dub her 'The White Mouse' and put a five million franc bounty on her head. Forced to escape France, Nancy is trained in espionage with an elite special forces group in London and gains a new codename, Helene. Finally, with mission in hand, Nancy is airdropped back into France as the deadly Madame Andree. Nancy goes on to become one of the most powerful and ruthlessly effective leaders in the French Resistance. But the closer to liberation France gets, the more exposed Nancy - and the people she loves - will become. Code Name Helene is a gripping and heartbreakingly moving story of extraordinary courage, unfaltering resolve, remarkable sacrifice - and enduring love.
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