The Secret Servant (#7 Gabriel Allon)

Daniel Silva

When last we encountered Gabriel Allon, the master art restorer and sometime officer of Israeli intelligence, he had just prevailed in his blood-soaked duel with Saudi terrorist financier Zizi al-Bakari. Now Gabriel is summoned once more by his masters to undertake what appears to be a routine assignmen...

The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Jem Roberts

As a wise ape once observed, space is big - vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly so. However, if you look too closely at space, it becomes nothing but lumps of rock and sundry gases. Sometimes it's necessary to take a step back, and let a few billion years go by, before any of the true wonder and scope of th...

The Girl with the Dogs: Penguin Special

Anna Funder

'To live with someone for a long time requires an element of fiction – the selective use of facts to craft an ongoing story.'  Amid the debris of her friends' relationships, Tess has a marriage that's comparatively unscathed.  But she's at a hinge moment, poised between her present life and the one she ...

Collecting the World - The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane

James Delbourgo

Hans Sloane was the greatest collector of his time, and one of the greatest of all time. His name is familiar today through the London streets and squares named after him, but the man himself, and his achievements, are almost forgotten. Born in the north of Ireland, Sloane made his fortune as a physici...