Bill Bryson
A Short History Of Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's quest to understand everything that has happened, from the Big Bangs' to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. How do we know what is in the centre of the earth, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

Frances Fyfield
Seeking Sanctuary

t was Isabel Calvert's pious Christianity that drove her husband Theodore away and, when he left, it was the Church that replaced him in his daughters' upbringing. By the time Isabel died, it was the Blessed Sacrament Convent that the daughters, Anna and Therese, were calling home. And while Anna rebelled and returned to the real world, Therese is still consumed by the life of duty and worship. In the midst of this arrives the mysterious Francis: a young, good-looking gardener. Although the nuns are besotted by his charm and handiwork, Anna is less convinced by his motives.

• By the author of Undercurrents and The Nature of the Beast, Seeking Sanctuary is another brilliant tale of enveloping, encapsulating suspense. Frances Fyfield's latest novel is a deliciously unsettling story of religion, revenge and how the devil can conjure the most brilliant of disguises.

Ruth Rendell
The Rottweiler

The latest victim in a series of apparently motiveless murders is found near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. Someone saw a shadowy figure running away, but the only other clues are that the murderer usually strangles his victim and removes . something personal - like a cigarette lighter or a necklace. The activities of the sinister 'Rottweiler' will exert a profound influence on the lives of a small group of people, especially when the suspicion emerges that one of them may be a homicidal maniac.

• Rendell returns to a darkly atmospheric London to explore how the lives of a small group of people from very mixed backgrounds are affected dramatically by a series of apparently motiveless murders.