In the remote wastes of Greenland, a young scientist has unearthed an artifact hidden in a cave for a millennium: a 50,000-year-old meteorite known as the Sacred Stone, which possesses potentially catastrophic radioactive power. The find places him in the crosshairs of two opposing terrorist groups who seek the stone for themselves. One is a group of Muslim extremists who have stolen a nuclear device and, with the power of the meteorite, could vaporise any city in the West. The other group is led by a megalomaniacal industrialist seeking to carry out the annihilation of Islam. Caught between two militant factions bent on wholesale slaughter, Juan Cabrillo and his ship of high-tech mercenaries known as the Corporation must fight to protect the Sacred Stone - and prevent the outbreak of World War III....

Alexander McCall Smith
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

Isabel Dalhousie can review a book called In Praise o f Sin with panache and conviction, but real life is a bit more challenging - particularly when it comes to her feelings for Jamie, a younger man who should have married her niece, Cat. Jamie's handsomeness leaves Isabel feeling distinctly uneasy. I am a philospher; she thinks, but I am also a woman. When Cat takes a break, Isabel runs her delicatessen. One of the customers has recently had a heart transplant and is now being plagued by memories that cannot be rationally explained and which he feels do not belong to him. Isabel is intrigued and finds herself rushing headlong into a dangerous investigation. But she still has time to think about the things that possess her-things like love and friendship and, of course, temptation. The last of these comes in many forms - chocolate, for example, or seductive Italians....

Chris Ryan
Blackout

London. Paris. New York. One by one the power systems get switched off in three of the world's major cities, plunging them into darkness and chaos. Is this the greatest terrorist spectacular since 9/I I? Josh Harding, a battle-hardened SAS soldier, is working undercover on anti-terrorist operations, tracking the leaders of al-Qaeda. He wakes up in a ditch in the wilderness of Arizona. Two bullets have shot up his leg and his neck. His memory is gone. And the police are hunting him for murder. As Josh struggles to recover his memory, and to stay one step ahead of the police, he finds himself drawn into a deadly conspiracy to stay alive. He must find out who he is, and why he was shot and who is turning off the power around the world.