Anita Brookner
Leaving Home

When cautious Emma Roberts goes to France to carry out research into seventeenthcentury garden design, she finds a reliable diversion from her studies in her unlikely new friend FranI;ois Desnoyers, in whose beautiful house she is welcomed as a guest. However, she is not too dazzled to ignore the tensions that exist between Fran~ois and her formidable mother, or between Mme Desnoyers and her other guests. London recedes into the background as life in France becomes more signifcant in every respect. It is not until the horrifying episode that puts an end to this fascination that Emma is reconciled to her duller but safer life at home and to the compromises that she comes to accept.

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....

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.