Depicting the hopeless, emotional polarity of a young couple, this novel follows their doomed marriage spent in a remote, tropical hell. She—described only as “the girl”—is young, sophisticated and sensitive. He, “Mr. Dog-Head,” is an unreconstructed thug and heavy drinker who rapes his wife, otherwise passing his time bludgeoning rats with a tennis racket. Together with a visiting stranger, “Suede Boots”—who urges the woman to escape until he is banished by her husband—these characters live through the same situations twice. Their identities are equally real—or unreal—in each case. With slight variation in the background and the novel’s atmosphere, neither the outcome nor the characters themselves are quite the same the second time. The constant question of the jungle “brain-lever” bird remains unanswered: who are you? “To write about this finely economical book in any terms other than its own is cruelly to distort the near-perfection of the original text. There is a vision here which dismays.” “We are indebted to Peter Owen for reissuing Anna Kavan’s work… Who Are You? is accomplished and complete… so fully imagined, so finely described in spare, effective prose, that it is easy to suspend disbelief.” “Lots of fun to read, sprouts with a macabre imagination and is, no question, a classic.” —Sunday Telegraph

Two brothers, one mission, and a whole world of trouble…They are Sam and Jacob Redman. Two brothers, SAS through and through. They fight alongside each other; they watch each other's backs. They are ruthlessly professional in the field of war, fiercely loyal wherever they are. But when Jacob is booted from the Regiment for a moment of madness, he disappears. Not even his family knows where he is, or even if he's still alive. All that is about to change. On his return from a brutal mission in Afghanistan, Sam is ordered to conduct another dangerous operation into an inhospitable part of the world. He soon learns, though, that his unit are not being told everything by their government paymasters; and so he is forced to choose between his duty to the men around him and his loyalty to the brother that he loves. Is Jacob part of a plan that threatens world peace? As the body count rises, only Sam can stop these events from reaching their terrifying conclusion

Well-known for young adult novels (The Shadow Speaks; Zahrah the Windseeker), Okorafor sets this emotionally fraught tale in postapocalyptic Saharan Africa. The young sorceress Onyesonwu—whose name means Who fears death?—was born Ewu, bearing a mixture of her mother’s features and those of the man who raped her mother and left her for dead in the desert. As Onyesonwu grows into her powers, it becomes clear that her fate is mingled with the fate of her people, the oppressed Okeke, and that to achieve her destiny, she must die. Okorafor examines a host of evils in her chillingly realistic tale—gender and racial inequality share top billing, along with female genital mutilation and complacency in the face of destructive tradition—and winds these disparate concepts together into a fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling

In the 24th century, men join the Space Legion to forget. A memory-erasing machine makes sure they do just that. The machine purges the memory of all traces of guilt, but for Legion recruit Warren Peace it has wiped out everything. He must have had a very nasty past indeed—if only he could recall it. Into battle with the Legion, Warren faces vicious predators in fearsome conflict without the slightest idea why he's been stupid enough to sign on in the first place!

The Crown Prince is partly right; the majority in the world is against him and what he stands for; but not against Germany and the Germans

Oscar-nominated Charlotte Rampling most recently appeared in HBO’s Dexter, and the feature film 45 Years. Her career has spanned popular entertainment and arthouse cinema, having starred in English, French and Italian films from 1966’s Georgy Girl (opposite Lynn Redgrave), to films with French director François Ozon, including 2003’s Swimming Pool. Having shied away from biographies and autobiographies (“too personal”) Rampling has now written Who I Am (first published in French) a lyrical, and intimate self-portrait via reminiscences. Highly personal, packed with photographs from her personal archive, Rampling recounts her childhood and youth as the daughter of an army officer (who won a gold medal for the 4 x 400 relay in the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics), and the memories and passions that would inspire her life and later work as an actress. Written in a style that gives a unique insight into her screen persona, it is an idiosyncratic and beguiling insight of one of the most consistently adventurous and interesting actors

In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha — the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons — died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale, in which Levadski feels “his heart pounding at the portals of his brain,” mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death

This wonderful detective novel is set in Peru in the 1950s. Near an Air Force base in the northern desert, a young airman is found murdered. Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma investigate. Lacking a squad car, they have to cajole a local cabbie into taking them to the scene of the crime. Their superiors are indifferent; the commanding officer of the air base stands in their way; but Silva and Lituma are determined to uncover the truth. Who Killed Palomino Molero, an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery, takes up one of Vargas Llosa's characteristic themes: the despair at how hard it is to be an honest man in a corrupt society

“Who Knows Where It Goes” is an uncollected short story that appeared in Ellery Queen in January 2010. It was inspired, of course, by the cratering of the world economy two years earlier. It's a story of hard times, and how a resourceful man can adapt to them. It's a story, too, about how such a man might explore his own capabilities, and find out if what he once did is something he still can do

Pilot Sophie Madigan practically drools when her last-minute client walks in on Christmas Eve. Wealthy Trey Shelton III has bedroom eyes, a wicked grin and a body to die for! Sophie can't think of any Christmas gift she'd enjoy more.until they're forced to make a crash landing. Finding himself on a deserted Pacific island isn't exactly the Christmas Eve Trey had in mind. At least, until he and Sophie leave their inhibitions – and their clothes! – behind. It should have been nothing more than a holiday fling – island-style. Too bad nobody told either of them…

On one hand, beautiful Celanire — a woman mutilated at birth and left for dead — appears today to be a saint; she is a tireless worker who has turned numerous neglected institutions into vibrant schools for motherless children. But she is also a woman apprehended by demons, as death and misfortune seem to follow in her wake. Traveling from Guadeloupe to West Africa to Peru, the mysterious, seductive, and disarming Celanire is driven to uncover the truth of her past at any cost and avenge the crimes committed against her. With her characteristic blend of magical realism and fantasy, and inspired by a true story, Maryse Conde hauntingly imagines Celanire in an unforgettable novel — a most dazzling addition to the deeply prolific and widely celebrated author's brilliant body of work

Who stole Sassi Manoon? Ask Kelly Bram Nicholas IV, the world’s youngest mad scientist, who gets all his answers from Starnap, the seagoing computer. Or ask Jigger Jackson, the girl who wants to be a movie star so bad she’d sell somebody else’s body for the chance. Or ask Frank Ashford, the boy of 1,000 voices 1,000, none of them his own. Or ask Robby Creswel, the black man’s answer to Raffles, perpetrator of the first crime-in. Or ask Major Alfred ffork-Linton and Miss Adelaide Rushby, the slightly dotty and vaguely mysterious couple who could even be exactly what they seem. Or ask Benny Bernard, the forlorn flack whose principal companions are a pair of Afghan hounds named Kama and Sutra. Or ask Sassi Manoon herself, the movie queen, the superstar, the million-dollar property swiped from the middle of a swinging film festival on a Caribbean island and held by everybody in sight. Ask Sassi Manoon who stole Sassi Manoon... and then ask her why she didn’t mind. Or you could ask Donald E. Westlake, whose hilarious explanations of the light side of the underworld have included last year’s award-winning God Save the Mark, and who here turns crossed eyes on the World of Film, the ancient and dishonorable art of Holding for Ransom, and the winning delusion that Love Will Find a Way. It’s all on the inside, a carnival caper of the Spanish Main, the loony Westlake touch that promises the daffiest band of desperadoes synchronizing their watches since Alec Guinness went straight. Who stole Sassi Manoon? You’ll have a great time finding out

Ginny sobbed, “You’re making a prisoner out of me!” Maybe you’d have solved the crisis better, but three people tried

Berie Carr, an American woman visiting Paris with her husband, summons up for us a summer in 1972 when she was fifteen, living in upstate New York and working as a ticket taker at Storyland, an amusement park where her beautiful best friend, Sils, was Cinderella in a papier-mache pumpkin coach. We see these two girls together — Berie and Sils — intense, brash, set apart by adolescence and an appetite for danger. Driven by their own provincial restlessness and making their own (loose) rules, they embark on a summer that both shatters and intensifies the bond between them

The Wedding of the Year… Philip Whitmore, Viscount Greybourne, has survived desert sandstorms, unearthed treasures of ancient cities, and defeated knife-wielding grave robbers. But when it comes to something as ordinary as getting married, Philip discovers that it's not so easy. He's been cursed after discovering an ancient stone tablet that dooms any woman foolish enough to marry him. Somehow, his fortune, title and dashing good looks no longer seem appealing – and his carefully selected society bride has left him at the altar. The Scandal of the Season Beautiful Meredith Chilton-Grizedale is determined to find Philip his perfect wife. The abruptly terminated "Marriage of the Season" was going to make her reputation as the Matchmaker of Mayfair, so now it's up to her to find someone to marry the most unmarriageable man in England. Yet from the moment she meets the mysterious viscount, Meredith finds herself falling for a man she should not love. With an ominous curse over their heads, risking her life for passion would be madness indeed…

Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London, lives for sex. Or at least he lives for women. At present he loves four women-his mother, his wife Hazel, and his two daughters-and is in love with five more. Charlie Merriweather, on the other hand, nice Charlie, loves just the one woman, also called Charlie, the wife with whom he has been writing children's books and having nice sex for twenty years. Once a week the two friends meet for lunch, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have-about fidelity and womanizing, and which makes you happier. Until today. It is Charlie who takes the dangerous step of asking for a piece of Marvin's disordered life, but what follows embroils them all, the wives no less than the husbands. And none of them will ever be the same again

Also published as “The Haunted Space Suit”

Martino was a very important scientist, working on something called the K-88. But the K-88 exploded in his face, and he was dragged across the Soviet border. There he stayed for months. When they finally gave him back, the Soviets had given him a metal arm… and an expressionless metal skull. So how could Allied Security be sure he actually was Martino? Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1958

From the acclaimed author of The Rainbow Stories, The Ice Shirt, and Fathers and Crows comes this fever dream of a novel about an alcoholic Vietnam veteran, Jimmy, who devotes his government check and his waking hours to the search for a beautiful and majestic street whore, a woman who may or may not exist save in Jimmy's rambling dreams. Gloria's image seems distilled from memory and fantasy and the fragments of whatever Jimmy can buy from the other whores: their sex, their stories-all the unavailing dreams of love and salvation among the drinkers and addicts who haunt San Francisco's Tenderloin District

The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unsual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder — especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath

He was four thousand dollars short, and the cops had it figured out. They said he’d wrapped the bills and shoved them across the counter to the girl

CAITLIN TAYLOR Having inherited nothing but a stack of bills and – horrors – an office job, Caitlin was suddenly a poor little rich girl. Worse, her new boss was temptingly gorgeous, but needed a major attitude adjustment… He seemed to think she was some sort of airhead, just because she didn't know her way around a filing cabinet. VS. JOE BROWNLEY There was nothing Joe needed less than to be inflicted with Caitlin Taylor – blond bombshell and Calamity Jane rolled into one! He would have fired her after the exploding coffeepot incident, but he'd promised her father he'd take her on. And besides, even while she was turning his office upside down, he couldn't help wondering how it would be to take her on. And besides, even while she was turning his office upside down, he couldn't help wondering how it would be to take her on after hours. WHO WOULD COME OUT ON TOP?