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Set in France before and during World War I, this is the story of a young Englishman who is impelled through a series of extreme experiences, including a traumatic love affair which tears apart the bourgeois French family with whom he lives.

Management Teaching use: With part of the novel set behind the trenches in the First World War there are several scenes which illustrate the difficulties of leading subordinates under extreme pressure and in highly risky situations where trust in management is essential. Throughout the text provides a useful opportunity to compare officers' management and motivational styles as the characters are presented in conversation with each other. It also includes some interesting comments on good leadership (pp 133 - 4).

This new installment in the adventures of the world's most iconic spy has been written by one of Britain's most admired novelists, Sebastian Faulks. Picking up from where Fleming left off in 1966 with The Living Daylights / Octopussy, Faulks has written the perfect continuation of the James Bond legacy. Devil May Care is set during the Cold War and features all the glamor, thrills and excitement that one would expect from any adventure involving Bond...James Bond.

The story of Pietro Russell, English-born son of an Italian mother and a British soldier wounded at Anzio in 1944. He survives an eccentric education to become a photographer fascinated by the world about him.

Jacques Rebiere and Thomas Midwinter, both 16 when the story starts in 1876, come from different countries and contrasting families. They are united by an ambition to understand how the mind works and whether madness is the price we pay for being human. As psychiatrists, their quest takes them from the squalor of the Victorian lunatic asylum to the crowded lecture halls of the renowned Professor Charcot in Paris; from the heights of the Sierra Madre in California to the plains of unexplored Africa. Their search is made urgent by the case of Jacques's brother Olivier, for whose severe illness no name has yet been found. Thomas's sister Sonia becomes the pivotal figure in the volatile relationship between the two men, which threatens to explode with the arrival in their Austrian sanatorium of an enigmatic patient, Fraulein Katharina von A, whose illness epitomises all that divides them. As the concerns of the old century fade and the First World War divides Europe, the novel rises to a climax in which the value of what it means to be alive seems to hang in the balance. This is Sebastian Faulks's most ambitious novel yet, with scenes of emotional power recalling his most celebrated work, yet set here on an even larger scale.

From Thomas Hardy's football report to Dan Brown's visit to the cash till, the work of the great and the not-so-great is here sent up with little hope of coming down. Most of these pieces began their life on Radio Four's The Write Stuff, but have been retooled for the printed page. Others, such as Martin Amis's first day at Hogwarts, have been written specially for this collection. Philip Larkin's 'Lines in Celebration of the Queen Mother's 115th Birthday', first banned, then cut by the BBC, appears in its entirety for the first time. This is not a book for the faint-hearted or the downstairs lavatory. It is a book for the bedside table of someone you cannot live without.