Bestselling author Jojo Moyes brings us a charming and heart-warming short story in association with Quick Reads. Nell is twenty-six and has never been to Paris. She has never even been on a weekend away with her boyfriend. Everyone knows she is just not the adventurous type. But, when her boyfriend doesn't turn up for their romantic mini-break, Nell has the chance to prove everyone wrong. Alone in Paris, Nell meets the mysterious moped-riding Fabien and his group of carefree friends. Could this turn out to be the most adventurous weekend of her life? Praise for Jojo Moyes: Beautifully written. (The Sun). A heartbreaking, laugh-out-loud, roller coaster. (Sunday Express). Raw, funny, real and sad, this is storytelling at its best. (Marie Claire). Jojo Moyes is a novelist and a journalist. She worked at the Independent for ten years before leaving to write full time. Her previous novels have all been critically acclaimed and include The Ship of Brides, Foreign Fruit, The Last Letter From Your Lover, winner of Spring 2012's most popular Richard and Judy Book Club title Me Before You, top ten bestseller The Girl you Left Behind and her most recent novel, number one bestseller The One Plus One. She lives in Essex with her husband and their three children.

For two couples in Paris, over a century apart, marriage is only the beginning of their love stories... For Sophie, a provincial girl at heart, it is easy to be swept up in the glamour of belle epoque Paris. But she quickly discovers that loving a feted artist like Edouard Lefevre brings undreamt of complications. Over a hundred years later, Liv is looking forward to her Parisian honeymoon with her husband, David, following their whirlwind romance. But arriving in the city, it quickly turns out not to be the romantic getaway she had been hoping for...

This very special hardback gift edition includes four bestselling Eric Carle titles: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? These classic picture books feature favourite animals and themes — colours, actions, sounds and babies — all brought to life in Eric Carle's beautiful and distinctive collage artwork.

'Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made me?' A gothic novella about love, torment and doomed aristocracy, set in the remote mountains of Spain. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). Stevenson's works available in Penguin Classics are An Apology for Idlers, The Black Arrow, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, In the South Seas, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae, Treasure Island and Selected Poems.

The Weather Makers tells the dramatic story of the earth's climate, of how it has changed, how we have come to understand it, and of what that means for the future. Tim Flannery's gripping narrative takes the reader on an extraordinary journey into the past and around the globe, bringing us closer to the science than ever before. Along the way he explodes the many illusions that have grown up around this subject.

It's the start of a new term at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches and Mildred Hubble is determined not to be the worst witch this year. Everything starts so well. Mildred's class has a new form teacher — no more Miss Hardbroom for Mildred and her friends! But then the new teacher, Miss Granite, starts acting fishy; Mildred has a very bad hair day when a hair growth spell goes wrong and she has to put up with know-it-all Ethel Hallow being 'helpful'. To top it all, her beloved cat Tabby is having a nervous breakdown and refuses to fly.

In this boldly drawn portrait of 18th century England, Roy Porter defines a nation from its princes to its paupers, from its metropolis to its smallest hamlet. The topics covered run the gamut — diet, housing, prisons, rural festivals, bordellos, plays, paintings, and work and wages.

The Sanctuary of the Redeemers is a place where children endure brutal cruelty and violence in the name of the One True Faith. Lost in the Sanctuary's huge maze of corridors is a boy. He is strange witty and charming, and violent. But when he opens the wrong door at the wrong time he witnesses an act so horrible he must flee, or die.

This is the next book in the brilliant and bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid is on its way! Share in the hilarious adventures of everyone's favourite wimpy kid, Greg Heffley, in the highly-anticipated seventh book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. It is also now a box office-busting major motion franchise with the third Wimpy Kid movie releasing in the UK on August 3rd.

From Oliver Bullough, the acclaimed author of the Orwell Prize-shortlisted, Let Our Fame Be Great, a study — part travelogue, part political analysis — of a nation in crisis. In the 1960s, two things happened in Russia. Not the overthrow of Nikita Khrushchev, though that may have been part of it, nor the invasion of Czechoslovakia, though that may have been part of it too. What happened is that around that time, women started to have fewer children than the country needed to sustain its population, and life expectancy began to fall. The two statistics taken together added up to what has become known as the demographic crisis , which accelerated in the chaos that followed 1991, and has not yet been reversed. Tracing the lives of the generation that grew to maturity in the 1960s, and the struggles of one in particular who tried to create a better future, Oliver Bullough shows in The Last Man in Russia how this population collapse is a psychological catastrophe, a protest against rulers who offer their people such limited dreams. And as protests finally begin, fifty years after the nation began to die, he traces the flickers of hope that have survived and are beginning to burn. Oliver Bullough studied modern history at Oxford University and moved to Russia after graduating in 1999. He lived in St Petersburg, Bishkek and Moscow over the next seven years, travelling widely as a reporter for Reuters news agency. He is now the Caucasus Editor for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. His first book, Let Our Fame Be Great, Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus, received the Cornelius Ryan award in the United States and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Britain. Oliver Bullough received the Oxfam Emerging Writer award in 2011.

'The ultimate children's story ever' — David Walliams Phizz-whizzing new branding for the world's No. storyteller! Exciting, bold and instantly recognisable with Quentin Blake's inimitable artwork. The famous story of Charlie Bucket and his Golden Ticket, and Willy Wonka and his amazing chocolate factory. Mr Willy Wonka, the most wondrous inventor in the world, opens his gates of his amazing chocolate factory to five lucky children. Gobstoppers, wriggle sweets and a river of melted chocolate delight await — Charlie needs just one Golden Ticket and these delicious treats could all be his! Roald Dahl, the best-loved of children's writers, was born in Wales of Norwegian parents. His books continue to be bestsellers, despite his death in 1990, and total sales are over 100 million worldwide! Quentin Blake is one of the best-known and best-loved children's illustrators and it's impossible now to think of Roald Dahl's writings without imagining Quentin Blake's illustrations.

Command Authority sees the return of Tom Clancy's greatest hero, Jack Ryan. There's a new strong man in Russia, but his rise to power is based on a dark secret hidden decades in the past. The clue to the mystery lies with a most unexpected source: President Jack Ryan. Tom Clancy's Command Authority is a brand new full-throttle all-action adventure for 2013. It follows Threat Vector and Locked On as the newest Jack Ryan novel. Praise for Tom Clancy: There's hardly another thriller writer alive who can fuel an adrenaline surge the way Clancy can. (Daily Mail). Exhilarating. No other novelist is giving so full a picture of modern conflict. (Sunday Times). Thirty years ago, Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history, who had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October, catapulted onto the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it 'the perfect yarn'. Since then Clancy has established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting and razor-sharp suspense. Mark Greaney has a degree in international relations and political science and is pursuing his master's in intelligence studies with a concentration in criminal intelligence. He is the author of The Gray Man, On Target, and Ballistic.

Half Bad by Sally Green is a breathtaking debut novel about one boy's struggle for survival in a hidden society of witches. You can't read, can't write, but you heal fast, even for a witch. You get sick if you stay indoors after dark. You hate White Witches but love Annalise, who is one. You've been kept in a cage since you were fourteen. All you've got to do is escape and find Mercury, the Black Witch who eats boys. And do that before your seventeenth birthday. Easy. Sally Green lives in north-west England. She has had jobs (paid and unpaid) and even a profession but at last has found the time to write down the stories she used to only be able to daydream about. She likes to read, walk in the country and would like to drink less coffee. Half Bad is her first novel.

Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard's Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking) and War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra) here examines how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world, and how, for instance, we often misperceive everything from our relationships with family, friends and business associates, the reasons for our investment decisions, to our own past. Your preference in politicians, the amount of tip you give the waiter — all our judgments and perceptions — reflect the workings of our mind on two levels, the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades scientific researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious, and a sea change in our understanding of how the mind affects the way we live. These cutting-edge discoveries have revealed that the way we experience life — our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment — is largely driven by the mind's subliminal processes and not by the conscious ones, as we have long believed. Employing his trademark wit and his lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self, increasing our understanding of how the human mind works, and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us. Leonard Mlodinow received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches at the California Institute of Technology. His previous books include War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra); the two national best sellers The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking) and The Drunkard's Walk (a New York Times Notable Book and short-listed for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books); Feynman's Rainbow; and Euclid's Window. He also wrote for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Don Tillman is a socially challenged genetics professor who's decided the time has come to find a wife. His questionnaire is intended to weed out anyone who's unsuitable. The trouble is, Don has rather high standards and doesn't really do flexible so, despite lots of takers, he's not having much success in identifying The One. When Rosie Jarman comes to his office, Don assumes it's to apply for the Wife Project — and duly discounts her on the grounds she smokes, drinks, doesn't eat meat, and is incapable of punctuality. However, Rosie has no interest in becoming Mrs Tillman and is actually there to enlist Don's assistance in a professional capacity: to help her find her biological father. Sometimes, though, you don't find love: love finds you...

«Harvey Cheyne, the pampered fifteen-year-old son of an American millionaire, is sailing to Europe when he falls overboard. Saved from drowning by a New England fishing schooner, he finds his rough new companions unimpressed by his wealth and shocked by his ignorance. He will have to prove his worth in the only way the captain and crew will accept: through the slow and arduous mastery of skills upon which their common survival depends.»

On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a newspaper columnist in Colombia decides to give himself 'a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent'. But on seeing this beautiful girl he falls deeply under her spell. His love for his 'Delgadina' causes him to recall all the women he has paid to perform acts of love.

This is Brendan Simms' formidable, game-changing history of Europe. In this marvelously ambitious and exciting book, Brendan Simms tells the story of Europe's constantly shifting geopolitics and the peculiar circumstances that have made it both so impossible to dominate, but also so dynamic and ferocious. It is the story of a group of highly competitive and mutually suspicious dynasties, but also of a continent uniquely prone to interference from 'semi-detached' elements, such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and (just as centrally to Simms's argument) the United States.