Humor Fiction Adventure

In volume II of The Flashman Papers, Flashman tangles with femme fatale Lola Montez and the dastardly Otto Von Bismarck in a battle of wits which will decide the destiny of a continent.

In this volume of The Flashman Papers, Flashman, the arch-cad and toady, matches his wits, his talents for deceit and malice, and above all his speed in evasion against the most brilliant European statesman and against the most beautiful and unscrupulous adventuress of the era.

In China, in 1860, a lot of people mistakenly put their trust in Flashman: the English vicar’s daughter with her cargo of opium; Lord Elgin in search of an intelligence chief; the Emperor’s ravishing concubine, seeking a champion in her struggles for power; and Szu-Zhan, the female bandit colossus, as practised in the arts of love as in the arts of war. They were not to know that behind his Victoria Cross, Harry Flashman was a base coward and a charlatan. They took him at face value. And he took them, for all he could, while China seethed through the bloodiest civil war in history.

Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally.

Gary Duba’s having a bad day. There’s a snake in his toilet, a rabid raccoon in the yard, and his girl Krystal’s in jail for getting naked at a Waffle House and licking the manager. Gary’s a redneck living in a trailer by the swamp. But he’s got dreams, big dreams. Every time he tries to get ahead, fate deals him a low blow. But then he gets lucky... With his best friend, Floyd, Gary sets out to sell his prized Barry Bonds rookie card to raise the $500 needed for bail. But things always find a way of getting out of hand.

Best-selling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.

For Twilight fans and beyond: the ultimate guide to love and sex, vampire-style. Women daring and lucky enough to discover romance with a vampire claim to enjoy the most intense love and sex of their lives. But how do you find a vampire of your very own? And just how do you get him interested in ravishing you within an inch of your life? Will the ecstasy of the coupling be worth the inherent risks of vampire love—the risks of drinking your blood, the risks of secrecy, and the risks of betrayal?

When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, is driven beyond endurance by his disgusting and difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: "Can't we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away." His prayer seems to have been answered when his entrepreneurial cousin, Sonny, sets up a retirement home, recreating a lost corner of England in a converted guesthouse in Bangalore.

In late 2003, in his column in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King called The Memory of Running "the best novel you won't read this year." This glowing endorsement of the audiobook resulted in Ron McLarty receiving a $2 million two-book deal from Viking Penguin. Also, Warner Brothers has shelled out big bucks for the movie rights to The Memory of Running, for which McLarty will write the script.

Meet Percy Stinkson. He's just a normal kid, trying to have fun and make it through school doing as little homework as possible....until he finds out he's the son of a Greek god! And Percy's father isn't just any Greek god. He's Pooseidon, God of Farts! Percy's life is totally transformed as he travels to Camp Half-Wit, where he's trained to use his special farting powers. He's going to need these powers, because he soon learns it's up to him to save the universe by going on a quest to find Zeus's stolen iPhone! It'll be a dangerous quest, but Percy will have company: Grover, a weird kid who thinks he's a half-goat, and Annabeth, a super-hot girl who unfortunately doesn't want to date Percy. Yet. There'll be loads of action and tons of smelly farts as Percy's quest proceeds to its exciting conclusion: a showdown in the Underworld with Hades himself! The odds might be against Percy, but don't give up hope, because he'll have the ultimate weapon at his disposal: The Lightning Fart! Can a fart really save the universe?

The Great Brain is Tom D. Fitzgerald, aged 10. The story is told by J.D., a sometimes confounded but always admiring younger brother. Such people as Mr. Standish, the mean schoolmaster, regret the day they came up against The Great Brain. But others, like the Jensen kids lost in Skeleton Cave, Basil, the Greek kid, or Andy, who has lost his leg and his friends, know that Tom's great brain never fails to find a way home.

Robert E. Howard is best known today for his "sword-and-sorcery" stories. But in the early 1930s, he was a legend in boxing circles for his humorously over-the-top adventure stories starring the sailor Steve Costigan, champ of the sea girl - the toughest trading vessel on the seven seas. Steve Costigan is a mariner and amateur boxer, with a heart of gold and a head of solid wood.

After taking down a corrupt margrave, breaking a deadly curse, and finding romance with the vexingly scrupulous junior prefect Emeric Conrad, Vanja had one great mystery left: her long-lost birth family . . . and whether they would welcome a thief. But in her search for an honest trade, she hit trouble and invented a god, the Scarlet Maiden, to scam her way out. Now that lie is growing out of control—especially when Emeric arrives to investigate and the Scarlet Maiden manifests to claim him as a virgin sacrifice.

The complete career of the immaculate Psmith! First, as a fellow lost lamb with cricket prodigy Mike Jackson at Sedleigh school; then shaking up the world of commerce in his genial efforts to reform boorish bank manager Mr. Bickersdyke; and later converting twee family periodical "Cosy Moments" into a crusading yellow journal, in pursuit of the bashful owner of New York's notorious Pleasant Street tenements. And finally following distressed damsel Eve to Blandings Castle—the seat of fluffy-minded peer Lord Emsworth—in the guise of an absconded Canadian poet.

Idealistic, independently wealthy, and pathologically short-tempered, Twilly Spree has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. When Palmer Stoat drops litter, Twilly decides to teach him a lesson.

Never meddle with unidentified spying objects...The year is: The Future. Mars and Earth are like that divorced couple who don’t exactly like each other but have at least stopped fighting in public. Floating somewhere in between them, amid all the garbage and Gene Roddenberry’s ashes, a transport vessel called the SS Jefferson is homeward bound. Its crew might have even made it on time for once, too...

I never thought I would date a dragon, or feed him chicken strips late at night, but life has gotten interesting. My steady dragon - you may know him as Lord Zavryd’nokquetal, but I get to call him Zav - is offering to take me to the elven homeland to meet my father and learn to harness the magic in my blood. Sure, I’m wary about his plans to force the elves to train me, but I need every advantage I can get. Especially when vampire attacks start cropping up all over Seattle, and my friend and business partner, Dimitri, disappears.

With his wedding behind him, Fred is looking forward to nightly life finally settling down. Unfortunately, someone from his past has other, far less peaceful, plans in mind. Finding his clan under attack, Fred must scramble to discover who is working against him and how to fight back. Between securing shelter, trading favors, and keeping up with his accounting business, it won't be easy to stay out of trouble, let alone uncover the identity of his adversary.

Skeeve is a magician’s apprentice (and a wanna-be thief) until an assassin’s bolt kills his master, Garkin. Along with Aahz, the green-scaled, purple-tongued demon and master magician summoned by Garkin, he sets out on a quest to get even. The road to vengeance is bound to prove rocky, however, because Skeeve can barely light a candle with his beginning magic, and Aahz has lost his own considerable magical abilities as a consequence of Garkin’s summoning spell.

Two childhood friends from Scotland and two illegitimate half-brothers from the deep South suffer and enjoy all manner of bizarre adventures that, it turns out, are somehow interconnected and, even more surprisingly, meaningful. The eclectic cast of characters features Socrates, Carl Jung, and Tony Randall, along with an ex-television evangelist with a penchant for booze, prostitutes, and uncomfortable knitwear who gets mugged in Miami by an almost pure-blooded Watusi warrior - and sets off on a road trip in a stolen motor home.

Ça fait quel bruit un détecteur de mortellitude ? Et qui a bien pû inventer bien ça ? Mortelle Adèle bien sûr ! Enfin un moyen de reconnaître ses semblables, des gens bizarres et mortels à la fois ! Adèle décide de tester son invention à l'école : Geoffroy, Jade, Miranda, Jennyfer... tous ses camarades y passent mais aucun ne fait bouger l'aiguille du détecteur Adèle va-t-elle trouver quelqu'un d'aussi mortel qu'elle ?