Lola has every reason to be interested in who Paddy’s marrying – because although she’s his girlfriend, she definitely isn’t the bride-to-be. Heartbroken, she flees the city for a cottage by the sea. But will Lola’s retreat prove as idyllic as she hopes?

Not if journalist Grace has anything to do with it. She wants the inside story on the de Courcy engagement and thinks Lola holds the key. Grace knew Paddy a long time ago. But why can’t she forget him?

Grace’s sister, Marnie, might have the answer but she also has issues with the past. Her family is wonderful but they can’t take away memories of her first love: a certain Paddy de Courcy. What will it take for Marnie to be able to move on?

And what of the future Mrs de Courcy … Alicia is determined to be the perfect politician’s wife. But does she know the real Paddy de Courcy?

Four very different women. One awfully charming man. And the dark secret that binds them all...

‘There’s something I need your help with. The details are a little hazy at the moment, but I sense that it’s going to be something big. Very big indeed. Have you heard of Dr Julius Gorner?’

It’s a name that will become seared into James Bond’s consciousness. The name of a man who knows no master but his own power-crazed ego, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed and who will stop at nothing until he has destroyed the very heart of Great Britain.

A savage execution in the desolate outskirts of Paris sets in motion a chain of events designed to lead only to global catastrophe, as a tide of lethal narcotics threatens to engulf Sixties Britain, a British airliner goes missing over Iraq and the thunder of coming war echoes round the Middle East...

Bond finds a willing accomplice in the shape of a glamorous Parisian called Scarlett Papava. He will need all her help in a life-and-death struggle with his most dangerous adversary yet – a man who would dance with the Devil himself.

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Living in Paris with her partner, the workaholic Mr Frog, and their adorable toddler, Tadpole, Catherine decides to alleviate the boredom of her metro-boulot-dodo routine by starting a blog under the name of Petite Anglaise.

Writing with disarming honesty about Paris life, about the confines of her hollow relationship with Mr Frog and about the wonder and pain that comes with being a mother, she finds a new purpose to her day.

As Petite Anglaise, Catherine regains her confidence and makes virtual friends, including one charismatic and single Englishman who lives in Brittany, James. And after meeting James one evening in a bar, Catherine feels she has regained her ability to fall in love, too.

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From punk to mod to New Romantic, and eventually to acclaimed poet, Simon Armitage writes about a life where music and poetry have been core. And about a place, the village of Marsden in west Yorkshire, where he can stand and look out across a huge circumference of inspiration and influence: Joy Division, the Smiths and The Fall to the west, the Comsat Angels and Pulp to the south, Andrew Marvell and Larkin way out east, Ted Hughes and Plath just to the north. Gig is a warm, vivid, wonderful book about music, poetry, family and … always … the North.

A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other on-line and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A few people find that a world-class on-line encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade instruction entirely on-line.

Our age’s new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us. New groups are doing new things in new ways, and we’re doing the old things better and more easily. Business models are being transformed at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is in a way so profound that it’s under-appreciated. In Here Comes Everybody, one of the culture’s wisest observers give us his lucid and penetrating analysis on what this means for what we do and who we are.

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Read Clay's guest blog post

Leo Gursky is a man who fell in love at the age of ten and has been in love ever since. These days he is just about surviving life in America, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbour know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the milk counter of Starbucks. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago in the Polish village where he was born Leo fell in love with a young girl called Alma and wrote a book in honour of his love. These days he assumes that the book, and his dreams, are irretrievably lost, until one day they return to him in the form of a brown envelope.

Meanwhile, a young girl, hoping to find a cure for her mother's loneliness, stumbles across a book that changed her mother's life and she goes in search of the author. Soon these and other worlds collide in The History of Love, a captivating audio exploring the power of love, of loneliness and of survival.

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When Neil Strauss - a self-proclaimed AFC (average frustrated chump) - withdraws $500 and signs-up for a workshop with notorious pick-up artist Mystery, he embarks upon a life-changing journey into the bizarre underworld of 'players'.  Creating their own vernacular and codes of honour, these are men that have devoted their lives to perfecting techniques of seduction.  In the course of the next two years Neil transforms himself from a frustrated, insecure journalist into the quick thinking, smooth talking Style, a character irresistible to women.  Then, as he is voted The World's Number One Pick-up Artist, he falls for a woman who could beat him at his own game.  With guest appearances from Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, and Courtney Love.

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While panic and suspicion flood the land, a small band of travellers comes together to outrun the breakdown in law and order. But when one of their number is found hanging from a tree, the chilling discovery confirms that something more sinister than plague is in their midst. And as the runes warn of treachery, it appears no one is quite what they seem, least of all the child rune reader, who mercilessly compels each of her companions to tell their stories.  And face the consequences.

Take a leap of imagination and embark on an unforgettable journey through the ravaged countryside ... with only a scarred trader in holy relics, a conjuror, two musicians, and a deformed storyteller for company.

Company of Liars is published on 31 January - to be alerted when it becomes available enter your email address here.

Penguin's Poems for Life takes its inspiration from Shakespeare’s idea of the 'seven ages' of a human life, bringing together some of the best-loved poems in English. Beginning with babies, the book is divided into sections on childhood, growing up, making a living and making love, family life, getting older, and approaching death, ending with poems of mourning and commemoration.

The Penguin Classics Poetry Doctor

Sometimes, when your own words fail you, a poem can describe how you’re feeling or express what you want to say...

Laura Barber (Poems for Life Publisher and our very own Poetry Doctor) has the remedy. Email your poetry problem (broken-hearted, new baby, something fitting for a funeral?) to poetrydoctor@penguin.co.uk and Laura will personally prescribe you with a poem to meet your needs.

During November and December 2007, we will be publishing a selection of your poetry problems, together with Laura’s suggested prescriptions for them - watch this space. We look forward to hearing from you!

If you submit a name then we will post it on the site, otherwise your post will be anonymous. If you are under 13 please make sure you have permission from a parent or guardian first before requesting a poetry prescription.

This is a book about shock, and the way it's applied to countries and people. It is the unofficial story of how the 'free market' came to dominate the world from Chile to Russia, China to Iraq, South Africa to Britain.

It is a story radically different from the one usually told. Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that 'free markets' lead to 'free people'. She reveals that our world is increasingly in thrall to a little understood yet hugely influential ideology: the shock doctrine. This is a doctrine that sees moments of collective crisis as a 'window of opportunity'. With societies too terrified or disoriented to protect their own interests, the free market advances, using the trademark tactic of rapid-fire economic shock therapy. Often, a refusal to comply results in distinctly more corporeal shocks: the shock of the Taser gun, or the electric cattle prod. Our history is littered with events that have provided opportunities for the shock doctrine. From the 1970s dictatorships of South America, through the Falklands War, Tiananmen Square and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Naomi Klein reinterprets our past to trace the rise of disaster capitalism, a program of social and economic engineering advanced through shock. Playing out today around the world in Israel, Iraq, New Orleans and South-East Asia, The Shock Doctrine reveals the true beliefs that lie behind global policy and in doing so reframes our history and our present.

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'It had been almost a year since I’d found Hannah dead, and I thought I’d managed to erase all traces of that night within myself. I was wrong.'

Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a mesmerizing debut. As teenager Blue van Meer tells her story we are hurled into a dizzying world of murder and butterflies, womanizing and wandering, American McCulture, the Western Canon, political radicalism and juvenile crushisms. Structured around a syllabus for a Great Works of Literature class (with hand-drawn Visual Aids), Blue’s wickedly funny yet poignant tale reveals how the imagination finds meaning in the most bewildering times, the ways people of all ages strive for connection, and how the darkest of secrets can set us free.

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