It was one of the less glorious incidents of the Idiran wars that led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, 800 years later, the light from the first of those deaths has reached the Culture's Masaq' Orbital. A Chelgrian emissary is dispatched to the Culture.

Cheradenine is an ex- special circumstance agent who had been raised to eminence by a woman named Diziet. Skaffen-Amtskaw, the drone, had saved her life and it believes Cheradenine to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence can see the horrors in his past.

When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks, nine-year-old Oskar Schell sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It leads him into the lives of strangers, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace.

An exploration of the morality of greed, corruption and violence. When several prominent people die mysteriously, the police beat a path to the door of an Edinburgh journalist known for his drug abuse and total commitment to computer games. By the author of The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road .

Sharrow was once a warrior-spy and leader of a combat team. Living in a state of semi-retirement, she suddenly found herself the target of the Huhsz, a religious cult, and realised that she had to find and reform her old team if she had any hope of survival. By the author of the Culture sequence.

By the author of The Wasp Factory and Walking on Glass , this book is set in Japan and on the Panama Canal. It concerns a world famous Japanese cellist, who refuses to fly, and as a result finds herself involved in the ominous realm of global realpolitik .