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.

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.

Daniel Weir was a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe he still is. At 31 he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret for ever. The author's previous novels include The Wasp Factory .

A man lies in a coma, his body broken, his memory vanished. He finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. The author's previous novels include The Wasp Factory .