Opens at the Shea Stadium at the World Series Game of 1951, where the ball is caught by a young, black man in the crowd, and continues to change hands throughout the book. The various recipients of the ball tell the story of post-war US history giving a panorama of America from the 50s to the 90s.

Percy is a half-blood - the son of a Greek God. He spends his time fighting with swords, battling monsters with friends and generally trying to stay alive. Now Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks Percy has stolen his lightning bolt - and making Zeus angry is a very bad idea. Can Percy find the lightning bolt before a fully-fledged war of the Gods erupts?

Presents Julie's story, as she prepares dishes ranging from oeufs en cocotte to bifstek saute au beurre, from Bitch Rice to preparing live lobsters. As the richness of the thousands of sauces she slaves over begins to spread into her life, she begins to find the joie de vivre that has been missing for too many years.

Exiled in Richmond in the 1920s, Virginia Woolf struggles to tame her rebellious mind and make a start on her new novel. In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan goes shopping for flowers for a party for her AIDS-suffering poet-friend. This novel meditates on artistic behaviour, love and madness.

Three stories on the nature of identity. In the first a detective writer is drawn into a curious and baffling investigation, in the second a man is set up in an apartment to spy on someone, and the third concerns the disappearance of a man whose childhood friend is left as his literary executor.

Tears the shiny veneer off the 'new' New York to show us the hidden cracks, the underground networks of control and violence beneath the glamour.

Revitalises the American road trip novel, from the perspective of a vulnerable but spirited woman. This book paints an earthy and surprising picture of 1920s America, its smells and textures, its population of drifters and con artists, pimps and prostitutes. It is epic in sweep, but intimate and psychologically acute, moving but unsentimental.

When Summer Fling Luke uses the L word (Living Together), Lizzie is only too happy to move in with the love of her life in his mother's Fifth Avenue pied-a-terre. But Lizzie's not as lucky in her employment search.

The in-crowd wears Gucci but one girl wears her heart on her sleeve! From the bestselling author of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA comes a no-holds barred expose of the world of the Manhattan super-rich.

When you peak at fifteen, where can things go but downhill? Former teen pop sensation Heather Wells has hit rock bottom. When Heather finds a job in a New York college dorm things seem to start looking up... at least until girls in the dorm begin to perish at an alarming rate.

Meet Sophie Applebaum, an everywoman who doesn't quite fit in anywhere. She's looking for a career - but lacks a calling; looking for love - but winds up with men who put her off instead of pull her in. The women she befriends want a girl who's strong but who can't say no. At drinks parties, she feels like a solid trying to do a liquid's job.

In the Polish village where he was born, Leo Gursky fell in love with a young girl called Alma and wrote a book in her honour. These days he is just about surving life in America. 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.

Carrie Bell was born and raised in Wisconsin. She had the same boyfriend for as long as anyone can remember. She is already quiet bored with Mike when he is horrifically injured in a diving accident at Clausen's Reservoir. Now, the future that Carrie was only beginning to rebel against looks set in stone. She is caught in a maze of moral dilemmas.

One of the best works of investigative journalism in years, 'Random Family' tells the story of growing up in the Latino ghettos of the Bronx, a story of drug-dealers, young mothers, poverty and violence, a family saga like no other.

'Walls has carved a story with precision and grace out of one of the most chaotic, heart-breaking childhoods... This deeply affecting memoir is a triumph in every possible way, and it does what all good books should: it affirms our faith in the human spir

Two Jewish Boys Danny and Reuven become friends. Danny comes from the strict Hasidic sect that keeps him bound in centuries of orthodoxy. Reuven is brought up by a father patiently aware of the twentieth century. Everything tries to destroy their friendship, but they use honesty with each other as a shield and it proves an impenetrable protection.

Jane Margaux was never supposed to remember her imaginary friend when he vanished from her life but he was the best friend she'd ever had and she could never let his memory fade. Jane's only friend was handsome, funny, thirty-something Michael. As Jane grew older though, the time came for Michael to leave Jane's side his work was done.

Imagine, if you will, New York City, 1899... Society's elite: the glamour, the grandeur, the glittering parties, the most handsome beaus, the most beautiful debutantes ...the rich girl, the humble boy, the forbidden love, the hushed whispers, the stolen glances, the whispers, the scandal, the mystery, the revenge...

It wasn't just the power failure the night Jean Honeychurch was born that earned her the nickname Jinx: misfortune seems to follow her wherever she goes. Which is why she's been shipped off to New York to stay with relatives - including her cousin Tory. Jinx learns that beneath Tory's big-city glamour lies a world of hatred and revenge.