The dazzling new Culture novel from one of the most exciting science-fiction writers of modern times - a tour de force of brilliant storytelling, world-building and imagination.

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Within the cosmic conflict, there was an individual crusade: deep within a fabled labyrinth lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it.

Two and a half millennia ago, the Excession, a perfect black sphere, appeared in a remote corner of space. It did nothing, then disappeared. Now it is back, and someone who saw it the first time has information on its staggering potential, but she is living out her death in the Sleeper Service.

A science fiction novel.

Bored with success, Gurgeh - The Player of Games - travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game. This is a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor.

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.

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.

In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realizes, but she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about. In another palace across the mountains, the chief bodyguard of the regicidal Protector General also has his enemies.

In the penultimate year before the Encroachment, the dimming sun still shines on the cloud-high weathered walls of Serehfa Fastness. On the day the Count Sessine dies for the final time, the chief scientist to the clan Accounts/Privileges receives a summons from the office of the High Sortileger.

A collection of short fiction by the author of The Wasp Factory and Against a Dark Background . The title story is a novella continuing the Culture sequence but set on Earth in 1977. The other stories range from science fiction to horror, and dark-coated fantasy to morality tale.

The dazzling new Culture novel from a modern master of science fiction - a tour de force of brilliant storytelling, world-building and imagination.

The dazzling new Culture book from the most exciting science fiction writer of modern times - a tour de force of brilliant storytelling, world-building and imagination.

A 7-hour abridgement on 6 CDs Reader to be confirmed

The year is 4034. The Nasqueron Dwellers, regarded as barbaric by the rest of the solar system, live on a gas giant at the edge of the universe. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Dwellers, must uncover a secret hidden for half a billion years, but everyday war goes closer.