A collection of misanthropic scribblings that tackles the issues ranging from the misery of nightclubs to the death of Michael Jackson, making room for Sir Alan Sugar, potato crisps, global financial meltdown, conspiracy theories and Hole in the Wall along the way.

A sourcebook of wise one-loners, of knock-out jokes, of drole asides and heartfelt statements of truth and beauty. It gathers insights of some of the best minds, and organises them into 250 subjects. It offers you a different take on almost every situation life throws at you.

Includes poems about Macavity, Old Deuteronomy, Mr Mistoffelees and many other cats.

Takes familiar features of the world we know and shows how they can be used to explain profound truths about the ultimate nature of reality.

Golding's best-known novel is the story of a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a fragile community on a previously uninhabited island. As memories of home recede and the blood from frenzied pig-hunts arouses them, the boys' childish fear turns into something deeper and more primitive.

Golding's best-known novel is the story of a group of boys who, after a plane crash, set up a fragile community on a previously uninhabited island. As memories of home recede and the blood from frenzied pig-hunts arouses them, the boys' childish fear turns into something deeper and more primitive.

Polite, pensive, mature, reserved... Charlie Brooker is none of these things and less. Picking up where Screen Burn left off, this work collects the best of Charlie Brooker's TV writing, together with spleen-venting diatribes on a range of non-televisual subjects - tackling topics ranging from David Cameron to human hair.

Ronni's challenge is this: to wean a die-hard football fan off the not-so-beautiful game. She needs a guinea pig on whom she can try out her theory. Who better than her best friend and ex-boyfriend, the truly obsessed Alistair McGowan?

Twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

A memoir that offers a portrait of the author's parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and Myra.

Charles II was thirty when he crossed the Channel in fine May weather in 1660. Exactly ten years later Charles would stand again on the shore at Dover, laying the greatest bet of his life in a secret deal with his cousin, Louis XIV. This book offers a portrait of Charles II, exploring his elusive nature through the lens of these ten vital years.

With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle East, Tassie Keltjin has come to university - to encounter the complex world of politics. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny to a couple who seem at once mysterious and glamorous, Tassie is drawn into the life of their newly-adopted child and increasingly complicated household.

Tim the tiny horse falls in love with a lady fly who doesn't appreciate him, so he acquires a pet greenfly to love instead. He has fun being best man at Fly's wedding, and experiences the joys and horrors of babysitting Fly's new baby. And then he decides to rent out his stable to a mad ladybird and her chaotic host of ant friends.

Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates.

Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.

Presents three stories about Humphrey the classroom hamster.

Imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. This is the story of love, friendship and memory, with a sense of the fragility of life.

A writer has been asked by The New York Times to write a story that will appear in the paper on Christmas morning. The man agrees, but he has a problem: How do you write an unsentimental Christmas story? He unburdens himself to his friend, a colourful character called Auggie Wren. 'A Christmas story? Is that all?' Auggie counters.

Tells a story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people.

Overachieving and eccentric football manager Brian Clough is on his way to take over the country's most successful, and most reviled, football club - Leeds United. The battle he'd face there would make or break the club - or him. This work tells the story of a world characterised by fear of failure and hunger for success.