What on earth is Bill Bryson doing writing a book of popular science--A Short History of Almost Everything? Largely, it appears, because this inquisitive, much-travelled writer realised, while flying over the Pacific, that he was entirely ignorant of the processes that created, populated and continue to maintain the vast body of water beneath him. ...more

An adventure featuring the Eighth Doctor with Fitz and Anji. The heroes are used to finding themselves in different times, eras long before or long after the ones into which they were born. But when these eras come equipped with Hilton hotels and luxury theme parks, it's a different matter. In the 1950s, the Good Time Travel Company has discovered ...more

At 9, Tiffany Aching defeated the cruel Queen of Fairyland. At 11, she battled an ancient body-stealing evil. At 13, Tiffany faces a new challenge: a boy. And boys can be a bit of a problem when you're thirteen. . . . But the Wintersmith isn't exactly a boy. He is Winter itself—snow, gales, icicles—all of it. When he has a crush on Tiffan...more

The Heroine: Tiffany Aching, incipient witch and cheese maker extraordinaire. Once saved world from Queen of the Elves. Is about to discover that battling evil monarchs is child's play compared to mortal combat with a Hiver (see below). At eleven years old, is boldest heroine ever to have confronted the Forces of Darkness while armed with a frying ...more

You never forget your ex-fiance. And when the call came at three in the morning, I thought for a moment it was him. It wasn't. It was his brother. And it wasn't good news. Apparently, the former love of my life had got himself thrown into jail for assaulting a woman. Since I make my living as a preternatural expert, I tend to believe almost anythin...more

In some of Laurell Hamilton's excellent supernatural thrillers about Anita Blake, the Vampire Executioner, we forget that Anita raises the dead for a living, and that her involvements with the undead, the temporarily furry and the St Louis Police Department are only a sideline. In Bloody Bones, she is hired to raise the victims of some long-ago mas...more

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, is not quite as human as she once was. Consumed by both the lusts of the vampire and the primal hungers of the wereleopards, her desires must be sated. But it is Jean- Claude, the Master Vampire, who needs her now. When she is asked to reanimate the body of a long-dead corpse, it seems like just another case to Anita. W...more