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In their Saitama office, Ashikawa is the kind of woman Nitani knows he will likely marry: sweet, obliging, and determined to wean him off his addiction to instant noodles. But he finds himself increasingly unable to respect her – or the sugary treats she shares around the workplace, winning their colleagues’ affection with baking rather than hard work. Oshio is bolder and uninhibited – she is Nitani's drinking buddy. In the oppressive office atmosphere, the pair grows closer, both outsiders struggling with the rigid status quo.

Amy Abrams doesn't do love. She grew up in an Upper East Side penthouse, which had about as much affection within its tastefully decorated walls as Castle Dracula. Then it happens. Love. It comes right out of the blue and knocks her off her six-inch heels. She learns that love comes with pesky side effects such as heartbreak. Amy promises herself that she'll never open herself to that horrible feeling again. She doesn't count on an infuriating, albeit drool-worthy biker to roar into her life and ruin the plans she had of locking up her heart.

As Mara and Tom navigate their break-up/non-break-up, Mara becomes fixated on the perfect couple living in the flat above her. While her best friend accuses her of being self-involved and her already overfamiliar boss keeps getting her drunker and drunker, the Happy Couple become a symbol for everything Mara and Tom could have been – but, crucially, are not.

The troubled and anxious of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all have their problems - and they all want to believe that a temporary feline companion from a unique pet shop can help them find a solution. Or at least provide a few days' relief and distraction. But, like all their kind, the Blanket Cats are mysterious creatures with their own unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn't what they really need. Three days may not be enough to change your life. But it can be enough to change how you see it.

New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York.

After eight years spent locked up, Max has gotten very good at being a prisoner. He knows the guards, the inmates, and how to survive. But the parole board has decided that he has sufficiently reformed, and it's time for him to say good-bye. When Max reaches the outside world, he finds that freedom doesn't make anything easier. Based on his own experiences in prison, Edward Bunker first drafted No Beast So Fierce in the 1950s, while incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison.

At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class South Brooklyn; he comes from the super-rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. She keeps a keen intelligence under wraps; his eccentric brilliance is all but impossible to repress. While Eva welcomes Jamie into her family’s embrace, he avoids going home; with little in common, they are drawn together in a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to an elite college and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out of school and joins the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Athena and Dexter live a happy but insular life, bound by routine and the care of their young sons. When Elizabeth, an old friend from Dexter’s university days, turns up with her much younger sister, Vicki, and her lover, Philip, she brings an enticing world to their doorstep. And Athena finds herself straining at the confines of her life.

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner treats its customers to wonderfully extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason to stop by... The father-daughter duo have started advertising their services as 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are capable of recreating a dish from their customers' pasts – dishes that may well hold the keys to forgotten memories and future happiness.

In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep. Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice - save the woman he loves or everyone else? - while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the muse of nightmares, has not yet discovered what she's capable of.

Looking up at the departures board in Heathrow airport, her flight to New York boarding soon, she knows that getting on that plane changes everything. Her life in London has grown stale, her relationship with boyfriend Dom has run its course, and New York has always been her dream. But it’s a risk – she’ll miss her parents, her friends, her job. What if Bea could live both lives? In one she goes back home for Christmas, and in another she heads to the Big Apple.

Áine should be feeling happy with her life. She’s just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, Áine can't shake the sense that there's something not quite right about the place...The longer Áine spends inside the flat - pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her - the less it feels like home.

I know all about guys like Cullen Hunt. Gorgeous. Wealthy. Powerful. I just fled New York to escape one. But when I reach Colorado, it’s either take a job at Cullen’s Trident Rescue or become homeless. And Cullen? He’s worse than I thought. Controlling. Demanding. Jerk. A grenade always teetering on the edge. He’s also hot as sin and makes my toes curl. I hate that I dream about him. Kissing me, holding me. He has dreams as well. Nightmares that only I can tame. I know all about guys like Cullen Hunt. I’m smart enough to stay away. Aren’t I?

After five years’ hard time, ex-soldier Hugh Marlowe emerges into the free world ready to fight anyone who stands in his way. Rough justice is all he knows. But when a beautiful, vulnerable woman asks for his help, Marlowe quickly finds himself a world away from the London gangland that he knows in a different life with its own problems.

Haunted by the brutal killing of his UN interpreter wife in Bosnia, ex-SAS operative Ed Coltrane is consumed with the need to hunt down her murderers. Drinking too much and spending too much on his search, his life is going into meltdown. Just as it seems he can fall no further, a former colleague informs him that one of his wife's killers is in London, as a guest of the British government. Certain unofficial figures in the corridors of power would like to see this man disappear, and they'd like Ed Coltrane to accept the contract.

Each girl survived an unthinkable horror. Now someone wants them dead.... They were the victims of separate massacres. Grouped together by the press and dubbed the 'Final Girls', they are treated like something fresh out of a slasher movie. When something terrible happens to Lisa, put-together Quincy and volatile Sam finally meet. Each one influences the other. Each one has dark secrets. And after the bloodstained fingers of the past reach into the present, each one will never be the same.

A chilling novel about our modern world, from the author of Empire of the Sun and Crash. An architect is driving home from his London offices when a blow-out sends his speeding Jaguar hurtling out of control. Smashing through a temporary barrier he finds himself, dazed and disorientated, on a traffic island below three converging motorways. But when he tries to climb the embankment or flag-down a passing car for help it proves impossible - and he finds himself marooned on the concrete island.

The Haughton Park development just outside Manchester is an exclusive new suburb of expensive homes for professional families. When the developer fails to sell half of the properties, the project is thrown into financial chaos. The local council steps in with a workable solution. They propose to use the unsold homes as social housing for homeless families in return for the much-needed cash injection that the developer needs to pay the bills. It’s a win-win situation. Or is it?

A deadly enemy will rise again.... Ella Praeger has always felt like an outsider. So when she is called to join the ranks of The Group, a force for good operating in the shadows, her world shifts. She is gifted a purpose - and a dangerous legacy. Years ago, The Group rid the world of one of its most powerful criminal masterminds. Yet when a child washes up on a beach in Greece, a mysterious symbol tattooed on its heel, it is a clear warning: impossibly, Athena Petridis has returned to reclaim her empire.

It's a hot summer afternoon. Tension is in the air. A gang of youths on bikes gathers outside a chip shop. A teenage boy is stabbed and left bleeding on the street. The boy's mother wonders how this could have happened to her son. She is full of questions, but when the answers lie so close to home, are they really what she wants to hear?