Novel

Upgrade is the mind-bending thriller from Blake Crouch, author of the bestselling Dark Matter and Recursion. YOU ARE THE NEXT STEP IN HUMAN EVOLUTIONLogan Ramsay is beginning to see the world around him, even those he loves the most, in whole new ways. His concentration is better, he can multitask quick, read faster, memorize more and sleep deeper.

It is not natural. His genes have been hacked. He has been targeted for an upgrade.

And he knows it. Logan has been trying to escape his family legacy for decades - and it has left him vulnerable to attack. With a terrifying plan in place to replicate his upgrade throughout the world's population, Logan may be the only person capable of protecting the bodies of earth from hijackers.

But to win this war, Logan will have to become something other than himself . . .

Intricately plotted and epic in scope, Upgrade asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity - and our boundless potential. Are you ready for the impossible?

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull. Thackeray's upper-class Regency world is a noisy and jostling commercial fairground, predominantly driven by acquisitive greed and soulless materialism, in which the narrator himself plays a brilliantly versatile role as a serio-comic observer. Although subtitled A Novel without a Hero, Vanity Fair follows the fortunes of two contrasting but inter-linked lives: through the retiring Amelia Sedley and the brilliant Becky Sharp, Thackeray examines the position of women in an intensely exploitative male world.

When Vanity Fair was published in 1848, Charlotte Bronte commented: `The more I read Thackeray'sworks the more certain I am that he stands alone - alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling... Thackeray is a Titan.'

*SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE YEAR*'A novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure' Financial Times 'Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious' Daily Mail The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet. Because it might have just gone extinct.

Nobody knows. And nobody really cares, either. Except for two people.

Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish is gone for good, and biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes. They don't trust each other an inch, but they're left with no choice but to team up in search of the lumpsucker. And as they journey across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe - a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the Baltic Sea; the lethal hinterlands of a totalitarian state - they're drawn into a conspiracy far bigger than one ugly little fish.

'A laugh-out-loud novel about mass extinction (yes, really)' Sunday Times 'Confirms his reputation as one of the foremost satirists of his generation' The Times

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL 2018**WHO IS VERNON SUBUTEX?An urban legend. A fall from grace. The mirror who reflects us all. Vernon Subutex was once the proprietor of Revolver, an infamous music shop in Bastille. His legend spread throughout Paris. But by the 2000s his shop is struggling. With his savings gone, his unemployment benefit cut, and the friend who had been covering his rent suddenly dead, Vernon Subutex finds himself down and out on the Paris streets. He has one final card up his sleeve. Even as he holds out his hand to beg for the first time, a throwaway comment he once made on Facebook is taking the internet by storm. Vernon does not realise this, but the word is out: Vernon Subutex has in his possession the last filmed recordings of Alex Bleach, the famous musician and Vernon's benefactor, who has only just died of a drug overdose. A crowd of people from record producers to online trolls and porn stars are now on Vernon's trail. VERNON SUBUTEX TWO IS PUBLISHED IN JULY 2018Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

Rock star Alexandre Bleach might be dead, but he has a secret. It's a secret that concerns several people, but the only person who can unlock it is Vernon Subutex, former record shop proprietor turned homeless messiah and guru, last seen hallucinating and feverish on a bench in the parc des Buttes Chaumont. Aicha wants to know the truth behind the death of her mother, Vodka Satana. And if she finds the bastards responsible, she wants to make them pay, whatever Celeste thinks of her plan. Celeste wants Aicha to get a grip and stop hanging around with Subutex's gang of disciples. The Hyena wants to find the Bleach tapes. She wants to untangle her complicated feelings about Anais, her boss' assistant. And speaking of her boss, she does not want Laurent Dopalet to discover how badly she has double-crossed him. Laurent Dopalet wants the Hyena to find and destroy the Bleach tapes. He wants to forget he ever knew Vodka Satana. He wants people to stop graffitiing his apartment with ludicrous allegations. Above all, he wants people to understand: NONE OF THIS IS HIS FAULT. THE SEQUEL TO VERNON SUBUTEX 1, SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2018. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

It could be happening here...or there. Today the place is Greece, wracked by a crisis that has pushed people to the brink. Two strangers meet in a train headed for Athens. One spews out his disgust at the foreigners and the poverty that have invaded the neighborhood he calls home, Vic City. He even has a "final solution" in mind. The other, seized by fright--or is it resignation and apathy?-- squirms as his haughty silence gives way to voyeurism and to political correctness. While the former, uninhibited, lashes out at the economic crisis in a violent racist rant, the latter, troubled, checks his email about the latest health treatments aimed at him and his family. Along the way, we get glimpses of the forces that have destroyed a society. Who will end up leading its angry, desperate and rudderless people? Vic City Express seizes the anxieties of our dystopian globalized world.

She will breathe a new empire into life – but all worlds can escape their creator…‘Full of adventure… A celebration of the power of storytelling’ GUARDIANIn the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga, ‘victory city’. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world.

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Sally Minogue, Department of English, Canterbury Christ Church University College. Based on Charlotte Bronte's personal experience as a teacher in Brussels, Villette is a moving tale of repressed feelings and subjection to cruel circumstance and position, borne with heroic fortitude. Rising above the frustrations of confinement within a rigid social order, it is also the story of a woman's right to love and be loved.