PHILIP JOSE FARMER – FLESH

Darina is in denial. Even after all she's been through, the Beautiful Dead can't be real. They must be a figment of her grief-stricken imagination. But visions of Phoenix and Hunter prove otherwise and soon she's drawn back to Foxton, to the barn, to Phoenix - where they have, what may just be, their final reunion. It's the moment they've been dreading - time to solve Phoenix's mystery. Everything has been building to this but Darina knows that revealing the true circumstances of Phoenix's death will lead to their final parting. With this impossible mixture of emotions, Darina begins to unscramble the facts, but she's up against mounting obstacles: the distraction of Hunter's personal mystery, Phoenix's returning father, threats of gang violence and conspiracies to blur and block the truth. With time pressure mounting and the risk of Phoenix being sent back into unending limbo, Darina puts herself in danger, and so the mystery of the Beautiful Dead builds into a heart-breaking climax ...

Four friends get together to watch the 1998 World Cup final. One of them has an let's write down our wishes for the next few years, put them away, and during the next final - four years from now - we'll get them out and see how many we've achieved. This is how World Cup Wishes opens, and from here we watch what happens to their wishes and their friendships as life marches on. The four men's bond is deep and solid, but tested by betrayal, death,and distance their alliance comes under pressure. Each friend offers a different perspective, though not necessarily a reliable one... and as they and the world around them change, so do their ideas of friendship and happiness. By the end they are forced to ask whether wishes can really be fulfilled. Or will their story turn out to be a requiem - for a generation, for friendship, or even for one of the four young men? Once again, Eshkol Nevo has produced a novel suffused with charm, warmth and an astonishing wisdom.

A novel of dazzling wit and serious purpose. An extraordinary feat of storytelling and breathtaking invention on a grand scale, it is a tour de force from a writer who has turned science fiction on its head. "Unexpectedly savage, emotionally powerful, and impossible to forget." —The Times In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one — maybe two — people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilizations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity — and her particular set of abilities — might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.