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Arthur and george grow up worlds and miles apart in late nineteenth-century britain: arthur in shabby-genteel edinburgh, george in the vicarage of a small staffordshire village. arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; george a solicitor in birmingham. arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, george remains in hardworking obscurity. but as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as the great wyrley outrages. george edjali’s father is indian, his mother scottish. when the family begins to receive vicious anonymous letters, many about their son, they put it down to racial prejudice. they appeal to the police, to no less than the chief constable, but to their dismay he appears to suspect george of being the letters’ author. then someone starts slashing horses and livestock. again the police seem to suspect the shy, aloof birmingham solicitor. he is arrested and, on the flimsiest evidence, sent to trial, found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour. arthur conan doyle, famous as the creator of the world’s greatest detective, is mourning his first wife (having been chastely in love for ten years with the woman who was to become his second) when he hears about the edjali case. incensed at this obvious miscarriage of justice, he is galvanised into trying to clear george’s name. with a mixture of detailed research and vivid imagination, julian barnes brings to life not just this long-forgotten case, but the inner lives of these two very different men. the reader sees them both with stunning clarity, and almost inhabits them as they face the vicissitudes of their lives, whether in the dock hearing a verdict of guilty, or trying to live an honourable life while desperately in love with another woman. this is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race; about what we think, what we believe, and what we know. julian barnes has long been recognised as one of britain’s most remarkable writers. while those already familiar with his work will enjoy its elegance, its wit, its profound wisdom about the human condition, arthur & george will surely find him an entirely new audience.

Who is the real margo? quentin jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous margo roth spiegelman from afar. so when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life – dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge – he follows. after their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, q arrives at school to discover that margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. she has disappeared. q soon learns that there are clues in her disappearance . . . and they are for him. trailing margo’s disconnected path across the usa, the closer q gets, the less sure he is of who he is looking for.

From the author of the sunday times top ten bestseller, sunday times crime book of the year and cwa gold dagger winner, the dry. jane harper’s new novel, the lost man, is out now. five went out. four came back… is alice here? did she make it? is she safe? in the chaos, in the night, it was impossible to say which of the four had asked after alice’s welfare. later, when everything got worse, each would insist it had been them. five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along the muddy track. only four come out the other side. the hike through the rugged landscape is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and teach resilience and team building. at least that is what the corporate retreat website advertises. federal police agent aaron falk has a particularly keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing bushwalker. alice russell is the whistleblower in his latest case – and alice knew secrets. about the company she worked for and the people she worked with. far from the hike encouraging teamwork, the women tell falk a tale of suspicion, violence and disintegrating trust. and as he delves into the disappearance, it seems some dangers may run far deeper than anyone knew.