Item category 1: Read Past/Discover Future

Jeanette Winterson's version of Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale' vibrates with echoes of the original but tells a contemporary story of betrayal, paranoia, redemption and hope. Time itself is a player in this game of high stakes that will either end in tragedy or forgiveness, showing us that, ho...

When she wangles the job of skippering a Viking longship for a film, Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived - even though it means returning home to the Shetland Islands, which she ran away from as a teenager. Then the 'accidents' begin - and when a dead woman turns up on the boat's ...

Magnus McFall was a comic on the brink of his big break when the world came to an end. Now, he is a man on the run and there is nothing to laugh about. Thrown into unwilling partnership with an escaped convict, Magnus flees the desolation of London to make the long journey north, clinging to his ...

Magnus McFall was a comic on the brink of his big break when the world came to an end. Now, he is a man on the run and there is nothing to laugh about. Thrown into unwilling partnership with an escaped convict, Magnus flees the desolation of London to make the long journey north, clinging to his ...

Long after earth was forgotten, a galaxy took shape, an Empire governed from the city-planet of Trantor. The system worked, and grew, for generations. Everyone believed it would work forever, except Hari Seldon.

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg. Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible - and Strike kn...

Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, this novel from Ian M. Banks, author of 'Consider Phlebas' and 'The player of Games', is science fiction at its best.

The exciting new historical thriller featuring Giordano Bruno, radical philosopher and secret agent. It is 1584 and the Protestant Prince William of Orange has been assassinated by a fanatical Catholic. There are whispers that Queen Elizabeth will be next.

2070-71. Nearly six decades after Step Day and in the Long Earth, the new Next post-human society continues to evolve. For Joshua Valiente, now in his late sixties, it is time to take one last solo journey into the High Meggers: an adventure that turns into a disaster. Alone and facing death, his...

Hearing that his old friend Cassiopeia Vitt is in trouble, Cotton Malone follows the few clues he has and realises that they are in the middle of something huge involving Russian and US oil interests and a centuries-old secret.