28.2.10

What would you do if you had a brother like Mr Darcy? Overprotective, powerful, and full of pride? In this coming-of-age story, Georgiana joins forces with her lively American cousin, Miss Clarissa Darcy, to challenge the expectations forced upon her.

Alice and Edith are sisters, best friends, and arch- enemies. Alice, the 'good girl', is everything the stunning, wanton and morally whimsical Edith is not. Both have an unhealthy attraction to shame and disgrace, and both are expert manipulators -- a power that is tested and exploited when the plane they are travelling on is commandeered by a blind terrorist in what may or may not be a hijacking. When Alice is chosen to communicate with the hostage negotiator, Edith decides to align herself with the terrorist. Inexplicably drawn to the negotiator, Alice finds it harder and harder to distinguish allies from enemies in what begins to feel like an elliptical airborne game show. Trapped on the plane with a pill- popping pregnant heiress, archaeologists on their way to a reunion, a wealthy, womanising Indian man and a dog named Verne, Alice learns valuable lessons about sibling rivalry, love and about who she is -- even while she's pretending to be someone else.

The picture possessed a frightful beauty, one which burned so brightly that, once witnessed, could never be unseen...Even the presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead through strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas...In a hidden studio in an area of Rome where the Vatican liked to keep an eye on the city's prostitutes, an art expert from the Louvre is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings that Nic Costa has ever seen - an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece.

'The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now...' The narrator of Robert Harris' gripping new novel is a professional ghostwriter - cynical, mercenary, and with a nice line in deadpan humour. Accustomed to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, he jumps at the chance to ghost the memoirs of Britain's former prime minister, especially as it means flying to the American resort of Martha's Vineyard in the middle of winter and finishing the book in the seclusion of a luxurious house.