When Finn, a former British spy, is poisoned by a Russian assassin, his ex-boss Adrian, the chief of MI6, wants vengeance. He also wants answers—information that only Finn's widow knows. But Anna, a former KGB colonel who betrayed her country for love, vanished with her child shortly after Finn's death.

Adrian isn't the only one eager to find Anna. Finn accessed intelligence so sensitive that the KGB killed to protect it—and now Anna is in the KGB's crosshairs, as the only person who knows the true identity of the Kremlin insider, superspy, and double agent called Mikhail. The CIA and Cougar, a giant American private intelligence company, are also hunting her. With the Kremlin still in the grasp of all-powerful Vladimir Putin, Mikhail is the West's best hope for revealing Russia's obscure intentions for its newfound oil wealth.

Anna holds the key to the secrets of her motherland, and now the former Russian agent faces her greatest test. To secure her freedom and protect her child, she must uncover the full truth before anyone else does—even as friend and foe set her in their sights.

Moving from Paris to New York, from the Kremlin to the American Southwest, Moscow Sting is an absorbing and timely tale of intrigue, betrayal, fatal lies, and complex truths, told with the authentic detail and chilling insight of an experienced insider.

In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters. Includes explanatory notes throughout the text, an introduction discussing the author and the background of the story, and a study guide.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.

Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber

• Family Life
• Public Prosecutors
• Murder
• Massachusetts
• Trial

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student.

Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own—between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he’s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

Award-winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis—a suspenseful, character-driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2012: A fast, compelling, and compulsively readable courtroom drama, Defending Jacob tells the story of a district attorney’s son who is accused of killing a classmate. As the father attempts to prove his son’s innocence, Landay explores uncomfortable territory: can a tendency toward violence be inherited? Is the capacity for murder a genetic disposition? The author, a former district attorney, gets the taut nuances just right, capturing the subtleties of a trial in a packed courtroom, where a small rustle or murmur can signify a lot. In the end Landay pulls off a clever plot device that doesn’t reveal itself until the final pages. --Neal Thompson

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!' Set before and during the French Revolution in the cities of Paris and London, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Dr Manette's release from imprisonment in the Bastille and his reunion with daughter, Lucie. A French aristocrat Darnay and English lawyer Carton compete in their love for Lucie and the ensuing tale plays out against the menacing backdrop of the French Revolution and the shadow of the guillotine.

hardcover

Southern Seahawk, the first novel in the Seahawk Trilogy, grows from the true story of Commander Raphael Semmes’ rise to infamy, becoming the Union’s “Public Enemy Number One.”In June, 1861, Semmes’ Confederate cruiser Sumter makes a daring escape through the Federal Blockade of the Mississippi. So begins the commander’s career as the Southern Seahawk. With a hand-picked crew of Southern officers and mercenary seamen, Semmes seizes eight enemy ships in four days, a record never surpassed by any other captain of a warship.??By the time the cruises of the Sumter and her successor Alabama end, Semmes will have taken and burned more than eighty prizes, making him the most successful maritime predator in history.For two and a half years Semmes eludes a pack of pursuers and almost single-handedly?drives marine insurance rates so high in the North, that many Yankee ships refuse to sail until he is caught.??Back in Washington, Semmes’ predations fuel feuds within the Lincoln cabinet and incite the spy games of historical figures like courtesans Rose Greenhow, Betty Duval, detective Allan Pinkerton and the commander’s mistress.

Southern Seahawk, the first novel in the Seahawk Trilogy, grows from the true story of Commander Raphael Semmes’ rise to infamy, becoming the Union’s “Public Enemy Number One.”In June, 1861, Semmes’ Confederate cruiser Sumter makes a daring escape through the Federal Blockade of the Mississippi. So begins the commander’s career as the Southern Seahawk. With a hand-picked crew of Southern officers and mercenary seamen, Semmes seizes eight enemy ships in four days, a record never surpassed by any other captain of a warship.??By the time the cruises of the Sumter and her successor Alabama end, Semmes will have taken and burned more than eighty prizes, making him the most successful maritime predator in history.For two and a half years Semmes eludes a pack of pursuers and almost single-handedly?drives marine insurance rates so high in the North, that many Yankee ships refuse to sail until he is caught.??Back in Washington, Semmes’ predations fuel feuds within the Lincoln cabinet and incite the spy games of historical figures like courtesans Rose Greenhow, Betty Duval, detective Allan Pinkerton and the commander’s mistress.

A life hanging in the balance . . . a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family secrets, love, and letting go.

In the wild, when a wolf knows its time is over, when it knows it is of no more use to its pack, it may sometimes choose to slip away. Dying apart from its family, it stays proud and true to its nature. Humans aren’t so lucky.

Luke Warren has spent his life researching wolves. He has written about them, studied their habits intensively, and even lived with them for extended periods of time. In many ways, Luke understands wolf dynamics better than those of his own family. His wife, Georgie, has left him, finally giving up on their lonely marriage. His son, Edward, twenty-four, fled six years ago, leaving behind a shattered relationship with his father. Edward understands that some things cannot be fixed, though memories of his domineering father still inflict pain. Then comes a frantic phone call: Luke has been gravely injured in a car accident with Edward’s younger sister, Cara.

Suddenly everything changes: Edward must return home to face the father he walked out on at age eighteen. He and Cara have to decide their father’s fate together. Though there’s no easy answer, questions abound: What secrets have Edward and his sister kept from each other? What hidden motives inform their need to let their father die . . . or to try to keep him alive? What would Luke himself want? How can any family member make such a decision in the face of guilt, pain, or both? And most importantly, to what extent have they all forgotten what a wolf never forgets: that each member of a pack needs the others, and that sometimes survival means sacrifice?

Another tour de force by Picoult, Lone Wolf brilliantly describes the nature of a family: the love, protection, and strength it can offer—and the price we might have to pay for those gifts. What happens when the hope that should sustain a family is the very thing tearing it apart?

For over 125 years John Tenniel's superb illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland have been the perfect complement to Lewis Carroll's timeless story. In that time Alice has been illustrated by numerous artists, but not one has come close to matching the universal appeal of the original pictures.

This is the first Alice to reproduce Ternniel's exquisite drawings from prints taken directly from the original wood engravings. Here, Tenniel's fine line work is far crisper, delicate shadings are reproduced with more subtlety, and details never seen before are now visible.

Like most nineteenth-century children's books, the pictures for Alice were created by transferring the artist's drawings to woodblocks, But with Alice, the original blocks served as masters from which metal plates were made for printing. Unfortunately, these plates deteriorated from the repeated pressure applied during printing, and over time, many of the fine lines in Tenniel's pictures simply vanished altogether.As the year-, passed, the original woodblocks disappeared and were believed lost; then, in 1985 they were discovered in a London bank vault.

Now, for the first time, prints from these woodblocks have been used to produce a deluxe gift edition with clearer, more detailed images than have ever been seen before. At last, readers can see the Alice that Carroll and Tenniel had originally envisioned.

Source of legend and lyric, reference and conjecture, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is for most children pure pleasure in prose. While adults try to decipher Lewis Carroll's putative use of complex mathematical codes in the text, or debate his alleged use of opium, young readers simply dive with Alice through the rabbit hole, pursuing "The dream-child moving through a land / Of wonders wild and new." There they encounter the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the Mock Turtle, and the Mad Hatter, among a multitude of other characters--extinct, fantastical, and commonplace creatures. Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences. But they turn out to be "curiouser and curiouser," seemingly without moral or sense.

For more than 130 years, children have reveled in the delightfully non-moralistic, non-educational virtues of this classic. In fact, at every turn, Alice's new companions scoff at her traditional education. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the "regular course" in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. Carroll believed John Tenniel's illustrations were as important as his text. Naturally, Carroll's instincts were good; the masterful drawings are inextricably tied to the well-loved story. (All ages) --Emilie Coulter