David Richards is a mid-level diplomat assigned to the sleepy, backwater Middle Eastern kingdom of Kutar in 1983. He spends his days on minor development projects and his nights seducing ambassador’s wives. But when news of a tribal skirmish reaches the capital, Richards soon finds himself embroiled in a civil war as Colonel Munn, a pint-sized, blustery Texan assigned to Kutar, organizes a preemptive offensive against the rebellious forces. After Munn is immediately routed and the rebellion seizes control of the capitol, Richards holes up in the ramshackle Moonlight Hotel with fellow expatriates, determined to ride out the conflict despite the growing chaos and destruction that are heading towards them. This is a stunning and thrilling novel of war and survival from an acclaimed war correspondent. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLING AUTHOR Learn to dance at The Moonlight Hotel, in the most romantic place in Britain ... Beginners and singles welcome. The Moonlight Hotel sits on the shore of England's best-loved lake, Windermere, exuding vintage glamour. Lauren loves the hotel, for hidden inside its faded walls is the key to her most precious memories. So, along with her best friends, Cate and Emily, she signs up to a new dance class in its gorgeous ballroom. They aren't going for the men, they're going for a laugh - although a little romance wouldn't hurt . . . But then a chain of events off the dance floor puts their friendship to the ultimate test, and makes Lauren question everything she holds dear. 'As entertaining as Strictly, but with a lot more romance' KATIE FFORDE 'Hilarious and romantic - Jane Costello's best book yet' BELLA

At The Meriwether, Florida's famous antebellum hotel off of Hope Springs, nothing is quite as it seems. Secret staircases give way to servants' quarters and Prohibition-era speakeasies make for the perfect hide-and-seek spot. Allie Jo Jackson knows every nook and cranny of The Meriwether-she's lived there her whole life-and nothing surprises her, until the first time she spots the enigmatic and beautiful Tara emerging from the springs. Tara's shimmery skin, long flowing hair, and strange penchant for late moonlight swims disguise a mysterious secret-and once Allie Jo and her friend Chase discover Tara's secret, nothing will ever be the same. From the celebrated author of Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning comes another magical summer tale full of memorable characters and a one-of-a-kind setting.

When sixteen-year-old Cynda goes to stay with her father and his second wife, Susan, at their remote bed-and-breakfast inn in Maine, everything starts off well despite legends about ghosts and a murder at the inn. But Cynda feels like a visitor in Dad's new life, an outsider. Then intense, handsome stranger Vincent Morthanos arrives at the inn and seems to return Cynda's interest. At first she is blind to the subtle, insistent signs that Vincent is not what he seems-that he is, in fact, a vampire. Can Cynda free herself-and her family-from Vincent's power before it's too late? Full-bodied characterizations and page-turning suspense ensure that this eerie, riveting novel will appeal to middle school fans of mystery and horror.

“An atmospheric, multilayered, sex-positive romance.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) After an awkward first encounter, Birdie and Daniel are forced to work together in a Seattle hotel where a famous author leads a mysterious and secluded life in this romantic contemporary novel from the author of Alex, Approximately. Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Raised in isolation and homeschooled by strict grandparents, she’s cultivated a whimsical fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. But her solitary world expands when she takes a job the summer before college, working the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel. In her new job, Birdie hopes to blossom from introverted dreamer to brave pioneer, and gregarious Daniel Aoki volunteers to be her guide. The hotel’s charismatic young van driver shares the same nocturnal shift and patronizes the waterfront Moonlight Diner where Birdie waits for the early morning ferry after work. Daniel also shares her appetite for intrigue, and he’s stumbled upon a real-life mystery: a famous reclusive writer—never before seen in public—might be secretly meeting someone at the hotel. To uncover the writer’s puzzling identity, Birdie must come out of her shell…discovering that the most confounding mystery of all may be her growing feelings for the elusive riddle that is Daniel.

As a city that seems to float between Europe and Asia, removed by a lagoon from the tempos of terra firma, Venice has long seduced the Western imagination. Since the 1797 fall of the Venetian Republic, fantasies about the sinking city have engendered an elaborate series of romantic clichés, provoking conflicting responses: some modern artists and intellectuals embrace the resistance to modernity manifest in Venice's labyrinthine premodern form and temporality, whereas others aspire to modernize by "killing the moonlight" of Venice, in the Futurists' notorious phrase. Spanning the history of literature, art, and architecture—from John Ruskin, Henry James, and Ezra Pound to Manfredo Tafuri, Italo Calvino, Jeanette Winterson, and Robert Coover—Killing the Moonlight tracks the pressures that modernity has placed on the legacy of romantic Venice, and the distinctive strains of aesthetic invention that resulted from the clash. In Venetian incarnations of modernism, the anachronistic urban fabric and vestigial sentiment that both the nation-state of Italy and the historical avant-garde would cast off become incompletely assimilated parts of the new. Killing the Moonlight brings Venice into the geography of modernity as a living city rather than a metaphor for death, and presents the archipelago as a crucible for those seeking to define and transgress the conceptual limits of modernism. In strategic detours from the capitals of modernity, the book redrafts the confines of modernist culture in both geographical and historical terms.

The Puget Sound region was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before settlers arrived. After initially landing at Alki Beach in West Seattle, the Denny Party established a settlement on the eastern shores of Elliott Bay in 1852. For years, the cultural and commercial life centered around Yesler's Wharf and Sawmill. The city grew rapidly following the 1870s after the discovery of coal in the Cascade foothills. The entire commercial district was incinerated in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, but it was quickly rebuilt out of enduring brick and stone. The city stumbled economically following the Panic of 1893, but it recovered after the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1897. By the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle was the undisputed leader in the Pacific Northwest.

'Downton with dance, perfect!' Santa Montefiore Prepare to be swept off your feet by the romantic and irresistible new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author and Strictly Come Dancing star Anton Du Beke London, 1937. With a new king in place, tensions are rising in London and across Europe. Shaken by the Great Depression and with talk of another war coming, the Buckingham Hotel is trying to regain some stability. Upstairs, Vivienne Edgerton is desperate to do something worthwhile with her time and her stepfather's money, rather than spending it on frivolity and debauchery - but will this land her in even more trouble? And downstairs, chambermaid Nancy Nettleton is finally starting to feel more settled at the Buckingham, and hopes her brother will soon call London home, too. But she misses the man she loves, demonstration dancer Raymond de Guise, who is noticeably absent from the Grand Ballroom dance floor. The staff and guests of the Buckingham soon discover that in a hotel full of secrets, there's always someone listening . . .

Midori Saito's dream seems about to come true. Too independent for Japanese society, Midori is a young woman who has always felt like a stranger in her native land. So when she falls in love with Kevin, an American English teacher, she readily agrees to leave home and start a new life with him in San Francisco--as his fiancée. Kevin seems to be the perfect man. That is, until he dumps her for his blonde ex-fiancée, whom Midori never even knew existed. Midori is left on her own, with just a smattering of fractured English, not much cash, and a fiancée visa set to expire in sixty days. Unable to face the humiliation of telling her parents she's been jilted, and not wanting to give up on her "American Dream," Midori realizes she's in for quite a challenge. Her only hope is her new acquaintance (and potential landlord) Shinji, a successful San Francisco graphic artist and amateur moon gazer who fled Japan after a family tragedy. And eventually, Midori surprises even herself as she proves she will do almost anything to hang on to her dream of a new life.