Ten years ago, a book was published which became a publishing phenomenon. It has sold 2.5 million copies in Vintage and 66,000 copies this year alone. It was a BBC 'Big Read' top 20 title, and has become a contemporary classic

Here, at last, is its successor…

Birds Without Wings tells of the inhabitants of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman empire: Iskander the Potter and fount of proverbial wisdom; Philothei, a Christian girl of legendary beauty who is courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the Goatherd, their great love culminating in tragedy and madness; Karatavuk and Mehmetçik, childhood friends who play in the hills above the town, Mehmetçik teaching the illiterate Karatavuk how to write Turkish in Greek letters; the two holy men of different faiths, Father Kristoforos and Abdulhamid Hodja, who greet each other with the words 'infidel efendi'; the landlord Rustem Bey, his wife's adultery and stoning, and his journey to Istanbul in search of a Circassian mistress. It tells also of Mustafa Kemal, the man of destiny, who by virtue of military genius and sheer bloody-mindedness defeats the Franks and reshapes the whole region in his image.

When jihad is declared against the Allies the young men of the town are sent to war. Karatavuk soon finds himself at Gallipoli where he experiences the intimate brutality of trench warfare, the loss of many comrades and of his own innocence. As the great world intrudes, the twin scourges of religion and nationalism lead to forced marches and massacres, hunger grips the town and the peaceful fabric of life is destroyed.

Epic, yet profoundly humane, Birds Without Wings is a glorious novel by one of our finest and best-loved novelists.

Click here to read an extract

Louis de Bernières' first three novels are The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book Eurasia Region, 1991), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book Eurasia Region, 1992), and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. The author was selected as one of the Granta twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book, 1995. His most recent book is Red Dog.

A Round-Heeled Woman

'Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.'
Small ad in the New York Review of Books.

Jane Juska placed her ad in The New York Times and the response was overwhelming. She took a sabbatical from teaching just to have time to respond and meet some of the men - the result is this engaging, funny and utterly frank account of her exploits. It's high time someone revealed the fact that older single people are as eager for sex and intimacy as their younger counterparts. Jane Juska's brave and honest memoir raises eyebrows and blood pressure in what is undoubtedly an inspiring account of one woman's daring adventures in sex and romance.

Jane Juska

Born in 1933, Jane Juska has taught English for more than forty years in high school, in college, and in prison. A Round-Heeled Woman, her first book, has made her an overnight celebrity. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Pompeii

The Roman Empire is the setting for the stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel.

A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? All along the coast, the Roman Empire's richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world's largest navy lies peacefully at anchor in Misenum. The tourists are spending their money in the seaside resorts of Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Only one man is worried. The engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct which brings fresh water to a quarter of a million people in nine towns around the Bay. Springs are failing for the first time in generations. His predecessor has disappeared. And now there is a crisis on the Augusta's sixty-mile main line - somewhere to the north of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.

Attilius - decent, practical, incorruptible - promises Pliny, the famous scholar who commands the navy, that he can repair the aqueduct before the reservoir runs dry. But as he heads out towards Vesuvius he is about to discover there are forces which even the world's only superpower can't control.

Pompeii recreates in spellbinding detail one of the most famous natural disasters of all time. And by focusing on the characters of an engineer and a scientist, it offers an entirely original perspective on the Roman world.

Robert Harris was born in Nottingham in 1957 and is a graduate of Cambridge University. He has been a reporter on the BBC's Newsnight and Panorama programmes, Political Editor of the Observer, and a columnist on The Sunday Times. He is the author of five non-fiction books in addition to his bestselling fiction.

Click here to view Pompeii reading guide

Love

'This novel is a searing, haunting, yet beautiful masterpiece. The story resonates in the mind long after the last page is turned. Buy it. Read it'
Scotland on Sunday

May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida - even L - all are women obsessed by Bill Cosey. More than the wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort, he shapes their yearnings for a father, husband, lover, guardian, and friend, yearnings that dominate the lives of these women long after his death. Yet Cosey himself is at the mercy of a troubled past and a spellbinding woman, 'a sporting woman', named Celestial.

This audacious vision from a master storyteller of the nature of love - its appetite, its sublime possession, and its dread - is rich in characters and dramatic events, and in its profound understanding of how alive the past can be. Sensual, elegiac and unforgettable, Love reflects the different facets of love, shifting from desire and lust and ultimately comes full circle to that indelible, overwhelming first love that marks us forever.

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of seven previous novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and most recently Paradise, and has also received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction. She is Robert F Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

Click here to view Love reading guide

Yellow Dog

Amis's first novel since The Information: a post 9/11 comedy.

When 'dream husband' Xan Meo is vengefully assaulted in the garden of a London pub, he suffers head-injury, and personality-change. Like a spiritual convert, the familial paragon becomes an anti-husband, an anti-father. He submits to an alien moral system - one among many to be found in these pages.

We are introduced to the inverted worlds of the 'yellow' journalist, Clint Smoker; the high priest of hardmen, Joseph Andrews; the porno tycoon, Cora Susan; and Royce Traynor, the corpse in the hold of the stricken airliner, apparently determined, even in death, to bring down the plane that carries his spouse. Meanwhile, we explore the entanglements of Henry England: his incapacitated wife, Pamela; his Chinese mistress, He Zizhen; his fifteen-year-old daughter, Victoria, the victim of a filmed 'intrusion' which rivets the world - because she is the future Queen of England, and her father, Henry IX, is its King.

Martin Amis

Martin Amis is the author of nine novels, two collections of stories and six collections of non-fiction. Koba the Dread, the successor to his celebrated memoir, Experience, was published by Cape in 2002.

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