Books created from the imagination

The internationally bestselling novel that inspired the acclaimed film directed by Peter Jackson.

Occasional Magic is a selection of 50 of the finest Moth stories from recent shows, from storytellers who found the courage to face their deepest fears.

To save her child, she will trust a stranger. To protect a secret, she must risk her life . . . Fleetwood Shuttleworth is 17 years old, married, and pregnant for the fourth time. But as the mistress at Gawthorpe Hall, she still has no living child, and her husband Richard is anxious for an heir. When Fleetwood finds a letter she isn't supposed to read from the doctor who delivered her third stillbirth, she is dealt the crushing blow that she will not survive another pregnancy.

Then she crosses paths by chance with Alice Gray, a young midwife. Alice promises to help her give birth to a healthy baby, and to prove the physician wrong. As Alice is drawn into the witchcraft accusations that are sweeping the North-West, Fleetwood risks everything by trying to help her. But is there more to Alice than meets the eye? Soon the two women's lives will become inextricably bound together as the legendary trial at Lancaster approaches, and Fleetwood's stomach continues to grow. Time is running out, and both their lives are at stake. Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.

In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box. But when the three Eastwood sisters join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote - and perhaps not even to live - the sisters must delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive. There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.

THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL AND SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. A Discovery of Witches is the first in the must-read ALL SOULS trilogy.

It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear. It begins with a discovery of witches. Fall under the spell of Diana and Matthew in the stunning first volume of the No.1 internationally bestselling ALL SOULS trilogy. A world of witches, daemons and vampires. A manuscript which holds the secrets of their past and the key to their future. Diana and Matthew - the forbidden love at the heart of it.

When historian Diana Bishop opens an alchemical manuscript in the Bodleian Library, it's an unwelcome intrusion of magic into her carefully ordered life. Though Diana is a witch of impeccable lineage, the violent death of her parents while she was still a child convinced her that human fear is more potent than any witchcraft. Now Diana has unwittingly exposed herself to a world she's kept at bay for years; one of powerful witches, creative, destructive daemons and long-lived vampires.

Sensing the significance of Diana's discovery, the creatures gather in Oxford, among them the enigmatic Matthew Clairmont, a vampire geneticist. Diana is inexplicably drawn to Matthew and, in a shadowy world of half-truths and old enmities, ties herself to him without fully understanding the ancient line they are crossing. As they begin to unlock the secrets of the manuscript and their feelings for each other deepen, so the fragile balance of peace unravels.

From the World's No. 1 Storyteller, The Witches is a children's classic that has captured young reader's imaginations for generations.

A Secret History of Witches is a moving historical saga that traces five generations of fiercely powerful mothers and daughters - witches whose magical inheritance is both a dangerous threat and an extraordinary gift.

STEP INTO ANOTHER WORLD - OF MAGIC, MAYHEM, MONSTERS AND MANIACAL GODS - IN STEPHEN FRY'S MOMENTOUS SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, MYTHOS

In Stephen Fry's vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. We shiver in fear when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments and watch with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds. Mythos captures these extraordinary myths for our modern age - in all their dazzling and deeply human relevance.

No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses. 'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' Times

"A sound broke through the usual calm--the same cracking sound I had heard while I was awake!"

The fragments Awa Bryant trapped just after she learned she was a long-awaited Dreamweaver are terrifyingly close to breaking free - so close that even in the waking world she can hear their efforts to crack their giant glass prison. Veila the Dreamcharmer is training her to use her powers, but Awa's impatient, distracted and still struggling with anxiety in her waking life. Yet, the threat grows stronger. She learns from Veila and the Priestess Tree that she must find the mysterious Dreamrealm labyrinth in order to master her powers and learn to alchemise the fragments before they can do more harm. Even with the training and the guidance she's received, can she succeed in her quest and defeat them before the marvellous Dreamrealm is destroyed?

What if dreams are more real than waking life?

From the outside, Awa seems like a normal teen, struggling with anxiety over school and friendships. However, secretly, she holds a rare power. She is a Dreamweaver, one who walks between worlds: that of waking life and the Dreamrealm. Now, she's finally managed to master some of her powers and alchemise the shadow fragments that were plaguing the beautiful Dreamrealm, but she knows there's so much more that has to be done in order to face the terrifying Shadow.

Awa loves exploring the Dreamrealm. She develops the power to visit her school friends in their dreams, even though they don't know she's a Dreamweaver. That backfires when her best friend Ella is kidnapped in a dream, causing her to come down with a mysterious illness in her waking life. Awa must do everything she can to save Ella... but she has no idea what! And to make matters worse, Veila, her friend and guide, has gone missing. Awa knows she must act quickly because Ella and Veila's lives are at stake, and she's going to need all the help she can get, even if that means recruiting her other friends to help!

What if dreams are more real than waking life?

Practical Magic, to date Alice Hoffman's biggest ever selling novel, became a major Hollywood film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman who played sisters Sally and Gillian Owens.

The stunning New York Times bestseller from the author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings.

It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

WINNER OF THE ORANGE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION, THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION, A SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Whatever dreams he was having, Jason knew they had nothing to do with his physical body. His eyes were firmly shut and his consciousness withdrawn from his senses when all this was going on. Yet in his dreams he experienced sights, sounds and even visceral sensations much more intensely than when he was awake.

From this he understood that you didn't need a physical body to see, or smell, or endure any kind of experience with an acuteness that was more real than reality. From an early age he deduced that heaven or hell need not be material places so much as states of mind--and no less glorious or horrifying because of that. There were no limits to a mind untethered from form."

What if you could re-live the enchantment of childhood bedtime--but with magic that is real? What if you felt the wonder you once sensed when you believed that anything is possible? Or were inspired to see the world through fresh eyes?

In this compendium of delightful short stories, David Michie draws us into the extraordinary experiences of everyday people as they encounter those tell-tale cracks exposing reality as not quite what it seems. Four female book club members are unexpectedly propelled, by the same black and white photograph, to discover a shared purpose beyond their wildest imaginings. An earnest young seeker finds that drawing aside the veil to an immeasurably more wonderful reality, doesn't depend so much on the arcane books he reads as on a source much closer to home. A cat-doting woman, who wishes her beloved felines would talk to her, is shaken when she realises what they have been trying to communicate all along.

"The Alchemist" is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people's lives.

The "Red Tent" is an extraordinary and engrossing tale of ancient womanhood and family honour.

The author tells the story of a priceless tarot deck, now lost to history, but as Semele delves further she realises the manuscript is more than it seems. Both a memoir and a prophecy, it appears to be the work of a powerful seer, describing devastating wars and natural disasters in detail thousands of years before they occurred.

The Celestine Prophecy contains secrets that are currently changing our world.

The Prophet, an international besteller and translated into over fifty languages, is the best-known and best-loved of Kahil Gibran's many spiritual and religious writings.

A tale set in the realm beyond the door we call DEATH.

Translated by renowned Rumi expert Nader Khalili, over 120 poems about love from the Persian mystic poet and Sufi master have been carefully collected and curated in this beautifully illustrated edition.