Natasha Pulley

Deep in uncharted Peru, the holy town of Bedlam stands at the edge of a forest. Somewhere inside are cinchona trees, whose bark yields quinine, the only known treatment for malaria. On the other side of the Pacific, it is 1859 and India is ravaged by the disease. Merrick Tremayne finds himself under orders to bring back cinchona cuttings at any cost and is dispatched, against his own better judgement, to Bedlam.

In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots to avoid frostbite, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life. But on one ordinary day, all that changes: Valery's university mentor steps in and sweeps Valery from the frozen prison camp to a mysterious unnamed town hidden within a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.

Here, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he's expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. But as Valery begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: what, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town? And if he keeps looking for answers, will he live to serve out his sentence? 

Based on real events in a surreal Soviet city, and told with bestselling author Natasha Pulley's inimitable style, The Half Life of Valery K is a sweeping historical adventure.

The postcard has been held at the sorting office for ninety-one years, waiting to be delivered to Joe Tournier. On the front is a lighthouse - Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides. Joe has never left England, never even left London. But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember and of a world that never existed. And now he has a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago, by a stranger who seems to know him very well.

Joe's journey to unravel the truth will take him from French-occupied London to a remote Scottish island, and back through time as he battles for his life - and for a very different future.

For Thaniel Steepleton, an unexpected posting to Tokyo can't come at a better moment. The London fog has made him ill and doctor's orders are to get out. His brief is strange: the staff at the British Legation have been seeing ghosts, and his first task is to find out what's going on. But staying with his closest friend Keita Mori in Yokohama, Thaniel starts to experience ghostly happenings himself. For reasons he won't say, Mori is frightened. Then he vanishes.

Meanwhile, something strange is happening in a frozen labour camp in northern Japan. Takiko Pepperharrow, an old friend of Mori's, must investigate. As ghosts appear across Tokyo and the weather turns bizarrely electrical, Thaniel grows convinced that it all has something to do with Mori's disappearance - and that Mori might be in far more trouble than any of them first thought.

In the wake of an environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London's Royal Ballet, has become a refugee in Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. January's job choices, housing, and even transportation are dictated by this second-class status.

When xenophobic politician Aubrey Gale chooses January for an on-the-spot press junket interview that goes horribly awry, January's life is thrown into chaos, but Gale's political fortunes are damaged, too. Gale proposes a solution to both their problems: a five year made-for-the-press marriage that would secure January's future and ensure Gale's political success.

As a romantic relationship develops, the political situation worsens, and January discovers Gale has an enemy, someone willing to destroy all of Tharsis to make them pay - and January may be the only person standing in the way.

In 1883, Thaniel Steepleton returns to his tiny flat to find a gold pocketwatch on his pillow. When the watch saves Thaniel's life in a blast that destroys Scotland Yard, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori - a kind, lonely Japanese immigrant.

Meanwhile, Grace Carrow is sneaking into an Oxford library, desperate to prove the existence of the luminiferous ether before her mother can force her to marry. As the lives of these three characters become entwined, events spiral out of control until Thaniel is torn between loyalties, futures and opposing geniuses.