Richard Poe

Harvard Symbologist, Robert Langdon, is shocked to find that a legendary secret society is alive and murderously active. A brilliant physicist has been murdered and his new discovery, a dangerous energy source, is missing. With the beautiful Vittoria, Langdon embarks on a frantic hunt through Rome and the Vatican for the missing anti-matter.

Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is, here, once more our guide to the great American midway. Now in the twilight of life, a man who has occupied many colourful lives - sportswriter, father, husband, ex-husband, friend, real estate agent - Bascombe finds himself in the most sorrowing role of all; caregiver to his son, Paul, diagnosed with ALS.

On a shared winter's odyssey to Mount Rushmore, Frank in typical Bascombe fashion faces down the mortality that is assured each of us, and in doing so confronts what happiness might signify at the end of days. In this memorable novel, Richard Ford puts on display the prose, wit and intelligence that make him one of the world's most acclaimed living writers.

'A man can't scrap his bloodline, can't snip the thread of immortality.' Such is the strength of Joe Saul's desperate longing for a child, that he feels as if a dark curse is upon him after three unfruitful years of marriage. Yet unbeknown to him, he is sterile. His beautiful, young, devoted wife loves him so much that she secretly conceives the child of another man. But when Joe discovers her deception, his anguish is greater than ever before... A powerful, tragic and deeply moving tale.

A new NASA satellite detects a rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice. This appears to show evidence of life from outer space, and comes at a time when NASA needs a victory. Rachel Sexton is sent to verify the claim and comes upon evidence of scientific trickery!

In 1948, when he is fifteen, Trond spends a summer in the country with his father. The events - the accidental death of a child, his best friend's feelings of guilt and eventual disappearance, his father's decision to leave the family for another woman - will change his life forever. An early morning adventure out stealing horses leaves Trond bruised and puzzled by his friend Jon's sudden breakdown.

The tragedy which lies behind this scene becomes the catalyst for the two boys' families gradually to fall apart. As a 67-year-old man, and following the death of his wife, Trond has moved to an isolated part of Norway to live in solitude. But a chance encounter with a character from the fateful summer of 1948 brings the painful memories of that year flooding back, and will leave Trond even more convinced of his decision to end his days alone.

Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer, Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune. This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus.

A RUSSIAN JOURNAL is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document. Steinbeck and Capa recorded the grim realities of factory workers, government clerks, and peasants, as they emerged from the rubble of World War II. This is an intimate glimpse of two artists at the height of their powers, answering their need to document human struggle.

Richard is a modern day everyman; a middle-aged divorcee trading stocks out of his home. He has done such a good job getting his life under control that he needs no one. His life has slowed almost to a standstill, until two incidents conspire to hurl him back into the world.. Richard & Judy Bookclub.

The Wayward Bus travels through the backroads of the lush California countryside, transporting the lost and the lonely to new destinations. Juan Chicoy is at the wheel, a man of the land, hot-blooded and uninhibited. His passengers include Ernest, a travelling salesman out for fun, seventeen-year-old Kit, also known as Pimples, and Camille the stripper who dances at stag nights and takes the star-struck young Norma under her wing.

This powerful and unsentimental novel becomes a story of crisis and passion, love and longing, as the travellers reveal their secrets and journey away from their pasts and towards, possibly, the promise of the future. The Wayward Bus, with its profound insight into human desires and failings, remains one of Steinbeck's most powerful novels.