The Guilty One

They were identical in every wayUntil the unthinkable tore them apartIsolte and Viola are twins. Inseparable as children, they've grown into very different adults: Isolte, a successful features writer for a fashion magazine with a photographer boyfriend and a flat in London, and Viola, desperately unhappy and struggling with a lifelong eating disorder.What happened all those years ago to set the twins on such different paths to adulthood? As both women start to unravel the escalating tragedies of a half-remembered summer, terrifying secrets from the past come rushing back - and threaten to overwhelm their adult lives...

Matilda Quartey is fourteen years old when sophisticated black Gold Coast lawyer, Robert Bannerman, sets eyes on her and resolves to take her as his second wife. For Julie, his first wife, this is a colossal slap in the face; for Matilda it is an abrupt - and cruel - end to childhood. Entwined with their story - by turns funny and heartbreaking - is that of Alan Turton, new ADC to the Governor and his dissatisfied wife, Audrey, a hard-drinking accident waiting to happen, who is appalled by her new life.Marilyn Heward Mills's Africa is a cauldron of contradictions: fatalistic but brimming with optimism; outwardly Christian, yet profoundly superstitious and reliant on fetish priests; poverty-stricken, but rich in pride and family values; vibrant with colour yet darkened by violence; exhausting, yet exhilarating. For Matilda it is her passionately loved homeland; for Audrey it is a prison. For the men it is a land of opportunity, where careers can be made and broken, fortunes lost and won. And for all of them the events of these ten years will shape and define their lives forever.

Most things in life that make you miserable you can change. But you can't change your football team. In his brilliant first book, Match of the Day 2 presenter and lifelong West Bromwich Albion fan Adrian Chiles asks why we feel the way we do about our teams and go to such great - almost bizarre - lengths to follow them.Seeking an answer to the oft-chanted question 'Who are you?', Adrian meets the fan who's missed only five games since the Second World War; the woman who has never seen her side concede a goal because she always covers her eyes; and the octogenarian who, relegated or promoted, weaves a rug to celebrate.The story, just like supporting a football team, is by turns hilarious, heartwarming and heartbreaking.

In the 1950s the Romani people lived on the brink of great change. In their bright wooden wagons they journeyed between horse-fairs and traditional stopping places - stoic, humorous and wild, often poverty-stricken but protective of their freedom - on the fringes of a society that was soon to close around them. Dominic Reeve describes his life among the Gypsies: the feuds and fairs, the joyful muddy squalor of an outdoor existence. He evokes an unforgettable cast of fireside characters - bold children, fierce matriarchs and dandyish villains in snap-brimmed hats - and tells of sharp deals done and rings run round country policemen, of love affairs, dances and open-air feasting. Smoke in the Lanes is the vivid, memorable record of a disappeared world.

A classic novella about the fallacy of the American dream, THE PEARL is Steinbeck's flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting and lyrical simplicity, THE PEARL sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

Like all her nice liberal friends Catherine Hope is determined to bring up her children with Tolerance, Understanding and without Fear. It seems to be working: Catherine's teenage daughter, Rachel, looks all set to get 'A's in everything.Suddenly Rachel wants to spend every weekend at her grandmother's country cottage, a place she had previously done everything she could to avoid. The reason? Marko: sultry, sexy countryside campaigner, out to save a threatened woodland from destruction, a woodland on the doorstep of Catherine's conventional and disapproving mother-in-law, Lavinia, who already reckons Catherine is a soft touch. What will Lavinia say apart from 'I told you so' about Rachel becoming a teenage road rebel?While Catherine's precious liberalism goes out of the window and she yearns to lock her daughter in her bedroom, Lavinia turns out to have hidden passions of her own. As the protest erupts around them, friendships are severed, loyalties divided and lives endangered. The dutiful daughter, model mother and gracious grandmother all find themselves changed for ever in this entertaining and moving story of the war between the generations.

The realm of the contract killer is a murky and murderous underworld where the price for the removal of a top villain is ?100,000. A world where the killers range from Mafia to millionaires, from FBI informants to ordinary housewives; where the methods range from garrotting to shooting, induced overdoses to burning. Mostly the bodies are never found. Sometimes they're made an example of: tied to juke boxes or left on street corners as 'examples'. In the latest addition to his Gangland series, James Morton lifts the lid on the hidden world of the contract killer. Who are these people? Where can they be found? How do the best of them commit untraceable crimes? Is the female more deadly than the male? And how true is it that the FBI, the police and others organisations devoted to solving crime have aided, abetted and even instigated contracts to kill?

Suzanne Blume has survived two marriages, financially supported two children through college and her teaching duties at a Boston university allow her just enough time to take on important legal cases and spend time with her closest friend. Life in her forties has also yielded some unexpected pleasures - she is enjoying her first sexual relationship in years. . . But her neat, buttoned-up life starts to unravel when her daughter Elena returns home, angry and unemployed. Can mother and daughter rebuild their fragmented relationship? And what of Suzanne's own mother? Having devoted her life to men and politics with passion, fiercely independent Beverley is now coping with the effects of a stroke and is also forced to share Suzanne's home and rely on the conventional daughter she has never had much time for . . .