The Stone Sky

The town of Bethlehem carries so many layers of meaning--some ancient, some mythical, some religious--that it feels like an unreal city, even to the people who call it home. Today, the city is hemmed in by a wall and surrounded by forty-one Israeli settlements and hostile settlers and soldiers. The population is undergoing such enormous strains it is close to falling apart. Any town with an eleven-thousand-year history has to be robust, but Bethlehem may soon go the way of Salonica or Constantinople: the physical site might survive, but the long thread winding back to the ancient past will have snapped, and the city risks losing everything that makes it unique.Still, for many, Bethlehem remains the "little town" of the Christmas song. Nicholas Blincoe will tell the history of the famous little town, through the visceral experience of living there, taking readers through its stone streets and desert wadis, its monasteries, aqueducts and orchards, showing the city from every angle and era. Inevitably, a portrait of Bethlehem will shed light on one of the world's most intractable political problems. Bethlehem is a much-loved Palestinian city, a source of pride and wealth but also a beacon of co-existence in a region where hopelessness, poverty and violence has become the norm. Bethlehem could light the way to a better future, but if the city is lost then the chances of an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will be lost with it.

For the first time in print as a special hardcover edition, Brent Weeks's blockbuster novella Perfect Shadow tells the origin story of the Night Angel trilogy's most enigmatic character: Durzo Blint. Also includes the short story, I, Nightangel.Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend: Acaelus Thorne, Yric the Black, Hrothan Steelbender, Tal Drakkan, Rebus Nimble.But when Gaelan must take a job hunting down the world's finest assassins for the beautiful courtesan-and-crimelord Gwinvere Kirena, what he finds may destroy everything he's ever believed in.

A scorching forbidden love threatens to tear a rift through the Black Dagger Brotherhood in J. R. Ward's newest novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards, convicted of treason against the Blind King, is facing a brutal interrogation and torturous death at the hands of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Yet after a life marked by cruelty and evil deeds, he accepts his soldier's fate, his sole regret the loss of a sacred female who was never his: the Chosen Layla.Layla alone knows the truth that will save Xcor's life. But revealing his sacrifice and his hidden heritage will expose them both and destroy everything Layla holds dear - even her role of mother to her precious young. Torn between love and loyalty, she must summon the courage to stand up against the only family she has for the only man she will ever love. Yet even if Xcor is somehow granted a reprieve, he and Layla would have to confront a graver challenge: bridging the chasm that divides their worlds without paving the way for a future of even greater war, desolation and death.As a dangerous old enemy returns to Caldwell, and the identity of a new deity is revealed, nothing is certain or safe in the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, not even true love . . . or destinies that have long seemed set in stone.

A serial killer thriller which will keep you on the edge of your seat.'Assured and clever' Daily MailHe buried his victim alive. And now he's escaped from prison and is on the run in the city.Fiona Henderson, the daughter of the victim who'd descended into a world of silence following her mother's murder, has gone missing. Her sister Annabelle scours the city in a desperate attempt to find her. And then the body of a homeless person if found among the rubbish in a deserted alleyway.As DIs Wheeler and Ross investigate, more suspicious deaths occur and a pattern emerges: the victims are all homeless. And so the police are pitched against a killer who is hellbent on a mission to rid the streets of the vulnerable and dispossessed.As Wheeler and Ross descend further into Glasgow's netherworld, their investigation reveals not only a flawed support system for the disaffected, but also a criminal class ruthlessly willing to exploit them. A city of double standards, where morality is bought and sold. But it's when the killer begins stalking DI Wheeler, that she and Ross realise that the threat is now personal.Anne Randall's first book in the Wheeler and Ross series, Riven, was written under the name A. J. McCreanor.