Meet Rook. A middle-aged philosophy professor with a sarcastic sense of humour, an ongoing rivalry with his highly-strung colleague Jeremy, and a rocky relationship with his ex-wife. But he has far more pressing matters to attend to than domestic disputes and academic feuds. He moonlights as a private investigator. Armed with a quick, inquisitive mind, an arsenal of philosophic quotations and an addiction to fear, he is willing to embroil himself in any sticky situation which comes his way.

Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.

Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.

From the best-selling author of Atonement, Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour is just a speck in the universe of possible things?

Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government, a pacifist who carries a gun, a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy, a cyberwhiz who hates computers, a robust bon vivant who can be as squeamish as any fop, a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high-school-age stepsister (only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior). Yet there is nothing remotely wishy-washy about Switters. He doesn't merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol.

Sissy Hankshaw, an almost flawlessly beautiful small-town girl with big-time dreams, hitchhikes her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bag in Tom Robbins's magical, funny, and most famous novel. Follow Sissy's amazing odyssey from Virginia to chic Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, where FBI agents, cowgirls, and ecstatic whooping cranes explode in a deliciously drawn-out climax.

For the first time as an Orbit special edition, Brent Weeks's blockbuster novella Perfect Shadow tells the origin story of the Night Angel trilogy's most enigmatic character: Durzo Blint. 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.

Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist. This first volume contains the short stories : "The Book of Blood," "The Midnight Meat Train," "The Yattering and Jack," "Sex, Death, and Starshine," and "In the Hills, the Cities,"

This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent '60s and early '70s displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works. In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain - the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

Here are eight tales of the Greatcoats, legendary sword-fighting magistrates brought together by an idealistic young king and disbanded after his execution as a tyrant. Follow along through their swashbuckling adventures, their triumphs and defeats, their darkest hours and their moments of shining redemption as they struggle to bring justice to a corrupt kingdom.

> Obeying Evil presents the shocking true story of Ronald Gene Simmons and the most disturbing family killing spree in the United States. Over the course of a week in 1987, he murdered 14 members of his own family, a former co-worker, and a stranger.

"The journey began on a gurney", writes Michael Perry, describing the debilitating kidney stone that led him to discover the essays of Michel de Montaigne. Reading the philosopher in a manner he equates to chickens pecking at scraps - including those eye-blinking moments when the bird gobbles something too big to swallow - Perry attempts to learn what he can (good and bad) about himself as compared to a long-dead French nobleman who began speaking Latin at the age of two.

From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, Ida B. Wells to Sandra Bland and Black Lives Matter, black women freedom fighters have braved violence, scorn, despair and isolation in order to lodge their protests. In A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, DaMaris Hill honours their experiences with at times harrowing, at times hopeful responses to her heroes.

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family.

Edwin Windsor, Evil Efficiency Consultant, returns with his manic lawyer Topper and his faithful secretary in this prequel to How to Succeed in Evil. Edwin is approached by a vampire, who offers him the prospect of eternal life if Edwin will help him with the troubles the modern world has presented his kind. It's Edwin versus Nosferatu in this insightful satire of the highly exploited vampire genre.