We also meet Raymond's upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, as well as Raymond's ex-wife, Fiona, herself 'an atomic bomb of pain'. Even though he really puts the 'anti' in anti-hero, you may find Raymond Gunt an oddly likeable character.

Have you ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time? You are hiking in the Scottish highlands with three friends when you come across a girl. She is half-naked, has been badly beaten, and she can't speak English. She is clearly running away from someone. Do you stop to help her? This book deals with these questions.

The stoning of adulterers proved a little more difficult - and potentially controversial. The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal, and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.

But he wasn't told he'd end up barely scraping a living wage, struggling to feed his children. Drawing on the stories of hundreds of American students, The Years That Matters Most is a revelatory account of a university system in crisis.

It is the story of science: the greatest story ever told. Here, for the first time in a single span, is the life of the universe, from quarks to galaxy super-clusters, and from slime to Homo sapiens. The universe was once a moment of perfect symmetry, and is now 13.7 billion years of history.

Fleeing the terrors of her former life, Isabel has left England, and at last is beginning to feel safe. Then a letter shatters her world, and she returns home determined not to let fear rule her life any more. But she's unable to shake off the feeling that someone who knows her better than she knows herself may be following her.