Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

One December night in 1942, a Nazi parachutist landed in a Cambridgeshire field. His mission: to sabotage the British war effort. His name was Eddie Chapman, but he would shortly become MI5's Agent Zigzag. Dashing and louche, courageous and unpredictable, the traitor was a patriot inside, and the villain a hero. The problem for Chapman, his many...

Zara collects phobias the way other high school girls collect Facebook friends. It's little wonder, since she's had a fairly rough life. Her father left when she was a baby, her stepfather just died and her mother's almost given up - in fact, she's sent her to live with her grandmother in cold and sleepy Maine to 'keep Zara safe'. Zara doesn't...

Mathematical genius. Brilliant engineer. Revered astronaut. Keith Corcoran is all of these things and more, but his otherworldly talents do nothing to prepare him for the tragedy that befalls his family, or its irrevocable outcomes. After a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, Keith returns to a house that has already ceased to...

Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda is a boisterous and delightful dissertation on discovering the uncharted depths of one's own personality. Abandoned by his bubble-headed mum and raised by a bunch of dogs, Bob is understandably bashful around humans. Deprived of her parents while still in diapers, Dorinda endures a dreadful existence with distant...

Four girls A thousand desperate dreams One shot at stardom 'It's what I was born to do and it's what I am going to do. Nothing's going to stop me now' Across the country wannabes are auditioning to be part of mega-girlband Purrfect in a new reality TV series. Among them are ice-queen Louise, who thinks she's got God on her side, foulmouthed Joni,...

It was part youthful zeal and part teen crush that led Zarah Ghahramani to join a student protest movement. But dabbling in student politics was to lead to disaster when one day she was bundled into a car and taken to Tehran's most notorious prison: Evin. Far from her comfortable middle-class home, Zarah had to find refuge from her ruthless...