Picador imprint: 544 books

'Set to be one of the coolest novels of the year' Stylist When journalist 'MS' interviews the mysterious 'XX' for a job at her Paris magazine, she hires him straight away – because he's gorgeous. As one date leads to another, her obsession spirals. MS finds herself writing letters...

On the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday party at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's 'Operation Millpond' have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault. Ned...

Having written enthralling biographies of London and of its great river, the Thames, Peter Ackroyd now turns to England itself. This first volume of six takes us from the time that England was first settled, more than 15,000 years ago, to the death in 1509 of the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII. In...

Following on from Foundation, Tudors is the second volume in Peter Ackroyd's astonishing series, The History of England. Rich in detail and atmosphere and told in vivid prose, Tudors recounts the transformation of England from a settled Catholic country to a Protestant superpower. It is the...

Dan Boothby had been drifting for more than twenty years, without the pontoons of family, friends or a steady occupation. He was looking for but never finding the perfect place to land. Finally, unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. After a lifelong obsession with Gavin Maxwell's Ring of...

This is London in the eyes of its beggars, bankers, coppers, gangsters, carers, witch-doctors and sex workers. This is London in the voices of Arabs, Afghans, Nigerians, Poles, Romanians and Russians. This is London as you've never seen it before. Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford...

There is hardly a city in the world with richer historical and cultural assocations than London. It is a place where history has been made for thousands of years, and where it is still being made today. It is not a city frozen in time, preserved in its ancient medieval pomp but a place that has been...

'With his gallows humour and observational wit, Jim Powell gives us a vivid portrait of a man in meltdown.' Daily Mail When I was small, my mother showed me how to grow a carrot from a carrot. She filled a jam jar with water, cut the top off a carrot, ran a cocktail stick horizontally through...

Rachael Boast’s first collection, Sidereal, was one of the most highly regarded debuts of recent years, winning the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize. Her second, Pilgrim's Flower, richly confirms and dramatically extends that talent – but where...

On a frosty winter evening, the Baron watches the snow fall. He is bored and worried. It will soon be Christmas and everything is too quiet. What can he do to bring excitement to the Manor? His wife, the Baroness, has an idea: he can appoint a King of Christmas, a peasant to take his place....

Carol Ann Duffy's beautiful anthology features an eclectic mix of poems that chart human fascination with the moon across the centuries and around the world. Carol Ann Duffy on To the Moon: 'Editing Answering Back, in which living poets replied to poems from the past, I was astonished...

'A sweet winter light blushed as Pablo Picasso walked his dog under the cypress trees and the bell of the old chapel guessed at the hour. It was Christmas Eve.' Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's new Christmas poem, Pablo Picasso's Noel follows the famous painter as he moves through a small town...

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2012 SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS ASSOCIATION NON-FICTION DAGGER AWARD ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT CRIME STORY OF THE DECADE’ Scottish Mail Manchester. London. Glasgow. In the summer of 2011 violence...

By 1880, London, capital of the largest empire ever known, was the richest, most populous city in the world. And yet it remained an overcrowded, undergoverned city with huge slums gripped by poverty and disease. Over the next three decades, London began its transformation into a new kind of city -...