The Night of the Wolf. On the Avenue, in the bleak area where New York City blends into suburbia, the Orphans - their fast Fords and Chevys coated by ice and leather and white dust - prepare to engage in deadly, intricately structured games of combat.

For more than a century, the small town of Haddan, Massachusetts, has been divided, as if by a line drawn down the centre of Main Street, separating those born and bred in the 'village' from those who attend the prestigious Haddan School. But one October night, the two worlds are thrust together by an inexplicable death.

Blue Diary is a dark and compelling new novel about the lies beneath the surface of a 'perfect' marriage. Alice Hoffman is also the author of Practical Magic, made into a Hollywood movie, Local Girls and The River King.

Verity, Florida, is a town remarkable only for its unbearable heat, strange inhabitants and the high number of women divorcees who live there. Lucy and Bethany Lee are two of them. Lucy's bad-penny son Keith witnesses Bethany Lee's murder but the murderer witnesses him.

Vonny lives on the island of Martha's Vineyard with husband Andre and son Simon. Their elderly neighbour, Elizabeth, has an accident and her granddaughter, Jodie comes to nurse her. So the players are assembled for a magical story of love and loneliness, of terror and human frailty.

When the women in the Sparrow family reach 13, they develop a unique ability. In Stella's case, the gift is the ability to see a person's probable future. When Stella foresees a gruesome murder, she tells her father, but it is too late. The murder has already been committed and suspicion falls on him.

With a sense of place that is uncanny, and vividly real characters whose lives don't run smooth and whose stories loop together across space and time, this is work from a favourite novelist.

Tells a story that begins with a little girl who makes a wish one snowy night and ruins her life. She grows up with a splinter of ice in her heart until one day, standing by her window, she is struck by lightning. Instead of killing her, this cataclysmic event sparks off a new beginning.

On the night that Arlyn Singer's father dies, she is certain her destiny will find her. Then John Moody shows up at her door, with no inkling that the tall, red-haired girl he has asked for directions will haunt him for the rest of his life.

This haunting, poignant story travels across three generations and through time. Unravelling the years from the present to the 1950s, 'The Third Angel' is a novel, set mainly in London, about girls and women who make the wrong choices and have to live with the sometimes unbearable consequences.