River's grandfather, the OB, is a Secret Service legend, is sinking into dementia, which is a problem, and he's just killed a blond young man who was claiming to be his grandson, River. OB is missing and Jackson Lamb has identified the body with his usual tact and sensitivity and it's all a horrible mess, and it's n the ake of a much, much worse mess, a devestating bombing in the heart of London. The dogs are on the prowl, Diana Taverner is playing games with the new First Desk, and Jackson Lamb, though he has the personality of a warthog, doesn't like it when people mess with his joes. That's his job.

Look, if you've read the previous three, you know that Herron shows no mercy. If you haven't you rreally need to go back and find out. It's been a while since LeCarre singlehandedly deromanticised the Cold War spy - Herron's here to do the same for the secret agent post 9-11 by focusing on the dregs, the outcasts, the rejects and the broken spies of Slough House. They're a mostly lovable lot, when you get to know some of them, anyway, but they are all very nearly their own worst enemies, except for Jackson Lamb, who is their worst enemy on a day-to-day basis, except every now and then someone even worse comes along. Like today.

A security robot sub-contraccted out on jobs guarding things like survey missions on a remote planets has managed to free itself from its own governor unit and spends most of its time watching entertainment channels and tolerating the demands of its humans until things start happening that suggest his humans are about to be killed for reasons unknown and despite its general distaste for people it grudgingly decides it likes at least some of them and tries to save them. Action and excitement ensues. Fun sci-fi thriller with a cool sarcastic voice.

Shades of James Crumley and early James Ellroy with unapologetically strong and muscular prose and an unapologetically strong and muscular hero, though he's also a formidable criminal scumbag who fell out with his bosses and while not exactly going straight and looking for redemption is determined to go his own way. This is why Isaiah Coleridge goes looking for a missing teenage girl and if he has to tear through a horde of hoodlums lowlives, crooked cops and feds to do it then tear through them he will. Big, bold, bloody and boisterous, unashamedly intellectual and a roaring tale of hardboiled violence from the master of cosmic horror.

Ed Gemmell joins the college paper and helps sniffs out a scandal in the Student Union. In the aftermath, Susan gets involved in the upcoming election to the detriment of her personal life. Esther has a crisis of confidence or something after an old friends comes to visit. Daisy tries to keep them on the rails by taking them on a trek. Overlapping plots and stories, characters in drama being rescued by the power of friendship and it's all very funny and gorgeous to look at. Allison's characters and script are wonderful, and Max Sarin's art adds about ten pounds to the funny and the charm.

Volume 8 of the most perfect comic in existence. Lovers, housemaes, friends and the impending end of third year are all conspiring to drive the girls apart. Can the unshakeable foundations of their friendship remain unshook?

Place your bets before openening as to the ways and means of Archie's torture, wounding and/or emotional abuse in this volume! Who had ripped aoart by wolves? SPOILER: Archie does not get ripped apart by wolves in this book! I say nothing, one way or the other, about pythons. Looking forward to the next instalment: Archie Gets Ripped Apart By Wolves.

Gorgeous and horrifying, Pretty Deadly's reapers - Ginny and Alice - go to the trenches of World War One to do battle with the Reaper of War. This book is incredible, with a visual language and story-telling rhytym and grand mythical structure that's unlike anything else out there.

After massive mysterious robots called harvesters devestate a glactic empire, robots are hunted in a brutal pogrom. On a distant mining colony a little companion robot called Tim 21 wakes up. He may be the key from saving everyone if the Harvesters return, consequently everyone is now after him.

Fun, sometimes cute, science fiction space opera.

An interpreter has a nasty encounter that doesn't end well. A journalist falls to her death, which is ruled a suicide. Arkady and Victor keep an eye on things while a gangster with a bullet in his head is buried and his callow son takes over. Zhenya joins the army. Renk's sort-of-girlfriend is haning off the arm of the gangster's son. A notebook full of symbols has to be deciphered. All the usual mysteries and complications you expect from Renko, beleagured investigator in Putin's Russia, who doesn't get assigned cases any more, but just wanders into them almost by mistake. Excellent as always.

A massacre in a sleepy English village kicks off this latest stay at Slough House, but it's an attempt on the life of the appalling Roderick Ho that attracts the less-than-benign attention of Jackson Lamb, even though Ho himself barely noticed it happening. River is reeling from revelations about his family in the previous book and his grandfather's senility. Louise is unimpressed but generally coping. Catherine is still off the drink and back at work. Shirley is going to Anger Fucking Managament classes. JK Coe is feeling suprisingly better since he killed that guy. Roderick has a girlfriend, and may just be about to get all of the Slow Horses wiped out by their own side. The horrifying Jackson Lamb doesn;t seem to care about much, but he won't let anyone else mess with his shower of despised joes. Not without causing unbelievable amounts of trouble and strife. This he now does.