When James Beddoes, a former financial journalist, moves to Paris, it is ostensibly to write a novel based on the diaries of Paul-Antoine Brunel, a French lieutenant who became a leader of the Paris Commune during the Siege of Paris in 1870. But James is also in Paris to pursue a Frenchwoman, Flavie, whom he met at a party and with whom he has become infatuated. Although it soon becomes clear that Flavie is gay, James nonetheless becomes drawn into her volatile emotional relationships, all the while secretly hoping that he can change her mind. And in parallel, amid the political struggles and the battles of the Paris Siege, another love story is unfolding - between Brunel and Babette, a married restaurateur. But when James follows Flavie to Palestine, and as the Paris Siege intensifies, all four protagonists are brought face to face with the brutal reality of civil war.

Nicholas Blincoe is the author of four previous novels including the award-winning Manchester Slingback and the acclaimed The Dope Priest and White Mice. Born in Rochdale, he attended art college before going to Warwick University, where he completed a PhD in contemporary European philosophy. He is also a screenwriter and a founder member of the New Puritans movement.

The long-awaited new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of Oxygen charts one man's quest to rediscover his faith in humanity

Clem Glass was a successful photojournalist, fired by his conviction that only photographs could capture the world's true face. Then, in Africa, he witnesses the grotesque aftermath of a genocidal massacre and returns to London with the belief that people, including himself, are fundamentally wicked. Now nothing - work, love, sex - can rouse him, and no other outlook can shift his altered vision. Not his father's Christianity, nor the new-found humanitarianism of his friend and fellow journalist Silverman. The one close relationship Clem is able to maintain is with his older sister, Clare, who has been struck down by the return of a mental illness she had been free from for twenty years. Together they set up home in the rural Somerset of their childhood, and together they keep the darkness at bay. But just as Clare begins to recover, news arrives out of the blue that the man responsible for the massacre is under arrest in Brussels. Clem's determination to confront the author of his nightmares sets in motion a startling sequence of events, and on his return to London he embarks on an inward journey that will lead to his own recovery.

Six lives. One amazing adventure. The hotly-anticipated paperback publication of one of the most highly acclaimed novels of 2004.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, was published in 1999. It was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under thirty-five, and was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Number9Dream, followed in 2001 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. He also returned to Britain from Japan, where he spent several years, and now lives in Ireland.