Never Judge A Book... Beautiful book covers. Part 1

Preface: Sylvia Penton has been hibernating for years, it's no wonder she's a little prickly...

Sylvia lives alone, dedicating herself to her job at the local university. On weekends, she helps out at a local hedgehog sanctuary because it gives her something to talk about on Mondays - and it makes people think she's nicer than she is.

Only Sylvia has a secret: she's been in love with her boss, Professor Lomax, for over a decade now, and she's sure he's just waiting for the right time to leave his wife. Meanwhile she stores every crumb of his affection and covertly makes trouble for anyone she feels gets in his way.

But when a bright new PhD candidate catches the Professor’s eye, Sylvia’s dreams of the fairy tale ending she has craved for so long, are soon in tatters, driving her to increasingly desperate measures and an uncertain future.

Sylvia might have been sleep walking through her life but things are about to change now she’s woken up…

Preface: 1686, ICELAND. AN ISOLATED, WINDSWEPT LAND HAUNTED BY WITCH TRIALS AND STEEPED IN THE ANCIENT SAGAS.

Betrothed unexpectedly to Jón Eiríksson, Rósa is sent to join her new husband in the remote village of Stykkishólmur. Here, the villagers are wary of outsiders.

But Rósa harbours her own suspicions. Her husband buried his first wife alone in the dead of night. He will not talk of it. Instead he gives her a small glass figurine. She does not know what it signifies.

The villagers mistrust them both. Dark threats are whispered. There is an evil here - Rósa can feel it. Is it her husband, the villagers - or the land itself?

Alone and far from home, Rósa sees the darkness coming. She fears she will be its next victim . . .

Preface: Imagine you could erase your grief.

Imagine you could forget your pain.

Imagine you could hide a secret. Forever.

Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a letter arrives summoning him to begin an apprenticeship. He will work for a Bookbinder, a vocation that arouses fear, superstition and prejudice – but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.

He will learn to hand-craft beautiful volumes, and within each he will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, he can help. If there’s something you need to erase, he can assist. Your past will be stored safely in a book and you will never remember your secret, however terrible.

In a vault under his mentor’s workshop, row upon row of books – and memories – are meticulously stored and recorded.

Then one day Emmett makes an astonishing discovery: one of them has his name on it.

Preface: When the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald was captured in New York with the help of Newt Scamander he made a threat, to escape custody. He begins gathering followers, a lot of whom are unsuspecting of his true agenda: to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings.

Unable to stand against him Dumbledore enlists Newt, his former Hogwarts student, to help thwart him. The wizarding world is divided between those who follow Grindelwald and those who oppose him.

Preface: Hortense is a kind little girl and happy apart from one thing: she doesn’t like her shadow and she thinks her shadow doesn’t like her. She tries everything she can think of to get rid of it until one day she succeeds.

Then something happens to make her realise that maybe her shadow isn’t so bad after all and maybe is quite a useful thing to have around.

Preface: Merrick Treymayne is feeling stifled and unwanted since moving back to his family home in Cornwall with his curmudgeonly brother Charles. As a former smuggler for the East India Company Merrick sustained an injury to his leg which left him needing a cane.

So, when his old friend Clem arrives to convince him to come on an expedition to Peru. Merrick takes some convincing. Clem and the East India Company want Merrick to help them take cuttings from the Cinchona tree in order to get quinine, a substance needed in the cure for malaria. The locals want to maintain the monopoly on their trees and they aren’t happy with foreigners trying to take their product away.

Those who have arrived in Peru on previous expeditions to gather this precious resource haven’t made it out of Peru alive. Knowing this, Merrick knows it is madness for him to try where others have failed, especially with his injured leg. All that awaits him in Cornwall is a fractious relationship with his brother who thinks Merrick is slowly descending into madness.

On arriving in Bedlam Merrick and Clem are surprised by the level of superstition among the locals. The newcomers are warned not to cross the salt lined boundary into the forest but with the time sensitivity of their mission will they listen.

The longer they stay in the village the more fascinated Merrick becomes with the strange stone statues that line the village and almost seem to be alive. How do they work? And why does the young priest Raphael seem to know Merrick’s grandfather even though he visited Peru decades earlier.

Preface: You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we’d have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren’s 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn’t necessary.

Except Tom just can’t seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that’s before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.

But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.

Preface: This timeless favourite follows the four March sisters - pretty Meg, tomboy Jo, shy Beth and vain Amy - as they grow and mature into four distinctive little women. Louisa May Alcott was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, the setting for Little Women. Jo is based on Louisa herself, and Meg, Beth and Amy are inspired by Louisa's own three sisters. Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.

Preface: 'The Tales of Beedle The Bard' will be familiar to anyone who has read and loved the Harry Potter books. For those who haven't 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' are a collection of fairy tales for witches and wizards.

Preface: Each girl survived an unthinkable horror. Now someone wants them dead...

They were called The Final Girls.

Three young women who survived unimaginable horror. Three victims of separate massacres grouped together by the press. Three strangers bound by similar traumas.

Lisa. Quincy. Samantha.

When something terrible happens to Lisa, put-together Quincy and volatile Sam finally meet. Each one influences the other. Each one has dark secrets. And after the bloodstained fingers of the past reach into the present, each one will never be the same.

Preface: This timeless favourite follows the four March sisters - pretty Meg, tomboy Jo, shy Beth and vain Amy - as they grow and mature into four distinctive little women. Louisa May Alcott was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, the setting for Little Women. Jo is based on Louisa herself, and Meg, Beth and Amy are inspired by Louisa's own three sisters. Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young ladies in nineteenth-century New England.

Preface: n the captivating start to the darkly lyrical fantasy series for readers of Leigh Bardugo and Sabaa Tahir, Tea can raise the dead, but resurrection comes at a price...

Let me be clear: I never intended to raise my brother from his grave, though he may claim otherwise. If there's anything I've learned from him in the years since, it's that the dead hide truths as well as the living.

When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she's a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.

In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha-one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles...and make a powerful choice.

Preface: In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift - a precious jewel on a delicate chain,intended for his young daughter.

Uncertain of its meaning, the father hides the gift away and his daughter, Vasya, grows up a wild, wilful girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.

Preface: In this spine-tingling tale Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but she never sends them. Instead she hides them within the thousands of books her husband has collected. After she writes her final letter, Ingrid disappears.

Twelve years later, her adult daughter, Flora comes home to look after her injured father. Secretly, Flora has never believed her mother is dead, and she starts asking questions, without realizing that the answers she’s looking for are hidden in the books that surround her.

Preface: The number of women my brother Matthew killed, so far as I can reckon it, is one hundred and six...

1645. When Alice Hopkins' husband dies in a tragic accident, she has no choice but to return to the small Essex town of Manningtree, where her brother Matthew still lives.

But home is no longer a place of safety. Matthew has changed, and there are rumours spreading through the town: whispers of witches, and of a great book, in which her brother is gathering women's names.

To what lengths will her brother's obsession drive him?

And what choice will Alice make, when she finds herself at the very heart of his plan?

Preface: Long before she was the terror of Wonderland, the infamous Queen of Hearts, she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love.

Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland and a favourite of the unmarried King, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, she wants to open a shop and create delectable pastries.

At a royal ball where Cath is expected to receive the King's marriage proposal, she meets handsome and mysterious Jest. At the risk of offending the King and infuriating her parents, she and Jest enter into a secret courtship.

Cath is determined to choose her own destiny. But in a land thriving with magic, madness and monsters, fate has other plans.

Preface: Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past - and a love - Peri had tried desperately to forget.

The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford University, as an eighteen year old sent abroad for the first time. To her dazzling, rebellious Professor and his life-changing course on God. To her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity. And finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart.

Preface: When Mata Hari arrived in Paris she was penniless. Within months she was the most celebrated woman in the city.

As a dancer, she shocked and delighted audiences; as a courtesan, she bewitched the era’s richest and most powerful men.

But as paranoia consumed a country at war, Mata Hari’s lifestyle brought her under suspicion. In 1917, she was arrested in her hotel room on the Champs Elysees, and accused of espionage.

Told in Mata Hari’s voice through her final letter, The Spy is the unforgettable story of a woman who dared to defy convention and who paid the ultimate price.

Preface: The news hits Mammoth View, California, early on a summer morning: there's been a massacre at one of the camp-sites outside town. It's not clear what happened, but it's obviously bad. And it's not over. As residents panic and head out of town, Police Chief Kenneth Hicks and his deputy set off into the woods to investigate.

The camp-site attack appears to be the perfect coincidence for Billy Lane. Looking for the biggest score of his career so he can send his daughter Tori to college, he's targeted the local bank. But the robbery does not go well and the aftermath goes even worse. The unexpected mass panic by the towns residents has jammed up the one highway out of town, forcing Billy to improvise. He heads up Mammoth Mountain, planning to take a treacherous escape route. Worse, he's learned that his daughter, supposedly safe in a summer camp, is missing.

Over the next twenty-four hours, chaos descends on Mammoth View. Billy will have to find deep wells of courage and ingenuity to survive. Tori, coming to terms with who her father really is, will discover she's much stronger than she ever thought possible. Chief Hicks will face his past personal failures and his present professional ones. All of which leads inexorably to what really happened at the camp-site outside of town.