It was Christmas Eve when Kate saw the young boy, struggling to hold the groceries in the supermarket. When she offers to give him a lift, it isn’t long before his sadness hints at a deeper tragedy. What happened that Christmas at the Hogarth place? And can Kate make this Christmas better for him and his family? Featuring the first two chapters of Peter James’s latest chilling novel, Perfect People.

A body is found in a chicken run . . .

In June, 2006, Picador launch Picador Shots, a new series of pocket-sized books priced at £1. The Shots aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine.

Sherlock has been incarcerated in the Bethlehem Hospital – Bedlam - where Victorian London’s most unfortunate citizens are locked away in squalor, cruelty and hopelessness. Sherlock tells them he’s not mad – but who’d believe a lunatic? There’s only one option: he has to escape –and then use all his rational powers to work out who put him there in the first place . . .

An accident, a suicide, an act of criminal negligence . . . and a near-death experience. These stories – set in France, the USA and Canada – bring together calamities from two centuries.

An imprisoned man is certain that his supposed murder victim is very much alive . . . A female driver is pursued relentlessly by a menacing figure in another vehicle . . . A young artist gets the biggest break of her career . . . A restless beauty manages the perfect birthday celebration . . . An escaped Iraqi on Saddam Hussein's death list pays an involuntary visit to his homeland . . . How will they react? How would you?

These fourteen stories show Jeffrey Archer's great skills with a wide variety of character, of subject and of setting, but all with that trademark twist in the tail. Every reader will have their own favourites: the choices run from love at first sight across the train tracks to the cleverest of confidence tricks, from the quirks of the legal profession -- and those who are able to manipulate both sides of the Bar -- to the creative financial talents of a member of Her Majesty's diplomatic service -- but for a good cause. The last story, 'The Grass is Always Greener', is possibly the best piece Archer has written, and will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Cat O’ Nine Tales is the sixth collection of irresistible short stories from the master storyteller illustrated by the internationally acclaimed artist, Ronald Searle, creator of Molesworth.

Taken from Jeffrey Archer's third collection of short stories, Twelve Red Herrings, comes this irresistible, witty and ingenious short read.