An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which women use to wax their legs while men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends Leila made at each key moment in her life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her. .

Ravaged by years of war and civil conflict, Britain has changed its name to Airstrip One and become part of Oceania – one of the three totalitarian blocks dominating the world – ruled by a mysterious leader called Big Brother who keeps the population in thrall through strict surveillance and brutal police repression. In a society where the individual is suppressed and turned into an “unperson” for not conforming, and where not only personal thought, but also historical record and language itself are constantly being manipulated by the ruling regime, Ministry of Truth worker Winston Smith tries to make sense of the rebellious thoughts and passions that are stirring inside him, and finds himself impotent against the inexorable machine that surrounds him and threatens to crush him at any time.

Arguably the greatest dystopian novel of all time and the most influential post-war work of fiction – which enriched the English language with words such as “Newspeak”, “doublethink” and “thoughtcrime” – Nineteen Eighty-Four is a riveting read and a groundbreaking exploration of mass surveillance, censorship and mind control, which has a deep resonance with the world we live in.

Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world's greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions to various questions that preoccupied him in old age, such as faith and existence, as well as matters of everyday life.

Banned in Russia under Communism, A Calendar of Wisdom was Tolstoy's last major work, and one of his most popular both during and after his lifetime. This new translation by Roger Cockrell will offer today's generation of readers the chance to discover, day by day, these edifying and carefully selected pearls of wisdom.

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