Being a hero bothers Jason Derry. It's easy to get maladjusted when your mom's a suburban housewife and your dad's the Supreme Being. It can be a real drag slaying monsters and retrieving golden fleeces from fire-spitting dragons, and then having to tidy your room before you can watch Star Trek. But it's not the relentless tedium of imperishable glory that finally brings Jason to the end of his rope; it's something so funny that it's got to be taken seriously. Deadly seriously.

As everyone knows, when great warriors die, their reward is eternal life in Odin's bijou little residence known as Valhalla. But Valhalla has just changed. It has grown. It has diversified. Just like any corporation, the Valhalla Group has had to adapt to survive. Unfortunately, not even an omniscient Norse god could have prepared Valhalla for the arrival of Carol Kortright, one-time cocktail waitress, last seen dead, and not at all happy.

All Malcolm Fisher did was run over a badger. Unfortunately the badger turned out to be Ingolf, last of the giants. With his dying breath he reluctantly gave Malcolm two gifts of power and made him ruler of the world.

The international super-successful What to Expectbrand has delivered again - announcing the arrival of a brand-new member of family: What to Expect the Second Year. This essential sequel to What to Expect the First Year picks up the action at baby's first birthday, and takes parents through what can only be called 'the wonder year' - 12 jam-packed (and jam-smeared) months of memorable milestones (from first steps to first words, first scribbles to first friends), lightning-speed learning, endless explorations driven by insatiable curiosity. Not to mention a year of challenges, both for toddlers and the parents who love them, but don't always love their behaviour (picky eating, negativity, separation anxiety, bedtime battles, biting, and tantrums). Comprehensive, reassuring, empathetic, realistic and practical, What to Expect the Second Yearis filled with solutions, strategies, and plenty of parental pep talks. It helps parents decode the fascinating, complicated, sometimes maddening, always adorable little person last year's baby has become. From the first birthday to the second, this must-have book covers everything parents need to know in an easy-to-access, topic-by-topic format, with chapters on growth, feeding, sleeping, behaviours of every conceivable kind, discipline (including teaching right from wrong), and keeping a toddler healthy and safe as he or she takes on the world. There's a developmental time line of the second year plus special 'milestone' boxes throughout that help parents keep track of their toddler's development. Thinking of travelling with tot in tow? There's a chapter for that, too.

This is a collection of people: Nevill breaks through the flat, artificial surfaces of typical portraits and gives us colourful views of their unexpected natures.

FLYING DUTCH - It's amazing the problems drinking can get you into. One little swig from the wrong bottle and you go from being an ordinary Dutch sea-captain to an unhappy immortal, drifting around the world with your similarly immortal crew. Little does Cornelius Vanderdecker, the Flying Dutchman, suspect that a chance encounter in an English pub might just lead to the end of his cursed life. FAUST AMONG EQUALS - The management buy-out of Hell wasn't going quite as planned. For a start, there had been that nasty business with the perjurers, and then came the news that the Most Wanted Man in History had escaped. But Kurt 'Mad Dog' Lundqvist, the foremost bounty hunter of all time, is on the case, and he can usually be relied on to get his man - even when that man is Lucky George Faustus ... Exuberant comedy from Tom Holt at his inventive best.

These widely acclaimed essays from the author of Infinite Jest -- on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more -- established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book -- a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner -- David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.