Most Popular Books by Iain Banks

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. Although there''s supposed to be a temporary truce between Stewart and the town''s biggest crime family, it''s soon clear that only Stewart is taking this promise of peace seriously. As he steps back into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt and all that it has lost him, Stu uncovers ever darker stories, and his homecoming takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated. Tough, funny, fast-paced and touching, Stonemouth cracks open adolescence, love, brotherhood and vengeance in a rite of passage novel like no other.

After years of exile, Alban Wopuld has been summoned back to his family''s highland estate, Garbadale. A powerful American corporation is trying to buy the rights to the family''s successful boardgame, Empire! Alban must confront his mother''s suicide and his teenage love affair with his cousin Sophie.

Dark family secrets, a long-lost love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business lie at the heart of Iain Banks'' fabulous new novel. The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire! - now a wildly successful computer game. So successful the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Young renegade Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion - but he also has other things on his mind. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he yet over Sophie, his bewitching cousin and teenage love, who''ll be present at the forthcoming family gathering - part birthday party, part Extraordinary General Meeting - at Garbadale, their highland castle?

In this work, 20 leading Scottish authorities and new researchers on the Iron Age provide a wide-ranging account of our present knowledge of the period.

Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother''s identity is another matter. Now, though, his father''s dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time. "Uncle" Paul''s a media lawyer now; Rob and Ali are upwardly mobile corporate bunnies; pretty, hopeful Pris is a single mother; Haze is still living up to his drug-inspired name twenty years on; and fierce, protective Hol is a gifted if acerbic critic. As young film students they lived at Willoughtree House with Guy, and they''ve all come back because they want something. Kit, too, has his own ulterior motives. Before his father dies he wants to know who his mother is, and what''s on the mysterious tape they''re all looking for. But most of all he wants to stop time and keep his father alive. Fast-paced, gripping and savagely funny, "The Quarry" is a virtuoso performance whose soaring riffs on the inexhaustible marvel of human perception and rage against the dying of the light will stand among Iain Banks'' greatest work.

Iain Banks is celebrated as a novelist and science fiction writer. It is less well known that his first published work was the poem ''041'', in New Writing Scotland in 1983. Like the poems that appeared within his novels, this was selected from the many he had written between 1973 and 1981. Banks took his poetry seriously and worked on it assiduously, but showed it mostly to friends. He first thought of publishing his poetry late in 2012, though insisted it be a joint collection with his life-long friend Ken MacLeod. The two writers were working on this project when Banks learned of his terminal diagnosis, and continued thereafter. He made his final revisions just days before his death. Readers of Iain Banks'' novels will find in the poems a further affirmation of the humane, sceptical and clear-eyed sensibility that informed all his work, shot through as ever with a dry wit that continues to disturb and delight. Ken MacLeod edited and introduces this collection.

Eine Reise an die Grenzen des Vorstellbaren In einem entlegenen Sektor des Weltraums taucht eines Tages ein rätselhaftes Artefakt auf – eine riesige schwarze Kugel, die sich allen Kontaktversuchen verweigert. Messungen ergeben, dass das Objekt tausend Milliarden Jahre alt sein muss, älter also als unser Universum. Doch wie ist das möglich? Und wer oder was steckt dahinter?

Der letzte Ausweg Die meisten Menschen haben die Erde verlassen, als sie erkannten, dass das Sonnensystem eine Dunkelwolke durchqueren und die Erde von der aufgeblähten Sonne verschlungen werden würde. Geblieben sind ein paar Menschenabkömmlinge, einige in virtueller, andere in biologischer Form. Schließlich wird auch ihnen klar, dass sie die Katastrophe nicht überdauern können. Nun suchen sie ratlos in den uralten Resten einstiger Größe nach einer rettenden Möglichkeit: der „förchtbar Maschien“. Aber die technische Zivilisation ist längst zu Staub zerfallen, und die Funktionen ihrer seltsamen Relikte sind nur schwer zu greifen ...

Kenne deinen Feind! Der idiranische Krieg treibt seinem Höhepunkt entgegen: Als Rache für die Niederlagen, die ihnen die KULTUR beigebracht hat, planen die Chelgrianer einen Anschlag auf das Masaq‘-Orbital, ein künstliches Gebilde von drei Millionen Kilometern Durchmesser, bewohnt von fünfzig Milliarden Menschen. Zwar wird das Orbital von einer KI geleitet, die Jahrhunderte lang an Raumschlachten teilgenommen hat – doch wie soll sie einen Gegner erkennen, der eine unsichtbare Waffe in sich trägt?

Alte Feinde Auf einem fernen Planeten widerstehen die Bewohner seit Jahrhunderten den technischen Errungenschaften der Zivilisation und halten an ihrer uralten Gesellschaftsform fest. Es ist eine archaische, raue Welt, die jedoch zahlreichen „Aussteigern“ aus allen Teilen des Universums – vor allem aus der KULTUR - als Refugium dient. Solange sie sich ruhig verhalten, werden sie von den Einheimischen geduldet – doch wehe, sie mischen sich in die politischen Geschicke dieser Welt ein ...

Leichen im Keller Cheradenine Zakalwe ist Spitzenmann der KULTUR-Spionage, ein Söldner, der die Drecksarbeit erledigt. Diesmal ist er auf einer Sondermission, auf der er Diziet Sma begegnet, der Frau, die ihn einst aus der Versenkung geholt und ihm zu einer Karriere als Spezialagent verholfen hat. Wie jedes Mal verlangt Zakalwe für seinen Einsatz neben einem kleinen Vermögen Informationen über den Aufenthaltsort seiner Schwester, und wie jedes Mal versucht Diziet Sma, herauszubekommen, welches dunkle Geheimnis in Zakalwes Vergangenheit verborgen liegt. Und diesmal scheint sie endlich Erfolg zu haben ...

Um die riesigen Distanzen im All zu überwinden, wurde ein Netzwerk aus Wurmlochkanälen geschaffen, und nur wer den Algebraisten - die Formel für die Wurmlochverbindungen - besitzt, kontrolliert dieses Netzwerk. Kein Wunder also, dass etliche Völker versuchen, den Algebraisten in ihren Besitz zu bekommen ... Spannende Action vor einem mehr als epischen Hintergrund - Bestsellerautor Iain Banks stellt ein weiteres Mal unter Beweis, dass er die grosse Science Fiction unserer Zeit schreibt. Iain Banks, geboren 1954 in Dunfermline, Schottland, schrieb 1984 in London seinen ersten Roman ''Die Wespenfabrik'', der in 20 Sprachen übersetzt wurde und ihn auf einen Schlag weltberühmt machte. Seither folgten mehr als ein Dutzend erfolgreicher Romane, von denen ''Verschworen'' wochenlang auf Platz Nr. 1 der britischen Bestsellerliste stand. Unter dem Namen Iain M. Banks schrieb er auch Science-Fiction-Romane. Er lebte in der Nähe von Edinburgh. Am 9. Juni 2013 starb Iain Banks im Alter von 59 Jahren.

La guerra se recrudece a lo largo de la galaxia. Las lunas, los planetas y las mismas estrellas se enfrentaron a una destrucción a sangre fría, brutal y, lo que es peor, aleatoria. Los Iridanos luchan por su fe; la Cultura, por su derecho moral a existir. No hay lugar para la rendición. En medio del conflicto cósmico, en las profundidades de un Planeta de los Muertos, yace una Mente fugitiva. Los rumores dicen que Horza el Cambiante, y su horda de mercenarios impredecibles, humanos y máquinas, se embarcaron en su propia cruzada por encontrarla... solo para hallar su propia destrucción.

A reissue of Iain Banks'' second novel--three separate stories which unfold to come intricately and masterfully together "Her eyes were black, wide as though with some sustained surprise, the skin from their outer corners to her small ears taut. Her lips were pale, and nearly too full for her small mouth, like something bled but bruised. He had never seen anyone or anything quite so beautiful in his life." Graham Park is in love, but Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid, and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him, and They are. Quiss, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle castle, is forced to play interminable impossible games. The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him, but he must find an answer before he knows the question. Park, Grout, Quiss--no trio could be further apart, but their separate courses are set for collision.

"Classic Galmour Photography" takes you behind the scenes of a fascinatingorld to reveal the secrets of the world''s top professional glamourhotographers. Glamour photography is one of the most popular genres todaynd many professionals have made their reputation in this field. The purposef this book is to examine the work and creative processes of the classiclamour photographers and then to explain what equipment, approach, settingsnd techniques are required to follow in their footsteps.

Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. He is to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. There is only one way to solve the problem. He has to steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. What he discovers could lead the universe into an age of peace, or to the brink of annihilation.

Who Do "You" Work For? The Business, a nearly omnipotent enterprise, is so infinitely discreet that even its top executives are vague about its actual business. It predates the Christian church and counts among its vast riches dozens of Michelangelo''s pornographic paintings and several sets of Crown jewels. The only thing it lacks is political clout, a problem the Business plans to solve by buying a nation and joining the United Nations. Kate Telman, the Business''s foremost expert on emerging technologies, is chosen to lead the effort. As this beautiful, ambitious American woman pursues the ultimate prize for her highly secretive transglobal employer, Iain Banks -- whom "The Times" of London calls "the most imaginative British novelist of his generation" -- offers a portrait of today''s ubiquitous multinational corporations. Already a bestseller in England, "The Business" paints a picture that is at once wickedly satirical and frighteningly familiar.

Sur l''orbitale Masaq'' s''est réfugié Ziller, un compositeur chelgrien dont le peuple a été récemment vaincu par la Culture, cette société galactique tolérante, anarchiste, cynique et par-dessus tout hédoniste. Ziller, le plus fameux musicien de son temps, a fui les mondes chelgriens pour des raisons politiques : il ne supportait plus le système de castes de sa patrie, raison même du conflit entre Chelgria et la Culture. Il compose, à la demande de Masaq'', un opéra symphonique en souvenir d''une guerre ancienne entre la Culture et les Idirans durant laquelle ces derniers ont fait exploser des étoiles huit cents ans auparavant. La symphonie de Ziller doit être jouée au moment précis où la lumière fulgurante de ces nova atteindra Masaq''. Un émissaire chelgrien, Quilan, est envoyé sur l''orbitale pour tenter de convaincre Ziller de revenir dans sa patrie. C''est la partie officielle de sa mission. L''autre est plus ténébreuse. Comme toujours avec Iain M. Banks, le plus brillant des auteurs anglais de sa génération, les choses ne sont pas ce qu''elles semblent et il convient de prendre le sens du vent. Un nouveau volet du cycle de la Culture, qui a renouvelé la science-fiction.