William de Worde, the accidental editor of Discworld's first newspaper, just wants to get to the truth. Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it's only the third edition.

The stockings are hanging ready, the sherry and pies are waiting by the fireplace - but where is the jolly fat man with his sack? It's not right to find Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say 'Ho ho ho' - but someone's got to bring the little kiddies their presents. Or else they might stop believing. Belief is important in Discworld, particularly on the last night of the year when the time is turning. If the real man in the red suit isn't found by morning, there won't be a morning. Ever again.... 

It begun as a sudden strange fancy...Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time. And now she's enlisted in the army and searching for her lost brother. But there's a war on. There's always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them.

Mightily Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest. He thought he'd come to the mountain kingdom of Lancre for a simple little religious ceremony. Now he's caught between vampires and witches, and he's not sure there is a right side.

Suddenly, condemned arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig found himself with a noose around his neck and dropping through a trapdoor into...a government job? By all rights, Moist should be meeting his maker rather than being offered a position as postmaster by Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork.

Sam Vines is a man on the run. Yesterday, he was a duke, a chief of police, and an ambassador. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilisation, there's going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They're werewolves - and they're catching up. Sam Vimes is out of time and already out of breath....

Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg! Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he's back in his own rough, tough past, without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive; he has a job to do.

Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office.

It's hot. It's dry...very dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one believes in. Practically everything that's not poisonous is venomous. But it's the best bloody place in the world, alright?

It's an offer you can't refuse. Who would not wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and the bank next door? It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, the life is not necessarily for long. The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There's something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is pretty nameless), and it turns out that the Royal Mintruns at a loss.

Rats! They're everywhere: in the breadbins, dancing across tabletops, stealing pies from under the cooks' noses. So what does every town need? A good piper to lure them away. That's where Maurice comes in. But he's only a cat (though one that talks).

To the consternation of the patrician, Lord Vetinari, a new invention has arrived in Ankh-Morpork - a great clanging monster of a machine that harnesses the power of all of the elements: earth, air, fire and water. This being Ankh-Morpork, it’s soon drawing astonished crowds, some of whom caught the zeitgeist early and arrive armed with notepads and very sensible rainwear.

The show must go on, as murder, music and mayhem run riot in the night. The Opera House, Ankh-Morpork, is a huge, rambling building, where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by a strangely familiar evil mastermind in a hideously deformed evening dress.

A weathercock has risen from the sea of Discworld and suddenly you can tell which way the wind is blowing. A new land has surfaced and so have old feuds. And as two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch has got just a few hours to deal with a crime so big that there's no law against it. It's called 'war'.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.