A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy and is known as @agatharoza on Wattpad.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children. Angelica is also the author of Hunt A Killer, a PERFECT SCORE novel, under the pen name A.M. Ellis, which she wrote as an IP for Scholastic in the US.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Aaron Edwards

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Dolly Alderton

Since early 2020, Dolly Alderton has been sharing her wisdom, warmth and wit with the countless people who have written in to her Dear Dolly agony aunt column in The Sunday Times Style. Their questions range from the painfully - and sometimes hilariously - relatable to the occasionally bizarre. They include breakups and body issues, families, friendships, dating, divorce, the pleasures and pitfalls of social media, sex, loneliness, longing, love and everything in between. 
 
Without judgement, and with deep empathy informed by her own, much-chronicled adventures in love, friendship and dating, Dolly leads us by the hand through the various labyrinths of life, proving that a problem shared is truly a problem halved.

Dear Dolly

On Love, Life and Friendship, the instant Sunday Times bestseller

Susan Cain

Whether you long for the partner who broke up with you, or the one you dream of meeting; whether you hunger for the happy childhood you'll never have, or for the divine; whether you yearn for a lost person, an unborn child, the fountain of youth, or unconditional love: These are all manifestations of the same great ache... 
 
In this inspiring masterpiece, Susan Cain - author of the international bestseller Quiet - shows us the power of a "bittersweet" outlook: the dramatically overlooked tendency to states of longing and poignancy, and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. Embracing the bittersweet means understanding that light and dark, birth and death - bitter and sweet - are forever paired, and that only by recognising this can we be fully whole. 
 
Bringing to light the ideas of artists, writers and thinkers from all over the world, and her own quest for answers over the course of a lifetime, Susan Cain shifts our understanding of the world by teaching us how to transform pain and sorrow into creativity and love - and therefore how to turn our sadness into an enriching superpower.

Bittersweet

How to Turn Sorrow Into Creativity, Beauty and Love

How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

Noam Chomsky

C. J. Polychroniou

Noam Chomsky examines the crumbling of the social fabric and the fractures of the Biden era, including the halting steps toward a Green New Deal, the illegitimate authority of the Supreme Court, in particular its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the ongoing fallout from COVID-19. Chomsky also untangles the roots of the War in Ukraine, the diplomatic tensions among the United States, China, and Russia, and considers the need for climate action on an international scale. 
 
Illegitimate Authority exposes those who wield power in their own self-interest and plots framework for how we can stand together and fight against injustice.

Illegitimate Authority: Facing the Challenges of Our Time

Various

Love, literature, friendship, music, carnival, travel, dance, work, nature, food - Black Joy can be found in so many places. And this anthology is an invitation for readers to ruminate on what brings them joy, too. 
 
Edited by award-winning journalist Charlie Brinkhust-Cuff and up-and-coming talent Timi Sotire, join twenty-eight inspirational voices in this uplifting and empowering anthology as they come together to celebrate being Black British, sharing their experiences of joy and what it means to them. 
 
 
With incredible pieces from: 
 
Diane Abbott - Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé - Fopé Ajanaku - Athian Akec - Travis Alabanza - Haaniyah Angus - Rukiat Ashawe - Bukky Bakray - Richie Brave - Munya Chawawa - Ruby Fatimilehin - Theophina Gabriel - Lauryn Green - Ife Grillo - Isaac James - Chanté Joseph - Vanessa Kisuule - Henrie Kwushue - Tobi Kyeremateng - Mikai McDermott - Jason Okundaye - Tope Olufemi - Melz Owusu - Leigh-Anne Pinnock - Mayowa Quadri - Lavinya Stennett - Timi Sotire - Sophia Tassew

Black Joy

Marit Kapla

Winner of the 2019 August Prize 
 
Near the river Klarälven, snug in the dense forest landscape of northern Värmland, lies the Swedish village of Osebol. It is a quiet place: one where relationships take root over decades, and where the bustle of city life is replaced by the sound of wind in the trees. 
 
In the last half-century, the automation of the lumber industry and the steady drip of relocations to the cities for work have seen Osebol's adult population dwindle to only 40-odd residents. The shops have closed; the bridge across the river is shut to traffic. But still, life goes on. Those who have inherited their farms for generations live alongside recent arrivals from near and far. People age; children grow up. Heirlooms are passed from hand to hand, and memories from mouth to mouth. 
 
In this extraordinary book, Marit Kapla has gathered the voices of the villagers themselves, interviewing almost all of those remaining between the ages of 18 and 92. They alone speak. Arranged with only a handful of lines on each page, they tell of their griefs and joys, resentments and pleasures, enmities and loves, and memories that span a century of progress and upheaval. 
 
To read Osebol is to be immersed in its gentle rhythms of simple language and open space, and to emerge feeling like one has really grown to know the inhabitants of this varied community, nestled among the trees in a changing world.

Osebol

Voices from a Swedish Village

Nora Ephron

A NEW, REVISED EDITION OF THE ULTIMATE NORA EPHRON COLLECTION, PACKED WITH WIT, WISDOM AND COMFORT, WITH AN INTRODUCTION FROM CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS 
 
'The perfect introduction to the iconic writer' STYLIST 
 
INCLUDING: 
 
* Nora's much-loved essays on everything from friendship to feminism to journalism 
 
* Extracts from her bestselling novel Heartburn 
 
* Scenes from her hilarious screenplay for When Harry Met Sally 
 
* Unparalleled advice about friends, lovers, divorces, desserts and black turtleneck sweaters 
 
 
'It's got a little bit of everything, from witty essays on feminism, beauty, and ageing to profiles of empowering female figures' ELLE 
 
 
*PRAISE FOR NORA EPHRON* 
 
'So bold and so vulnerable at the same time. I don't know how she did it' PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE 
 
'Nora's exacting, precise, didactic, tried-and-tested, sophisticated-woman-wearing-all-black wisdom is a comfort and a relief' DOLLY ALDERTON 
 
'Nora Ephron is the funniest, cleverest, wisest friend you could have' NIGELLA LAWSON 
 
'I am only the one of millions of women who will miss Nora's voice' LENA DUNHAM

The Most of Nora Ephron

The ultimate anthology of essays, articles and extracts from her greatest work, with a foreword by Candice Carty-Williams

The ultimate anthology

Various Authors

Three decades after her pioneering anthology, Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby curates an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 
 
A glorious portrayal of the richness and range of African women's voices, this major international book brings together their achievements across a wealth of genres. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class. 
 
Bold and insightful, brilliant in its intimacy and universality, this landmark anthology honours the talents of African daughters and the inspiring legacy that connects them-and all of us.

New Daughters of Africa

An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African descent

Arundhati Roy

'Azadi!' - Urdu for 'freedom' - is the iconic chant of the Kashmiri freedom struggle. And now, while Kashmir's streets have been silenced, the irony is that this same anthem echoes round the streets of the country that most Kashmiris view as their coloniser. What lies between the silence of one street and the sound of the other? Is it a chasm, or could it become a bridge? 
 
In this series of penetrating essays on politics and literature, Arundhati Roy examines this question, challenging us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. Azadi, she warns, hangs in the balance for us all.

AZADI

Fascism, Fiction & Freedom in the Time of the Virus

Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.

Under USSR rule, the subject matter and style of literary expression in Ukraine was strictly controlled and censored. But once Ukraine gained independence in 1991 its literary scene flourished, as the moving and delightful poems, essays and extracts collected here show. 
 
There are fifteen authors included in this book, both established and emerging, and in this anthology we see them grappling with history and the future, with big questions and small moments. 
 
From essays about Chernobyl to poetry about Robbie Williams, from fiction discussing Jimmy Hendrix live in Lviv to underground Ukrainian poetry of the Soviet era, WRITING FROM UKRAINE offers a unique window into a rich culture, a chance to experience a particularly Ukrainian sensibility and to celebrate Ukraine's nationhood, as told by its writers.

Writing from Ukraine

Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965

Christopher Clark

Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers has become one of the most influential history books of our century: a remarkable rethinking of the origins of the First World War, which has had a huge impact on how we see both the past and the present. 
 
 For the many readers who found the narrative voice, craftsmanship and originality of Clark's writing so compelling, Prisoners of Time will be a book filled with surprises and enjoyment. Bringing together many of Clark's major essays, Prisoners of Time raises a host of questions about how we think about the past, and both the value and pitfalls of history as a discipline. 
 
 The book includes brilliant writing on German subjects: from assessments of Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck to the painful story of General von Blaskowitz, a military man who accommodated himself to the horrors of the Third Reich. There is a fascinating essay on attempts to convert Prussian Jews to Christianity, and insights into everything from Brexit to the significance of battles. Perhaps the most important piece in the book is 'The Dream of Nebuchadnezzar', a virtuoso meditation on the nature of political power down the ages, which will become essential reading for anyone drawn to the meaning of history.

Prisoners of Time

Prussians, Germans and Other Humans

Rosita Boland

'My dictionary's first two definitions of 'comrade' are: 
 
A close companion. 
An intimate associate or friend. 
 
The third one is: 
A fellow soldier. 
 
My friends have been all those things to me.' 
 
In this stunning essay collection, award-winning journalist Rosita Boland explores the many friendships that have shaped her life. Surprising and beautiful, she writes about the imaginary friends of early childhood, books that have provided companionship and joy, kindred spirits met while travelling, the friend she hoped might become something more, and also the friendships that become lost over time. 
 
Life-affirming, affecting and wise, Comrades is a powerful exploration of what it is to live, to connect, and to be human in this world.

Comrades

A Lifetime of Friendships

Susan Sontag

The sixteen essays represent the last pieces written by Susan Sontag in the years before her death in 2004. Reflecting on literature, photography and art, post-9/11 America and political activism, these essays encompass the themes that dominated Sontag’s life and work, revealing why she remains one of the twentieth-century’s preeminent writers and thinkers.

At the Same Time

Why read non-fiction? Is it just to find things out? Or is it for pleasure, challenge, adventure, meaning? Here, in seventy new pieces, some of the most original writers and thinkers of our time give their answers. 
 
From Hilton Als on reading as writing's dearest companion to Nicci Gerrard on reading for her life; from Malcolm Gladwell on entering the minds of others to Michael Lewis on books as secret discoveries; and from Lea Ypi on the search for freedom to Slavoj Žižek on violent readings, each offers their own surprising perspective on the simple act of turning a page. The result is a celebration of seeing the world in new ways - and of having our minds changed.

Why We Read

Marcia Willett

'We'll always be together, won't we?' 
 
Childhood friends and cousins Leo and Alice had imagined their whole lives playing out on their beloved Devon beach. But one night when they are teens, sitting on the sand beneath the stars, Alice tells Leo a secret that must never be shared with anybody else . . . then packs her bag and flees. 
 
Leo is left to build his own life - without Alice. He surrounds himself with other family and friends and on the whole is content and fulfilled. But he is left with a sense of what - or who - is missing. So decades later, when he receives a note from Alice asking if she can come home, he doesn't hesitate to agree. 
 
But as the stars align and their reunion draws near, Leo is left to consider their separation and what so many years apart means for a relationship solidified in youth and a secret which could affect the whole family.

Starry, Starry Night

The escapist, feel-good read about family secrets

Ann Ingle

At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name. 
 
Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back and considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'. 
 
Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Openhearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others.

Openhearted

Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go

Victoria Mas

'A darkly sumptuous tale of wicked spectacle, wild injustice and the insuppressible strength of women' EMMA STONEX, author of THE LAMPLIGHTERS 
 
'An essential story of women resisting the unjust exertion of male power' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
____________________ 
 
 The Salpêtrière asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope. 
 
 Geneviève is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugénie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family. Because Eugénie has a secret, and she needs Geneviève's help. Their fates will collide on the night of the Mad Women's Ball... 
 
____________________ 
 
'In this darkly delightful Gothic treasure, Mas explores grief, trauma and sisterhood behind the walls of Paris' infamous Salpetriere hospital' PAULA HAWKINS, author of A SLOW FIRE BURNING 
 
 'A beautifully written debut...I have absolutely no doubt it will be one of my favourite novels of 2021.' AJ PEARCE, author of DEAR MRS BIRD 
 
'Essential reading' COSMOPOLITAN 
 
 'A deftly woven tale of hope and pain, judgement and redemption, cruelty and kindness. Utterly captivating and profoundly affecting.' Sunday Times bestseller, MIRANDA DICKENSON 
 
 'Enter the dance of this little masterpiece and let yourself be dazzled. Assured of hitting the bestseller lists' THE PARISIAN 
 
____________________ 
 
AN AMAZON PRIME ORIGINAL FILM STARRING MÉLANIE LAURENT

The Mad Women's Ball

The prize-winning, international bestseller and Sunday Times Top Fiction selection

Deborah Levy

Following the international critical and commercial success of The Cost of Living, this final volume of Levy's 'Living Autobiography' is an exhilarating, thought-provoking and boldly intimate meditation on home and the spectres that haunt it. It resumes and expands Levy's pioneering examination of a female life lived in the storm of the present tense, asking essential questions about womanhood, modernity, creative identity and personal freedom. From one of the great thinkers and writers of our time, Real Estate is a memoir and a manifesto for radical emancipation - as an artist, as a woman, and as an inheritor of the real estate of the now.

Real Estate

Living Autobiography 3

A celebratory 20th anniversary edition of this landmark collection from black writers across the literary spectrum 
 
This ground-breaking anthology was first published twenty years ago, into a different literary landscape. Showcasing the work of more than 100 black British authors, this 20th anniversary edition celebrates their lasting contributions to literature and to our wider culture. 
 
Including poetry from Roger Robinson, David Dabydeen, Bernardine Evaristo, Jackie Kay and Benjamin Zephaniah, short stories from Ferdinand Dennis, Diana Evans, Catherine Jonson, E.A. Markham and Ray Shell; essays from Floella Benjamin, Linda Bellos, Treva Etienne, Kevin Le Gendre and Labi Siffre; memoirs from Margaret Busby, Henry Bonsu, Buchi Emecheta, Sol B. River and Leone Ross, and many others. 
 
IC3 spans a wealth of genres - from poetry, to short fiction, memoir and essays - to demonstrate the range and astonishing literary achievements of black writers, who remain underrepresented in British culture today. Featuring a new introduction from original editors Kadija Sesay and Courttia Newland, this collection reflects on the legacy of these writers and their extraordinary work.

The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain

Claudia Rankine

At the theatre, around the dinner table, in the airport and in the voting booth, what fractures lie beneath the veneer of contemporary civility and rhetorical claims to unity? What happens if we actually acknowledge them? And when we do, how can we strive to stay in the room with one other? 
 
 In a series of real-life conversations with both friends and strangers, Claudia Rankine set out to explore these questions, taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy - and a willingness to be surprised - as her guiding light. Just Us is the record of those encounters. Brilliantly arranging essays, images and poems along with the voices and rebuttals of others, it counterpoints Rankine's own text with facing-page notes and commentary, and along the way considers a typically enlightening and unexpected range of issues, from priority boarding queues to the political and cultural implications of women dyeing their hair blonde. 
 
 Wry, vulnerable and prescient, this is Rankine's most intimate work, less interested in being right - and in always feeling comfortable - than in being true and being together.

Just Us

An American Conversation

Patrick Freyne

Patrick Freyne has tried a lot of stupid ideas in his life. Now, in his scintillating debut, he is here to tell you about them: like the time (aged 5) he opened a gate and let a horse out of its field, just to see what would happen; or the time (aged 19) he jumped out of a plane for charity, even though he didn't much care about the charity and was sure he'd end up dead; or the time (aged old enough to know better) he used a magazine as a funnel for fuel when the petrol cap on his band's van broke. 
 
He has also learned a few things: about the power of group song; about the beauty of physically caring for another human being; about childlessness; about losing friends far too young. Life as seen through the eyes of Patrick Freyne is stranger, funnier and a lot more interesting than life as we generally know it. Like David Sedaris or Nora Ephron, he creates an environment all his own - fundamentally comic, sometimes moving, always deeply humane. OK, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea is a joyous reading experience from an instantly essential new writer.

OK, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea

C.L.R. James

It is the 1920s in the Trinidadian capital, and Haynes' world has been upended. His mother has passed away, and his carefully mapped-out future of gleaming opportunity has disappeared with her. 
 
Unable to afford his former life, he finds himself moving into Minty Alley - a bustling barrack yard teeming with life and a spectacular cast of characters. In this sliver of West Indian working-class society, outrageous love affairs and passionate arguments are a daily fixture, and Haynes begins to slip from curious observer to the heart of the action. 
 
Minty Alley is a gloriously observed portrayal of class, community and the ways in which we are all inherently connected. An undisputed modern classic, this is an exceptional story told by one of the twentieth century's greatest Caribbean thinkers.

Minty Alley

A collection of rediscovered works celebrating Black Britain curated by Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo

George Orwell

Shooting an Elephant is Orwell's searing and painfully honest account of his experience as a police officer in imperial Burma; wearing the mask of Empire, committing an act of cruelty, 'solely to avoid looking a fool'. One of Orwell's greatest essays, the claustrophobic sense rendered between conquered, conqueror, and conscience would later be drawn out in his two great works of literature, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.

Shooting an Elephant

August Wilson

In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the great blues diva Ma Rainey is due to arrive at a run-down Chicago recording studio with her entourage to cut new sides of old favourites. Waiting for her are the black musicians in her band, and the white owners of the record company. A tense, searing account of racism in jazz-era America that the New Yorker called 'a genuine work of art'. 
 
Fences centres on Troy Maxson, a garbage collector, an embittered former baseball player and a proud, dominating father. When college athletic recruiters scout his teenage son, Troy struggles against his young son's ambition, his wife, who he understands less and less, and his own frustrated dreams.

Fences & Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Tim Robinson

Long recognized as perhaps the greatest non-fiction writer at work in Ireland, for his vast, polymathic accounts of nature and culture in the Aran Islands and Connemara, Tim Robinson is also an essayist of genius whose fascinations range across the globe. In Experiments on Reality, he shines the light of his intelligence on his own life, and on some of the most fascinating questions in science and culture. 
 
Robinson brings us to his boyhood in Yorkshire, National Service in Malaya in the 1950s, and his years as a visual artist in Istanbul, Vienna and London. He revisits some of the scenes of his researches for the maps he made of Aran and Connemara, places that continue to throw up remarkable stories and puzzles. And he performs astonishing literary thought-experiments, playing with the boundaries of the essay form, scientific inquiry, and storytelling. Experiments on Reality is a masterpiece from one of the great minds of our time.

Experiments on Reality

The Last Essays

Roberto Calasso

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians: in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today. A world that feels more elusive than ever before. 
 
Yet once contrasted with the period between 1933 and 1945, when the world made a partially successful attempt at self-annihilation, the new millennium begins to take on an unprecedented form. What emerges is something illusory, ever-shifting and occasionally murderous: the unnamable present. 
 
This book, the ninth part of a work in progress, is a meditation on the obscure and ubiquitous process of transformation happening in societies today, where distant echoes of Auden's The Age of Anxiety give way to something altogether more unsettling.

The Unnamable Present

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

Diaries 1964-1980

Colm Tóibín

'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses 
 
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers. With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family. This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

Esmé Weijun Wang

'I've inherited a love of a writing and a talent for the visual arts from my mother, as well as her long and tapered fingers; I've also inherited a tendency for madness' 
 
Esmé Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford and the literary world, she would find herself floored by an overwhelming terror that 'spread like blood', or convinced that she was dead, or that her friends were robots, or spiders were eating holes in her brain. What happens when your whole conception of yourself is turned upside down? When you're aware of what is occurring to you, but unable to do anything about it? 
 
Written with immediacy and unflinching honesty, this visceral and moving book is Wang's story, as she steps both inside and outside of her condition to bring it to light. Following her own diagnosis and the many manifestations of schizophrenia in her life, she ranges over everything from how we label mental illness to her own use of fashion and make-up to present herself as high-functioning, from the failures of the higher education system to how factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease compounded her experiences. Wang's analytical, intelligent eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with haunting personal narrative. The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core and provides unique insight into a condition long misdiagnosed and much misunderstood.

The Collected Schizophrenias

Emilie Pine

'I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid. But I am doing it anyway.' 
 
In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks powerfully from her painful personal experience - on the emotional labour of caring for her alcoholic father, on the unspeakable grief of miscarriage and infertility, on the social taboos around menstrual blood and female pain, on the ways young women use their own bodies as a weapon against themselves. Courageous, humane and uncompromising, devastatingly poignant and yet never self-pitying, these pieces investigate and challenge society's assumptions around pain, strength, resilience and identity, ultimately embracing joy and hope in the business of living.

Notes to Self

J. D. Salinger

An American soldier has a strange encounter with an orphaned English teenager the night before he leaves for war. A four-year-old boy runs away from home in a dinghy. A missionary's child is kidnapped by Chinese bandits. A honeymoon in Florida goes awry with tragic consequences. 
 
 Including the first stories to feature J. D. Salinger's beloved Glass family characters, this brilliantly varied collection offers a vivid introduction to the work of one of the most admired and widely read American novelists of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane and frequently affecting, For Esmé - with Love and Squalor is a gem to be passed down for many generations to come.

For Esmé - with Love and Squalor

And Other Stories

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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