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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Louise Brangan

This haunting and immersive book shines a light on the dark history of Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries. 
 
'Compelling, measured and deeply felt' ANNE ENRIGHT 
'A terrific yet harrowing unearthing of Ireland's shadowland. A landmark book' RORY CARROLL 
'Breaking silence is a catalyst for change' CAELAINN HOGAN 
 
Following independence in 1922, Ireland began to chase a dream: to become the perfect Catholic nation. But purity had a price. Throughout the twentieth century, thousands of women and girls who did not conform – the wayward, the poor, the disabled, the abused – were sent to the Magdalene Laundries. Each was perceived to have fallen in some way. Once locked inside, their hair was shorn off, their names were erased – and then they were put to work. They washed, they scrubbed and they prayed, labouring in an attempt to salvage their souls. 
 
When the gates of the last Laundry shut in 1996, Ireland moved on. Or so it seemed. This remains one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods of recent history. Published to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the last Laundry’s closure, The Fallen is the forgotten story of the Magdalene Laundries, told through the voices of the women who endured them, the nuns who presided over them and the communities that lived alongside them. 
 
Unflinching and compassionate, Louise Brangan draws on archives and survivors’ testimonies to dismantle long-held myths about what the Laundries were, who was sent to these places of violence and secrecy, and why. As we move from the past into the present, Brangan compels us not only to confront this shameful history, but to ask a deeper question: what do we choose to remember? 
 
Winner of the 2024 Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award

The Fallen

The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence

Simon Morrison

An erudite and entertaining history of Moscow, a city whose rich past offers crucial insight into contemporary global politics 
 
Moscow stands at the centre of a nation comprising eleven percent of the globe’s landmass, eleven time zones, and nearly one hundred and fifty million people, some thirteen million of whom live in the capital. In A Kingdom and a Village, acclaimed historian Simon Morrison offers a vividly rendered history of Russia’s heart and soul, tracing its transformation from a ‘big village’ – the demeaning nickname the St. Petersburg nobility gave to its provincial neighbour – into a spectacular metropolis of vast geopolitical import. 
 
That arc is the stuff of dramatic, violent, stranger-than-fiction historical narrative: the last century alone has featured invasions and costly battles, the destruction (and reconstruction) of sacred cultural and religious landmarks, and the collapse of the Soviet republic – not to mention the rise of an authoritarian leader who is a keen student of Russian history. Morrison reaches back to the city’s founding as a fortress on a river nearly a millennium ago. In the centuries that followed, any number of external forces – from Tatar Mongols and Swedes to Napoleon and Hitler – set their sights on Moscow, bolstering its self-conception as both a glittering prize and a site of perpetual defence and resurrection. 
 
Drawing on a rich array of archival materials, Morrison shows us that to understand Moscow is not only to unlock the spellbinding mysteries of Russia’s past, but also to grasp the grim logic of its present. 
 
A Kingdom and a Village is a magisterial biography of a place – and an essential guide to a people and a nation.

A Kingdom and a Village

A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow

Ibram X. Kendi

A revelatory account of the racist conspiracy theory that now pervades global politics – from the prize-winning author of the million-copy bestseller How To Be an Antiracist 
 
Throughout the world, authoritarian movements are radically reshaping our politics and our lives. At the heart of them all lies ‘great replacement theory’, which insists that peoples of colour, migrants and minorities are being deliberately empowered to displace white majorities. 
 
In Chain of Ideas, Ibram X. Kendi shows how this conspiracy theory has mutated from the extremist fringe into a global ideology, embraced by leaders as varied as Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Nigel Farage, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. He traces its historic roots in slavery, segregation, colonialism and Nazism, and shows how these age-old prejudices have been dressed in new language for a digital age. 
 
But this is not a book about extremists on the margins. From Anders Breivik’s massacre to the chants of the Charlottesville marchers, from Brexit slogans to the Christchurch shooting, Kendi shows how these ideas have crossed borders, inspired terror and are now re-shaping parties of government. Chain of Ideas is a penetrating history of how reactionary ideas have been repackaged as common sense, and how they shape the globe today.

Chain of Ideas

Great Replacement Theory and the Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

Simukai Chigudu

In my home country, they call me a ‘bornfree’. 
 
Simukai Chigudu was one of the first generation to be born after the end of colonial rule in Zimbabwe. Growing up he heard stories about his grandfather’s murder by the Rhodesian regime, how his father had been imprisoned and tortured as a student before joining the bloody war of independence as a guerilla, and how his mother had thrown off the strictures of the past to build a successful career helping other women do the same. Yet Simukai’s early life was also steeped in British tradition. With his classmates he sang English folk songs, read Shakespeare, played cricket. 
 
Then, in 2002, he was one of thousands to leave the country as it descended into political violence and economic collapse. His new home: a boarding school in the north of England. What followed was a culture shock that unravelled his understanding of the world, his family and himself. 
 
Chasing Freedom is his profound and remarkably moving story – that of a boy shaped through his parents’ buried trauma by the great currents of late-twentieth century history. It is the story of a family haunted by the cause of liberation, and of a new generation, still searching for their promised freedom.

Chasing Freedom

Coming of Age at the End of Empire

Paul O'Keeffe

A vivid and visceral portrayal of the most famous naval battle in history, focusing on the human cost of war, by a brilliant military historian 
 
‘A gripping read, full of fascinating insights…deeply moving…Brilliant’ Adam Zamoyski 
 
At about 1.15 in the afternoon of 21 October 1805, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was struck by a 15-millimetre French musket round fired from of the Redoutable, a distance of some 70 feet to HMS Victory’s quarter deck. It fractured his left shoulder, pierced his lung and emerged to sever the spine. 
 
In this fresh and vibrant retelling of the battle of Trafalgar, Paul O’Keeffe traces the course of events both prior and subsequent to that fatal shot: from 6.30 in the morning, as the British ships began their approach towards the enemy fleet, until the cessation of firing that followed the apocalyptic destruction of the French 74-gun Achille at 5.45 in the afternoon. 
 
We also learn about the battle’s dramatic aftermath: how a violent storm destroyed the surviving French and Spanish ships; how news of victory travelled and was celebrated in London; how Nelson’s body was brought home and given a spectacular funeral. 
 
Paying meticulous attention to little explored details, O’Keeffe gives us a front-row view of events. Gripping and immersive, this is a unique account of Trafalgar for a new generation of readers. 
 
‘If you think you know it all about the battle of Trafalgar, think again. Paul O’Keeffe’s new book is full of fascinating information … His book is a must’ Nicholas Best, author of Trafalgar

Trafalgar

Gavin Newsom

California Governor Gavin Newsom's intimate and poignant account of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics 
 
‘Go slow,’ his political elders advised him, but Gavin Newsom has never known such a speed. For Newsom, the California Dream is what lured his father’s family from Ireland, six generations ago. His great-great-grandfather, a cop, walked a beat in San Francisco, where almost 150 years later Newsom would be elected as mayor. 
 
Newsom has never lived anywhere but California. His childhood was spent being tugged between two worlds: his mother worked three jobs in order to care for her children while his father, a close friend of the Getty family, brought Newsom into a world of wealth and connections. But the vantage point was valuable: he inherited his mother’s perseverance and his father’s reverence of California – not only its wildness, but its opportunity. 
 
In Young Man in a Hurry, Newsom traces the forces that have defined his ambitions as a politician. As mayor of San Francisco, he made waves when he violated state law in order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He launched bold efforts to counter climate change, improve mental health care, and enhance gun safety. Elected as governor and entering office into immediate hyper-partisan headwinds from Washington, DC, Newsom has constantly and consistently stuck his neck out. 
 
Here, he reflects on the long journey that ultimately shaped him into one of the most recognizable and accomplished elected officials in America.

Young Man in a Hurry

A Memoir of Discovery

Kate Brown

In the heart of bustling European and American cities lies an overlooked yet vibrant corner of resilience, ingenuity and magic: our gardens. 
 
From pre-industrial England to modern-day Ohio, via the Paris Commune, Barackia in pre-war Berlin, Soviet allotments in Estonia, the orchards tended by Black migrants in Washington and food forests in contemporary Amsterdam, ordinary people, working with each other and with nature, cultivated life in the unlikeliest of places. Over the past three hundred years, these tiny gardens, often born from necessity and shaped by precarity, immigration and environmental crisis, have thrived by recycling nutrients, remedying contaminated soil and transforming how we think about our relationship to the earth. 
 
Tiny Gardens Everywhere is a hymn to the most fertile agriculture in recorded human history, showing that it occurred not on farms – the product of gigantic exertions of fossil fuels and technology – but with little effort in small garden beds. And the resourcefulness, intuition and inherited methods of their growers accomplished many of today’s sustainability goals by producing local, diverse and organic food. 
 
Acclaimed historian Kate Brown unearths the long and battered story of gardeners and their gardens, asking what happens when these urban Edens are not seen as retreats from the city but become part of its social fabric, alive with histories of displacement, conflict and resistance. This is a book about land, but also about community, repair and the quiet revolutions that begin when someone plants a seed in unloved ground.

Tiny Gardens Everywhere

A History of Urban Resilience

Gisèle Pelicot

The extraordinarily powerful memoir by a heroine of our times, whose story inspires change, compassion and courage. 
 
One November day, Gisèle Pelicot was called to a local police station and life as she knew it ended. Her husband of fifty years had been caught by a supermarket guard filming up women’s skirts. But on his computer was shattering evidence: for nearly a decade, he had been secretly drugging and raping her and inviting dozens of strangers into their home to abuse her. 
 
Four years later, he and fifty other men were put on trial and Gisèle’s courage in waiving her right to anonymity made global headlines. ‘Shame must change sides,’ she declared, giving voice and hope to millions. Her words became a rallying cry and her decision marked a turning point in public feeling about sexual violence. 
 
For the first time, and with unwavering honesty and grace, she describes a difficult childhood, first love, her career and motherhood. It is a life in determined search of happiness, both before and after her devastating discovery. She is an ordinary person who faces extraordinary catastrophe, whose example changes the world. 
 
A Hymn to Life is an unforgettable testament and a promise. Its message is one of defiance and renewal – that victims have no reason to feel ashamed; that even after unimaginable betrayal we can go on; that the colour can come back to life. Ultimately, Gisèle Pelicot emerges with a renewed passion and reverence for living, and for love.

A Hymn to Life

Shame has to Change Sides

Kate Pickett

A fairer, healthier, more caring and sustainable society is entirely within our grasp. This book shows us the way. 
 
• How do we ensure that everyone has good health and receives the care they need? 
• How do we provide education that allows every child to flourish? 
• How do we ensure safety, justice and a sustainable environment for all? 
 
Kate Pickett is a world-leading social scientist whose life’s work has been to identify the underlying causes of society’s most important problems – and the long-term solutions that will actually work. 
 
In this inspiring book, she shows that to make a good society – in which everyone has what they need to be well, and everyone would be better off – we must prioritise the health, care, education and rehabilitation of those who have the least and suffer the most. This means confronting once and for all the fundamental problems of poverty and inequality that lie behind all the others. 
 
Drawing on over three decades of evidence, and an array of proven solutions and real-world success stories from across the globe, The Good Society cuts to the essence of the challenges we face and presents us with a practical, galvanising, perspective-shifting vision for how to tackle them.

The Good Society

And How We Make It

Tim Wu

Today’s tech platforms are some of history's most advanced tools for extracting as much as possible – data, attention, profit-margins – from everyone else. As they become essential, we are at risk of building an economy that is perpetually unfair for much of humanity. 
 
Places and spaces where people can exchange information and goods have been at the heart of every economy and every civilization in history, but today’s global platforms - as provided by Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta and others - are different: instead of providing value they extract it, creating vast disparities in wealth and power between the haves and have-nots. For the first time in history, we have the ability to create sustainable prosperity for all, but currently that wealth is concentrated in a tiny number of hands. It isn't abundance that's the problem; it is distribution. 
 
In this brilliantly engaging, frequently surprising account, Tim Wu, one of the world’s foremost experts on anti-monopoly law, draws on fascinating case studies in the history of technology's explosive rise to demonstrate emphatically that breaking monopolies will ultimately unleash creativity and growth - and reduce the vast inequality that inevitably leads to social upheaval and political chaos. Wu also sets out an alternative blueprint that preserves the economic flourishing that platforms catalyze, allowing tech platforms to play a major role in creating and sustaining an economic model of prosperity not just for the few but for the many.

The Age of Extraction

How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

Elizabeth Kolbert

Urgent and inspiring lessons from the frontlines of the climate catastrophe – by one of our most important and influential environmental writers. 
 
From Greenland’s melting ice sheets to New Zealand’s protected mountaintops, we join Kolbert on the road as she travels to the places most dramatically affected by climate change – revealing a world which is both dangerously fragile and remarkably resilient. 
 
We encounter newly discovered species and meet the last surviving members of others, witness the power of rewilding up close and are reminded of the abounding wonders of our natural world. Along the way we also meet countless brilliant individuals who are steering us towards a better future: scientists harnessing AI to commune with whales; activists successfully lobbying for the rights of nature; and ordinary people making extraordinary moves, such as the Samsø islanders leading completely carbon-neutral lives. 
 
The natural world is changing profoundly, and the threats to our planet are only growing more serious. Now is the time to deepen our understanding of this incredible world we are in danger of losing – and to act, while we still can.

Life on a Little-Known Planet

Dispatches from a Changing World

Marc Priestley

From the high-octane, high stakes world of F1, these are the key lessons learned at the top level of the sport – and how to take them out of the pitlane and make them work for you 
 
Foreword by Jake Humphrey, author of HIGH PERFORMANCE. 
 
F1 teams operate at the highest level of competitive sport. With huge sums of money, global prestige and even lives on the line, they work under constant pressure to survive and succeed. 
 
Drawing on his World Championship-winning experience working for McLaren – one of the most storied and successful F1 teams in history – and his work as a high performance coach and mentor, Marc Priestley shows you lessons learned from and amongst the world’s best. He helps you to think about the challenges you face in work or life the way a world-class F1 team might think about those same challenges. 
 
From conquering stress to building a winning team; from responding to failure to celebrating success – and much more – Marc Priestley takes you inside the pitlane to reveal the secrets of F1 success – and how they can work for you.

Pitlane Lessons

What F1 Can Teach You About Life and Work

Aleks Krotoski

From the epic of Gilgamesh to the alchemy of the philosopher’s stone, humanity’s eternal quest for immortality – and its rejuvenation tricks, therapies and tinctures – has always been our most mortal endeavour. 
 
But now the giants of invention and investment are building a fountain of youth of their own creation: one they not only engineer, but also own and control. Death is simply their next problem to solve, the latest expression of a hubris that regards humans as appliances to be fixed and machines to be upgraded. By harnessing technology to ‘cure’ ageing, and funding cutting-edge – and often controversial – research, today’s immortalists are locked in an arms race to be the first to pocket the profits of longevity. 
 
What was once a wild west of experimentation has wormed its way into Washington’s corridors of power. Award-winning broadcaster and academic Aleks Krotoski journeys from those cult fringes to the heartlands of government to meet the moguls, effective altruists, geroscientists and entrepreneurs who are disrupting death. Along the way she encounters radical life extensionists transfusing their teenage son’s blood, transhumanists who want to upload consciousness to the cloud, biohackers flogging AI-powered wellness apps and billionaire kingmakers building brand-new nations. 
 
This razor-sharp, powerful and at times chilling investigation empowers us to consider what it truly means to be human, asking: do we really want a handful of Silicon Valley techno-fundamentalists to be the architects of our forever?

The Immortalists

The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life

Werner Herzog

What if a lie is told to reveal some underlying truth? Are feelings that seem inappropriate, such as hysteria following the death of a celebrity, any less true than the grief we feel over the death of a loved one? Even if the plot of an opera seems preposterous, can’t it still express emotions that ring true with the audience? 
 
At the heart of this fascinating and iconoclastic book lies Werner Herzog’s concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ – a truth that is often hidden behind the facts and our conceptions of reality but can be gleaned through the poetic imagination, in art, literature and cinema, when we open ourselves up to an aesthetic experience. 
 
Written in Herzog’s inimitable style, these stories, anecdotes and reflections take us from present-day deep fakes and the opportunities and perils of AI to ancient Egypt and Rome, where rulers resorted to lies and propaganda in the same way as governments do today; from Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole to alien abduction claims and the making of Herzog’s own films. 
 
With its singular vision and unique voice, The Future of Truth is a compelling meditation on the relationship between fact and fiction – evidence and imagination – by one of today’s most fascinating and idiosyncratic thinkers.

The Future of Truth

Yanis Varoufakis

A captivating portrait of number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis’s political awakening, told through the extraordinary lives of five women, and the West’s tumultuous history from 1924 to the present. 
 
Eleni put an arm around him and said: ‘Come, come, life is ahead of us. Raise your soul now. We have much to do.’ 
 
When Yanis Varoufakis was eight years old, his uncle made him a model airplane out of matchsticks and cigarette papers; all he could find in his cell. Yet, to his dismay, his mother Eleni broke open the fragile gift, revealing a hidden message: instructions for fellow dissidents ahead of their forthcoming court martial. It was 1969 and Uncle Panayis was a political prisoner, captured and tortured for resisting the military dictatorship. 
 
Dramatic in scope and deep in feeling, Raise Your Soul is an intimate portrait of three generations caught up in the whirlwind of history. It is also a remarkable narrative spanning one hundred years, beginning in post-colonial Egypt in the 1920s, and then tracing Greece’s tumultuous century through Nazi occupation, communist resistance, civil war, Cold War fracture, fascist dictatorship, socialist revival and present-day economic crisis. 
 
At its heart are the women whose resilience, defiance and courage inspired the visionary economist most: Eleni, Anna, Trisevgeni, Georgia and Danaë. Through their lives, Varoufakis not only lays bare his own political soul, but confronts the dark forces of authoritarianism that still haunt Europe and beyond, reigniting hope in all of us that we can rise once more.

Raise Your Soul

A Personal History of Resistance

Jason Burke

Immersive, globe-spanning and full of detail and drama, The Revolutionists is an unprecedented account of a seismic decade that transformed the modern world. 
 
In the 1970s, a network of radical extremists terrorised the West with intricately planned plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Among them were the glamorous young Leila Khaled with her jewellery made from grenade rings, the hard-drinking Carlos the Jackal in shades and designer suits, and the radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. United by their hatred of Israel, capitalism and ‘Western imperialism’, they unleashed a series of audacious attacks that brought governments to their knees and glued the world to their televisions in morbid fascination. 
 
Drawing on decades of research, recently declassified government files, secret documents, and original interviews with hijackers, spies, witnesses and victims, Jason Burke takes us into the lives and minds of the perpetrators of these often-deadly operations. Through their eyes – and the eyes of the unrelenting agents who hunted them down – he uncovers a dark, complex world of loyalty, betrayal and commitment to radical change at any cost. 
 
Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and packed with revelations about iconic events such as the deadly attack on the Munich Olympic, Israel’s raid on Entebbe, the Iranian revolution and the rise of Islamic extremism, this is a sweeping, scrupulously reported historical narrative with the pace and suspense of a thriller. 
 
The Revolutionists pitches the reader into these tumultuous times. Ultimately, it shows how a campaign led by secular, leftist revolutionaries gave way to a far more lethal movement of conservative religious fanaticism that would dominate the decades to come. It is impossible to understand the world today without reading this history.

The Revolutionists

The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Nate Soares

AI is the greatest threat to our existence that we have ever faced. 
 
The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction – but it’s not too late to change course. Two pioneering researchers in the field, Eliezer Yudkowsy and Nate Soares, explain why artificial superintelligence would be a global suicide bomb and call for an immediate halt to its development. 
 
The technology may be complex, but the facts are simple: companies and countries are in a race to build machines that will be smarter than any person, and the world is devastatingly unprepared for what will come next. 
 
How could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Will it want to? Will it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares explore the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario, and explain what it would take for humanity to survive. 
 
The world is racing to build something truly new – and if anyone builds it, everyone dies.

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

The Case Against Superintelligent AI

Lady Hale

Our laws and justice system might touch our lives when we have an accident, a wrong is done to us, or we have a family difficulty. They are vast, ancient and cover everything from the personal to the regulation of our government. But to most of us, they are a web of intimidating institutions and practices. 
 
Lady Hale – former President of the Supreme Court and an inspirational figure admired for her historic achievements and for the causes she has championed – shows us how the law is on our side. Taking us into the complexities of real courts and real decisions, we see that we all have rights: schoolchildren, disabled people, workers, minorities and patients. 
 
Here are true stories from every part of the justice system, from lowly benefits tribunals and magistrates’ courts to the lofty heights of the Royal Courts of Justice and the Old Bailey; stories about the dilemmas of deciding what is right and just, and which invite you to say where justice lies before knowing what the courts decided. From mundane situations to the dramatic and the extraordinary, we see how the people whose needs the law is designed to protect actually experience it. 
 
With the Law on Our Side is a citizen’s guidebook to the law in our land, a top-to-bottom tour with a supremely expert guide. In captivating stories, it tells us what the law is about, how it works and most importantly why we should all care about it.

With the Law on Our Side

How the law works for everyone and how we can make it work better

Stephen Greenblatt

Poor boy. Dark star. Spy. Transgressor. Genius. 
 
From one of the greatest writers on the Elizabethan era, Dark Renaissance is the thrilling and subversive life story of Christopher Marlowe – Shakespeare’s inspiration and rival, who helped to bring England out of the cultural darkness and into the light. 
 
In brutally repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry – which to him is a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous scepticism. 
 
What Christopher Marlowe finds on the other side of that door, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of many others, including his youthful collaborator William Shakespeare. By the time of his murder in a Deptford tavern in 1593, the 29-year-old Marlowe will be the most celebrated dramatist of his time. 
 
Stephen Greenblatt grippingly reconstructs the involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his masterpieces about power and its costs. And he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world – involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still. 
 
Dark Renaissance is a scintillating life of a writer whose blazing talent catapulted England from cultural backwater to crucible of creativity.

Dark Renaissance

The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, Christopher Marlowe

James Fox

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores. 
 
Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future. 
 
For as long as there are humans, there will be craft. It is all around us, hiding in plain sight, enriching even the most modest things. And in this increasingly digital age, it is perhaps more valuable than ever. Craftland is a celebration of that deeply necessary connection between our creative instincts and the material world we inhabit, revealing a richer and more connected way of living.

Craftland

A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts and Vanishing Trades

Liam Shaw

Antibiotics: one of humanity’s greatest achievements – but invented by microbes. 
 
An epic narrative of discovery and innovation – but also of extraction and exploitation. 
 
This is the spellbinding story of how we have burned through the fossil fuels of medicine. 
 
Since their advent, antibiotics have saved millions of lives, marking one of the greatest medical advances in our history. Dangerous Miracle weaves together the grand arc of the evolution of antibiotics over millions of years with a history of the past century: first as we mined the earth for naturally occurring antibiotic molecules, then as we learned to synthesise our own. 
 
But like fossil fuels, antibiotics are a finite resource which we’ve regarded as a cheap, everlasting fuel. They are unlike other drugs: every time we use them we increase the possibility of antibiotic resistance emerging, risking their future effectiveness. If we want antibiotics to have a future, we need to prepare to adapt. And fast. 
 
Rich with pioneering characters, great breakthroughs and grave risks, Dangerous Miracle is a grand drama of science, history and politics. It is a revelatory account of the miraculous history and uncertain future of antibiotics from a gifted writer.

Dangerous Miracle

A natural history of antibiotics – and how we burned through them

Dean Spears

Michael Geruso

If we continue as we are, with birth rates falling globally, the world’s human population will peak in the next few decades – and then begin a sudden and rapid decline. It would be easy to think that fewer people would be better: better for the planet, better for the people who remain. In After the Spike, two leading population economists ask us to think again. 
 
Carefully weighing the evidence and the many claims that surround this controversial subject, Dean Spears and Mike Geruso explain why depopulation is not the solution we urgently need for the climate crisis, nor will it improve lives. Far more likely is that the progress which has raised living standards so dramatically over the last two centuries will slow or even reverse. As humanity’s future shrinks, it will become more fragile and less certain, and harder for us to escape from global poverty, disease and injustice. 
 
Halting this decline and stabilising the population need not mean sacrificing a greener future or reverting to past gender inequities. In fact, they argue, it can only be achieved with women’s reproductive rights and individual choice as driving forces. But if we want future generations to enjoy lives even better than our own, it’s time to take seriously society’s collective task of lifting the burdens of parents and other carers. 
 
Deeply reasoned and uncompromisingly humane, After the Spike sheds important light on a dramatic shift in the human story and asks us to consider what future we should want for our planet, our children, and one another.

After the Spike

The Risks of Global Depopulation and the Case for People

Tim Gregory

What if climate change isn't an environmental challenge, but an energy challenge? 
 
In this visionary book, Dr Tim Gregory urges us to rethink the path to net zero. He argues that the solution to climate change lies not simply in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but in fully embracing another energy source that emits zero carbon dioxide: nuclear power. 
 
Gregory dismantles the conventional wisdom that renewables such as wind and solar are completely ‘green’, and debunks myths surrounding nuclear waste and radiation, demonstrating that nuclear power is not only reliable, safe and potent, but the most environmentally responsible way to harvest energy. 
 
Going Nuclear calls for decarbonisation to be the twenty-first century's Apollo programme. By interweaving scientific optimism, myth-busting data, and ambitious policy ideas, Gregory illustrates the boundless potential of the atom beyond just clean energy: from advanced medicine and forensics to atomic gardening and space exploration. 
 
This is a bold case for an alternative, sustainable and prosperous future: a world in which abundant energy is available to all.

Going Nuclear

How the Atom Will Save the World

How the Atom Will Save the Planet

Daniel M Davis

Is it true that orange juice can help ward off colds? How does age affect our immune system? Is mental health really connected to inflammation? 
 
We are surrounded by bold claims and quick fixes for ‘boosting’ our immune health. But one thing the science is clear on is that everyone’s immune system is completely unique – what is good for one person may not work well for another. So how do we separate the bogus claims from the useful advice? And given its sheer complexity, is there anything we can do to improve our immune system? 
 
In this expert guide, world-leading immunologist Daniel M. Davis examines the effects of stress, diet, age, exercise, the microbiome and more on the immune system, punctures the key myths, sorts the fact from the fiction and equips us to make informed choices for ourselves.

Self Defence

A Myth-busting Guide to Immune Health

Neil Mercer

For generations our education system has been built on the twin pillars of literacy and numeracy. But what if a third – and equally vital – pillar has been ignored? Enter oracy: communicating effectively, articulating ideas and engaging with others through spoken language. 
 
In this persuasive and powerful manifesto, Neil Mercer calls for oracy, as a subject and a set of skills, to have equal footing alongside literacy and numeracy. Oracy can and must be taught, so that students leave school not only as readers and writers, but as accomplished speakers and listeners. Mercer incisively shows how oracy education has nothing to do with speaking ‘proper’, or eliminating style, slang and regional accents, but instead about empowering people to find and express their own voice. In fact, oracy is a key driver of cognitive development, academic attainment and social mobility – helping every young person to achieve their potential and challenge the inequalities of language and power. 
 
Oracy: The Transformative Power of Finding Your Voice is the first book to bring this important step change in educational and social thinking to a wider audience. But it is also practical: a guide to how to use talk to teach critical thinking and find creative solutions to life’s burning issues. After all, the impact of oracy doesn’t stop at the school gates: we all need oracy skills for our personal relationships, professional networks and social lives.

Oracy

The Transformative Power of Finding Your Voice

Emily M. Bender

Alex Hanna

A smart, incisive take-down of the bogus claims being made about so-called ‘artificial intelligence’, exposing the real harm these technologies do to our jobs, health, society and environment, who stands to gain from them, and how to fight back. 
 
Is AI going to take over the world? Have scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to replace all our jobs, even creative ones, like doctors, teachers and care-workers? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? 
 
The answers to these questions, as the expert authors of The AI Con make clear, are 'no', 'they wish', 'LOL', and 'definitely not'. In fact, these fears are all symptoms of the hype being used by tech corporations to justify data theft, motivate surveillance capitalism, and devalue human creativity so they can replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. Meanwhile, across healthcare, education, media, government and law-enforcement, ‘AI’ products are already being introduced that are unreliable, ineffective, unjust and dangerous. 
 
Packed with real-world examples, pithy arguments and expert insights, The AI Con arms you to spot AI hype in all its guises, expose the exploitation and power-grabs it aims to hide, and push back against it at work and in your daily life.

The AI Con

How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

Madeline Potter

The Roma is a profoundly personal portrait of a people and their on-going journey, shedding new light on their history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today. It is a history that is not widely known and understood, and that invisibility has created a space where fear and hostility continue to thrive. 
 
Full of fascinating stories and extraordinary individuals, The Roma is a powerful corrective to the stereotyping and prejudices still faced by Romani communities. We meet the Romani artist who chronicled her experiences of the Holocaust in Austria; the boxer who should have become Germany’s light-heavyweight champion only to have his win scratched from the record by the Nazis; and a eighteenth-century Romani woman in London who was accused of kidnapping a girl and sentenced to death only to be exonerated thanks to some detective work by an unconvinced judge. 
 
Throughout, Madeline Potter weaves in her travels though contemporary Romani Europe as well as strands of her own journey as a Romani woman in Romania and now in Britain. Deftly blending explorative history and portraits of a unique and vibrant culture with intimate accounts of racism, The Roma is a celebration of survival – of resilience and resistance in the face of prejudice and persecution.

The Roma

A Travelling History

Eric Klinenberg

What unites us? What divides us? What do we value? Sociologist Eric Klinenberg had been studying what crises reveal about societies for over two decades when his home of New York became the deadliest hot spot of the global pandemic. In this book he tells the deeply reported stories of seven ordinary people trying to survive at the epicentre of the crisis, and combines them with data gathered from around the world to provide unprecedented insights into what societies are made of, why they come together or fall apart, and how they shape our lives.

2020

A Reckoning

Merlin Sheldrake

The smash-hit Sunday Times bestseller now illustrated with over 100 spectacular full-colour images, showcasing this wondrous and wildly various lifeform as never before 
 
'Astonishing ... it seems somehow to tip the natural world upside down' Observer 
 
'Completely mind-blowing ... reads like an adventure story' Sunday Times 
 
*WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY BOOK PRIZE 2021* 
*WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRTITING 2021* 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021* 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021* 
 
The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. They can change our minds, heal our bodies and even help us avoid environmental disaster; they are metabolic masters, earth-makers and key players in most of nature's processes. In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake takes us on a mind-altering journey into their spectacular world, and reveals how these extraordinary organisms transform our understanding of our planet and life itself. 
 
'Dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing' Robert Macfarlane 
'Urgent, astounding and necessary' Helen Macdonald 
'Gorgeous!' Margaret Atwood (on Twitter) 
'Wonderful' Nigella Lawson 
'This book is like one surprise after another' David Byrne 
'Uplifting' Jeanette Winterson 
 
* A Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Times, Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday, BBC Science Focus and Time Book of the Year *

Entangled Life (The Illustrated Edition)

Rachel E. Cargle

From a highly lauded modern voice in feminism and racial justice comes a deeply personal and insightful testament to the power of reimagining to dismantle the frameworks and systems that no longer serve us while building new ones that do. 
 
There are breaking points in all our lives when we realise that the way things have been done before just don't work for us anymore, be it the way we approach our relationships, our belief systems, our work, our education, even our rest. For activist, philanthropist and CEO Rachel E. Cargle, reimagining - the act of creating in our minds that which does not exist but that we believe can and should - has been a lifelong process. Reimagining served as the most powerful catalyst for Cargle's personal transformation from a small-town Christian wife to an incisive queer feminist voice of a generation. 
 
In A Renaissance of Our Own, we witness the sometimes painful but always inspiring breaking points in Cargle's life that fostered a truer identity. These defining moments offer a blueprint for how we must all use our imagination - the space that sees beyond limits - to live in alignment with our highest values and to craft a world independent of oppressive structures, both personal and societal. Cargle now invites you to acknowledge ways of being that stem from societal expectations instead of your personal truth, and to embark on a renaissance of your own. She provides the very tools and prompts that she used to unearth her own truth, tools that opened her up to being a more authentic feminist and purpose-driven matriarchal leader. 
 
A Renaissance of Our Own gives us the courage to look at the world and say, 'I want something different.' It serves as a reminder of the power and possibility of reimagining a life that feels right, all the way down to the marrow of your bones.

A Renaissance of Our Own

A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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