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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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Oleksandr Mykhed

‘We were so happy and didn’t know it…’ 
 
A thirty-three-year-old writer lives in a quiet European suburb with his wife and his dog. His parents have bought an apartment nearby. On weekends they go out for brunch, cook and see friends. Life is good; it is normal. Then the invaders come. 
 
Language of War is about what happens when your world changes overnight. When you wake up to the sound of helicopters and the smell of gunpowder. When your home is hit by shells or broken into by gunmen, and you spend another night in a basement-turned-bomb shelter. When, even though you’ve never held a weapon before, you realise the only choice is to fight back. It is about things one can never forget, or forgive. 
 
Bringing together Oleksandr Mykhed’s vivid day-by-day chronicles of the invasion of Ukraine with a chorus of other voices – his family, friends in exile, those who have fought and have witnessed unimaginable atrocities – this book is both a record, and a reckoning. Haunting and timeless, it asks how it is possible to find the words to describe a new reality; how you can still make sense of the world when the only language you can speak is the language of war.

The Language of War

Joe Dunthorne

Joe Dunthorne had always wanted to write about his great-grandfather, Siegfried: an eccentric scientist who invented radioactive toothpaste and a Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home. 
 
The only problem was that Siegfried had already written the book of his life – an unpublished, two-thousand page memoir so dry and rambling that none of his living descendants had managed to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally read the manuscript himself, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew… 
 
Thus begins a mystery which stretches across the twentieth century and around the world, from Berlin to Ankara, New York, Glasgow and eventually London – a mystery about the production of something much more sinister than toothpaste. On the trail of one ‘jolly grandpa’ with a patchy psychiatric history and an encyclopaedic knowledge of poison gases, Joe Dunthorne is forced to confront the uncomfortable questions that lie at the heart of every family. Can we ever understand where we come from? Is every family in the end a work of fiction? And even if the truth can be found – will we be able to live with it? 
 
Children of Radium is a remarkable, searching meditation on individual and collective inheritance. Witty and wry, deeply humane and endlessly surprising, it considers the long half-life of trauma, the weight of guilt and the ever-evasive nature of the truth.

Children of Radium

A Buried Inheritance

Yehudis Fletcher

As the daughter of a rabbi raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, Yehudis struggled to conform to the strict expectations placed upon her and her siblings. Outspoken, curious and desperate to know more about G-d, she felt fenced in by arbitrary rules and questions left unanswered. 
 
As she grew older, these restrictions intensified and her questions for G-d hung heavier than ever. Repeatedly let down by those who were supposed to protect her and pushed on to a path that seemed to take her further away from who she really was, she began to yearn for a life where she could embrace all facets of herself. 
 
When Yehudis’s sexuality came to blows with the expectations of her family and her community, the pressure to inhabit a binary position reached fever pitch. Confronted with either losing the faith she loved or losing herself, Yehudis made the most daring decision of all: she decided to stay. 
 
Wry and exhilarating, Chutzpah is a fearless exploration of what is possible when one person simply refuses to choose between abandoning their roots and abandoning themselves.

Chutzpah

A memoir of faith, sexuality and daring to stay

Didier Eribon

A few years ago, Didier Eribon’s mother began to lose her physical and cognitive autonomy. After several months of resistance, Eribon and his brothers were compelled to place her in a nursing home. A few short weeks later, his mother passed away. 
 
In The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman, Eribon continues the historical, political and personal reflection he began with Returning to Reims, this time turning his attention to the end of life. Tracing his mother’s rapid decline, and drawing on works by Simone de Beauvoir, Norbert Elias, Annie Ernaux and Michel Foucault, among others, Eribon transmutes his rage, sadness and the shame over her death into a strikingly nuanced portrait of the woman who raised him. Here, Eribon asks: how does our society treat the elderly? What is the place of bodies that can no longer assemble, discuss freedom or protest? Can the completely dependent speak for themselves – and if not, who can speak for them? 
 
An honest, original and wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between ageing and class, politics and literature, this is a profound meditation on a fundamental human experience, too often overlooked.

The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman

Liliane Lijn

In 1958, talented and fearless and eighteen years old, Liliane Lijn left her family home and moved to Paris alone to become an artist. Once there, she found an art world filled with the wild energy of creative revolution – peopled and controlled almost entirely by men. 
 
In the years that followed, Lijn built a life for herself in the city. She embraced the hectic bohemian spirit of the Left Bank. She befriended artists, painters, poets, gallerists and revolutionaries, as the late Surrealists gave way to a burgeoning Pop Art movement. She had disastrous love affairs with difficult men. She experimented boldly, creating ground-breaking sculptures with light, text and movement. And as her profile steadily grew, she was told again and again that there are no great women artists: ‘There never have been.’ 
 
Liquid Reflections is her memoir of these years of experiment and adventure – years when Lijn was constantly in motion, from Paris to New York to Venice to Athens, from paper and canvas to wax and Perspex to oil and water. In love, she became pregnant but rebelled against the idea that a woman could not be both a great artist and a mother. 
 
And she sought – and found – radical pleasure in the act of creative expression and in the living, sensuous world around her. 
 
Based on personal diaries from the time, this is a riveting and revelatory account of a singular coming of age: a glittering portrait of the artist as a young woman. 
 
'I wrote LIQUID REFLECTIONS because I wanted to take my readers on the journey I made to become an artist. It's the story of an idealistic, inspired young woman who refuses to accept the prejudices of her time. Becoming an artist was also a search for my own identity…’ Liliane Lijn

Liquid Reflections

Caroline Elton

Meet Lionel, Caroline’s older brother. Born in the late 1940s, when little was known about autism, Lionel was considered a peculiarity. From the beginning, he was a silent child, oblivious to the people around him and intent only on playing with his toy trucks. By the time he turned four, doctors declared him ineducable and advised that he be institutionalised – a shockingly standard practise at the time. 
 
No one could have predicted that Lionel would go onto music college and find his place in the world. With the help of his mother – who refused to send him away – Lionel lived a life that was certainly unusual but never dull. He had perfect pitch, could multiply three-figure numbers in his head, or work out which day of the week you were born on, the instant you told him your birthday. 
 
But when Lionel’s mother dies, and shortly after he is diagnosed with cancer, his two sisters struggle to fill the void – to become Lionel’s caretaker and support him as they had promised their mother. Looking After is both a portrait of one autistic man's remarkable life, and a heart-rending story of how one family learnt to care for each other, to deal with loss and to be by each other’s side at the very end.

Looking After

Autism, Family and End-of-Life Care

A Portrait of My Autistic Brother

Emma Barnett

The essential companion for every mother embarking on maternity leave 
 
'In one important sense maternity leave is poorly named, as it involves no actual leave. You are constantly on, even when your offspring is having a nap. There is nothing restful about it. In another sense maternity leave is aptly named, because it’s a period of leave from all you know: taking leave of one’s mind, body, job, and relationships' 
 
When Emma Barnett began her second maternity leave, she realized that, despite having been there before, as soon as her first leave finished the rose-tinted lenses had descended and she immediately forgot what the experience was actually like when you’re in it. This collective forgetting, which leads to well-meaning comments such as ‘enjoy every minute’ and ‘treasure this special time’, is doing a disservice to women, leaving them unprepared for the more complicated reality of what it means to be on maternity service. 
 
In this warmly reassuring, refreshingly honest book, Emma sets out to capture this reality, in real time while on her latest tour of duty. She isn’t offering advice on sleep-training or weaning or helping your baby reach milestones. Instead, this book is a celebration and acknowledgement of the work of being on maternity leave, with its soaring highs and challenging lows, and its impact on how women feel about our purpose and ourselves.

Maternity Service

A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave

Tao Leigh Goffe

Our planet is on the precipice of dramatic ecological breakdown and climate despair is at an all-time high. But there are many communities who have survived beyond the environmental destruction wrought on them by colonialism – and they hold the solutions for climate repair. 
 
Using the Caribbean as a case study, Tao Leigh Goffe traces the vibrant and complex history of the islands back to 1492 and the arrival of Christopher Columbus when the Caribbean became the subject of Western exploitation. Charting the human and ecological forces that have shaped the islands, Goffe examines the legacy of fierce warrior Queen Nanny of the Maroons, engages in pressing cultural debate about stolen artefacts and human remains which are kept hidden in museum archives, and visits Indigenous farming cooperatives who are using ancestral knowledge to rebuild their communities. 
 
Using the Caribbean as a both a warning and a guide, Dark Laboratory takes hopeful and galvanizing teachings from the islands communities to offer illuminating solutions to the ecological crisis. From guano to sugarcane, coral bleaching to invasive mongoose populations, Dark Laboratory is a lyrical, vibrant and urgent investigation into the greatest threat facing humanity.

Dark Laboratory

On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

Viv Groskop

'Full of helpful concepts... I'm finding it very useful.' Philippa Perry 
'Plenty of tips and tricks.' Sunday Times 
 
Most books about public speaking don't tell you what to do when you open your mouth and nothing comes out. And they don't tell you how to get over the anxiety about performance that most people naturally have. They don't tell you what to do in the moments when you are made, as a woman, to feel small. They don't tell you how to own the room. 
 
This book does. 
 
From the way Michelle Obama projects 'happy high status', and the power of J.K. Rowling's understated speaking style, to Virginia Woolf's leisurely pacing and Oprah Winfrey's mastery of inner conviction, what is it that our heroines do to make us sit up and listen - really listen - to their every word? And how can you achieve that impact in your own life? 
 
Here's how.

How to Own the Room

Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking

Nora Ephron

Soak up the wisdom of the inimitable Nora Ephron with this stunning 20th-anniversary special edition, featuring a foreword by Dolly Alderton. The perfect gift for yourself or a friend. 
 
'Ephron has an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are' NEW YORK TIMES. 
 
'The book that most influenced me' LILY ALLEN 
 
Acclaimed Hollywood filmwriter and director Nora Ephron examines the indignities of ageing in a collection of wickedly witty autobiographical pieces such as 'I Hate My Handbag', 'Blind as a Bat' and 'What I Wish I'd Known'. I Feel Bad About My Neck offers the consolation that no matter how much your neck sags, your boobs droop, your skin wrinkles and your children don't appreciate you, someone has been there before you. 
 
Nora Ephron captures the essence of what it means to be an older woman in an irresistible, laugh-out-loud funny, frank and unexpectedly moving book that every woman should have on their shelves.

I Feel Bad About My Neck

And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman

with a new introduction from Dolly Alderton

Hilton Als

What are the forces that shape us? In The Women, Hilton Als explores—with breath taking originality—the role of sexual and racial identity in marginalized lives. With a blend of fact and fiction, Als brings to vivid life a number of extraordinary characters, including: his mother, a singular woman whose West Indian heritage and determination inspired her son to write; Malcolm X's mother, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's burgeoning misogyny and fear; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who deeply empathized with white gay men; and Owen Dodson, teacher and poet, who played an important role in the author's development as a gay man, and thinker. 
 
Combining memoir, cultural history, social theory and storytelling, The Women is a profoundly innovative work which has inspired a generation of writers. Here, Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to scrutiny, showing ‘no mercy but every tenderness’. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

The Women

Lindsey Burrow

The life-affirming, No.1 bestselling memoir of Lindsey Burrow, the working mother of three young children who has inspired the nation through her selfless commitment to husband Rob Burrow (CBE), the rugby league legend she cared for throughout his heroic battle with motor neurone disease (MND). 
 
A Pride of Britain Award Winner 
 
Take Care: A Memoir of Love, Family & Never Giving Up explores the deepest reserves of resilience, personal sacrifice and hope that Lindsey Burrow exhibited on a daily basis when her family’s life was upended by the terminal MND diagnosis. Juggling her day job for the NHS as a physiotherapist, with round-the-clock care for Rob, who couldn’t move or talk, and could only eat with Lindsey’s assistance, she simultaneously raised her brilliant young family and helped to raise awareness for MND. The efforts of Rob, Lindsey and Kevin Sinfield have raised over £15 million for charity. 
 
In 2024, Lindsey presented her debut ITV1 documentary, ‘Who Cares for Our Carers?’ which highlighted the emotional and practical hardships faced by thousands of her fellow unpaid carers, whose hidden work is worth an estimated £162bn a year in the UK, the equivalent of another NHS. Told in Lindsey’s characteristically humble, charming and inspirational style, Take Care explores her life and shares her honest experiences of finding strength in the good and the bad times, in order to offer readers and families hope to overcome challenges in their own lives. The book sheds a light on the many families across the UK who care for their loved ones with little support. Finally, the book is a rousing call to action, for us all as a society to take better care of one another.

Take Care

A Memoir of Love, Family & Never Giving Up

Wes Moore

A powerful memoir from 'the Democrats’ most talented political newcomer since Barack Obama' (Time) 
 
'Spectacular . . . Wes Moore is a proper leader' George Clooney 
 
 
Two kids named Wes Moore shared much more than a name; they shared remarkably similar circumstances. Both grew up father­less and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on street corners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police. 
 
How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and leading politician, while the other became a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? 
Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer this profound ques­tion. 
 
In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also featured an article about a botched armed robbery in which a police officer had been killed. Two of the suspects had gone on the run. One was named Wes Moore. 
 
After following the case to its conclusion, Wes Moore wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter asked the questions that had been haunting him: who are you? How did this happen? 
 
Through dozens of letters and prison visits, over the course of years, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own. 
 
Told in alternating dramatic narratives, The Other Wes Moore takes readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, and sheds a powerful light on modern America. 
 
 
'I always walk away from a conversation with Wes Moore with a new perspective…new ideas...with a new way of seeing things...with a new burst of positive energy.' Oprah Winfrey

The Other Wes Moore

Donna Leon

Whether walking along the canals of Venice or teaching English to Iranian pilots, interviewing blood diamond dealers or reading Great Expectations, Donna Leon has found inspiration in the strangest of places. 
 
In this engaging collection of stories on writing, reading, teaching and Venice, Leon offers new insight into the moments that shaped her into a celebrated, internationally bestselling author. Infused with her ever-present and delightful sense of humour and irony, she is as good a storyteller about herself as she is a chronicler of Guido Brunetti’s crime adventures. Readers will be as caught up in her world as she is in his.

Backstage

Stories of a writing life

Alice Mah

'Part of me knew what the hungry ghosts wanted all along, what they still want. It is not vengeance. No, they want something else, but we refuse to listen. They want us to face up to our broken obligations.' 
 
Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors, making offerings of food and incense to prevent them from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune. Yet for the past century, a time ruptured by war and revolution, many tombs have been left unattended. Following a record year of wildfires, Alice Mah returns to her family’s rice village in South China, and discovers that her ancestors are almost forgotten, and there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid. 
 
Here Mah chronicles her journey from the rice villages of South China to her home in post-industrial England, through the Chinatowns of Western Canada where she grew up, to the isles and industry of Scotland where she now lives. As years pass and fires rage on, she becomes increasingly troubled by her ancestors’ neglected graves. Her research on pollution gives way to growing eco-anxiety, culminating in a crisis of spiritual belief. 
 
A haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, Red Pockets confronts the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, while searching for an acceptable offering. What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?

Red Pockets

An Offering

Erling Kagge

‘Extraordinary . . . an elegant travel account, a learned history and a psychological thriller wrapped in one’ ANNE APPLEBAUM 
 
‘Erling Kagge is a deeply thoughtful writer . . . The North Pole proves to be the perfect subject for him’ MICHAEL PALIN 
 
‘The book of a lifetime, from a rare writer-adventurer whose obsession and passion for his subject know no bounds’ ELIF SHAFAK 
 
‘A beautiful book’ ALAIN DE BOTTON 
 
Throughout recorded human time, few places on Earth have inspired as much fascination as the North Pole. This is an otherworldly place where the sun rises and stays aloft for six whole months before setting, plunging the expanse of ice and water into darkness for half a year. 
 
Foot-stepping alongside Erling Kagge, who ventured to the North Pole in the spring of 1990, we hear the story of the North Pole as never told before. From Herodotus who first wondered what the northernmost point of our planet might be like, to the intrepid early cartographers who mapped the world, and the legendary expeditions led by Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary – the first polar explorer global celebrities – who were in the grip of a dangerous obsession to get to the North Pole first. What emerges is a new history of the world, spanning thousands of years, as seen from the ‘silver-shining vacantness’ of the North Pole. 
 
Blending memories from Kagge’s own 1990 trip with this epic history, The North Pole is an adventure story, a book about enacting hidden human dreams, about difficult fathers and their difficult sons, and a psychological record of what it means to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the face of adversity. It is for anyone who’s gazed out at the horizon – and wondered what happens if you just keep walking. 
 
'As an explorer Erling Kagge is world class; as a writer he is equally gifted’ SIR RANULPH FIENNES

The North Pole

The History of an Obsession

Bill Gates

Everyone is programmed a bit differently. Source Code tells the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today. Taking us back to his beginnings, Gates describes with candour his childhood in Seattle, the centrality of family – his close relationship with his card-playing grandmother and his demanding but caring parents – his struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, his first deep friendships and the impact of losing his closest friend. 
 
We follow his extraordinary development as a restless teenager who discovered a love of coding and computing at the dawn of a new era, and see the earliest signs of the phenomenal business acumen that led him to drop out of Harvard at the age of 20 to devote all his energies to Microsoft. We also learn what distinguishes him from others in his line: from his first encounters with the three Steves – Jobs, Wozniak and Ballmer – to when Microsoft signed its first deal with Apple in the late 1970s and beyond, Gates never forgot his mother’s reminder that he was merely a steward of any wealth that he gained. 
 
This warm and inspiring book allows readers to understand Gates's energy and ambition – and to see how he sets himself in the world.

Source Code

My Beginnings

Jason Allen-Paisant

The Possibility of Tenderness is a personal history narrated through the lens of the ‘grung’ and plants. It’s also a people’s history of the land, a family saga, an archival detective story through time. It’s the migration tale of a young scholar who arrives in Britain from rural Jamaica to study at Oxford to achieve ‘upward social mobility’ and who now lives in Roundhay Leeds. Suddenly, amidst his journey of dreams and class aspiration, the plants and people of his native district, Coffee Grove, begin to offer different ways of living, alternative dreams, and the possibility of tenderness and the permission to roam England. 
 
Marrying the local and the familial with global history and unfolding as a timely and immersive tale of land, environment, and the world of plants, The Possibility of Tenderness reveals how the history of a tiny rural village in a mountainous region of Jamaica is interlinked with that of modern Britain. And, also what that rural village can teach us about leisure, land ownership and reclamation today. 
 
Mama, the author’s grandmother, is a central protagonist of the story. Alongside her, herbalists, plant workers, farmers, and plant lovers help forge an intimate portrait of Coffee Grove, as do the plants themselves; fever grass, jointa, search mi heart, leaf of life, helping Allen-Paisant revise his sense of self and solidify a new understanding of his place in the world. 
 
The Possibility of Tenderness is a cross-pollinating book about the transformative power of plants, the legacy of dreams, and the lessons they offer for living with the earth.

The Possibility of Tenderness

A Jamaican memoir of plants and dreams

John Davidson

The funny and moving autobiography offering extraordinary insight into what it is like to live with a severe form of Tourette's Syndrome. From the award-winning Scottish campaigner. 
 
NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT ARAMAYO AND MAXINE PEAKE. 
 
'An astonishing tale about an amazing man.' 
- JOJO MOYES, author of Me Before You and Someone Else's Shoes 
 
'Funny and heartfelt ... this skilfully told tale deserves praise for how it lets us non-sweary people see inside the ordinary, albeit anxious, mind of someone with Tourette syndrome.' THE TIMES 
 
Born in the 1970s on the Scottish Borders, John’s was ten when his tics first arrived, as if from nowhere. Previously a happy, popular, football-mad boy he was labelled disruptive, rude, and even mad. As his condition progressed, from blinks and jerks to involuntary rude and obscene shouting, John was bullied, rejected - alienated from his family and a society that had no idea what to make of him. 
 
Hospitalized and drugged for months, it was only an extraordinary and transformative friendship, and John’s dogged optimism, that turned his life around, making I Swear an inspirational story of triumph over adversity. 
 
Through John’s eyes, we see Tourette’s not just as a medical condition, but as a lens through which we can all better understand the importance of human connection. And how essential, as well as ultimately rewarding, it can be to keep going and never give up. 
 
'This superb book is an engaging and fascinating account of what it's like to live with Tourette's.' DAILY MAIL 
 
'Brave, shocking, funny and moving ... This is a really important book.'

I Swear

My Life with Tourette’s

Diane Keaton

In her one-of-a-kind voice, Diane Keaton shares the wisdom she’s accumulated through the years as a mother, daughter, actress, artist, and international style icon. From a mortifying encounter with a makeup artist to an awkward excursion to Victoria’s Secret with her teenage daughter, Keaton reveals candid moments from her life in and out of the public eye. She recounts her experiences with the many men in her life—including Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino—shows how our ideals of beauty change as we age, and explains why a life well lived may be the most beautiful thing of all.

Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty

Gerald Durrell

A final posthumous work from the beloved conservationist and naturalist Gerald Durrell, to celebrate the centenary of his birth, with a new foreword by HRH Princess Anne. 
 
‘Gerald Durrell was magic’ SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH • ‘One of the finest and most lyrical nature writers in English’ OBSERVER 
 
Myself and Other Animals is a new book mosaicked from unpublished autobiographies, uncollected pieces and previously published extracts from Durrell’s work and archives. The result is an extraordinary journey through Durrell’s life in his own words, edited and introduced by his widow Lee Durrell. 
 
Drawing on a memoir that Durrell started writing before he became too ill to continue it, and an unfinished book from a trip to Australia in 1969 to the Great Barrier Reef, Northern Territory and Queensland, here is the unvarnished story of Durrell’s life, from touching family tributes to golden bats and pink pigeons. 
 
Moving from India to England and then to the always sun-lit Corfu, told with dry wit and insight into our fellow animals, here is the vivid finale of one of Britain’s most beloved conservationists and prose stylists.

Myself and Other Animals

Alex James

There is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many years, all our lives did, and actually, I’d suddenly realised, they did still. 
 
One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. 
 
This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex describes how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond. Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ somehow organised an entire festival of his own, and tried to perfect the recipe for a giant Frazzle. 
 
Over the Rainbow is a heartfelt and hilarious account of what it feels like to be catapulted back into the limelight with one of the world’s biggest bands. It is a love letter to Blur, to friendship and to music. And it shows us all that, however old – or hungover – we might feel, nothing’s ever truly over: it’s always just the start of the next thing.

Over the Rainbow

Tales from an Unexpected Year

Al Pacino

From one of the most iconic actors in the history of film, an astonishingly revelatory account of a creative life in full 
 
To the wider world, Al Pacino exploded onto the scene like a supernova. He landed his first leading role, in The Panic in Needle Park, in 1971, and by 1975, he had starred in four movies—The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon—that were not just successes but landmarks in the history of film. Those performances became legendary and changed his life forever. Not since Marlon Brando and James Dean in the late 1950s had an actor landed in the culture with such force. 
 
But Pacino was in his mid thirties by then, and had already lived several lives. A fixture of avant-garde theater in New York, he had led a bohemian existence, working odd jobs to support his craft. He was raised by a fiercely loving but mentally unwell mother and her parents after his father left them when he was young, but in a real sense he was raised by the streets of the South Bronx, and by the troop of buccaneering young friends he ran with, whose spirits never left him. After a teacher recognized his acting promise and pushed him toward New York’s fabled High School of Performing Arts, the die was cast. In good times and bad, in poverty and in wealth and in poverty again, through pain and joy, acting was his lifeline, its community his tribe. 
 
Sonny Boy is the memoir of a man who has nothing left to fear and nothing left to hide. All the great roles, the essential collaborations, and the important relationships are given their full due, as is the vexed marriage between creativity and commerce at the highest levels. The book’s golden thread, however, is the spirit of love and purpose. Love can fail you, and you can be defeated in your ambitions—the same lights that shine bright can also dim. But Al Pacino was lucky enough to fall deeply in love with a craft before he had the foggiest idea of any of its earthly rewards, and he never fell out of love. That has made all the difference. 
 
_________________________________________________________________________ 
 
Praise for Al Pacino: 
 
‘Al Pacino is magical’ Martin Scorsese 
 
‘A legend’ Francis Ford Coppola 
 
‘So unique and special’ Robert De Niro 
 
‘A singular, special talent, whose work stands the test of time’ Robin Williams 
 
‘A wicked sense of humour’ Oliver Stone 
 
‘Charming, hilarious, a nonstop talker. There is an aspect of him that is like a lost orphan, like this kind of crazy idiot savant’ Diane Keaton 
 
‘As Michael in The Godfather, Pacino was everything I wanted that character to be on screen. I couldn’t believe it. It was, in my eyes, a perfect performance, a work of art’ Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather 
 
‘Comedic, talented, and certifiably insane’ Johnny Depp 
 
‘Al is money, the man in charge, making it happen. I got to act with Al Pacino and it was worth more to me than anything’ Samuel L Jackson 
 
‘A marvellous actor and man’ Sean Connery 
 
‘The depth of Al Pacino's artistry is only more overwhelmed by the generosity of his spirit and his warmth. Al Pacino is Van Gogh. Modigliani' Andy Garcia 
 
‘The greatest actor in the world’ Jamie Foxx

Sonny Boy

A Memoir

Elif Shafak

Postnatal depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and – like most of its victims – Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them. But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how, ‘for the first time in my adult life... words wouldn't speak to me’. 
 
As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences. In her beautiful and intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed.

Black Milk

On Motherhood and Writing

Florian Gadsby

Florian Gadsby has devoted his life to pottery, refining his technique towards the point of perfection - and as his skill has grown, so has his social media following, which today numbers in the millions. Based at a studio in North London, he releases three new collections per year, characterized by simple forms and sharp edges, which sell out in a matter of minutes. 
 
In By My Hands, Florian tells the story of his artistic awakening, his education in England, Ireland and Japan, and of the sheer discipline which has led him to become the cultural sensation he is today. Arguing for the value in dedicating yourself to a craft, Florian weaves anecdotes about particular pots and processes into the narrative of his life, exploring what he has learnt from specific pieces he was taught to throw during his apprenticeships and how they have informed his philosophy and approach to his work. 
 
By My Hands is an ode to the beauty of small things, such as a simple hand-thrown mug or bowl, which can brighten life's daily rituals and make them more meaningful - as well as an inspiring testament to the power of perseverance.

By My Hands

A Potter’s Apprenticeship

Baroness Lola Young

Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice, and a crossbench peer. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children's homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood. 
 
In Eight Weeks, through her care records, fragments of memory, and her imagination where parts of her story are missing, Lola assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in a system that often made her feel invisible and unwanted. Alongside glimpses into her life as a peer, activist, and campaigner it tells the powerful story of her determination to defy the odds. 
 
Eight Weeks is a spirited, eye-opening and beautifully written account of being a child in care and a Black child in a white family and is a vital part of contemporary Black British history.

Eight Weeks

Looking Back, Moving Forwards, Defying the Odds

Elliot Mintz

'A charmingly modest tale of a long brush with stardom, with all its pleasures and frustrations' Kirkus 
'A captivating and intimate window into the complicated lives of one of rock’s most legendary couples' Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) 
_____________ 
 
'It’s hard to define the relationship Elliot had with our family. But I ultimately think the best word to describe him is: friend. Perhaps our closest friend. The reason I wanted Elliot to write a book, first and foremost, is because he is a good storyteller. The fact that he was there in the lives of John and Yoko (and mine), is really just icing on the cake. I like hearing him talk, and I’m sure you will, too' Sean Ono Lennon 
 
From the moment he interviewed Yoko Ono on his late night radio show in September 1971, Elliot Mintz’s life would never the same again. That phone call would lead him to an intense and revealing friendship with Yoko and her husband, John Lennon, until John’s untimely death in 1980, and beyond, to the present day. 
 
In 1971, then the talk host on American airwaves, Elliot Mintz was talking to all of the major figures in the burgeoning West Coast music scene when he was asked whether he would interview Yoko about her new album. Their talk quickly lead to other private calls and then to John Lennon, with whom he quickly formed a firm bond. Those conversations became hours-long epics, to the extent that Elliot had another phone line put in, for which only two people had the number - John and Yoko. 
 
The aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup ushered in a tumultuous decade. Elliot witnessed it, or heard all about it, at close hand including the unbearable cost of such fame when John and Yoko separated for what became known as his ‘lost weekend’. There was joy when their son Sean was born and the creative rebirth that was the multi-platinum selling triumph, Double Fantasy. But then there was unimaginable tragedy too when John was brutally murdered in December 1980.

We All Shine On

John, Yoko, and Me

Rebecca Hall

Hugo Martinez

Women warriors planned and led slave revolts on slave ships during the passage across the Atlantic. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history. 
 
In Wake Rebecca Hall, a historian, a granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery, tells their story. With in-depth archival research and a measured use of historical imagination, she constructs the likely pasts of women rebels who fought for freedom on slave ships bound to America, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. Beneath both is Hall's own tale: of a life lived in the shadow of slavery and its consequences. 
 
Strikingly illustrated in black and white, Wake explores both a personal and a global legacy. Part graphic novel, part memoir, it is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake. 
 
'Not only a riveting tale of Black women's leadership of slave revolts but an equally dramatic story of the engaged scholarship that enabled its discovery' - Angela Davis

Wake

The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

Jenni Fagan

WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 
 
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non Fiction 
 
Shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 
 
'An astonishing story of survival' Guardian 
'Extraordinary and uplifting' Observer 
'A triumphant tale of survival' Financial Times 
'An extraordinary book' Literary Review 
'To read this book is to be reminded of the importance of kindness, of beauty and of storytelling' iPaper 
'A phenomenal memoir. I am in awe' Amy Liptrot 
'Beautiful, deep, transfixing . . . it will burn a home in your heart' Lemn Sissay 
'Essential reading, life-changing ... Beautiful, earth-shattering and unforgettable' Samantha Morton 
'Mesmerising, heart-breaking. I'll never forget it' Annie Mac 
'Should be required reading' Claire Fuller 
 
The government told a story about me before I was born. 
 
Jenni Fagan was property of the state before birth. She drew her first breath in care and by the age of seven, she had lived in fourteen different homes and had her name changed multiple times. 
 
Twenty years after her first attempt to write this powerful memoir, Jenni is finally ready to share her account. 
Ootlin is a journey through the broken UK care system – it is one of displacement and exclusion, but also of the power of storytelling. It is about the very human act of making meaning from adversity.

Ootlin

‘A renegade who was right . . . He was truly a man before his time’ SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH 
 
‘An account of Durrell’s very first job, as an animal handler at Whipsnade, just after the end of the Second World War, an experience that helped fashion his philosophy of animal keeping’ GUARDIAN 
 
At the age of two I made up my mind quite firmly and unequivocally that the only thing I wanted to do was to study animals. Nothing else interested me. 
 
Republished to celebrate the centenary of his birth, here is Gerald Durrell’s legendary account of his coming-of-age as a reader, writer and budding naturalist at Whipsnade Zoo. He joyfully recaptures the glory of this single formative year where, in the crucible of muck, operatic brown bears, and reading Pliny by night and tending to the lions by day, the passionate worldview of one of the century’s great animal-loving renegades came into full view. 
 
‘One of the finest and most lyrical nature writers in English’ OBSERVER

Beasts in My Belfry

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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