Aeschylus

Aesop lived in the early sixth century BC on the island of Samos, which lies off the coast of modern Turkey. He originally came from Thrace which was a separate country in those days, though it now forms part of Greece and Bulgaria. Very little is known about his life except that he worked as a slave on Samos for a master called Iadmon, and that he became a very famous storyteller. He was so famous that almost any fable which could have been told by him became attributed to him.

Aesop

Afsaneh Knight

Afsaneh Moqadam

Afua Hirsch is a writer, filmmaker, and journalist. She is the author of Brit(ish), the Sunday Times bestseller that explores Britishness, identity and belonging, for which she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction. She co-presented Enslaved, a 6-part series about the transatlantic slave trade with Samuel L Jackson. She is the presenter of the Audible podcast series We Need To Talk About the British Empire, and Africa Rising, an ongoing flagship series about art and culture for the BBC, through her production company Born in Me Productions. She is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

Afua Hirsch

AGAPI STASSINOPOULOS is an author, blogger and international speaker who inspires audiences around the world. She has spoken at many corporations and conferences, such as Nike Women, Starbucks,Time Inc., Virgin, Johnson &amp; Johnson and the American Heart Foundation. She was born in Athens and trained in London at RADA before gaining a Master’s in psychology at the University of Santa Monica. She has collaborated with her sister, Arianna Huffington, to develop talks and seminars, and has worked with the Oprah Winfrey network. She is currently hosting a new podcast series in collaboration with The Huffington Post, entitled ‘Sundays with Agapi’, which includes guided meditations and interviews with prominent guests. She lives in Los Angeles.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Agatha Christie

Aggie MacKenzie

Aghnia Mardiyah is a London-based Illustrator and Character Designer with a passion for children's books and animation. She is drawn to fun, bright and vibrant colours. When she isn't disappearing under piles of work, she loves to travel! Exploring foreign places, exciting new sights and sensations is what inspires her the most!

Aghnia Mardiyah

Agnes Callard is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, Boston Review, and penned a monthly column for the Point. From 2019 to 2020, she held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the research that contributes to this book.

Agnes Callard

Agnes Jekyll

Agnes Bertha Marshall (24 August 1855-29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur who became a leading cookery writer, dubbed the 'Queen of Ices'. Her 1888 cookery book included a recipe for 'cornets with cream', possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone. Marshall was born in Walthamstow. She wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs A B Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs A B Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894).

Agnes Marshall

Agnes Prus

Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Litro, 3:AM Magazine, and Asymptote amongst other places. His piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction for The Outpost, runner-up in the Lifted Brow &amp; RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. Hyper is his first novel.

Agri Ismaïl

Aharon Appelfeld authored more than 45 acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction and received many international awards including the MLA Commonwealth Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, the prix Médicis étranger, the Israel prize, and the Nelly Sachs prize. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine) in 1932, he survived the Holocaust and passed away in Israel in 2018.

Aharon Appelfeld

Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist and human rights activist based in London. He is the co-founder and director of We Are Not Numbers and a journalist with Palestine Deep Dive. Ahmed holds a degree in English Literature from Al-Azhar university in Gaza, and an MA in International Journalism from Leeds University, where he was a Chevening Scholar. 
 
Pam Bailey is a social-justice activist and journalist based in Washington DC. She lived and worked in the Gaza Strip following the 2008/9 Israeli assault, and co-founded We Are Not Numbers. Today, in addition to her ongoing dedication to the Palestinian cause, she dedicates herself to two nonprofits that advocate for people detained in American prisons -- including one she co-founded in 2020, called More Than Our Crimes.

Ahmed Alnaouq

Ahmed Errachidi

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Ahron Bregman is the author of four books about Israel and the Arabs: The Fifty Years War (with Jihan el Tahri), Israel's Wars, A History of Israel and Elusive Peace. He teaches at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Ahron Bregman

Ai Qing is regarded as one of the finest modern Chinese poets, whose free verse was influential in the development of new poetry in China.

Ai Qing

Ai Weiwei

Aidan Chambers was born in County Durham in 1934. After national service in the Royal Navy he became a teacher and then, for seven years, a monk. His young adult novels have been widely acclaimed, with POSTCARDS FROM NO-MAN'S LAND winning the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the US Michael L Printz Award. With his wife Nancy he ran Signal magazine and he has served as the president of the School Library Association. His devoted services to children's literature were recognised by his receipt of the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2002.

Aidan Chambers

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. Langrishe Go Down, his first novel, won the James Tait Black memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was later filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His second novel, Balcony of Europe, was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel Lions of the Grunewald appeared in 1993 and a collection of shorter fiction, Flotsam and jetsam, in 1996. Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of the Higgins Bestiary which concludes with this volume.

Aidan Higgins

Aidan Mathews

Aidan Potts

Aidan Smith

Aidan Storey

Aidan Trimble is the Chief Instructor to the Federation of Shotokan Karate and a former British, European and World Karate Champion, winning the world title in Tokyo - the home of Karate. Aidan has trained with some of the world's leading teachers of 'traditional' and 'sport' karate and is now an award-winning instructor and teacher who is in demand throughout the world. He can be contacted via www.fsk-karate.com.

Aidan Trimble

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Sally Norton

Is that gurgle the best you can do? With five years of pleasure ahead of you, there are 101 amusing and infuriating things for you to get up to . . . 
 
Go ahead . . . 
 
 
· Play your jam sandwich in the DVD machine. 
 
· Worship the cardboard box your most expensive present came in. 
 
· Stick that pea right up your nose. 
 
· Take your place in the middle of your parents' bed. 
 
· Drop that tiny car in the massive ball pit and scream until your scrambling parents unearth it. 
 
 
After all, you're only young once. 
 
Destined to make new parents laugh and/or cry, Sally Norton's hilarious 101 Things to Do Before You're Five coaches babies through the essential skills to be mastered in those pre-school days, while guiding grown-ups through the 'joys' of those first five crucial years.

101 Things to Do Before You're Five

The funny, bizarre and downright yucky things to expect from your little people

Fred Metcalf

Looking for a good joke? Searching for an ice-breaker for that after-dinner speech? Or are you just in need of a few laughs? 
 
Then stop! Your search is over. This book is the finest, funniest collection of gags, rib-ticklers and plain silly one-liners ever to find themselves squeezed inside the covers of a book. Organised by subject matter (from Absence - via Insults - to Writers) and containing side-splitters stolen from such wits as Groucho Marx, Orson Welles, Mark Twain and P. J. O'Rourke, among many, many others, this book will ensure that people will feel compelled to laugh at you wherever you go. 
 
A treasure trove of wit covering all walks of life, The Penguin Dictionary of Jokes is the perfect joke book for all occasions.

The Penguin Dictionary of Jokes

Alexander Aciman

Emmett Rensin

From Oedipus: PARTY IN THEBES!!! Nobody cares I killed that old dude, plus this woman is all over me. Total MILF. 
From Paradise Lost: OH MY GOD I'M IN HELL. 
Perhaps you once asked yourself, 'What exactly is Hamlet trying to tell me? Why must he mince his words, muse in lyricism and, in short, whack about the shrub?' No doubt such questions would have been swiftly resolved were the Prince of Denmark a registered user on Twitter.com. This, in essence, is Twitterature. 
From Hamlet: WTF IS POLONIUS DOING BEHIND THE CURTAIN??? 
Here are over 60 of the greatest works of literature - from Beowulf to Bronte, Kafka to Kerouac, Dostoevsky to Dickens - distilled in the voice of Twitter to their pithiest essence, providing everything you need to master the literature of the civilised world, while relieving you of the task of reading it. 
From Dante's Inferno: I'm havin a midlife crisis. Lost in the woods. Shoulda brought my iPhone.

Twitterature

The World's Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter

Geoffrey Willans

Ronald Searle

I need hardly tell you the esential thing about a football i.e. nobody need tell me to get rid of it. i do not want it in the first place. Wot is the use of having a soaking wet piece of leather pushed at you? Give me a hadock every time, at least you can eat it. 
 
Poor Nigel Molesworth is back at St Custard's, being snarled at by Grimes and forced to endure the good old footer season. But despite the distractions of hideous Molesworth 2 and weedy fotherington-tomas, he will still share all his secrets to passing exams and being a grown up. But what's this? A resolution to be good? And to luv gurls? Is this the end of the Nigel Molesworth known and loved by millions - or will he be bored by teatime?

Back in the Jug Agane

If headmasters were honest a prospectus would be a book which sa how many kanes he hav, contane a warning about the skool dog and the amount of prunes and rice served during the term. 
 
Nigel Molesworth may not be the best student St Custard's will ever have, but he is certainly able to express his feelings about his beloved school - not to mention botany walks and foopball. With his handy guide to Masters at a Glance (Know the Enemy) and Lessons (chiz chiz) and How to Avoid Them, no noble brave fearless etc. boy will ever have to suffer at the hands of the 'swots, bulies, milksops greedy guts and oiks' ever again WIZZ.

Down With Skool!

A guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents

All skools make some sort at teaching the pupils things and the headmaster pin up a huge timetable of lessons ect. which make the heart sink when you look at it. 
 
Nigel Molesworth is back, this time taking the tinies in hand and showing that they can survive the first term - as long as you avoid the prefects and show all due respect to Molesworth 1. Back to Skool might be particularly hard on Mater and Pater, but think of those poor new bugs, forced to be their best at Latin, English, foopball and French (Armand in his striped shirt and feeble questions). Just follow his timeless advice, however, and you too could be Topp.

How to be Topp

A guide to Success for tiny pupils, including all there is to kno about SPACE

With one mad yell the mob, armed with stumps and bits torn from desks, surge away down the pasage, trampling the masters under foot. A buket of water fall on GRIMES and the term end in a series of wizard rags and japes. Cars arrive, driven by parents with drawn, white faces. 
 
Nigel Molesworth is dragging St. Custard's into the 20th century in the company of 'felow pupils, their doting maters, pompous paters and any others who are interested', via the Elizabethans and the Wild West. Most importantly, he has some important lessons in how to treat Girls, what to do with a tee-vee, what a holiday will really involve, and how to survive the uranium age that is sure to hit any time now. CAVE!

Whizz for Atomms

A guide to survival in the 20th century for felow pupils, their doting maters, pompous paters and any other who are interested

Adam Jacot de Boinod

The Wonder of Whiffling is a hugely enjoyable, surprising and rewarding tour of English around the globe (with fine coinages from our English-speaking cousins across the pond, Down Under and elsewhere).Discover all sorts of words you've always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one's money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell. 
 
Delving passionately into the English language, Adam Jacot de Boinod also discovers why it is you wouldn't want to have dinner with a vice admiral of the narrow seas, why Jacobites toasted the little gentleman in black velvet, and why a Nottingham Goodnight is better than one from anywhere else.

The Wonder of Whiffling

Alan Davies

Alan Davies was always a hoarder. Pages from Smash Hits, rolled up gig posters, Cup Final ticket stubs, Woody Allen paperbacks, NME covers and Blondie calendars filled boxes once used to ferry shopping home from supermarkets (back when supermarkets would leave boxes out for the ferrying of shopping). Not much that came down from Alan's bedroom wall made it into the bin, never mind the uninvented bin-liner. 
 
Growing up is not easy. So many decisions: Who to revere, Sheene or McEnroe? Who to imitate, Starsky or Hutch? Who to dislike overnight in an effort to show maturity, Thatcher or Scargill? How to decide which pin-ups to unpin when a batch of Animal Rights leaflets or a satirical poster of Ronald Reagan demand wallspace? 
 
 
The Impressionable Age of a young man lasts around a decade and the idols and icons of that period can reveal much of the time and of the impressed subject. 
 
Nostalgic, warm and laugh-out-loud funny My Favourite People and Me 1978-1988 is an affectionate trip through a suburban childhood in Essex and an eighties education in Kent. As Alan says, 'an attempt to remember who and what I liked as a boy/youth/idiot and to work out why. There are also some pictures.'

My Favourite People & Me

1978-1988

Charles Timoney

Vocabulary alone isn't enough. To survive in the most sophisticated - and the most scathing - nation on Earth you will need to understand the many peculiarities of the (very peculiar) French culture. And for that you need A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi. 
 
If you want to fit in with the French you'll have to know how to deal with sardonic waiters; why French children hate Charlemagne; the etiquette of kissing, joke-telling and drinking songs, what to do with a bidet, the correct recipe for a salade nicoise and, of course, how to convey absolute, shattering indifference with a single syllable (Bof!). 
 
Charles Timoney, the author of Pardon My French, provides a practical, pleasurable guide to the charms of the Gallic people - from their daily routines to their peerless gesticulations, from their come-ons to their put-downs. Read on and put the oh la la back into your French vacances. Your inner gaul will thank you for it.

A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

The Ideal Guide to Sounding, Acting and Shrugging Like the French

Julie Powell

Trapped in a boring job and living in a tiny apartment in New York, Julie Powell regularly finds herself weeping on the way home from work. Then one night, through her mascara-smudged eyes, Julie notices that the few items she's grabbed from the Korean grocery store are the very ingredients for Potage Parmentier, as described in Julia Childs' legendary cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And The Project is born. 
 
Julie begins to cook - every one of the 524 recipes in the book, in the space of just one year. This is Julie's story, as gradually, from oeufs en cocotte to bifstek sauté au beurre, from "Bitch Rice" to preparing live lobsters, she realises that this deranged Project is changing her life. The richness of the thousands of sauces she slaves over is beginning to spread into her life, and she begins to find the joie de vivre that has been missing for too many years.

Julie & Julia

My Year of Cooking Dangerously

John Lloyd

Richard Curtis

Ben Elton

Rowan Atkinson

Twenty-six years ago, Edmund Blackadder made his first appearance on our screens. Comedy has never been the same since (nor indeed has history). 
 
Gathered here - in this twenty-sixth anniversary commemorative edition - are the complete scripts of Blackadder's adventures and, mostly, misadventures. Every word, every lie, every cunning plan and cock-up. 
 
From medieval nastiness, through Elizabethan and Regency glory, to the mud and sautéed rats of the First World War, Blackadder and his oafish underling Baldrick can be most definitely blamed for ruining England's reputation as a country with a great history. 
 
This historical record has been set down by Mr Richard Curtis, Mr Ben Elton, Mr Rowan Atkinson and Mr John Lloyd.

Blackadder

The Whole Damn Dynasty

Michael Lewis

Here, with his remorseless eye for the truth, the bestselling author of Liar's Poker turns his sights on his own domestic world. The result is a wickedly enjoyable cautionary tale. 
 
Lewis reveals his own unique take on fatherhood, dealing with the big issues and challenges of new-found paternity: from discovering your three-year-old loves to swear to the ethics of taking your offspring gambling at the races, from the carnage of clothing and feeding to the inevitable tantrums - of both parent and child - and the gradual realization that, despite everything, he's becoming hooked. 
 
Home Game is probably the most brazenly honest and entertaining book about parenting ever written.

Home Game

An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is broke and out of love. His wife has gone to America, taking his daughter with him; his mother has become a celebrity chef on daytime television, with a particular skill for handling phallic ingredients; and his father continues to languish in Mountjoy Jail. 
 
To cap it all, Immaculata, a Nigerian girl whom Sorcha has been sponsoring by direct debit for fifteen years, has turned up on his doorstep. Things couldn't get worse. 
 
But the long road back begins high in the Pyrenees, in the tax haven of Andorra, where Ross must spread the Gospel of rugby to the strange, primitive natives who have only ever heard of soccer, skiing and duty free shopping. There, he meets Conchita, a beautiful, sultry psychoanalyst, who persuades him to look inwards and find out what it is that makes him tick. Sorry, thick.

Mr S and the Secrets of Andorra's Box

Julian Norridge

Long before Drake refused to interrupt his game of bowls when the Armada was sighted, the British have had a passionate relationship with sport. Julian Norridge goes through the stories of fourteen major sports from cricket to boxing to football, from their very beginning and throughout the British Isles, whether it&rsquo;s Welsh inventor and tobacco enthusiast Major Walter Clopton Wingfield coming up with a game that could use those new fangled rubber balls (modern tennis) or the Scots inventing the golf club &ndash; 500 years after the game. 
 
But this is far more than a book about sport, it takes a very funny, very British look at our popular history, mythology and most importantly the highly eccentric figures that made it. It chronicles the constant battle between fair play and gambling; between advances in the game and plain cheating (such as turning up with a cricket bat wider than the wicket). 
 
Can We Have Our Balls Back Please? proves that there is an awful lot to be proud of in our history and where that strange feeling of superiority really comes from. It shows why we get just so excited when we take on any other nation in any sporting event and are so disappointed when we lose...

Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?

How the British Invented Sport

Hugleikur Dagsson

Hugleikur Dagsson is the most famous cartoonist in Iceland. 
 
Iceland is very cold, very bleak and very expensive. 
 
The only things to do there are drink and kill whales. 
 
Dagsson&rsquo;s last book &ndash; Is This Supposed To Be Funny? &ndash; was a cult international bestseller. 
 
He hopes you likes this one. Otherwise he&rsquo;ll have to kill some whales

Is This Some Kind of Joke?

Gerry Ryan

Gerry Ryan on life, the world, the universe - and a few things besides. Here are his experiences, stories and opinions drawn from nearly thirty years of talking to the nation. It's a sharp, punchy read all told in his no-nonsense, irreverent, straight to the bone style. It's the best, the worst, the funniest, the most outrageous. And threaded through it's the story of coming of age as a broadcaster at the same time as Ireland became a truly modern country. A smart, sassy and wildly entertaining read.

Would The Real Gerry Ryan Please Stand Up

Ammon Shea

'If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on. I have read the OED so you don't have to...' 
 
Weighing in at 137 pounds, the Oxford English Dictionary is the word lover's Everest and the world's most exhaustive and exhausting dictionary - for instance, there are over 60,000 words on the various meanings of set and un- goes on for 451 pages. 
 
Like a lexicographical Edmund Hillary, Ammon Shea set out to boldly read, where no reader has gone before - from cover to cover.Reading the OED gives a very funny account of his coffee-fuelled twelve months lost inside its 20 volumes. 
 
Divided into 26 chapters, one per letter of the alphabet, this book is part personal narrative (exploring everything from love to glasses to the superiority of books over computers) and part a collection of Shea's favourite discoveries. These span from the oddly useful (parabore - a defence against bores) to the downright bizarre (natiform - shaped like buttocks) and takes in Nashe's eight different kinds of drunkenness and all kinds of other strangely memorable information along the way. 
 
Filled with curiosities, delights and surprises, Reading the OED is a feast for language obsessives, from a man who loves words (perhaps a little too much).

Reading the Oxford English Dictionary

One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages

Steven Pinker

Why do so many swear words involve sex, bodily functions and religion? Why are some words rude and others aren't? Why can launching into expletives be so shocking - and sometimes so amusing? 
 
Steven Pinker takes us on a fascinating and funny journey through the world of profanities, taken from his bestselling The Stuff of Thought, to show us why we swear (whatever our language or culture), how taboos change and how we use obscenities in different ways. You'll discover that in Québecois French the expression 'Tabernacle' is outrageous, that the Middle Ages were littered with four-letter words, that 'scumbag' has a very unsavoury origin and that in a certain Aboriginal language every word is filthy when spoken in front of your mother-in-law. 
 
Covering everything from free speech to Tourette's, from pottymouthed celebrities to poetry, this book reveals what swearing tells us about how our minds work. (It's also a bloody good read).

The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television

Jon Holmes

Why was Candle in the Wind for Diana a terrible mistake? 
 
Which rock star left an unspeakable gift inside a hotel room hairdryer? 
 
What's the story behind Ozzy Osbourne and the exploding mouse? 
 
Rock and roll and rumour go together like Peaches and Geldof. Tales of outrageous excess, of the filth and the fury (not to mention the furry) are part of music's heritage. 
 
Whether they're true or bare-faced lies, Jon Holmes has gathered together the greatest pop and rock myths and legends ever told. These stories have come straight from the mouths of those that were there, those that shouldn't have been there and those that were there for a bit but left early and only heard about it afterwards.

Rock Star Babylon

Luke Wright

Joel Stickley

Do you ever wonder who's responsible for the rubbish that you read every day? 
 
In Who Writes this Crap, Stickley and Wright take the most ridiculous examples of junk mail, packaging, emails and advertising and rewrite them in side-splitting new ways. Whether it&rsquo;s a smoothie label, a newspaper headline or an unsolicited email from a Nigerian prince, this fun and irreverent satire will change the way you read forever.

Who Writes This Crap?

Elizabeth Little

What can Johnny Cash&rsquo;s lyrics teach us about the little-known Tangut dialect? Is &lsquo;tabernacle&rsquo; really a swear word in Quebecois? Which language has absolutely no verbs? What is Earth&rsquo;s politest insult? And what is biting the wax tadpole actually a translation of?* 
 
Prepare for a hilarious rollercoaster ride through hundreds of well-known, obscure, difficult, dead and even made-up languages. Elizabeth Little has waded through innumerable verb tables in every available mood and tense, untangled up to eighteen cases of noun, and wrestled with all kinds of complicated adjective, participles and glottal stops to bring you the best and most bizarre quirks of the ways people communicate all around the globe. 
 
From the language that has no different word for &lsquo;blue&rsquo; or &lsquo;green&rsquo;, to why Icelanders need official permission to name their children, from what makes a Korean TV hit to what people might think you&rsquo;re saying if you order eggs in Spain, Biting the Wax Tadpole will ensure you&rsquo;re never lost for words again. 
 
*Coca-Cola, would you believe it?

Biting the Wax Tadpole

Misadventures of an Armchair Linguist

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly thought he had it all: 
 
Nice gaff, cool cor, plenty of dosh, a stake in Dublin's trendiest nightclub and a face that made boyfriends jealous. To say nothing of a beautiful wife and kids ... 
 
All that remained was for him to totally fock it up: 
 
And I mean, totally ... 
 
But did he see it coming? Of course not - too busy using his killer lines on the Seoige sisters: 
 
And then it hit me, all at once, on a lonely night in the Ice Bar ...

This Champagne Mojito is the Last Thing I Own

Andrew Clover

'She says: "Darling let's have children". I know this is a historic moment. I must respond like a man. So I ignore her . . .' 
 
Sunday Times columnist Andrew Clover would like to share with you everything he's learned - the hard way - about childcare. Starting at the beginning, by asking why men are so terrified of breeding, he examines every worry a parent is likely to face: How can I make them sleep? How do I choose a good school? Will I ever have sex again? Why should I paint my face like a tiger? Wise and candid, this is the most truthful parenting guide of all time. It's also the funniest and most inspiring read any dad - or mum - could ever hope to read.

Dad Rules

How My Children Taught Me To Be a Good Parent

Robin Halstead

Jason Hazeley

Alex Morris

Joel Morris

Leave the hordes behind, pack some sandwiches and head off for a grand day out. Whether it's the National Fruit Collection or the pub where time stood still, Britain is stuffed full of surprising and idiosyncratic local attractions. 
 
The authors of Bollocks to Alton Towers, the bestselling celebration of the plucky underdogs of tourism, have ventured even farther off the beaten track and into the corners that corporate branding forgot, to bring you more unique, glorious and uncomonly British days out. Here you'll discover: 
 
The garden centre with a replica of Del Boy's living room 
 
The joys of a Melton Mowbray pork pie pilgramage 
 
The rude charms of the Boscastle Witchcraft Museum 
 
The Clowns' Gallery that paints a smile on Hackney's face 
 
This book is a reminder of all the odd things that make the British what we are. A hidden, eccentric and joyous world of teas, fans, trains, shoes and puppets is waiting for you out there - far from the sodding crowd.

More Bollocks to Alton Towers

Martin Kihn

I was the nicest guy in the world. The kind of guy who gives up his seat for women who aren&rsquo;t even pregnant. And all it had got me was a dead-end job, a crappy apartment and a dog that treated me as its bitch. 
 
So one day I decided to become a totally different man. A rock-hard alpha male who fights to win, makes his own rules and doesn&rsquo;t know the word sorry. An asshole. 
 
The worst thing? It worked! 
 
Here you&rsquo;ll discover my revolutionary programme for assholism, including: 
 
&middot; Essential body language &ndash; don&rsquo;t smile, unless others are in pain 
 
&middot; Workplace etiquette &ndash; taking credit for everything, except mistakes 
 
&middot; Diet and exercise &ndash; the power of red meat, energy drinks and hitting below the belt 
 
&middot; Relationships &ndash; how to avoid getting burned, even if your wife is a trained chef (like mine) 
 
&middot; Feelings &ndash; the only luxury you can&rsquo;t afford 
 
This is the story of my journey into jerkhood. 
 
It is my story of glory.

Asshole

How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a @!?* About You

Jonny Geller

What do google, guilt, musicals and Scarlet Johansson have in common? Answer: they&rsquo;re all Good for the Jews! But what about Christmas? Or Jordan (the celebrity, naturally)? or Scientology? . Luckily the Judological Institute of Spiritual Mathematics (JISM) are pleased to reveal to the outside world &ndash; yes, Non-Jews are allowed to buy this book &ndash; the ancient mystical formula for calculating which people, products and places is, in fact, Good for the Jews. 
 
Here the secret art of Judology (think of it as a third cousin of Kabbalah) will reveal: &bull; Big Brother is , in fact, Good for the Jews . since when has someone watching your every move, listening to all your conversations, NOT been a Jewish experience? 
 
&bull; eBay , of course, is Not . Where else can one happily buy Hitler's nasal trimmer or mint conditioned first editions of Mein Kampf?. 
 
Additional help in getting the J factor comes with handy lists of who to marry, which Jews changed their names, and the essential Vacation Spots that are good for the Jews 
 
One final note. Please do not borrow this book from a friend or library as borrowing is not Good for the Jews. Buying is. Heimische.

Yes, But is it Good for the Jews?

How to Bring Out the Jew in You

Tony Thorne

Are you a bobo or a wombat? Are you tempted by infobia or to kick dead whales up the beach? If your answer to any of these questions is 'What are you talking about?', then you definitely need a copy of Shoot the Puppy. Amusing, informative and newly updated for 2007, it guides the reader through the ever-growing heap of contemporary jargon from around the English-speaking world, showing where it comes from, what it means, and what it tells us about our contemporary world.

Shoot the Puppy

A Survival Guide to the Curious Jargon of Modern Life

Why would Germans accuse you of being like the donkey getting cross with a rabbit? Who would a Spaniard tell to go and fry asparagus? And when might the French claim they are without a radish? 
 
Furthering your knowledge of the world&rsquo;s unusual idioms, Toujours Tingo will also explain how ordering &lsquo;lamb&rsquo; in Ethiopia may see a cow delivered to your table, and how politicians in Sweden may be encouraged occasionally to g&ouml;ra en hel Pudel (&lsquo;do a full poodle&rsquo;) with some humble apologising. Covering such wide-ranging linguistic necessities as arguing, raising children, working and dining out, and filling all those gaps that English leaves thoughtlessly unplugged, this book&rsquo;s charm would &ndash; for Russians at least &ndash; be e&#382;iku ponjatno (obvious even to a hedgehog).

Toujours Tingo

Extraordinary Words to Change the Way We See the World

Albert Jack

Albert Jack now turns his attention to the mysteries that have haunted us throughout history. Albert Jack's Ten Minute Mysteries cleverly combines his research with riveting stories and hilarious observations. 
 
All life's most perplexing questions answered: UFOs, Crop Circles and Alien invasions ? Where is the Mona Lisa? (clue: it's not in the Louvre) ? Is the Loch Ness Monster really a circus elephant? ? Will the real Paul McCartney please stand up? ? What happened to the Mary Celeste? ? Who killed Marilyn Monroe? ? What was Agatha Christie's own mystery? ? Who was Jack the Ripper? and many, many more... 
 
With enough entertaining information to fuel hundreds of pub conversations, fascinating illustrations and all kinds of discoveries to surprise even the most expert conspiracy theorist , Albert Jack's Ten Minute Mysteries is the perfect present for anybody who's ever wondered why...

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