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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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Dr Sami Timimi

A Sunday Times Best Book of 2025 
 
'A brilliant book. I said “Hurrah!” and “Yes!” to every point Sami Timimi makes. A welcome antidote to the dangerous cult of overdiagnosis and the commodification of normal distress' PHILIPPA PERRY 
 
'[A] terrific, thought-provoking book' JOHANN HARI 
 
How can we reconsider the way in which we think about, treat and care for those in distress? 
 
More and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD and autism. 
 
More and more people are being diagnosed with mental disorders. 
 
Young people are being medicalised for behaviours that might be explained as entirely normal in other parts of the world. 
 
Distress has been commodified over many decades by pharmaceutical companies, the media and the psychiatric establishment. 
 
So how can we know when distress is normal and when it is something that needs to be treated? 
 
In Searching for Normal, Sami Timimi explores the political and cultural context of these phenomena and presents a deeply humane approach that looks at the person as a whole – their family context, their culture, their personal resilience – and advocates for a reframing of how we think about and treat distress.

Searching for Normal

A New Approach to Understanding Mental Health, Distress and Neurodiversity

Sarah Perry

'Please read this book. It may very well change how you live' Rachel Clarke 
 
'I was spellbound' Kathryn Mannix 
 
This is not a book about grief: it is a book about dying, and it is a book about family, and care and love. 
 
Sarah Perry's father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. Until then he'd been a healthy and happy man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels, his local church, and the Antiques Roadshow. He was in some ways a very ordinary man, but as he began to die, it became clear how extraordinary he was. 
 
Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David themselves at home, eventually with the help of carers and visiting nurses. They bathed and cleaned and dressed him, comforted him in pain, sat with him through waking and sleeping, talked to him, sang to him, prayed with him. Day by day and hour by hour, they witnessed what happens to the body and spirit as death approaches and finally arrives. 
 
'Beautiful and profound and completely gripping' Mark Haddon 
 
'We cannot be but somewhat changed by this remarkable book' Daily Telegraph 
 
'By the end I was left shaken, deeply moved' Christos Tsiolkas 
 
'This book will be a lifeline for so many people' Seán Hewitt 
 
'Sarah is in a league of her own as a writer - I don't know how she does it' Sara Collins

Death of an Ordinary Man

John Burnside

With wit, precision and grace, John Burnside's second memoir traces the aftershocks of a troubled childhood into troubled adulthood. 
 
With a new introduction by Sarah Perry 
 
‘Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched’ Andrew O’Hagan 
 
In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a ‘Surbiton of the mind.’ But the suburbs are not quite as normal as he had imagined, and he relapses into chaos. 
 
He encounters a homicidal office worker who is obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and Petula Clark, an old lover, with whom he reprises a troubled, masochistic relationship and, finally, the seemingly flesh-and-blood embodiments of all his private phantoms, as he drifts further into unreality. 
 
The second of John Burnside’s extraordinary trilogy of memoirs, Waking Up in Toytown is the story of one man’s search for sanity – but also the story of love that outgrows its restraints and a scorching enquiry into the soul, from one of our greatest contemporary writers. 
 
‘Burnside’s memoir deserves to become a classic. Has anyone written about the direct experience of mental illness with such scrupulous observation and wit?’ Daily Express

Waking Up in Toytown

A Memoir

Lucy Foulkes

What we experience during adolescence shapes us for life, but psychologist Lucy Foulkes shows that too often we fear, dismiss or even try to prevent aspects of it that are crucial to our development. Drawing on decades of psychological research, and including profoundly moving interviews, Coming of Age gets beneath the recent myths and age-old stereotypes of adolescence to reveal the reasons why teens behave the way they do. 
 
Above all, Foulkes shows that adolescents have an extraordinary capacity for resilience, empathy and mutual support, and that even the most challenging encounters are part of an essential process of self-discovery.

Coming of Age

How Adolescence Shapes Us

Alexandra Fuller

The story of a mother grieving the sudden loss of her twenty-one-year-old child - from the bestselling memoirist of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight 
 
** Pulitzer Prize Finalist 2025 in Memoir/Autobiography ** 
 
'Truly extraordinary' HELEN MACDONALD 
 
‘A profound and gripping memoir about surviving unexpected, devastating loss’ SUNDAY TIMES 
 
‘A mesmeric celebration... Will help others surviving loss — surviving life' NEW YORK TIMES 
 
It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra Fuller is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel. 
 
And then – suddenly and incomprehensibly – her son Fi, at twenty-one years old, dies in his sleep. 
 
From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.

A Memoir of My Son

Benji Waterhouse

‘This is honestly my dream book… Fascinating’ FERN BRADY 
 
‘Fearlessly honest, funny and uplifting’ JO BRAND 
 
‘Very funny and deeply sympathetic. Really excellent’ HENRY MARSH 
 
Most of the psychiatric cases in this book are Benji’s patients. Some of them are his family. One of them is him. 
 
Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. 
 
Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures? 
 
This is an eye-opening medical memoir – from both sides of the doctor’s desk. The perfect read for fans of This Is Going to Hurt, Unnatural Causes and The Prison Doctor.

You Don't Have to Be Mad to Work Here

A Psychiatrist’s Life

Catherine Coldstream

‘Evocative’ Sarah Perry 
‘Immersive’ Katherine May 
‘Profoundly moving’ Mark Haddon 
 
Discover Catherine Coldstream’s compelling account of life as a nun in the 1990s, and the dramatic events which led to her flight from the monastery. 
 
After the shock of her father’s death, and with the rest of her family scattered, Catherine was left grieving and alone at twenty-four. A search for meaning led her to the nuns of Akenside Priory. 
 
Here she found a tight-knit community of dedicated women and peace in an ancient way of life. But as she surrenders to her final vows, all is not as it seems behind the Priory’s closed doors. 
 
Catherine comes to realise that divine authority is mediated through flawed and all-too-human channels. She is faced with a dilemma: should she protect the serenity she has found, or speak out? 
 
‘Gripping… A rich memoir’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘Absorbing and beautifully written’ Financial Times

Cloistered

My Years as a Nun

Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó began life as a butcher’s daughter in communist Hungary. Raised in a one-room home of clay and straw with no running water, she saw potential everywhere: in the promise of a seed, in the alchemy of soap, in the scarlet of a carcass. 
 
Breaking Through is the extraordinary story of her courageous determination – first to become a scientist, and then to unlock an elusive molecule she believed could revolutionise medicine. Others disagreed, and for decades she endured demotions, discrimination and even threats of deportation. Yet Karikó persevered, ultimately making a world-shifting discovery: the mRNA vaccine technology that saved millions of lives and will transform healthcare forever.

Breaking Through

My Life In Science

Clive Stafford Smith

'[A] vivid, inquiring memoir... A properly soul-searching book' Observer 
 
The powerful and emotive memoir about one man’s relationship with his father and the stigma around mental illness, from the acclaimed author and human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. 
 
A leading campaigner for justice, human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has spent a lifetime getting to know his clients – from detainees in Guantánamo Bay to prisoners facing execution on Death Row – and finding out 'what makes them tick'. 
 
Yet closer to home, there was a man whose mind has always remained off limits: his own father. 
 
But when Clive inherited more than 3,000 of his letters, he could finally start to piece together the obsessive personality behind them. 
 
Drawing on the life of a client with his own mental health issues, The Far Side of the Moon is an unforgettable memoir and a meticulous critique of our social and justice systems.Just how much has Clive's father's unspoken struggle shaped his own life? 
 
PRAISE FOR CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH 
 
‘Superbly written’ John Grisham on Injustice 
 
‘Remarkable’ Observer 
 
‘An empowering read for anyone who cares about the human implementation of justice’ Colin Firth on Injustice

The Far Side of the Moon

Trials of My Father

Hadley Vlahos

‘Refreshingly forthright’ New York Times | ‘Extraordinary’ Laura Lynne Jackson | ‘Beautifully written’ Katy Butler | ‘Tender and transformative’ Christie Tate | ‘Meaningful and sublime’ Theresa Brown 
 
What can life’s final moments teach us about living well today? 
 
In this bestselling memoir, palliative care nurse Hadley Vlahos recounts the unforgettable tales of the hospice patients whose journeys of self-discovery inspired her sense of purpose and hope. From the elderly man seeing visions of his late daughter, to the young patient lamenting the time wasted fearing judgment, to the woman whose unwavering belief in her faith was shaken up by the prospect of dying. 
 
Each story teaches us to embrace life’s fleeting nature, and raises vital questions: How do we make peace with the end? How can we honour our late loved ones? And, above all, how can we make each day count? 
 
Compassionate and thought-provoking, The In-Between is a celebration of life’s great unknowns, and a comfort as we navigate what comes next. 
 
‘Heartfelt, gentle … refreshingly forthright’ New York Times 
 
‘Beautifully written … contains profound wisdom.’ Katy Butler, author of The Art of Dying Well 
 
‘Transformative … makes dying feel like a peaceful, dynamic, and nourishing event.’ Christie Tate, author of Group 
 
‘Offers gentle encouragement for all those who live under life’s running clock and for those who love them.’ Kirkus Reviews

The In-Between

Stories of Care and Connection in Life’s Final Moments

Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments

Marie-Elsa R. Bragg

A unique, intimate and beautiful exploration of grief, loss, healing and faith 
 
'This is a beautiful book, a remarkable, cadenced recollection of how grief lives in the body. It is poetry as a kind of dance. You have to read it' EDMUND DE WAAL 
 
We sat in the kitchen across the small wooden table from each other. She cried like banks bursting, then silence; like winds blowing through her shoulders, chest bouncing, then long shallow breaths. She ruptured and I watched, still, emotionless. 'You must stop crying.' 
 
When Marie-Elsa was just six years old, her mother took her own life. Now, many years later, she returns to that night. Going back to that moment, inhabiting this defining tragedy, allows for an exploration of the grief but also brings healing. 
 
Written partly as a series of unsent letters to both her mother and father, Sleeping Letters is a way of connecting to past family, an attempt to reconcile with loss, as well as a radical exploration of Marie-Elsa&rsquo;s own faith. It is an unforgettable book, with a luminous sense of a daughter&rsquo;s loss. 
 
With a Foreword by Rowan Williams 
 
&lsquo;Truly remarkable... This book carries its readers to a place where inhibitions and fears about loss and death give way to something more hopeful and, in their own way, real&rsquo; Daily Telegraph

Sleeping Letters

On Grief, Loss, Healing and Faith

Andy Mitchell

Psychedelics have made a comeback, but the truth is they remain a mystery. 
 
In this daring, profound and wildly entertaining investigation, clinical neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell tests the claims being made for these substances by taking ten different psychedelics in ten different settings. 
 
Journeying from a neuroimaging lab in London to the Colombian Amazon via Silicon Valley and his friend&rsquo;s basement kitchen, his encounters with scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and con men, psychonauts and shamans, and above all with the drugs themselves, take us beyond the hype and reveal the reality of psychedelics &ndash; that they are as enchanting but ultimately unfathomable as experience itself.

Ten Trips

A Psychedelic Adventure

The New Reality of Psychedelics

Jon Harvey

A BBC Arts & The Reading Agency's Big Sporting Read selection 
 
'Warm, sad and funny... There is something very eccentric and British about A Fan for All Seasons' - Sunday Times 
 
A hilarious, heartfelt, nostalgia-infused story of sport, loss and the journey of a lifetime. 
 
After the sudden death of his older brother, Dan, Jon Harvey turned to the thing that had provided their strongest connection: sport, in all its myriad sublime and ridiculous forms. He made it his mission to visit as many events as he possibly could in a single year – to build the ultimate season ticket. 
 
A kaleidoscopic twelve months took him from London Olympia to ancient Olympia, from rugby balls to Rubik's Cubes, Wimbledon tennis to Wimbledon greyhounds, from tennis legend Roger Federer to darts hero Martin 'Wolfie' Adams, and much, much more. It's a celebration, of sport, life, and an unbreakable bond between two brothers.

A Fan for All Seasons

A Journey Through Life and Sport

Robert M Sapolsky

What if free will is an illusion? In Determined one of the world’s greatest scientists of human behaviour overturns one of our most powerful beliefs – that we are the authors of our own actions – and sets out the disturbing yet liberating implications of accepting this fact. 
 
As Robert Sapolsky shows, everything we think and do is caused by the luck of our biology and the influence of our environment, and ultimately both are beyond our control. In a world without free will, we must completely rethink what we mean by choice, responsibility, morality and justice. Sapolsky’s extraordinary book does exactly this, guiding us toward a profoundly fairer, more humane way of living together.

Determined

The Science of Life Without Free Will

Life Without Free Will

Patrick Bringley

** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ** 
 
A revelatory portrait of a great museum and the moving story of one guard's quest to find solace and meaning in art 
 
'Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of you would have been written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist - but by a museum guard?' Sunday Times 
 
When Patrick’s older brother dies at twenty-six, all he wants is to retreat. So, he does. He quits his job and seeks refuge in the most beautiful place he can think of: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
 
All the Beauty in the World recounts Patrick’s time as a museum guard, keeping quiet vigil over some of our greatest treasures and uncovering the Met’s innermost secrets. As his connection to the art and the life that swirls around it grows, so does Patrick – and gradually he emerges transformed by heartbreak, community and the power of art to illuminate life in all its pain, pleasure and hope. 
 
'As luminous as the old masters paintings' Daily Mail 
'Consoling and beautiful' Guardian 
'Marvellous' Daily Telegraph 
'A beautiful tale about beauty. It is also a tale about grief, balancing solitude and comradeship, and finding joy in both the exalted and the mundane' Washington Post 
 
*New York Times bestseller, Nov 24

All the Beauty in the World

A Museum Guard’s Adventures in Life, Loss and Art

Rachel Hewitt

'Heartfelt, passionate, infuriating and often devastating, this book will inspire you to fight for your right to tread your own path' CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ, author of Invisible Women 
 
When Rachel loses five family members in five months, grief magnifies other absences. Running across moors and mountains used to help her feel at home in her body but now feels fraught with danger. 
 
Rachel goes in search of a new family: the foremothers who blazed a trail at the dawn of outdoor sport. She discovers Lizzie Le Blond who scaled the Alps in woollen skirts and photographed fearless women climbing, skating and tobogganing at breakneck speeds. Telling Lizzie's story alongside her own, Rachel runs her way from bereavement to belonging, inspired by the tenacious women, past and present, who insist that breaking boundaries outdoors is, and always has been, in her nature. 
 
‘A book of limitless curiosity and eloquent passion’ The Times

In Her Nature

How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors

Antoine Leiris

'A beacon of hope in a dark world' Cathy Rentzenbrink, on international bestseller You Will Not Have My Hate 
 
A moving account of single fatherhood in the wake of bereavement. 
 
When Antoine Leiris lost his wife, Hélène, in a terrorist attack in Paris, he was left to care for their baby alone. In this wry and honest book Antoine talks about how they have both fared since that terrible day. 
 
Grief is a succession of transformations. Four years later, I am no longer the same man. The same is true for Melvil. He isn't a baby anymore, but a happy little boy. 
 
Life, After follows a single father learning how to create a happy home for his son. From imagining the reviews he might receive as a parent, to dealing with the complicated emotions that arise around a new relationship and talking to children about bereavement, Antoine charts the course of their life together with remarkable humour and self-awareness. 
 
At times heartbreaking and at times vibrating with the joy of the companionship of a lively little boy, Life, After finds a way to answer the question 'How can I go on?' 
 
That is when it begins. Life, after.

Life, After

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

A darkly comic and moving memoir on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford professor. 
 
‘A book that will stay with you for life’ 
NATALIE HAYNES 
 
‘The best book about multiple sclerosis’ 
THE TIMES 
 
We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time... But sometimes we are unlucky. My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist. 
 
When the trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, as he explores in Metamorphosis, his fall also did something else. It took him deep into his own mind: his hopes, his fears, his loves and losses, and the books that would sustain, inform and nourish him as his life began to transform in ways he could never have imagined. 
 
‘A pitch-perfect memoir… touchingly honest and darkly funny’ 
JACQUELINE WILSON 
 
‘An outstanding feat… Riveting’ 
SUNDAY TIMES

Metamorphosis

A Life in Pieces

Richard Askwith

'Inspirational' - Observer 
 
A transformational quest for the secrets of happy, healthy, whole-life running that will change the way you think about growing older. 
 
Colourful, informative and inspiring, The Race Against Time is a story of cold science and heart-warming resilience; of champions and also-rans; of sprinting centenarians and forty-something super-athletes barely touched by age. Its heroes are experts and enthusiasts - scientists, coaches, runners - from many countries, each with a different story to tell. 
 
This is a book for anyone who has ever felt the healing power of running &ndash; or simply wondered about the effects of ageing. It is both a very personal account of one man's journey from despair to hope, and an exhilarating guide, explaining how timely adjustments to lifestyle and training can slow the progress of physiological decay, while sheer human spirit can, if you are lucky, keep you running happily and healthily, all the way into extreme old age.

The Race Against Time

Adventures in Late-Life Running

Rachel Aviv

There are stories that save us, and stories that trap us, and in the midst of an illness it can be very hard to know which is which&hellip; 
 
Strangers to Ourselves shares the experiences of five people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. It asks, do the stories we tell around mental illness affect its course, its outcomes, even our identities? 
 
Drawing on in-depth reporting, written testimonies and formative events in her own childhood, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a subtle, compassionate, revelatory account of how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress.

Strangers to Ourselves

Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us

Shilpa Ravella

Inflammation has traditionally been thought of as the body's response to injury and foreign microbes. But as the threats we face have evolved, what if it were now the root cause of modern disease? 
 
New science has revealed low-level, smoldering inflammation, simmering quietly and undetected, behind everything from heart disease and cancer to mysterious autoimmune conditions. Hidden inflammation even weakens our immunity and increases the likelihood that our immune system will mount an overwhelming, inappropriate attack against infections. 
 
In this beautifully written story of scientific discovery by a doctor at the forefront of this field, A Silent Fire brings together the science of immunology, nutrition and the microbiome, interwoven with fascinating case studies, to explain what we know of this elusive phenomenon, offering insights into how we can live not only long but well.

A Silent Fire

The Story of Inflammation, Diet and Disease

Tim Spector

'Life-changing' DAVINA McCALL 
'A must-read' Dr RUPY AUJLA 
'Fascinating' NIGELLA LAWSON 
'Empowering' LIZ EARLE 
 
**AS HEARD ON THE DIARY OF A CEO PODCAST** 
 
**THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE FOOD FOR LIFE COOKBOOK** 
 
Food is our greatest ally for good health, but the question of what to eat in the age of ultra-processed food has never seemed so complicated. 
Drawing on cutting-edge research and personal insights, Professor Tim Spector offers clear answers in this definitive, easy-to-follow guide to the new science of eating well. 
 
Empowering and practical, Food for Life is nothing less than a new approach to how to eat - for our health and the health of the planet. 
 
‘No fads, no nonsense, just practical, science-based advice on how to eat well’ Daily Mail, Books of the Year 
 
'A rigorously academic book that welcomes the layperson with open arms' The Times 
 
** A THE TIMES and SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
** WINNER OF THE FORTNUM & MASON SPECIAL AWARD **

Food for Life

Your Guide to the New Science of Eating Well

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE LEADING GUT-HEALTH EXPERT, FOUNDER OF ZOE AND AUTHOR OR FOOD FOR LIFE 
 
* As seen on ITV's LORRAINE and heard on THE DIARY OF A CEO * 
 
This ground-breaking exploration debunks food myths, from what we should be eating for breakfast to whether we should really avoid ultra-processed foods. 
 
Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day? 
Is there any point in counting calories? 
Is there any evidence that coffee is bad for us? 
 
Through his pioneering research, Professor Tim Spector busts these and many other myths about food. 
 
Spoon-Fed explores the scandalous lack of good science behind many diet plans, official recommendations, miracle cures and ultra-processed foods, and encourages us to rethink our whole relationship with food - not just for our health as individuals, but for the future of the planet. 
 
'Hugely enjoyable' Michael Mosley 
 
'Illuminating and so incredibly timely' Yotam Ottolenghi 
 
'This book should be available on prescription' Felicity Cloake 
 
'Will actually help you decide what to add to your next grocery shop' Bee Wilson, Guardian 
 
* Tim Spector's new book Food for Life: Your Guide to the New Science of Eating Well is out in paperback 4th January 2024*

Spoon-Fed

Why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong

David Quammen

'A luminous, passionate account of the defining crisis of our time' New York Times 
 
From the bestselling author of Spillover, the book that predicted the pandemic, this is the story of Covid-19 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists tasked with fighting it. 
 
David Quammen draws on countless interviews with experts, including leading virologists, to take us inside the global race to understand SARS-CoV-2, it's ever-changing nature and capacity to kill. In doing so, he explains how new viruses emerge when we disrupt ecosystems and suggests why the coronavirus may be here to stay. 
 
By peering over the shoulders of the brilliant scientists leading the chase, Breathless uncovers the warnings from infectious diseases experts that went unheeded; and which clues are the most compelling in the hunt for the virus' origin. 
 
'A classic...a masterpiece' Stanley Prusiner, Nobel Prize Winner 
 
'A viral howdunnit that is pacy and unafraid to educate readers' Observer 
 
'As close to authoritative history as we have... It reads like a real-time thriller' Chicago Tribune

Breathless

The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

Mya-Rose Craig

Discover Mya-Rose Craig's moving and life-affirming memoir about family, searching for rare birds, and the power of our natural world. 
 
'Lyrical, poignant and insightful' MARGARET ATWOOD (on Twitter) 
'Filled with hope and energy' Guardian 
 
In her memoir, Mya-Rose Craig and her family travel the world in search of rare birds and astonishing landscapes. But a shadow moves with them, too - her mother's deepening mental health crisis. In the face of this struggle, the Craigs turn to nature again and again, and every time it offers joy and stillness. 
 
On these journeys, Mya-Rose also witnesses the inequality and destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet. And so, through the simple, mindful act of looking for birds, she becomes ever more determined to campaign for all our survival. 
 
'A delightful account of a young life devoted to birding - and the fight to save birds and the places they live' Stephen Moss 
 
* Winner of a Somerset Maugham Award * 
* Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing * 
* Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize *

Birdgirl

Discovering the Power of Our Natural World

Henry Marsh

**BBC DOCUMENTARY CONFESSIONS OF A BRAIN SURGEON IS OUT NOW** 
 
From the No.1 bestselling author of Do No Harm, an entrancing and uplifting meditation on the gift of life. 
 
‘A book to treasure and reread’ Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being 
 
As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but even he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. 
 
In And Finally, he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient. As the days pass, his mind turns to his career, to the people and places he has known, and to creative projects still to be completed. 
 
Yet he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and nature, by his love for his family, and – most of all – by what it is to be alive. 
 
* A Daily Telegraph, The Times and Financial Times Book of the Year * 
 
‘Magnificent’ Rachel Clarke 
 
‘Vividly wry and honest’ The Times 
 
‘I admire this book enormously’ Philip Pullman 
 
‘Enthralling’ Guardian

And Finally

A Neurosurgeon’s Reflections on Life

Matters of Life and Death, the Sunday Times bestseller from the author of DO NO HARM

Siddhartha Mukherjee

**Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2023** 
 
A NEW YORK TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, ECONOMIST, MAIL ON SUNDAY and GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
From the dawn of life itself, every being that has ever lived owes its existence to the cell. 
 
'Will leave you in awe' Guardian 
 
The discovery of this vital form led to a transformation in medicine but also in our understanding of ourselves - not as bodies or machines but as ecosystems. It has also given us the power to treat a vast array of mortal maladies...and even to create new kinds of human altogether. 
 
Rich with stories of scientists, doctors and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is a stunning ode to the building blocks of life and the cutting-edge science harnessing their power for the better. 
 
'Profound...As big a topic as life itself' The Times 
 
'Medical magic' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Vast...important...optimistic' Mail on Sunday

The Song of the Cell

The Story of Life

An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

Seán Hewitt

A luminous and haunting memoir from the prize-winning poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma. 
 
When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis. Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. 
 
All Down Darkness Wide is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a fearless exploration of a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds.

All Down Darkness Wide

Emmanuel Carrère

This is a book about yoga. Or at least, it was. 
 
January 2015. High on literary success and familial bliss, Emmanuel Carrère embarks on a rigorous ten-day meditative retreat in rural France in search of clarity and material for his next book, which he thinks will be a subtle, upbeat introduction to yoga. 
 
But his trip is cut short, and he is brought down to earth with a thud when he returns to a Paris in turmoil in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. From then on, Carrère's life - along with his novel-in-progress - begins to unravel in ever more unexpected ways. 
 
'The story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel... profound and moving' Geoff Dyer 
 
'Extraordinarily compelling' Financial Times

Yoga

From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY

Christie Watson

A frank, funny and inspiring new memoir from the bestselling author of The Language of Kindness about the search for meaning in midlife 
 
'An insightful and outspoken exploration of middle age and the perimenopause' Observer 
 
Am I a terrible mother? Is the world ending? Did I turn the oven off? Did I pay the parking fine? Is my TV licence up to date? Will I go to prison? Who will take care of the children? 
 
This is the story of Christie Watson's journey through midlife. The joy of letting go and the pain of the morning after, the unstoppable power of female friendship and the struggle to raise teenagers as a single parent. It lays bare the exhilaration, agony, wonder and fears of being a middle-aged woman with a wild heart, a changing body and a new set of challenges. And as her world takes on a different shape, there's something else she starts to feel: the hot flush of possibility... 
 
'A superb chronicle of midlife and the chaos of the perimenopause. Candid, humorous, insightful, deeply empathetic, inspiring and utterly necessary' i Paper 
 
'Brilliant... Like having an honest conversation with a smart and funny friend' Cathy Rentzenbrink 
 
'I adore Christie Watson. Quilt on Fire is full of her trademark candour, compassion and humour' Elizabeth Day 
 
'You don't have to be in midlife to appreciate this funny, real, empathetic memoir about the multitudes contained in every woman' Red

Quilt on Fire

The Messy Magic of Friends, Sex & Love

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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