An exotic holiday for Miss Marple is ruined when a retired major is killed… As Jane Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier’s yarn about a strange coincidence. Infuriatingly, just as he…
A Chronology of Photography presents a fresh perspective on the medium by taking a purely chronological approach to its history, tracing the complex links between technological innovations, social change and artistic interventions. Structured around a central timeline that charts the development of photography from early experiments with optics right up to the present-day explosion of digital media, it features sumptuous…
‘We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.’ Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to…
'Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning,…
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to…
John Locke (1632-1704) was perhaps the most influential English writer of his time. His Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises of Government (1690) weighed heavily on the history of ideas in the eighteenth century, and Locke’s works are often − rightly − presented as foundations of the Age of Enlightenment. Both the Essay and the Second Treatise (by far the more influential of the Two Treatises) were…
In alternating chapters that reveal a nascent period in their development as two of the twentieth century's most influential writers, Beat Generation icons William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac's And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is an electrifying true-life mystery, including afterword by James Grauerholtz in Penguin Modern Classics. This is a hardboiled crime novel, and a true story. In…
'All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others' When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to…
'June, 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.' In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another…
What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this clear-sighted analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth…
Geralt the Witcher is on a mission: to save his ward, Ciri, and with her the world … The next story in the bestselling series that inspired the world-famous WITCHER games! The Wizards Guild has been shattered by a coup and, in the uproar, Geralt was seriously injured. The Witcher is supposed to be a guardian of the innocent, a…
'Beautiful World, Where Are You is Rooney's best novel.' THE TIMES *The Sunday Times and Global number one bestseller* *Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards* *A Book of the Year in The Times, the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Financial Times* 'A tour de force.' Anne Enright, Guardian 'Rooney's best novel yet.'…
Help your baby discover all about bedtime with touch and feel textures Stroke, tickle and touch the textures together with your baby and help them discover all about bedtime. Let their little hands roam and feel how fluffy the bedtime toys are and how smooth and shiny the stars feel. They’ll learn as you play. Twinkly, bumpy, scaly, silky, sandy,…
Today, Billie Holiday is an icon – an artist whose voice has weathered countless shifts in public taste, and whose impact on contemporary music is unquestionable. But when eighteen-year-old Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia studios in November of 1933 to record ‘Riffin’ the Scotch’ and ‘Your Mother’s Son-in-Law’, no one could predict the sensation that was about to emerge; marking…
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Graham Greene's gripping thriller was adapted into a British film noir in 1947 starring Richard Attenborough as the razor-wielding Pinkie.
With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds in the Roman Senate, but the story of his last breath is still unfolding. In fact, you're probably inhaling some of it now. Of the sextillions of molecules entering or leaving your lungs at this moment,…
Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was eleven and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at twenty-one, the accident that would make her a widow at forty-one. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others. So when she receives a phone call…
'Thoroughly engrossing' Michael Pollan, The Atlantic 'Wonderful, energising' Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian Coffee is one of the most valuable commodities in the history of the global economy and the world's most popular drug. The very word 'coffee' is one of the most widespread on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's brilliant new history tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to…
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are interviewed and then befriended by Melissa, a well-known journalist who is married to Nick, an actor, they enter a world of beautiful houses, raucous…
⭐ CHOSEN BY BARACK OBAMA AS A FAVOURITE READ OF 2020 ⭐ NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ⭐ TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2020, NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST 'A hilarious, pitch-perfect comedy set in the Brooklyn projects of the late 1960s. This alone may qualify it as one of the year's best novels.' The Washington Post From the winner…
This charming, irresistible debut novel set in London during World War II about a young woman who longs to be a war correspondent and inadvertantly becomes a secret advice columnist is "a jaunty, heartbreaking winner" (People)--for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Lilac Girls. Emmeline Lake and her best friend Bunty are doing their bit…
When two British agents go missing in Jamaica, Bond is sent to investigate. Battling the Doctor's twin obsessions with power and pain, he uncovers the true nature of his opponent's covert operation - but he must undergo a deadly assault course before he can destroy the Doctor's plans once and for all.
Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time. But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned…
In these vigorous stories, Lauren Groff brings her electric storytelling to a world in which storms, snakes and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats are of a human, emotional and psychological nature. Among those navigating it all are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple; a…
Funny Girl - the latest novel from Nick Hornby, the million-copy bestselling author of About a Boy Make them laugh, and they're yours forever . . . Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She only wants to make people laugh. So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself off to…
James Baldwin's electrifying first novel. 'I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.' Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the…
Now with a new preface to mark the ten year anniversary of publication, Roberto Saviano's groundbreaking and utterly compelling book is a major international bestseller which has to date sold 750,000 copies in Italy alone. Since publishing his searing expose of their criminal activities, the author has received so many death threats from the Camorra that he has been assigned…
Harry’s nemesis is preparing a horrifying fate for him. Find out how in the fourth book in this award-winning series – adult edition featuring stylish jacket art by Andrew Davidson. ‘It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.’ When the Quidditch World Cup is disrupted by Voldemort’s rampaging supporters alongside the resurrection of the terrifying…
Celebrate 20 years of Harry Potter magic with four special editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw ...Twenty years ago these magical words and many more flowed from a young writer’s pen, an orphan called Harry Potter was freed from the cupboard under the stairs - and a global phenomenon started. Harry Potter and the…
Celebrate 20 years of Harry Potter magic with four special editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw ...Twenty years ago these magical words and many more flowed from a young writer’s pen, an orphan called Harry Potter was freed from the cupboard under the stairs - and a global phenomenon started. Harry Potter and the…
Celebrate 20 years of Harry Potter magic with four special editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw ...Twenty years ago these magical words and many more flowed from a young writer’s pen, an orphan called Harry Potter was freed from the cupboard under the stairs - and a global phenomenon started. Harry Potter and the…
What does it mean to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good brother, or a good friend? In this clear-sighted analysis, social historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of the eighteenth…
In the seventy thousand years that modern human beings have walked this earth, we’ve come a long way. Art, science, culture, trade – on the evolutionary food chain, we’re real winners. But, frankly, it’s not exactly been plain sailing, and sometimes – just occasionally – we’ve managed to really, truly, quite unbelievably f*ck things up. From Chairman Mao’s Four Pests…
We are in Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin's novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice…
‘[Her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human’ Barack Obama ‘Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers of our time’ Sunday Times ‘Jack is the fourth in Robinson’s luminous, profound Gilead series and perhaps the best yet’ Observer Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack,…
On an average Saturday morning in a butcher's shop in North London, Lucy and Joseph meet on opposite sides of the counter. She is a teacher and mother of two, with a past she is trying to forget; he is an aspiring DJ with a wide-open future that maybe needs to start becoming more focused. Lucy and Joseph are opposites…
'The superb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin's trans-European rail journey and how it shook the world' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 'Splendid ... a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it…
`I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974.' So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on…
The Noughts & Crosses series are still my favourite books of all time and showed me just how amazing story-telling could be' - Stormzy Sephy is a Cross: she lives a life of privilege and power. Callum is a nought: he's considered to be less than nothing - a blanker, there to serve Crosses. They've been friends since they were…
Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and…
'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' - Olivia Laing So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice,…
Dear Reader, In February 2013 I gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great. Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation’s decline has continued. Today the danger is greater…
The intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-grandaughter of Iran's last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. This is a beautiful and intimate story full of tragedy…
THE UNFORGETTABLE DEBUT BY THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW ‘Terrific. A smart, witty, charming dry-martini of a novel‘ David Nicholls, author of One Day ‘Achingly stylish . . . witty, slick production, replete with dark intrigue, period details, and a suitably Katharine Hepburn-like heroine’ Guardian ‘If the unthinkable happened and I could never read another new work of fiction . . . I’d…
The second volume of an epic, beautifully illustrated graphic history of humankind, based on Yuval Noah Harari's internationally bestselling phenomenon When nomadic Homo sapiens settled to live in one place, they started working harder and harder. But why didn't they get a better life in return? In The Pillars of Civilization, Yuval Noah Harari and his companions including Prof. Saraswati…
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency-a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.…
The Witcher returns! A brand new novel set in the early days of The Witcher saga – the inspiration behind the bestselling series of games! Geralt. The witcher whose mission is to protect ordinary people from the monsters created with magic. A mutant who has the task of killing unnatural beings. He uses a magical sign, potions and the pride…
Dissatisfied and discontent, Florent-Claude Labrouste feels he is dying of sadness. His young girlfriend hates him and his career as an engineer at the Ministry of Agriculture is pretty much over. His only relief comes in the form of a pill – white, oval, small. Recently released for public consumption, Captorix is a new brand of anti-depressant which works by…
Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2020 The Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2020 Longlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize 'Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.' – Observer It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always…
Opis Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over. Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he's willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as…
As the young Zinaida and her sweetheart, the student Nemovetsky, stroll through the idyllic Russian countryside, their memories, dreams and thoughts about life and the future mingle in the evening breeze. But when night falls, they hasten to retrace their steps back to town through a small wood, where they are accosted by three threatening drunkards, who knock Nemovetsky unconscious…
The sequel to Jonas Jonasson’s international bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they…
The books in Volume Two: The Tale of Peter Rabbit The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin The Tailor of Gloucester The Tale of Benjamin Bunny The Tale of Two Bad Mice The Tale of the Pie and the Patty Pan The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit The Story of Miss Moppet The Tale of…
‘We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.’ Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to…
Go on a journey from bean to brew and explore the history of coffee, its production and how to become an expert barista at home. Are you a coffee lover who wants to learn how to extract the perfect brew? This coffee guide is a must-have for anyone looking for information and inspiration to experiment with different beans, methods, and…
'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation' James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement. Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire…
From the worldwide number one bestselling author of The Nightingale comes Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss. Goodreads Historical Novel of the Year. A woman has to be tough as steel up here. You can’t count on anyone to save you and your children. You have to be willing to save yourselves.…
After walking through a portal in the Tower of the Swallow, thus narrowly escaping death, the Witcher girl, Ciri, finds herself in a completely different world… a world of the Elves. She is trapped with no way out. Time does not seem to exist and there are no obvious borders or portals to cross back into her home world. But…
In a sleepy village in the Shire, a young hobbit is entrusted with an immense task. He must make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Rulling Ring of Power - the only thing that prevents the Dark Lord Sauron's evil dominion.
Read John Fowles's feisty, clever, cunning and compelling novel with an unusual twist. On a remote Greek island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games. John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding…
A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SUSAN HILL Agatha Christie called her ‘a shining light’. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery? A fog is creeping through the weary streets of London - so too are whispers that the Tiger is back in town, undetected by the law, untroubled by…
WITH A NEW FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR On his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents and wielding his tin drum Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of the Nazi era to his anarchic adventures is post-war Germany.
The world has fallen into war. Ciri, the child of prophecy, has vanished. Hunted by friends and foes alike, she has taken on the guise of a petty bandit and lives free for the first time in her life. But the net around her is closing. Geralt, the Witcher, has assembled a group of allies determined to rescue her. Both…
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2020 WINNER OF THE WINDHAM-CAMPBELL PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2020 FINALIST FOR THE PEN / JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD 2020 'Profound and unforgettable' Sally Rooney 'A classic . . . I have long thought of Boyer as a genius' Patricia Lockwood 'An outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique' Ben Lerner 'Some of the most perceptive…
