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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. 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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Serhii Plokhy

On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: 'Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.'While the threat of mutually assured destruction kept a lid on a simmering and tense geopolitical landscape, events like the Chernobyl disaster and near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that total destruction was only ever one malfunction, mistake, or miscommunication away. Now, as governments re-arm their nuclear arsenals, treaties designed to limit the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons fall away, and nuclear weapons come increasingly within reach of non-state actors, we are on the brink of a renaissance of the nuclear industry.In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever. 
 
As he examines the motivations of key players, Plokhy confronts the crucial question of our age: what can we learn from the first nuclear arms race that can help us to stop the new one?

The Nuclear Age

An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival

Jeremy Clarkson

Clarkson’s farm is the gift that keeps on giving, and now our hero has decided to bring his misunderstood entrepreneurial flair to bear on a new venture: a pub. Let the doors open on The Farmer’s Dog. 
 
All British produce, Hawkstone beer on tap, a private bar for farmers and a vintage tractor hanging from the ceiling. The perfect country pub. But as the Cotwolds’ newest publican quickly discovers, there’s a lot more to landlording than pulling pints. 
 
Just as well, then, that he still has Lisa, Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald to help him through...

Diddly Squat: The Farmer's Dog

Karen Hao

Longlisted for the 2025 Financial Times &amp; Schroders Business Book of the Year 
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2025 
Shortlisted for Foyles Non Fiction Book of the Year 2025 
A New York Times Bestseller 
 
An eye-opening account of the tech arms race shaping out planet, from an award-winning journalist and AI insider to the world of Sam Altman and OpenAI 
 
When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. 
But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace, as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase it down. 
In exhilarating prose and with unparalleled access to those closest to Sam Altman, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.

Empire of AI

Inside the reckless race for total domination

Mark Urban

'Punchy. Trenchant. Heavyweight. Mark Urban’s Tank blows the doors off, just as you’d expect from such an accomplished author. Take cover!’ Damien Lewis, author of SAS Great Escapes 
 
An authoritative history of the tank and the remarkable individuals who designed them and fought in them, from a former officer and best-selling historian 
 
Tanks are the ultimate embodiment of industrial age warfare. In the popular imagination, they represent both a terrifying beast of destruction and a potent symbol of liberation. 
 
The technology behind these war machines has evolved relentlessly, and yet the coming of the information age has led many to predict that drones, missiles, and Artificial Intelligence have made the tank obsolete. Time and again, however, tanks have continued to shape – and be shaped by -- battles around the world, from their introduction in 1916, through the Second World War and tank-on-tank fights in 1990s Iraq, to the current conflict in Ukraine. 
 
In TANK, best-selling historian and former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment Mark Urban draws on wide-ranging accounts from soldiers, designers, and politicians, from Winston Churchill to Volodymyr Zelensky, to tell the remarkable story of one of the most important developments in military history. Through the ten most important vehicles ever made, Urban chronicles the incredible advances in tank technology – starting with the Mark IV, the first British tank to be used in large numbers in WW1, and following the story through the T-34 and Tiger to the M1 Abrams, a product of huge American Cold War investment that is still used to this day. 
 
Officially supported by The Tank Museum and using never-before-seen archival sources, interviews and declassified documents, this is a fascinating history of the vehicle that changed conflict forever. 
 
‘An illuminating and exciting drive through the mud and blood of twentieth-century warfare' Dr Robert Lyman, author of Operation Suicide

Tank

The 10 War Machines That Changed the World and the Remarkable Men Behind Them

Tony Fadell

Build

An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

Alex James

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

Over the Rainbow

Tales from an Unexpected Year

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

It has become habitual to think of our relationship with energy as one of transition: with wood superseded by coal, coal by oil, oil by nuclear and then at some future point all replaced by green sources. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s devastating but unnervingly entertaining book shows what an extraordinary delusion this is. Far from the industrial era passing through a series of transformations, each new phase has in practice remained almost wholly entangled with the previous one. Indeed the very idea of transition turns out to be untrue. 
 
The author shares the same acute anxiety about the need for a green transition as the rest of us, but shows how, disastrously, our industrial history has in fact been based on symbiosis, with each major energy source feeding off the others. Using a fascinating array of examples, Fressoz describes how we have gorged on all forms of energy – with whole forests needed to prop up coal mines, coal remaining central to the creation of innumerable new products and oil still central to our lives. The world now burns more wood and coal than ever before. 
 
This book reveals an uncomfortable truth: ‘transition’ was originally itself promoted by energy companies, not as a genuine plan, but as a means to put off any meaningful change. More and More and More forces its readers to understand the modern world in all its voracious reality, and the true nature of the challenges heading our way.

More and More and More

An All-Consuming History

An All-Consuming History of Energy

Jerry Brotton

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. 
 
In Four Points of the Compass, Jerry Brotton takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery. He reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. Throughout, Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning, literally and metaphorically, depending on where you stand.

Four Points of the Compass

The Unexpected History of Direction

Rob Jackson

Can we really restore the earth’s atmosphere within our lifetime? 
 
Whether through sustainable technologies such as fossil-free steel production, hydrogen-powered ships and electric motorbikes, or natural solutions like rewilding peatlands, people all over the world are finding new ways to travel, feed themselves and drive industry while safeguarding a liveable planet for future generations. 
 
Drawing on decades of research and a vast network of experts, Rob Jackson, Chair of the Global Carbon Project, introduces some of the brilliant innovators behind the boldest solutions to climate change – including an Eritrean agricultural scientist, a Swedish CEO and a Brazilian hydrologist. 
 
Now we have more tools to combat climate change than ever before, Into the Clear Blue Sky traces a clear path to a better future for us all – one that will see us cutting emissions in inventive new ways that protect our health and livelihoods, while repairing the damage we have caused to the atmosphere. This visionary and transformative book is the call to action we need – right now.

Into the Clear Blue Sky

The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere

Annie Jacobsen

Up to now, no one outside of official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilisation as we know it. Frantic calls over secure lines work to confirm the worst as armoured helicopters are scrambled to evacuate the chosen few to secure bunkers. One nuclear missile will provoke two dozen in return. Decisions over hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes, based on partial information, knowing that once launched, nothing is capable of halting the destruction. 
 
Based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts, Nuclear War is at once a compulsive non-fiction thriller and a powerful argument that we must rid ourselves of these world-ending weapons for ever.

Nuclear War

A Scenario

James Rebanks

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. 
 
Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. 
 
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold. 
 
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge, forgiveness and how to make lasting change.

The Place of Tides

Adam Higginbotham

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Midnight in Chernobyl comes the definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger space shuttle disaster based on fascinating in-depth reporting and new archival research – riveting history that reads like a thriller 
 
On the morning of 28 January 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions around the world witnessed the tragic deaths of the crew, which included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like the assassination of JFK, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in twentieth century history – one that forever changed the way America thought of itself and its optimistic view of the future. Yet the full story of what happened – and why – has never been told. 
 
Based on extensive archival research and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space follows a handful of central protagonists – including each of the seven members of the doomed crew – through the years leading up to the accident, a detailed account of the tragedy itself, and into the investigation that followed. It’s a compelling tale of optimism and ingenuity shattered by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubristic ‘go fever’; and of an investigation driven by heroic leakers and whistle-blowers determined to bring the truth to light. 
 
With astonishing clarity and narrative verve, Adam Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program, the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster, as well as the designers, engineers and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space. A masterful blend of riveting human drama, fascinating science and shocking political infighting, Challenger brings to life a turning point in our history. The result is an even more complex and extraordinary story than any of us remembered – or thought possible.

Challenger

A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Welcome back to Clarkson’s Farm. 
The spring crop failed. Farming sheep, pigs and cows was hardly more lucrative (better off breeding ostriches…) 
 
But in the face of uncooperative weather, bureaucracy, and the world’s persistent refusal to recognise his genius, our hero’s not beaten yet. Not while the farm shop’s still doing a roaring trade in smelly candles, he isn’t. 
 
Misery loves company and in girlfriend Lisa, Farm Manager Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald his Head of Security Jeremy’s got the best. And it’s hard to feel too gloomy with a JCB telehandler, a crop-spraying hovercraft and a digger in the barn.

Diddly Squat: Home to Roost

Scott Bateman

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER 
 
Read the legendary story of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft, seen through the eyes of former RAF captain Scott Bateman 
'An engaging and revealing read' JOHN NICHOL‘An action-packed insider’s account of what it’s like to fly this legendary flying machine in peace and war’ KeyAero.com 
-- 
 
Take wing with an unsung hero . . . 
Hercules is the hero of the skies we never talk about. First to land in any combat zone and last out, the Hercules always unflashily gets the job done – whether that’s a risky air drop or hauling out troops in an emergency evac. 
Also working as an aerial tanker, gunship, spyplane, air-sea rescuer and even a precision bomber, its versatility has time and again seen the Hercules give the RAF their edge – from Antarctica to Iraq, Afghanistan to the Falklands. 
Captain Scott Bateman drags us into the cockpit and buckles us in for an extraordinary pilot’s seat view of this aircraft’s 50-year history. 
Anytime. Anywhere. Anyhow.

Hercules

Lisa Kaltenegger

For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we're alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. The question should have an obvious answer: yes or no. But once you try to find life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. How do you find it over cosmic distances? What actually is life? 
 
As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute, astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger built a team of tenacious scientists from many disciplines to create a uniquely specialized toolkit to find life on faraway worlds. In Alien Earths, she demonstrates how we can use our homeworld as a Rosetta Stone, creatively analyzing Earth's history and its astonishing biosphere to inform this search. With infectious enthusiasm, she takes us on an eye-opening journey to the most unusual exoplanets that have shaken our worldview - planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, and others with more than one sun in their sky! And the best contenders for Alien Earths. We also see the imagined worlds of science fiction and how close they come to reality. 
 
We live in an incredible new epoch of exploration. As our witty and knowledgeable tour guide, Professor Kaltenegger shows how we discover not merely new continents, like the explorers of old, but whole new worlds circling other stars and how we could spot life there. Worlds from where aliens may even be gazing back at us. What if we're not alone?

Alien Earths

The Search for Life in the Cosmos

Planet Hunting in the Cosmos

Hampton Sides

In July 1776, Captain James Cook began his third voyage in HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, in Hawaii, Cook was killed – stabbed by the indigenous population. 
 
What brought Cook to this end, so far from his reputation? Cook was renowned for humane leadership, dedication to science and respect for indigenous societies. 
 
Cook’s new voyage carried secret orders, and the Captain grew strange, delivering savage punishments and leading his ships into danger. The mission revealed the sharp edge of a colonial sword, leaving catastrophe in its wake. And, on the shores of Hawaii, Cook’s expedition finally tore itself apart…

The Wide Wide Sea

Mark Miodownik

Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some power our engines while others make drinks fizzy? In It's a Gas, Mark Miodownik masterfully reveals an invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling. 
 
Taking us back to that exhilarating – and often dangerous – moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what they had discovered, Miodownik shows that gases are the formative substances of our modern world, each with its own weird and wonderful personality. 
We see how seventeenth-century laughing gas parties led to the first use of anaesthetics in surgery, how the invention of the air valve in musical instruments gave us bicycles, cars and trainers, and how gases made us masters of the sea (by huge steamships) and skies (via extremely flammable balloons). This delight of a book reveals the immense importance of gases to modern civilisation.

It's a Gas

The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World

Chris Dixon

‘A compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.’ Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI 
 
The promise of the internet has been stolen. 
 
Over the last decade, a handful of giant companies like Facebook and Google have seized control of the web – sapping its dynamism and taking its profits for themselves. 
 
But there is a way to take it back. 
 
Here, a leading Silicon Valley investor argues that blockchains – the radically free and democratic new type of software design that underpins ‘web3’ – could return financial and decision-making power to the internet’s users. For the first time, we won’t just read and write on the internet – we will own it, too. 
 
‘A must for anyone who wants to better understand the real potential of blockchains and web3.’ Bob Iger, CEO, Disney 
 
‘The most elegant and sophisticated argument for blockchain to date . . . Shines as a history of computing and the internet.’ Fortune

Read Write Own

Building the Next Era of the Internet

Deb Chachra

Infrastructure enables lives of astounding ease and freedom that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. These technological systems - the most complex and vast ever created by humans - have allowed us to work collectively for the public good. But these systems are now beginning to fail us. Engineering professor Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, and just how much they shape our lives - but also the price they extract, who pays it and in what ways, as well as the threats to our infrastructure in a changing world. 
 
From Snowdonia's Electric Mountain to a solar plant in southern India, Chachra shows how we can rebuild our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. We need to learn how to see these systems and to transform them, together, because the cost of not being able to rely on them is unthinkably high.

How Infrastructure Works

Transforming our shared systems for a changing world

Paul Beaver

Small in stature but immense in reputation and talent, there was more to Eric 'Winkle' Brown than met the eye.From shooting down Luftwaffe bombers in the Battle of the Atlantic and narrowly escaping from a torpedoed ship, to a never-to-be-repeated litany of world records as a test pilot, his unparalleled flying career saw him take the controls of over four hundred different kinds of aircraft-more than any other pilot in history. 
 
A legend in his own lifetime, and by his death, a national treasure, there have always been mysteries at the heart of his story…

Winkle

The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot

Chris Lintott

Our view of the Universe is changing. The timeless heavens, turning ceaselessly above us, have been revealed to be dynamic and ever-changing, requiring a new kind of astronomy. On mountaintops and in deserts around the world, new telescopes are being built to show us this changing sky. But amongst all this technological development, the major astronomical events of the past century have largely come about by accident - found not by careful experiment but as surprises when we were looking for something else entirely. 
 
- The most promising habitat for life beyond Earth turns out to be Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus, whose oceans were revealed as NASA's Cassini probe happened to swing by. 
 
- Pulsars, the remnants of long-dead massive stars, were originally just 'scruff' in the data of radio astronomers looking at distant galaxies. 
 
- Telescopes around the world sprung into action to follow the visit of our first, unexpected, interstellar visitor, an asteroid from another system. 
 
- And we get the most from the Hubble Space Telescope by pointing it at nothing ... 
 
Chris Lintott takes us on an astonishing tour of accidents and human error in pursuit of asteroids, pulsars, radio waves, new stars and alien life. On the threshold of opening a new window on the cosmos through new surveys and instruments, his book is an urgent argument for how keeping an open mind can benefit us all - whatever might still be out there for us to find. 
 
....................... 
Praise for Chris Lintott 
'Superbly written insights.' - Professor Brian Cox 
'Chris Lintott is a modest genius. He has quietly revolutionized modern astronomy.' Brian May 
'Lintott deftly interweaves personal experience and more philosophical ruminations.' Michael West, Nature

Our Accidental Universe

Stories of Discovery from Asteroids to Aliens

Robert Skidelsky

A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity's relationship with machines, showing how we got here and what happens next 
 
Faith in technological fixes for our problems is waning. Automation, which promised relief from toil, has reactivated the long-standing fear of job redundancy. Information technology, meant to liberate us from traditional authority, is placing unprecedented powers of surveillance and control in the hands of a purely secular Big Brother. And for the first time, artificial intelligence threatens anthropogenic disaster – disaster caused by our own activities. Scientists join imaginative writers in warning us of the fate of Icarus, whose wings melted because he flew too close to the sun. 
 
This book tells the story of our fractured relationship with machines from humanity’s first tools down to the present and into the future. It raises the crucial question of why some parts of the world developed a ‘machine civilisation’ and not others, and traces the interactions between capitalism and technology, and between science and religion, in the making of the modern world. 
 
Taking in the peaks of philosophy and triumphs of science, the foundation of economics and speculations of fiction, Robert Skidelsky embarks on a bold intellectual journey through the evolution of our understanding of technology and what this means for our lives and politics. ‘Unless we understand technology as a system of ideas rather than as a necessity,’ he writes, ‘we will be powerless to choose which technology is best suited to our needs and purposes.’

The Machine Age

An Idea, a History, a Warning

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith

Zach Weinersmith

Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away - no climate change, no war, no Twitter - beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of original research, and interviews with leading space scientists, engineers and legal experts, they aren't so sure it's a good idea. Space tech and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the deep knowledge needed to have space-kids, build space-farms and create space nations in a way that doesn't spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won't create a nightmare, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. 
 
With deep expertise, a winning sense of humour and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself - whether and how to become multiplanetary.

A City on Mars

Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

Arthur Parkinson

Most of us want a dog, or a cat, or a pony when we are young &ndash; but for Arthur Parkinson, it was always hens. Growing up in an ex-mining town in Nottinghamshire, the other kids in the playground called him 'Chicken Boy'. The quiet fulfilment of keeping hens became his sanctuary, a tonic for mental and physical health, a connection with his family and the natural world. Illustrated with Arthur's own characterful watercolours and photographs of his &lsquo;girls&rsquo;, Chicken Boy is a one-of-a-kind memoir of a life in nature.

Chicken Boy

My Life With Hens

Robert Zubrin

Within a few years, humans will be able to voyage to Mars. SpaceX is at the forefront of companies already building fleets of spaceships to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America &ndash; to the then New World. We will settle the red planet, transforming its raw materials into resources and tackling the challenges that await us, creating a new frontier for humankind. 
 
Dr Robert Zubrin explains how populous Martian city-states will emerge, producing their own air, water, food, power and more. How they must be beautiful to attract settlers, and what that might look like. How the primary exports are unlikely to be material goods but intellectual products, created by a technically adept population in a frontier environment where people will be forced to innovate &ndash; including GMOs, robotics, AI and power production. Zubrin even predicts the red planet&rsquo;s customs, social relations and government &ndash; of the people, by the people, for the people, with inalienable individual rights &ndash; that will overcome traditional forms of oppression to draw talented Earth immigrants. 
 
In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote &lsquo;We have it in our power to begin the world over again&rsquo;. Zubrin inspires us to embrace another magnificent future today. With the right pieces in place, his red planet will become a pressure cooker for invention, benefiting humans on Earth, Mars and beyond. The New World on Mars proves that there is no point killing each other over provinces on Earth when, together, we can create planets.

The New World on Mars

What We Can Create on the Red Planet

Keith Fisher

Petroleum has always been used by humans: as an adhesive by Neanderthals, as a waterproofing agent in Noah's Ark and as a weapon during the Crusades. Its extraction from the earth in vast quantities transformed light, heat and power. A Pipeline Runs Through It is a fresh, in-depth look at the social, economic, and geopolitical forces involved in our transition to the modern oil age. It tells an extraordinary origin story, from the pre-industrial history of petroleum through to large-scale production in the mid-nineteenth century and the development of a dominant, fully-fledged oil industry by the early twentieth century. 
 
This was always a story of imperialist violence, economic exploitation and environmental destruction. The near total eradication of the Native Americans of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio has barely been mentioned as a precondition for the emergence of the first oil region in the United States. The growth of Royal Dutch-Shell involved the genocidal subjugation of people of the Dutch East Indies and the exploitation of oil in the Middle East arose seamlessly out of Britain's prior interventions in the region. Finally, in an entirely new analysis, the book shows how the British navy's increasingly desperate dependence on vulnerable foreign sources of oil may have been a catalytic ingredient in the outbreak of the First World War. 
 
The rise of oil has shaped the modern world, and this is the book to understand it.

A Pipeline Runs Through It

The Story of Oil from Ancient Times to the First World War

Get tucked in to a third bestselling helping of Clarkson's Farm from our favourite wellie-wearing wannabe farmer, Jeremy Clarkson 
 'Brilliant . . . laugh-out-loud' Daily Telegraph 
 
 'Outrageously funny . . . will have you in stitches' Time Out 
 --- After three years, Jeremy Clarkson has discovered the golden rule of farming: 
 
 whatever you hope will happen, won't. 
 
 Enthusiastic schemes to diversify face defeat at the hands of the Council Planning department, or derision from Kaleb. Jeremy's plans for a business empire founded on rewilding and nettle soup are doubted by Lisa. And the stifling thickets of red tape keep only one person smiling – Cheerful Charlie, who charges by the hour. 
 
 But the animals couldn’t be happier. A rented bull called Break-Heart Maestro is delighting the cows. The pigs are bringing home the bacon. And the goats are . . . most probably psychopaths. 
 
 Yet on the good days it hard not to be optimistic. 
 Where else do you get to harvest blackberries with a vacuum cleaner? 
 
 Maybe it’s not just Break-heart Maestro who gets a happy ending? 
 
---- 
 
Readers are loving Diddly Squat: Pigs Might Fly 
 
‘Another funny book from Jeremy. This one made me chuckle but, my only complaint it's too short. I wanted more. Hopefully Another book is being written as we speak’ ***** Reader Review 
 ‘I love the show and I love the books. Both make me chuckle but have also given me an insight into farming and how hard farming is’ **** Reader Review 
 ‘I’ve read the previous books and loved those as well. 
 Witty and funny with depth and a bit of seriousness’ **** Reader Review 
 ‘Loved it, quickest book I've ever read. Can't wait for the next Clarkson instalment’ **** Reader Review

Diddly Squat: Pigs Might Fly

Tom Whipple

'Deeply researched and engagingly written' The Times 
'Has the pace and style of a well-crafted thriller' Mail on Sunday 
'Chock full of memorable characters and written with all the drama and pace of a Robert Harris thriller' Rowland White, author of Mosquito 
 
Summer 1939. War is coming. The British believe that, through ingenuity and scientific prowess, they alone have a war-winning weapon: radar. They are wrong. The Germans have it too. 
 
They believe that their unique maritime history means their pilots have no need of navigational aids. They are wrong. Most of the bombs the RAF will drop in the first years of the war land miles from their target. 
 
They also believe that the Germans, without the same naval tradition, will never be able to find targets at night. They are, again, wrong. 
 
In 1939 the Germans don't just have radar to spot planes entering their airspace, they have radio beams to guide their own planes into enemy airspace. 
 
This war will be fought on land and sea and in the air, but it will also be fought on the airwaves. It will be fought between scientists on both sides at the forefront of knowledge, and the agents and commandos they relied on to bolster that knowledge. Thanks to one young engineer, Reginald Jones, the British develop radar technology that went on to help the Allies win the war. 
 
Relying on first-hand accounts from Reginald Jones as well as papers recently released by the Admiralty, The Battle of the Beams fills a huge missing piece in the canon of World War II literature. It is a tale that combines history, science, derring do and dogged determination and will appeal as much to fans of World War II history as to those fascinated by the science behind the beams that changed our lives. 
 
The radio war of 1939-45 is one of the great scientific battles in history. This is the story of that war.

The Battle of the Beams

The secret science of radar that turned the tide of the Second World War

Mark Ellison

A Book of the Year 2024, Nick Harkaway, Daily Express 
A Radio 4 Book of the Week 
 
'Sturdy advice, delivered with humour and the occasional splinter' Guardian 
 
‘Gorgeous . . . contains fascinating insights about working with your hands, the nature of talent, and how to create a meaningful life’ A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Puzzler 
 
‘Exquisite, purposeful, absorbing . . . a book with much to teach us all’ Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies 
 
‘People think I’m a genius because I remember my high school math’ 
 
When Mark Ellison left high school, no one thought he would go anywhere. A self-proclaimed ‘serial dropout’, Mark spent his young adult years taking work where he found it. Who would have thought that forty years later he would be regarded as a great carpenter, making a living out of building homes for the rich and famous? 
 
Full of warmth, wisdom and irreverent humour, this is the story of what carpentry can teach us about the satisfaction and joy that comes from doing something well for a long time. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed to algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, Mark exposes the messy wiring behind the pristine walls - and the mindset that any of us can develop to build our own impossible things. Written with refreshing candour, this is an essential book about building life on your own terms, and the possibilities that await when we forge our own path.

How to Build Impossible Things

Lessons in Life and Carpentry

Tim Peake

From bestselling author and British astronaut Tim Peake, an inspirational human history of space travel, from the Apollo missions to our future forays to Mars. The Right Stuff for a new generation. 
 
THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ANY SPACE TRAVEL ENTHUSIAST 
____________________________________________________________________ 
 
'This book is brilliant - once in a blue moon. A book for the whole family.' Chris Evans, Virgin Radio 
 
'The most wonderful book ... Tim Peake is a historian and encyclopaedia of space.’ Rory Stewart 
 
'An extraordinary book. For anyone - even if you’re not interested in Space. If you’re interested in human stories and the human character - this is delightful.' BBC Breakfast 
 
'A fascinating, detailed, playful book drawn from extensive research – Peake met seven Apollo astronauts, Russian cosmonauts and various other space technicians – as well as his considerable personal experience. Lifts the lid on what space is like: the dedication and sacrifice; the politics and pantomime; the practicalities and the peril; the glory and fame; the adjustment back to normal life.' iPaper 
 
'A thrilling human history of space' Daily Mirror 
 
'The bible of space travel' Chris Moyles, Radio X 
____________________________________________________________________ 
As seen in the major TV series Secrets of Our Universe with Tim Peake. 
 
Only 656 people in human history have left Earth. In Space: The Human Story, astronaut Tim Peake traces the lives of these remarkable men and women who have forged the way, from Yuri Gagarin to Neil Armstrong, from Valentina Tereshkova to Peggy Whitson. 
 
Full of exclusive new stories, and astonishing detail only an astronaut would know, the book conveys what space exploration is really like: the wondrous view of Earth, the surreal weightlessness, the extraordinary danger, the surprising humdrum, the unexpected humour, the newfound perspective, the years of training, the psychological pressures, the gruelling physical toll, the thrill of launch and the trepidation of re-entry. The book also examines the surprising, shocking and often poignant stories of astronauts back on Earth, whose lives are forever changed as they readjust to terra firma. 
 
Publication of the book comes on the eve of NASA's plans to return to the moon, fifty years after an astronaut last walked on the lunar surface. In 2024 the Artemis II mission will send four astronauts to orbit the moon. 
 
In 2025 Artemis III will send the first woman and the first person of colour to step on the lunar surface. What will separate these upcoming moonwalkers from the legendary Apollo crews? Does it still take a daring-do attitude, super-human fitness, intelligence, plus the 'Right-stuff' - a fabled grace under pressure? And how will astronauts travel even further - to Mars and beyond? Space: The Human Story reveals all.

Space

The Human Story

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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