82ASK

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

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

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

Becky Barnicoat

‘By turns bloody, sweet, bleak and joyful… It is also very, very funny’ NEW STATESMAN 
 
This is a graphic memoir (like a graphic novel, but true – and also a bit graphic). 
 
It’s about the delirium, chaos and strangeness of becoming a parent for the first time. 
 
It’s for every one who has ever wondered if it’s ok to cry when the baby cries – and also laugh, snort, lie on the floor naked and drool when the baby drools. 
 
This is definitely not a parenting manual, but it might be the only book about parenting you’ll ever need. 
 
‘You will cry, yes, but mainly snort with laughter’ SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'The most accurate account of becoming a parent I have ever read' PHILIPPA PERRY 
 
'Bracingly truthful... very funny' OBSERVER 
 
'It made me laugh, weep, cheer and howl... essential reading for parents and their peers.' NELL FRIZZELL 
 
‘So clever, so funny, so astute, so healing. Becky Barnicoat is a stone cold genius' LUCY JONES

Cry When the Baby Cries

Sarah Perry

Sarah Perry’s father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. He was in some ways a very ordinary man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels and his local church. Yet as Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David through his final days, they realised how extraordinary he really was.This loving, clear-eyed and unforgettable book shows how death may be met and understood as a part of life – a universal experience that is terrible and beautiful, intimate and real, sometimes all at once.

Death of an Ordinary Man

John Burnside

John Burnside recalls the failed relationship with his father, in the first of his trilogy of exquisite memoirs 
 
With a new introduction by Megan Nolan 
 
‘A master of language’ Hilary Mantel 
 
He had his final heart attack in the Silver Band Club in Corby, somewhere between the bar and the cigarette machine. A foundling; a fantasist; a morose, threatening drinker who was quick with his hands, he hadn’t seen his son for years. 
 
John Burnside’s extraordinary story of this failed relationship is a beautifully written evocation of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father’s world: men defined by the drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo. 
 
A Lie About My Father is about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made and how they fall apart, and about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father. 
 
‘Memoir this good illuminates something larger than itself. It is an exercise in understanding, compassion and forgiveness’ Sunday Telegraph 
 
Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year

A Lie About My Father

Sammy Wright

School should equip children for adulthood. In reality, it means one thing: exams. Exam Nation sets out a better way – and, crucially, shows us how we might get there. 
 
Educationalist and Head of School Sammy Wright argues that grades, rankings and Ofsted reports all miss the point of school, and together they are undermining our whole approach to education. Rather than sorting pupils into winners and losers, we need to think differently about what our schools are actually for – to see them as communities not factories – if we are to give all young people the opportunities and future they deserve.

Exam Nation

Why Our Obsession with Grades Fails Everyone – and a Better Way to Think About School

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

Julia F. Christensen

Discover how 15 minutes a day can awaken your creative magic and spark joy 
 
Have you ever been so absorbed in writing, drawing, cooking, dancing, yoga, music or crafting that you lost track of time? In neuroscience, this is known as ‘flow’, a focused state where the mind and body are at their most serene. Former dancer and neuroscientist Julia Christensen reveals why you experience overthinking and shares a 7-step method for creating a reliable pathway to flow to effortlessly unlock the creative genius within you. Boost your mood, calm your mind, and enjoy the magic of flow every day.

The Pathway to Flow

Unlock the Healing Science of Creativity

The New Science of Harnessing Creativity to Heal and Unwind the Body & Mind

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

Oliver Burkeman

Stop trying to sort your life out. Start living.Our lives can feel defined by the struggle with overwhelm, endless decisions and striving to be productive. Wouldn’t it be good to stop doing all that? What if we could find freedom – and get more of the important things done – by embracing our limitations, and by letting things happen instead of forcing them?Meditations for Mortals begins with the reality in which we actually find ourselves, not with fantasies of an ideal existence. Reflecting on ideas from philosophy, religion, psychology and self-help, it offers us a powerful and practical new way to do what counts: a guiding outlook Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism’.This book is a profound and liberating crash course in living more fully. It overturns much familiar advice and opens a gateway to a saner, freer and more enchantment-filled life.One day at a time.

Meditations for Mortals

A Four Week Guide to Doing What Counts

Four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts

Dani Shapiro

The New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance delivers her most intimate and powerful work: a piercing, life-affirming memoir about marriage and memory, sorrow and love. 
 
Hourglass is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time - abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage, and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning - a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become. 
 
What are the forces that shape our most elemental bonds? How do we make lifelong commitments in the face of identities that are continuously shifting, and commit ourselves for all time when the self is so often in flux? What happens to love in the face of the unexpected, in the face of disappointment and compromise - how do we wrest beauty from imperfection, find grace in the ordinary, desire what we have rather than what we lack? 
 
Drawing on literature, poetry, philosophy, and theology, Shapiro writes gloriously of the joys and challenges of matrimonial life, in a luminous narrative that unfurls with urgent immediacy and sharp intelligence. Artful, intensely emotional work from one of our finest writers. 
 
‘A beautiful book by a writer of rare talent’ Cheryl Strayed

Hourglass

Time, Memory, Marriage

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

Kerry Hudson

‘I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it’ Giovanna Fletcher, Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast 
 
The new memoir from Kerry Hudson about her struggle to build a safe, loving home for her baby – the very opposite of the home she grew up in... 
 
‘Absorbing’ Irish Times 
‘Filled with colour’ Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun 
‘A rallying cry’ Herald 
 
How do you build a family without a blueprint to work from? 
 
Kerry Hudson grew up in poverty. Always on the move, shuttled between the care system and her chaotic mother, she left school at 15 without qualifications. Now a prize-winning writer, she looks back and asks: how do you create a different life for yourself and your family? 
 
In Newborn we see how Kerry found love, what it took to decide to start a family of her own and how fragile every step of the journey towards parenthood was. All along the way, she faces obstacles that would test the strongest foundations, from struggles with fertility to being locked down in a Prague maternity hospital to a marriage in crisis. But over and over again, her love, hope, fight – and determination to break patterns and give her son a different life – win through and light her path. 
 
PRAISE FOR KERRY HUDSON: 
 
‘It’s not just Kerry Hudson’s writing that is vibrant, authentic and true, it’s the person herself, it’s where the writing comes from; a wise and generous heart’ KIT DE WAAL 
 
'Hudson’s resilience, grace and humility are staggering. She’s an absolute inspiration’ DOUGLAS STUART 
 
‘Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes’ PHILIPPA PERRY

Newborn

Running Away, Breaking with the Past, Building a New Family

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

Hannah Ritchie

This book will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems – and show how together we can solve them. 
 
** THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER ** 
 
'Truly essential' MARGARET ATWOOD 
‘Inspiring' DAVID WALLACE-WELLS 
‘Shines with positivity’ RUTGER BREGMAN 
‘Unmissable' TIM SPECTOR 
 
------------------------------------------- 
 
We are bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won't be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, that we should reconsider having children. 
 
But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. The data shows we've made so much progress on these problems, and so fast, that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in history. 
 
Packed with the latest research, practical guidance and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you've been told about the environment, from the virtues of eating locally and living in the countryside, to the evils of overpopulation, plastic straws and palm oil. It will give you the tools to understand what works, what doesn't and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations. 
 
These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let's turn that opportunity into reality. 
 
--------------------------------------- 
 
‘A book for anyone who finds it difficult to believe in a better future’ THE TIMES 
 
‘I hope people around the world read this book, understand our planet isn’t a lost cause, and get inspired to help fix it’ Bill Gates 
 
A STYLIST BEST NON-FICTION 2024 * A GUARDIAN BIGGEST FICTION AND NON-FICTION FOR 2024 * A FINANCIAL TIMES, SCOTSMAN, PROSPECT AND NEW SCIENTIST BOOK OF THE YEAR* A WATERSTONES ‘BOOK YOU NEED TO READ IN 2024’

Not the End of the World

Surprising facts, dangerous myths and hopeful solutions for our future on planet Earth

How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

Zahra Hankir

'Fascinating' Nigella Lawson 
'Awe-inspiring' Funmi Fetto 
'A treat to read' Kassia St Clair 
 
A Sunday Times Style Barometer and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick 
 
For centuries, humans have been drawn to lining our eyes. The aesthetic trademark of icons from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools: ancient royals and Gen Z influencers alike have harnessed its power. 
 
Through Zahra Hankir&rsquo;s kohl-lined eyes, this ubiquitous product becomes proof of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space. Exploring intimate conversations &ndash; with Chadian nomads, Japanese geisha, Indian dancers, New York&rsquo;s drag queens and more &ndash; Eyeliner embraces the profound significance of its namesake, especially among communities of colour. 
 
What emerges is a delightful and unexpectedly moving journey through streets and stages around the world, and a stirring reclamation of a key piece of our collective history. 
 
Featuring stunning portrait illustrations by Mercedes deBellard

Eyeliner

A Cultural History

Shane O'Mara

From neurons to nations, Talking Heads is a stunning survey of the science of human connection and communication. 
 
'Delightfully well-written' IRISH TIMES 
'Intriguing ... Makes for an enjoyable read' NEW SCIENTIST 
'Full of good stories' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 
 
Talking to each other is a primal behaviour. It&rsquo;s a key part of what makes us human. Yet the science of human connection has largely remained a mystery. Only recently have scientific advances allowed us to peer into the purpose of conversations and uncover their extraordinary impact. 
 
In this groundbreaking book, the first of its kind written by a leading neuroscientist, Professor Shane O&rsquo;Mara expertly reveals how talking affects all our lives. What does it mean that we mostly think, and speak, in five-minute bubbles around the present moment? Is the fact that we instinctively trust what others say empowering or a hindrance? And how do our very nations begin as conversations? 
 
Moving from the personal to the social and ultimately towards an urgent and radical new perspective on the defining phenomenon of our times, populist nationalism, Talking Heads is the story of how conversation shapes us and constructs our worlds &ndash; and how, together, we can talk our way into a better tomorrow.

Talking Heads

How Conversation Shapes Us

The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds

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

Paul Bloom

Are you a human? Do you have a mind? Then this book is for you. 
 
Nothing is more familiar and yet less understood than the human mind. It defines the experience of being human, and yet its workings contain some of the deepest mysteries ever encountered. Written by one of the world's greatest teachers of psychology, The Human Mind provides a masterful and riveting guide to all that we have learned since modern science began probing those mysteries. It shines new light on all that you take most for granted: everything you think and feel, everything you say and do, everything that makes you you.

The Human Mind

A Brief Tour of Everything We Know

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

Amy Key

Is it possible life without romantic love isn't so bad? 
 
An essential memoir about building life on your own terms 
 
***A SUNDAY TIMES AND INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023*** 
 
'The book I've been waiting for my entire life' 
DOLLY ALDERTON, author of Everything I Know About Love 
 
'Marks an important shift in ideas about intimacy' 
OBSERVER 
 
'The harbinger of real talent' 
SUNDAY TIMES 
 
When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love. 
 
Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - which shaped Key's expectations of love - as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself. Building a home, travelling alone, choosing whether to be a mother, recognising her own milestones, learning the limits of self-care and the expansive potential of self-friendship, Key uncovers the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed. 
 
With profound candour and intimacy, Arrangements in Blue explores the painful feelings we are usually too ashamed to discuss: loneliness, envy, grief and failure. The result is a book which inspires us to live and love more honestly.

Arrangements in Blue

Notes on Love and Making a Life

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

Marc Hamer

Beloved author Marc Hamer writes about finding refuge in his tiny back garden in this highly original story of childhood, old age, and the restorative power of gardens. As a child, he kindled a deep love of the earth by watching plants and insects and exploring the world through a stack of old encyclopaedias he found in the shed. Now an old man, he creates a garden for himself in the neglected plot behind his house. 
 
A little book with a big heart: the insights glow as vivid as a flowerbed. If you want to be inspired, or you've lost your belief in the goodness of this world, this could be for you. 
 
'A sublime meditation on life, love, nature and family, woven with the wisdom gained through a life well lived' Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell 
 
'A book of great but tender power' Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast 
 
'Patterned with Hamer's gifts for observation, compression, and tone' New Yorker 
 
'Rich and tender' New York Times

Spring Rain

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.

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter