Lucy is the founder of The Hope-Filled Family, a ministry encouraging Christian parents, carers and all those investing in the younger generation. She is the author of several books for adults and children, including Busy Family Devotional and the Mighty Girl, Mighty God series. She is mum to four children ages 11 to 16, who arrived by birth and adoption, and is married to Al, a church leader in York, England.

	 Lucy Rycroft

5ive Guys FC

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

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

David Rooney

'David Rooney is an expert storyteller with a big heart, capturing not only the perils faced by the intrepid airmen who attempted the flight, but also their humanity' JOHN LANCASTER, author of The Great Air Race 
 
Newfoundland, 1919. Buffeted by winds, an unwieldy aircraft – made mainly from wood and stiff linen – struggled to take off from the North American island’s rocky slopes. Cramped side by side in its open cockpit were two men, freezing cold and barely able to move but resolute. They had a dream: to be the first in human history to fly, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean. But there were three other teams competing against them, and as the waves raged a few miles below, memories of wartime crashes resurfaced . . . 
 
It was just over six months since the ‘War to End all Wars’ had come to its close. Between them, the seven young aviators who would get off the ground for the transatlantic race had already defied death many times. Mining letters, diaries and evocative unpublished photographs, David Rooney’s deeply researched account of the audacious contest shows how it was the airmen’s thrilling wartime experiences that ultimately led them to the ‘Big Hop’, and brought old friends together for one more daring adventure. 
 
These Atlantic pioneers weren’t scientists or stoical upper-class officers. They were ordinary, working men, risking their lives in the name of progress. Unjustly forgotten by history, they nonetheless paved the way for the Earharts and Lindberghs who came after – and ushered in the age of global connection in which we live now. 
 
A non-stop flight across the Atlantic might seem routine today; almost a chore. But it is only possible because of those who went first.

The Big Hop

The First Non-stop Flight Across the Atlantic and Into the Future

Sophie Elmhirst

**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER** 
**WINNER OF THE NERO AWARDS GOLD PRIZE BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
**A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
 
An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love 
 
'An enthralling, engrossing story of survival' Bill Bryson 
‘An absolute jewel of a book’ India Knight 
‘A gripping tale of adventure’ Elizabeth Day 
‘An extraordinary survival story’ Sunday Times 
 
Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maurice and Maralyn plan their escape: sell the house, build a boat, set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway around the world, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alone on a tiny raft, their love is put to the test. This is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive – not just at sea, but in life. 
 
‘This skilful storytelling drew me in…very touching indeed’ James Rebanks 
‘With the adrenaline kick of Jaws . . . A remarkable portrait of a marriage kept afloat against the odds’ Financial Times 
‘This dramatic, profound human story is so beautifully told. I really could not put it down’ Nina Stibbe 
 
A Guardian, Observer & Waterstones Non-fiction Book of the Year 
 
**READERS ADORE MAURICE & MARALYN** 
‘A riveting tale of survival . . . and of the power of love when all appears lost’ 
‘A mind-blowing story of resilience and love in the face of adversity’ 
‘The very best kind of true story, and beautifully written’ 
‘I couldn’t put this book down’ 
‘I was absolutely hooked from the outset’ 
 
Published as A Marriage at Sea in the USA

Maurice and Maralyn

An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love

A Whale, a Shipwreck, a Love Story

Colin Grant

A memoir told through a series of intimate portraits, which build into a poignant, insightful and unforgettable testimony of West Indian British experience. 
 
***A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023*** 
 
'Grant is a natural storyteller... Compelling and charming' 
BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, Other 
 
'Grant's most revealing work' 
NEW STATESMAN‘I’m black, so you don’t have to be,’ Colin Grant’s uncle Castus used to tell him. If Colin – born in Britain to Jamaican parents – worked hard and became a doctor, his race would become invisible; he would shake off the burden his parents’ generation had carried. The reality turned out to be very different. 
 
This is a memoir told through a series of intimate portraits, including of Grant’s mother Ethlyn, his father Bageye, his sister Selma, and his great uncle Percy. Each character we meet is navigating their own path. Each life informs Grant’s own shifting sense of his identity. Collectively, these stories build into an unforgettable testimony of black British experience.

I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be

A Memoir in Eight Lives

Jody Rosen

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023** 
 
'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday 
 
A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine. 
 
A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance: the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much? 
 
Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters: women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity. 
 
By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance. 
 
'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik 
 
'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence' Economist 
 
'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe

Two Wheels Good

The History and Mystery of the Bicycle

Claire Ratinon

A powerful work of memoir and storytelling that will change the way we think about the natural world. 
 
Like many diasporic people of colour, Claire Ratinon grew up feeling cut off from the natural world. She lived in cities, reluctant to be outdoors and stuck with the belief that success and status could fill the space where belonging was absent. 
 
But a chance encounter with a rooftop farm was the start of a journey that caused her to rethink the life she'd been creating and her beliefs about who she ought to be. Enlivened, she turned her hand to growing food in London before finding herself yearning for a small parcel of land to call her own. 
 
Unearthed tells the story of her leaving the city for the English countryside - and her first garden - in the hope of forging a pathway towards the embrace of the natural world and a sense of belonging cultivated on her own terms. 
 
'Ratinon's story will change hearts and minds' Alice Vincent 
 
'A beautiful book about nature...I recommend it' Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)

Unearthed

On race and roots, and how the soil taught me I belong

Howard Jacobson

'One of the all-time great memoirs' Daily Telegraph 
'Wonderful...candid, shrewd and moving' William Boyd 
'Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious' Simon Schama 
 
Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer. 
 
Howard Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy, he traces the life that brought him there. Born into a working-class Jewish family in 1940s Manchester, he did not lack encouragement or subject matter. Jacobson takes us from childhood and studying at Cambridge, through landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor, and on to his first marriage and the birth of his son. Later, he begins new - and often surprising - ventures in places as disparate as London, Wolverhampton, Boscastle and Melbourne. 
 
Infused with bittersweet memories of Jacobson's parents and friends, this is the story of a writer's beginnings, and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be. 
 
'Hilariously brilliant' David Baddiel 
 
'Howard Jacobson brilliantly transforms calamity into rip-roaring comedy' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

Mother's Boy

A Writer's Beginnings

Frances Stonor Saunders

*Winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize 2022* 
 
'This is family history at its best... the words fizz off the page and flutter in the mind' Sunday Times 
 
If you open that suitcase you'll never close it again. 
 
Ten years ago, Frances Stonor Saunders was handed an old suitcase filled with her father's papers. Her father's life had been a study in borders - exiled from Romania during the war, to Turkey then Egypt and eventually Britain, and ultimately to the borderless territory of Alzheimer's. The unopened suitcase seems to represent everything that had made her father unknowable to her in life. 
 
So begins a captivating exploration of history, memory and geography, as Frances Stoner Saunders decides to unpick her family's past.

The Suitcase

Six Attempts to Cross a Border

Carmen Callil

'A triumphant family memoir' Hallie Rubenhold 
'Powerfully told...an impressive work' The Times 
'Oh Happy Day gives a voice to the voiceless' Australian Book Review 
 
In this remarkable book, Carmen Callil discovers the story of her British ancestors, beginning with her great-great grandmother Sary Lacey, born in 1808, an impoverished stocking frame worker. Through detailed research, we follow Sary from slum to tenement and from pregnancy to pregnancy. We also meet George Conquest, a canal worker and the father of one of Sary's children. George was sentenced - for a minor theft - to seven years' transportation to Australia, where he faced the extraordinary brutality of convict life. 
 
But for George, as for so many disenfranchised British people like him, Australia turned out to be his Happy Day. He survived, prospered and eventually returned to England, where he met Sary again, after nearly thirty years. He brought her out to Australia, and they were never parted again. 
 
A miracle of research and fuelled by righteous anger, Oh Happy Day is a story of Empire, migration and the inequality and injustice of nineteenth-century England. 
 
'A remarkable tale...drawing chilling parallels to the inequalities of our times' Observer

Oh Happy Day

Those Times and These Times

Lizzie Collingham

Bourbons. Custard Creams. Rich Tea. Jammie Dodgers. Chocolate Digestives. Shortbread. Ginger snaps. Which is your favourite? 
 
 British people eat more biscuits than any other nation; they are as embedded in our culture as fish and chips or the Sunday roast. We follow the humble biscuit's transformation from durable staple for sailors, explorers and colonists to sweet luxury for the middling classes to comfort food for an entire nation. Like an assorted tin of biscuits, this charming and beautifully illustrated book has something to offer for everyone, combining recipes for hardtack and macaroons, Shrewsbury biscuits and Garibaldis, with entertaining and eye-opening vignettes of social history.

The Biscuit

The History of a Very British Indulgence

Hester Grant

The enthralling story of an eighteenth-century family and their extraordinary achievements. 
 
Four brothers, three sisters. Brought up in a Northumberland rectory and in the close of Durham Cathedral, the Sharps would achieve exalted positions at the heart of British society. In 1781, the celebrated painter Johan Zoffany put the final brush strokes on the luminous portrait that immortalised the siblings’ rise, and their remarkable unity and passion for life. 
 
Ambitious, free-thinking and courageous, the Sharps were pioneers in the major movements that defined the eighteenth century – from political reform and philanthropy to medicine and industry. John, an eminent priest, established a model welfare state at Bamburgh Castle and commissioned the world’s first lifeboat; William became surgeon to George III; while James was a visionary inventor, canal promoter and engineer. Most famously of all, Granville, the youngest son, battled tirelessly as Britain’s first great campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. Despite the social strictures of their day, Elizabeth, Judith and Frances claimed significant independence, and played key roles in hosting the Sharps’ famous musical parties on barges on the Thames. 
 
In this vivid, moving biography, Hester Grant charts the siblings’ shared journey to prominence, and explores the values and enduring bonds that inspired their success. The Good Sharps brings to life not just these men and women who realised that the future could be different, but also the new world they created.

The Good Sharps

The Eighteenth-Century Family that Changed Britain

The Brothers and Sisters Who Remade Their World

Shelley Klein

'A charming account of a daughter, a house and a fastidious dad' Sunday Times 
 
Shelley Klein grew up in the Scottish Borders, in a house designed on a modernist open-plan grid. With colourful glass panels set against a forest of trees, it was like living in a work of art. Her father, Bernat Klein, was a textile designer whose pioneering colours and textures were a major contribution to 1960s and 70s style. 
 
Thirty years on, Shelley moves back home to care for her father, now in his eighties: the house has not changed and neither has his uncompromising vision - or his distinctive way of looking at the world. Told with great tenderness and humour, this is Shelley's account of looking after an adored yet maddening parent and a piercing portrait of the grief that followed his death. 
 
'A sad, funny, utterly fascinating book about families, home and how to say goodbye' Mark Haddon 
 
'Original, moving and bracingly honest... often hilarious' Blake Morrison, Guardian 
 
'It is strange that grief should produce such a life-affirming book, but it has. Read it for the solace it contains, or for its captivating descriptions. Either way, it's a delight' Telegraph

The See-Through House

My Father in Full Colour

Matthew Crawford

Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the human spirit and the competence of ordinary people by the bestselling author of The Case for Working with Your Hands. 
 
Once we were drivers on the open road. 
 
Today we are more often in the back seat of an Uber. 
 
As we hurtle toward a 'self-driving' future, are we destined to become passengers in our own lives too? 
 
In Why We Drive, the philosopher and mechanic Matthew Crawford celebrates the risk, skill and freedom of driving. He reveals what we are losing to technology and government control in the modern world, and speaks up for play, dissent and occasionally being scared witless. 
 
'Fascinating... A pleasure to read' Sunday Times 
 
'Persuasive and thought-provoking... A vivid and heartfelt manifesto' Observer

Why We Drive

On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control

Darran Anderson

‘Astonishing… A marvellous poetic reminder that every place is a universe of magical possibility to the perceptive mind’ Damian Le Bas, author of The Stopping Places 
 
 A smuggler and a deserter, Darran Anderson’s grandfathers skirted the Second World War on the fringes of legality. His father survived the height of the political violence in Northern Ireland and Darran himself came of age during the final years of the Troubles before leaving his hometown to find a way to exist in the world. 
 
 But when another young man in his family disappears, Darran is brought back to Derry. Walking the banks of the River Foyle, he starts on a search for what has been lost. A portrait of a city, a biography of a family, a record of the objects that make up a life, Inventory offers a vital new perspective on a troubled history.

Inventory

A Family Portrait of Derry’s Troubled Past

A River, A City, A Family

Gillian Tindall

*As read on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week* 
 
'A genius for a certain kind of social history that, in shining a light on one small place, illuminates a huge amount' Sunday Telegraph 
 
A toy train. A stack of letters. A tiny pulse glass, inherited from her great-great-grandfather, which was used to time a patient's heartbeat before pocket watches... Gillian Tindall, one of our most admired domestic history writers, examines seemingly humble objects to trace the personal and global memories stored within them, and re-animate the ghostly heartbeats of lost lives. 
 
'Elegiac... Tindall reflects on a lifetime's interest in historical recovery' The Telegraph 
 
'Tindall is a fine historian and writes with a wryness of everyday human foibles' The Times

The Pulse Glass

And the beat of other hearts

Laura Cumming

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD** 
 
Uncovering the mystery of her mother's disappearance as a child: Laura Cumming, prize-winning author and art critic, takes a closer look at her family story. 
 
'A modern masterpiece' Guardian 
 
Autumn 1929 - a young girl is kidnapped from a beach. Five agonising days go by before she is discovered safe and well in a nearby village. The child remembers nothing of these events and at home, nobody ever speaks of them again. 
 
Decades later, Laura Cumming delves into the mystery surrounding her mother's disappearance. Examining everything from old family photos to letters, tickets and recipes, she uncovers a series of secrets and lies perpetuated not just by her family but by the whole community and in doing so unlocks a mystery almost a century old. 
 
'A moving, many-sided human story of great depth and tenderness, and a revelation of how art enriches life' Sunday Times 
 
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 
Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize

On Chapel Sands

My mother and other missing persons

Horatio Clare

*A Newstatesman Book of the Year* 
 
‘Nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting’ Observer 
 
Bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north. 
 
'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' 
 
 
A message from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice. 
 
 
Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and explores Finland’s history and character. Surrounded by the extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

Icebreaker

A Voyage Far North

Lucy Mangan

'Beautiful and moving... It will kickstart a cascade of nostalgia for countless people' Marian Keyes 
 
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up different worlds and cast new light on this one. 
 
She was whisked away to Narnia - and Kirrin Island - and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library. 
 
In Bookworm, Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life and disinters a few forgotten treasures poignantly, wittily using them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm. 
 
'Passionate, witty, informed, and gloriously opinionated' Jacqueline Wilson

Bookworm

A Memoir of Childhood Reading

Elizabeth Foley

Beth Coates

'An obvious candidate to take to a desert island, along with Shakespeare and the Bible' Daily Telegraph 
 
Don't know your isosceles from your equilateral? Forgotten what actually happened in 1066? Any idea why the sky is blue? This bestselling bible of old-school knowledge for grown-ups has all the answers. 
 
With fun lessons in mathematics and algebra, English language and literature, chemistry and the sciences, geography, history, Latin, modern languages and more, Homework for Grown-ups is packed with essential information, facts, figures and theories, along with entertaining test questions to keep you on your toes and reignite those long-dormant brain-cells.

Homework for Grown-ups

Everything You Learnt at School... and Promptly Forgot

Stuart Heritage

Stuart Heritage got where he is today by being decent, thoughtful, hardworking and kind. He is, in short, a model citizen. The favourite son. 
 
His younger brother Pete is quick-tempered, peevish and aggressively pig-headed and, for a while, known to his friends as 'Shagger'. 
 
But now, Stu has returned to his hometown to discover that Pete has taken his place. 
 
Don’t Be A Dick, Pete is a hilarious examination of home and family; sons, fathers, fatherhood, sibling relationships and how hard it is to move on in a system that’s loaded with several decades of preconceived ideas about you.

Don't Be a Dick Pete

Crossrail, the ‘Elizabeth’ line, is simply the latest way of traversing a very old east–west route through what was once countryside to the city and out again. Visiting Stepney, Liverpool Street, Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, Gillian Tindall traces the course of many of these historical journeys across time as well as space. 
 
The Tunnel Through Time uncovers the lives of those who walked where many of our streets still run. These people spoke the names of ancient farms, manors and slums that now belong to our squares and tube stations. They endured the cycle of the seasons as we do; they ate, drank, worked and laughed in what are essentially the same spaces we occupy today. As Tindall expertly shows, destruction and renewal are a constant rhythm in London’s story.

The Tunnel Through Time

Discover the secret history of life above the Elizabeth line

Travis Elborough

'A fascinating, informative, revelatory book' William Boyd, Guardian 
 
Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life, you might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there. In fact, public parks are an invention. From their medieval inception as private hunting grounds through to their modern incarnation as public spaces of rest and relaxation, parks have been fought over by land-grabbing monarchs, reforming Victorian industrialists, hippies, punks, and somewhere along the way, the common folk trying to savour their single day of rest. 
 
In A Walk in the Park, Travis Elborough excavates the history of parks in all their colour and complexity. Loving, funny and impassioned, this is a timely celebration of a small wonder that – in an age of swingeing cuts – we should not take for granted.

A Walk in the Park

The Life and Times of a People's Institution

Juliet Nicolson

One woman’s investigation into the nature of memory, the past, and above all, love. 
 
All families have their myths and Juliet Nicolson’s was no different: her flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita, her mother’s Tory-conventional background. 
 
A House Full of Daughters takes us through seven generations of women. In the nineteenth-century slums of Malaga, the salons of fin-de-siècle Washington DC, an English boarding school during the Second World War, Chelsea in the 1960s, these women emerge for Juliet as people in their own right, but also as part of who she is and where she has come from

A House Full of Daughters

Peter Korn

Why do we make things? Why do we choose the emotionally and physically demanding work of bringing new objects into the world with creativity and skill? Why does it matter that we make things well? What is the nature of work? And what is the nature of a good life? 
 
Part memoir, part polemic, part philosophical reflection, this is a book about the process of creation and what it means to be a craftsman in a mass-produced world. For woodworker Peter Korn, the challenging work of bringing something new and meaningful into the world through one’s own efforts is exactly what generates authenticity, meaning, and fulfilment, for which many of us yearn. This is not a ‘how-to’ book in any sense, Korn wants to get at the ‘why’ of craft in particular, and the satisfaction of creative work in general, to understand its essential nature. 
 
How does the making of objects shape our identities? How do the products of creative work inform society? In short, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves? Korn draws on four decades of hands-on experience to answer these questions eloquently in this heartfelt, personal and revealing book.

Why We Make Things and Why it Matters

The Education of a Craftsman

Keggie Carew

Discover a daughter's journey into her father's past in this Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the 2016 Costa Biography Award. 
 
Keggie Carew grew up under the spell of an unorthodox, enigmatic father. An undercover guerrilla agent during the Second World War, in peacetime he lived on his wits and dazzling charm. But these were not always enough to sustain a family. 
 
As his memory began to fail, Keggie embarked on a quest to unravel his story once and for all. Dadland is that journey. It takes us into shadowy corners of history, a madcap English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, the corridors of dementia and beyond. 
 
'OH THIS BOOK. Beautiful and fierce and brave. Memory and war and family and loss and, well, wow' Helen Macdonald, bestselling author of H is for Hawk 
 
'A thrilling history of Churchill's Special Operations Executive... combined ingeniously with a tender, moving, funny portrait of the author's father' Nick Hornby, Observer

Dadland

A Journey into Uncharted Territory

Mark Vanhoenacker

**Sunday Times Bestseller** 
**Book of the Week on Radio 4** 
 
'A beautiful book about a part of the modern world which remains genuinely magical’ Mark Haddon 
 
'One of the most constantly fascinating, but consistently under-appreciated aspects of modern life is the business of flying. Mark Vanhoenacker has written the ideal book on the subject: a description of what it’s like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist and a deeply sensitive human being. This is a man who is at once a technical expert – he flies 747s across continents – and a poet of the skies. This couldn’t be more highly recommended.' Alain de Botton 
 
Think back to when you first flew. When you first left the Earth, and travelled high and fast above its turning arc. When you looked down on a new world, captured simply and perfectly through a window fringed with ice. When you descended towards a city, and arrived from the sky as effortlessly as daybreak. 
 
In Skyfaring, airline pilot and flight romantic Mark Vanhoenacker shares his irrepressible love of flying, on a journey from day to night, from new ways of mapmaking and the poetry of physics to the names of winds and the nature of clouds. Here, anew, is the simple wonder that remains at the heart of an experience which modern travellers, armchair and otherwise, all too easily take for granted: the transcendent joy of motion, and the remarkable new perspectives that height and distance bestow on everything we love. 
 
‘A beautiful, contemplative book… What Skyfaring gives is something we need: elevation; another perspective… Normally when I find a volume where prose style and subject matter fuse so pleasingly, I tear through it in a day. Here, I found myself pausing on almost every page, as I absorbed its detail or phrasing.’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 
 
**A 2015 Book of the Year – The Economist, The New York Times, GQ and more**

Skyfaring

A Journey with a Pilot

Edmund de Waal

The gripping story of the lure of porcelain, or 'white gold', from the Number One bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes. 
 
** A Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller ** 
 
 "Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first" 
 
 A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white. 
 
 Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times. 
 
 In these intimate and compelling encounters with the people and landscapes who made porcelain, Edmund de Waal enriches his understanding of this rare material, the 'white gold' he has worked with for decades. 
 
'This is a haunting book, a book that amasses itself piece by piece, gaining in weight.' Olivia Laing, New Statesman 
 
'A mighty achievement' Guardian

The White Road

A Journey Into Obsession

a pilgrimage of sorts

Martin Buckley

In this exciting and unusual travel book, Martin Buckley journeys through many places, from Benbecula to Rarotonga, from Sudan to New Zealand, from Corsica to Tucson, Arizona - but the country he explores is a romantic and dangerous place that seduces all who travel there - the sky. 
 
Three years ago, Martin Buckley gained a pilot's licence, and set off to 'hitch-hike' by plane around the world. His encounters with a range of sometimes eccentric and always obsessive pilots led to aid flights through war zones in a UN Cessna, aerobatics in a jet fighter, chasing goats across snowy mountains by helicopter and touching the edge of the stratosphere in a Learjet. 
 
The result is a wholly original travel book, free-spirited and often very funny, weaving a bird's-eye view of aviation's peculiar history into the narrative and offering intimate insights into the passion and perils of the pilot's seat.

Absolute Altitude

A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Sky

Robert Pirsig

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

40th Anniversary Edition

Adrian Tinniswood

The Rainborowes bridges two generations and two worlds, weaving together the lives of the Rainborowe clan as they struggle to forge a better life for themselves and a better future for humankind in the New World. 
 
Starting with William Rainborowe, a prominent merchant-mariner and shipmaster, and his equally formidable sons and daughters between 1630 and 1660, we follow their astonishing story through the Civil War, the Putney debates, and settling in America. The Rainborowes explains America and mourns England’s failed revolution. It spans oceans and ideologies and encompasses personal tragedies and triumphs, the death of kings and the birth of nations. 
 
Using rare printed material from the period and unpublished manuscripts from collections in Britain and America The Rainborowes recreates day-to-day life on both sides of the Atlantic during one of the most tumultuous periods in Western history. In their efforts to build a paradise on earth, the Rainborowes and their friends encounter pirates and witches, prophets and princes, Muslem militants and Mohican Indians. They build new societies. They are ordinary men and women, and they do an extraordinary thing. 
 
They change the world.

The Rainborowes

Nicholas Shakespeare

The astonishing true story of a young woman's adventures, and misadventures, in the dangerous world of Nazi-occupied France. 
 
For Priscilla, pre-war Paris was an exciting carousel of suitors, soirées and heartbreak, and eventually a lavish wedding to a French aristocrat. 
 
But the arrival of the Nazi tanks signalled the end of life as a Vicomtesse, and the beginning of a precarious existence under German Occupation. 
 
Over half a century later, her nephew, Nicholas Shakespeare, found a box of Priscilla's notebooks and journals. He began investigating the rumours that she had escaped a prisoner-of-war camp and fought for the Resistance - and he finally unearthed the truth behind suspicions of disreputable love affairs and far darker secrets.

Priscilla

The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France

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

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter