Alison Tyler

Alison Uttley

Alison Weir is one of Britain’s top-selling historians. She is the author of numerous works of history and historical fiction, specialising in the medieval and Tudor periods. Her bestselling history books include The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth of York and The Lost Tudor Princess. Her novels include Innocent Traitor, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen and Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession. She is an Honorary Life Patron of Historic Royal Palaces and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She lives and works in Surrey.

Alison Weir

Alison Wolf

Alison Wood Brooks is the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Her oversubscribed course ‘TALK: How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life’ helps MBA students hone their conversational skills. Her research has featured in two of the twenty most popular TED Talks of all time as well as in Pixar’s film Inside Out 2. She was named an American Psychological Society Rising Star in 2017 and one of the ‘Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors’ by Poets &amp; Quants

Alison Wood Brooks

Alison Wright

Born in the north and now living in the south, Alison Young is globally recognised as one of the most experienced, qualified professionals in the world of beauty. Alison recently won an 'Amazing Woman' Award from Woman &amp; Home and CEW Awards, recognising her outstanding contribution to the industry. She is hugely respected and trusted by brand owners, CEOs, PRs, marketeers and, most importantly, her core fan base of real women at home. During her 35 years' industry experience, Alison trained as a beauty therapist, counting A-listers and royalty among her clientele, before becoming the UK's youngest ever Head of Training at Clarins. Since then, Alison has helped thousands of clients in person and trained countless other professionals. Today, Alison splits her time between advisory roles for labs, brands and retailers, and her media work across TV, radio and social media, including QVC where she is watched by millions and has helped turned brands such as Molton Brown, Liz Earle and Elemis into household names. www.alisonyoungbeauty.com / @aliyoungbeauty

Alison Young

Alison Zai is a Los Angeles-based illustrator. She creates drawings about the irrational chaos, beauty, and overall strangeness of life. These experiences and emotions that make us human are featured throughout her work, usually in the form of brightly coloured talking animals.

Alison Zai

Alissa Nutting

Alissa Quart

Alissa Timoshkina is a food writer, historian and campaigner, best known for the multi-award-winning #CookforUkraine initiative and her cookbooks Kapusta and Salt &amp; Time. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vogue and The Economist, and she is a regular voice on BBC radio, podcasts and at major food and literary festivals.

Alissa Timoshkina

Alistair Beaton

Alistair Brownlee

Alistair Coleman joined the BBC as a computer operator in 1989, forgot to leave, and accidentally became a journalist several years later. He's often mistaken for an expert in North Korean and Asian affairs, and is probably on lists in several foreign capitals for what he said about their Presidents. 
 
His award-winning blog, Angry People in Local Newspapers, now has over 200,000 followers and was the first blog to be named Best British Blog by the Guardian. 
 
 
He has two grown-up children, and lives in Hampshire with his partner Jane. They, in turn, are servants to a pair of seemingly immortal Jack Russells.

Alistair Coleman

Alistair Cooke (1908-2004) enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. Born in Salford in 1908 and educated at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Harvard, throughout his long career he worked as a journalist and broadcaster for many different organisations and won numerous awards for his work. He was the Guardian's chief American correspondent for twenty-five years and the host of Masterpiece Theatre and other ground-breaking cultural television programmes. He achieved acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic for his thirteen-part BBC series America: A Personal History of the United States and the accompanying book sold two million copies. Alistair Cooke was, however, best known both at home and abroad for his weekly Letter from America, which was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts, becoming far and away the longest-running BBC radio series in broadcasting history. He died in March 2004, just a few weeks after his retirement.

Alistair Cooke

Alistair Horne

Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLeod

Alistair McAlpine

Alistair McGowan

Alistair Owen is the author of five acclaimed books of interviews with British writers, including two Guardian and Observer books of the year. He has written screenplays, stage plays and arts journalism, and chaired writer Q&amp;As at events, festivals and online. His first novel, The Vetting Officer, is available on Kindle and in paperback.

Alistair Owen

Alistair Shearer

Alistair Sooke

Alistair Tait

As one of the only members of his family not to have been employed by the Secret Intelligence Service, Alistair Wood has enjoyed a reassuringly respectable (and successful) career in advertising, working in the UK, US, Korea, and South-East Asia. He lives in London.

Alistair Wood

Alister McGrath

Aliya Whiteley is one of the most exciting talents in the UK. The author of four books of speculative fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted The Loosening Skin. Her novels have been shortlisted for many awards, including the Clarke Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the James Tiptree Jr. Award. She lives in Sussex with her husband and teenage daughter.

Aliya Whiteley

Aliyah Umm Raiyaan reverted to Islam in 1999 as a young woman and has been involved in UK dawah for over twenty years. In 2010, she founded Solace UK, a charity that helps women who have reverted to Islam and find themselves in difficulty. In 2019, she launched a YouTube show called Honest Tea Talk, which brought unscripted conversations to the table about raw unspoken topics related to the Muslim community. She continues to devote her time to helping women achieve their full potential whilst emphasising the importance of developing a personal and close relationship with Allah. She lives in East London with her family. She is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Ramadan Reflections and The Power of Du'a.

Aliyah Umm Raiyaan

Allan Ahlberg, a former teacher, postman, plumber's mate and grave  digger, is in the super-league of children's writers. He has published  over 100 children's books and, with his late wife Janet, created such  award-winning picture books as Each Peach Pear Plum, Funnybones, Burglar  Bill and The Jolly Postman.

Allan Ahlberg

Allan Ahlberg, a former teacher, postman, plumber's mate and grave digger, is in the super-league of children's writers. He has published over 100 children's books and, with his late wife Janet, created such award winning picture books as EACH PEACH PEAR PLUM and THE JOLLY POSTMAN - both winners of the Kate Greenaway Medal. He has also written prize-winning poetry and fiction and lives in Sussex.

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Charles Montgomery

Happy City is the story of how the solutions to this century's problems lie in unlocking the secrets to great city living 
 
This is going to be the century of the city. But what actually makes a good city? Why are some cities a joy to live in? 
 
As Charles Montgomery reveals, it's not how much money your neighbours earn, or how pleasant the climate is that makes the most difference. Journeying to dozens of cities - from Atlanta to Bogotá to Vancouver - he talks to the new champions of the happy city to explore the urban innovations already transforming people's lives. He meets the visionary Colombian mayor who turned some of the world's most dangerous roads into an urban cycling haven; the Danish architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan towns to modern-day Copenhagen; and the New York City transport commissioner who turned the gridlock of Times Square into a place to lounge in the sun. 
 
Drawing on the lessons from their stories, from brain science, and from the fascinating realm of urban experimentation, Happy City offers solutions we can all use to improve our livesandshows that simple changes can make all the difference. 
 
'Do we live in neighbourhoods that make us happy? Montgomery encourages us to ask without embarrassment, and to think intelligently about the answer' The New York Times Book Review 
 
'Excellent . . . Montgomery believes in the importance of smart town planning and Happy City is a compendium of its major ideas' Will Dean, Independent 
 
Charles Montgomery is a journalist and urban experimentalist from Vancouver, Canada. His writings on urban planning, psychology, culture, and history have appeared in magazines and journals on three continents. He is the author of one previous book, and was an original member of the BMW Guggenheim Lab.

Happy City

Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design

Yaron Matras

In I Met Lucky People, Yaron Matras, the world's leading authority on the Romani, explains why we need to reconsider how we view their culture 
 
Who are the Romani people? As one of the last remaining societies in the Western hemisphere with a strictly oral culture, they have no written record of their history that can be consulted. From the early 1990s, linguist Yaron Matras has been working with the 'Rom', as they call themselves, one of a handful of people to have done so. Travelling widely in central and eastern Europe, studying their language and learning their dialects, he has witnessed their campaign for recognition. In I Met Lucky People Matras gives us the first comprehensive account of their culture, language and history. It is a story of the echoes of a rich past left in language and customs, and of how the changing fortunes of Europe throughout the centuries have been imprinted on Romani culture. 
 
'Required reading' - Financial Times 
 
Yaron Matras is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester, and Editor of the journal Romani Studies. His involvement with Romani issues began in the advocacy and civil rights arena. Matras was media relations officer to the Roma National Congress from 1988 -1995, and founding editor of RomNews, one of the very first advocacy information services on Romani issues. He has worked closely with the Open Society Institute's Roma programmes, is a founding member of the European Academic Network on Romani Studies, and has led several large-scale research projects on Romani language and culture, including an international research consortium on Romani migrations. He is the author of over a dozen books and numerous chapters and articles on Romani language and culture, and speaks the Romani language fluently.

I Met Lucky People

The Story of the Romani Gypsies

David Marquand

Since 2008's financial crisis, we have heard much about the failures of bankers, regulators and politicians. David Marquand sees a wider issue: the fall of the public realm. The crisis, he argues, is one of our moral economy as much as of our political economy. Already, we are well advanced towards a near-Hobbesian state of genteel barbarism - and greed is all-pervasive. 
 
Setting out a framework for a new public philosophy founded on civic conscience and cooperation, Marquand seeks to spring the trap into which our culture has stumbled. The message is plain: we cannot continue on our present path.

Mammon's Kingdom

An Essay on Britain, Now

William Gibson

Though primarily known as a novelist, over thirty years William Gibson has also built up a reputation as one of our most entertaining and insightful critics of contemporary culture. He is widely credited with having described the internet and cyberspace before any such things existed. 
 
Distrust that Particular Flavor brings together for the first time his writings on a wide variety of contemporary subjects: the differing cultures of Japan and Singapore; music and the movies; what's wrong with the internet; the interactive relationship between writers and readers; and many others. Also included in the book is a fascinating autobiographical sketch: his upbringing in the South, the early death of his parents and his escape into books; and the move to Canada to avoid the draft.

Distrust that Particular Flavor

Peter Schneider

Over the last five decades, no city has changed more than Berlin: divided in 1961, reunited in 1989, it has become Europe's most vibrant melting-pot of artists, immigrants and entrepreneurs. Blending memoir, history and reportage, this legendary Berliner takes us behind the scenes there - looking at everything from life under the Stasi and the difference between East and West Berliners' sex-lives to the city's night-life, politics and hidden quirks - and reveals what makes Berlin the uniquely fascinating place it is.

Berlin Now

The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall

Philip Hook

Fascinating and highly subjective, built on Philip Hook's thirty-five years' experience of the art market, Breakfast at Sotheby's explores the artist and his hinterland (including -isms, middle-brow artists, Gericault and suicides), subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), 'wall-power', provenance and market weather. Comic, revealing, piquant, splendid and absurd, Breakfast at Sotheby's is a book of pleasure and intelligent observation.

Breakfast at Sotheby's

An A-Z of the Art World

Hooman Majd

In The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay, Hooman Majd introduces us to the delights and challenges of life in the so-called axis of evil. His funny, wry account of daily life in Iran is a mixture of extreme driving, intense sociability, yellow-tinged sheep's yoghurt and truly good Cuban cigars, interspersed with challenges from the religious police, stealthy internet use and polite yet concerning interrogations inside government ministries. At parties he both hears stories from friends of life in Evin prison after the Green Revolution and witnesses heady Western-style nihilism. From the smoggy streets of Tehran to the beautiful cities and mountains around it, this is a warm and revealing account of life in reverse-exile.

The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay

An American Family in Iran

Paul Collier

Exodus is an insightful, expert foray into the explosive issue of immigration, from Paul Collier, award-winning economist and author of The Bottom Billion 
 
Mass international migration is a response to extreme global inequality, and immigration has a profound impact on the way we live. Yet our views - and those of our politicians - remain caught between two extremes: popular hostility to migrants, tinged by xenophobia and racism; and the view of business and liberal elites that 'open doors' are both economically and ethically imperative. With migration set to accelerate, few issues are so urgently in need of dispassionate analysis - and few are more incendiary. 
 
Here, world-renowned economist Paul Collier seeks to defuse this explosive subject. Exodus looks at how people from the world's poorest societies struggle to migrate to the rich West: the effects on those left behind and on the host societies, and explores the impulses and thinking that inform Western immigration policy. Migration, he concludes, is a fact, and we urgently need to think clearly about its possibilities and challenges: it is not a question of whether migration is good or bad, but how much is best? 
 
'Exodus is an important book and one I have been waiting to read for many years ... [it is] a work that is humane and hard-headed about one of the greatest issues of our times' - David Goodhart, Sunday Times 
 
'Paul Collier is one of the world's most thoughtful economists. His books consistently illuminate and provoke. Exodus is no exception' - Economist 
 
'Tinged with poignancy ... a humane and sensible voice in a highly toxic debate' - Colin Kidd, Guardian 
 
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and a former director of Development Research at the World Bank. He is the author of, among others, the award-winning The Bottom Billion and The Plundered Planet.

Exodus

Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century

Sudhir Venkatesh

After his insider's study of Chicago crack gangs electrified the academy, Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent a decade immersed in New York's underbelly, observing the call girls, drug dealers, prostitutes and other strivers that make up this booming underground economy. Amidst the trust-funder cocktail parties, midtown strip clubs, and immigrant-run sex shops, he discovers a surprisingly fluid and dynamic social world - one that can be found in global cities everywhere. Floating City is Venkatesh's journey through the 'vast invisible continent' of New York's underground economy - a thriving yet largely unseen world that exists in parallel to our own.

Floating City

Hustlers, Strivers, Dealers, Call Girls and Other Lives in Illicit New York

Sendhil Mullainathan

Eldar Shafir

Why can we never seem to keep on top of our workload, social diary or chores? Why does poverty persist around the world? Why do successful people do things at the last minute in a sudden rush of energy? Here, economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir reveal that the hidden side behind all these problems is that they're all about scarcity. Using the new science of scarcity, they will change the way you think about both the little everyday tasks and the big issues of global urgency.

Scarcity

The True Cost of Not Having Enough

Why having too little means so much

Richard Barber

The destruction of the French army at Crécy in 1346 and the subsequent siege and capture of Calais marked a new era in European history. The most powerful, glamorous and respected of all western monarchies had been completely humiliated by England, a country long viewed either as a chaotic backwater or a mere French satellite. 
 
The young Edward III's triumph would launch both countries, as we now know, into a grim cycle of some 90 years of further fighting ending with English defeat, but after Crécy anything seemed possible - Edward's claim to be King of France could be pressed home and, in any event, enormous rewards of land, treasure and prestige were available both to the king and to the close companions who had made the victory possible. It was to enshrine this moment that Edward created one of the most famous of all knightly orders, the Company of the Garter. 
 
Barber writes about both the great campaigns and the individuals who formed the original membership of the Company - and through their biographies makes the period tangible and fascinating. This is a book about knighthood, battle tactics and grand strategy, but it is also about fashion, literature and the privates lives of everyone from queens to freebooters. Barber's book is a remarkable achievement - but also an extremely enjoyable one.

Edward III and the Triumph of England

The Battle of Crécy and the Company of the Garter

Alexa Chung

Alexa Chung's IT: the Top Ten Bestseller from the international fashion muse and Vogue contributing editor 
 
Now a Penguin paperback, this one-off collection of Alexa Chung's writing, doodles and photographs combines stories of early style inspirations such as her grandpa and the Spice Girls with discussion of figures of obsession like Jane Birkin and Annie Hall, reflecting on heartbreak, how to get dressed in the morning, the challenges of taking a good selfie, and more. Interspersed with pages from Alexa's notebooks and many a photo of a good night out, It is now perfectly sized for any bag - handbag or otherwise. Witty, charming and with a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude, It is a must-have for anyone who loves fashion, worries about growing up, or loves just about everything Alexa Chung. 
 
'If you love Alexa Chung, buy it. If you are interested in fashion and style, buy it. If you're after a book full of pretty pictures and inspo, buy it' - Cosmopolitan 
 
Alexa Chung is a model and contributing editor to British Vogue. The recipient of numerous style awards, Alexa has won the prestigious British Style Award (voted for by the public) three years in a row. She currently lives in New York City.

C. H. Dalton

Meet C. H. Dalton, a professor of racialist studies and an expert on inferior people of all ethnicities, genders, religions, and sexual preferences. Presenting evidence that everyone should be hated, A Practical Guide to Racism contains sparkling bits of wisdom on such subjects as: 
 
· The good life enjoyed by blacks, who shuffle through life unhindered by the white man's burdens, to become accomplished athletes, rhyme smiths, and dominoes champions 
· The sad story of the industrious, intelligent Jews, whose entire reputation is sullied by their taste for the blood of Christian babies 
· A close look at the bizarre, sweet-smelling race known as women, who are not very good at anything - especially ruling the free world 
· A crucial manual to Arabs, a people so sensitive they are liable to blow up at any time. Literally.

A Practical Guide to Racism

Bill Wasik

Monica Murphy

The most fatal virus known to science, rabies-a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans-kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind's oldest and most fearsome foes. 
 
"A searing narrative." 
-The New York Times 
 
"In this keen and exceptionally well-written book, rife with surprises, narrative suspense and a steady flow of expansive insights, 'the world's most diabolical virus' conquers the unsuspecting reader's imaginative nervous system. . . . A smart, unsettling, and strangely stirring piece of work." 
-San Francisco Chronicle 
 
"Fascinating. . . . Wasik and Murphy chronicle more than two millennia of myths and discoveries about rabies and the animals that transmit it, including dogs, bats and raccoons." 
-The Wall Street Journal

Rabid

A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus

Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu

A rare and timely intervention from Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, on development in Africa. 
 
To many, Africa is the new frontier. As the West lies battered by financial crisis, Africa is seen as offering limitless opportunities for wealth creation in the march of globalization. But what is Africa to today's Africans? Are its economies truly on the rise? And what is its likely future? 
 
In this pioneering book, leading international strategist Kingsley Moghalu challenges conventional wisdoms about Africa's quest for growth. Drawing on philosophy, economics and strategy, he ranges from capitalism to technological innovation, finance to foreign investment, and from human capital to world trade to offer a new vision of transformation. Ultimately he demonstrates how Africa's progress in the twenty-first century will require nothing short of the reinvention of the African mindset. 
 
'Africans seriously analyzing Africa's opportunities are all too rare. Kingsley Moghalu writes with insight and authority' Paul Collier 
 
'Savvy . . . distinguished' Mark Malloch-Brown 
 
'Unique in the depth of its insight, the ambition of its scope, and the clarity of its argument. Kingsley Moghalu brings a remarkable intellect and his vast experience to this tour de force on Africa's economic transformation. This is a truly weighty contribution to understanding Africa's developmental dilemma and its quest for a more prosperous future' Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala 
 
'Insightful and analytical . . . sheds instructive light on Africa's position in the world. It is a testament to the palpable optimism that encompasses Africa while frankly addressing the myriad challenges that lie ahead for its economic transformation' Shashi Tharoor 
 
Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu is Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He was the Founder and CEO of Sogato Strategies S.A., a global strategy and risk management consulting firm in Geneva, Switzerland. He has previously worked for the United Nations for 17 years in strategic planning, legal, development finance and executive management. His previous books include Global Justice and Rwanda's Genocide.

Emerging Africa

How the Global Economy's 'Last Frontier' Can Prosper and Matter

Lucy Inglis

Travel back to the eighteenth century as Lucy Inglis brilliantly recreates the age of love, sex, intellect, art, great ambition and fantastic ruin. 
 
This book is about the Georgians who called London their home, from dukes and prostitutes to rent boys and hot air balloonists, dog-nappers and foundlings. Georgian London reveals their daily lives: quickie marriages outside Fleet Prison, clandestine visits to Covent Garden, the terror of serial killers and lawless highwaymen and days out at the Tower Zoo. 
 
Here, amongst a crowded cast of unforgettable characters, discover the making of the capital millions know and love today.

Georgian London

Into the Streets

Katherine Angel

Unmastered is groundbreaking, incisive and moving. Exploring desire and pleasure, grief and pain, it underlines the importance and difficulties of speaking desire as a woman. How do we explore sexuality on our own terms, and find language for our desires, when desire and language are always social? Applying an unflinching gaze to her own life, Katherine Angel has created, in prose both stark and lyrical, a searching and erotic work shifting in meaning and resonance even as it is read.

Unmastered

A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell

Andrew Newberg

Mark Robert Waldman

In our default state, our brains constantly get in the way of effective communication. They are lazy, angry, immature, and distracted. They can make a difficult conversation impossible. But Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Waldman have discovered a powerful strategy called Compassionate Communication that allows two brains to work together as one. Using brainscans as well as data collected from workshops given to MBA students at Loyola Marymount 
University, and clinical data from both couples in therapy and organizations helping caregivers cope with patient suffering, Newberg and Waldman have seen that Compassionate Communication can reposition a difficult conversation to lead to a satisfying conclusion. 
 
Whether you are negotiating with your boss or your spouse, the brain works the same way and responds to the same cues. The truth, though, is that you don't have to understand how Compassionate Communication works. You just have to do it. Some of the simple and effective takeaways in this book include: 
 
• Make sure you are relaxed; yawning several times before (not during) the meeting will do the trick 
• Never speak for more than 20-30 seconds at a time. After that they other person's window of attention closes. 
• Use positive speech; you will need at least three positives to overcome the effect of every negative used 
• Speak slowly; pause between words. This is critical, but really hard to do. 
• Respond to the other person; do not shift the conversation. 
• Remember that the brain can only hold onto about four ideas at one time 
 
Highly effective across a wide range of settings, Compassionate Communication is an excellent tool for conflict resolution but also for simply getting your point across or delivering difficult news.

Words Can Change Your Brain

12 Conversation Strategies to Build Trust, Resolve Conflict, and Increase Intimacy

Vic Gatrell

The colourful, salacious and sumptuously illustrated story of Covent Garden - the creative heart of Georgian London - from Wolfson Prize-winning author Vic Gatrell 
 
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE HESSELL TILTMAN PRIZE 2014 
 
In the teeming, disordered, and sexually charged square half-mile centred on London's Covent Garden something extraordinary evolved in the eighteenth century. It was the world's first creative 'Bohemia'. The nation's most significant artists, actors, poets, novelists, and dramatists lived here. From Soho and Leicester Square across Covent Garden's Piazza to Drury Lane, and down from Long Acre to the Strand, they rubbed shoulders with rakes, prostitutes, market people, craftsmen, and shopkeepers. It was an often brutal world full of criminality, poverty and feuds, but also of high spirits, and an intimacy that was as culturally creative as any other in history. Virtually everything that we associate with Georgian culture was produced here.

The First Bohemians

Life and Art in London's Golden Age

Alan Connor

In the century since its birth, the crossword has evolved into the world's most popular intellectual pastime: a unique form of wordplay, the codes and conventions of which are open to anyone masochistic enough to get addicted. In Two Girls, One on Each Knee, Alan Connor celebrates the wit, ingenuity and frustration of setting and solving puzzles. From the beaches of D-Day to the imaginary worlds of three-dimensional crosswords, to the British school teachers and journalists who turned the form into the fiendish sport it is today, encompassing the most challenging clues, particular tricks, the world's greatest setters and famous solvers, PG Wodehouse and the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition, this is an ingenious book for lovers of this very particular form of wordplay.

Two Girls, One on Each Knee

The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword

Shelley MacKenney

Abandoned by her mother as a young girl, with a father always on the run, Shelley's life was never normal. Her family formed part of South London's criminal underworld which left her feeling ostracized and lonely. Falling deeper and deeper into depression and mania, one day - she snapped. Shelley got on the first coach out of London with only £30 in her pocket, and decided to become a 'missing person'. For years she lived on the street as a shell of woman, often stealing to survive. It would take something spectacular to bring her back to the real world...

Missing

David Goldblatt

No nation has so closely aligned its national identity with playing and watching football as Brazil. 
 
Football is regarded as a thing of joy, its yellow shirts a delightful amalgam of sport and art, entwined with its cultures of music and religion. This is true, but there is another side to the story too. Brazil may now be the sixth largest economy in the world but the corruption of its football authorities is characteristic of its society as a whole. 
 
To write the history of Brazilian football is to write the history of Brazil itself. This is the whole story - the players, the fans, the politicians, the passion - from the arrival of football in the country in 1894 just after the last Emperor had been deposed to the social unrest and riots at the Confederations Cup in 2013.

Futebol Nation

A Footballing History of Brazil

Collette Elliott

What if Baby P or Daniel Pelka had lived to tell their tale? 
 
Collette Elliott's childhood was a place of filth and terror. Her prostitute mother abused and neglected Collette; leaving her with clients, starving her and beating her to a pulp. 
 
But the worst thing was that the people who were supposed to protect Collette turned a blind eye. 
She slipped through the net and only just survived. 
 
This is the story of a little girl who waited years for justice. It's the story of a woman determined to protect other children from suffering her fate.

Unforgivable

Jennifer Saunders

Jennifer Saunders' comic creations have brought joy to millions. From Comic Strip to Comic Relief, from Bolly-swilling Edina in Ab Fab to her takes on Madonna or Mamma Mia, her characters are household names. 
 
But it's Jennifer herself who has a place in all our hearts. This is her funny, moving and frankly bonkers memoir, filled with laughter, friends and occasional heartache - but never misery. 
 
BONKERS is full of riotous adventures: accidentally enrolling on a teacher training course with a young Dawn French, bluffing her way to each BBC series, shooting Lulu, trading wild faxes with Joanna Lumley, touring India with Ruby Wax and Goldie Hawn. 
 
There's cancer, too, when she becomes 'Brave Jen'. But her biggest battle is with the bane of her life: the Laws of Procrastination. As she admits, 'There has never been a Plan. Everything has been fairly random, happened by accident or just fallen into place. I'm off now, to do some sweeping...' 
Prepare to chuckle, whoop, and go BONKERS.

Bonkers

My Life in Laughs

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

There is the guard who delivers blows with no visible traces. The fraudster stitched up by the police for murder. The man who refuses to lie for a packet of cigarettes. The abandoned teenager, the down-and-out, the grass... He describes a hidden world of brutality and corruption, yet one where moments of humanity still manage to shine through. 
 
One in ten Russian men pass through prison at some point in their lives. This book is a denunciation of an entire system of bureaucratic criminality, and a passionate call to recognise a human tragedy.

My Fellow Prisoners

Michael Pollan

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NEW NETFLIX SERIES 
 
'It's not often that a life-changing book falls into one's lap ... Yet Michael Pollan's Cooked is one of them.' SundayTelegraph 
 
'This is a love song to old, slow kitchen skills at their delicious best' Kathryn Huges, GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 
 
The New York Times Top Five Bestseller - Michael Pollan's uniquely enjoyable quest to understand the transformative magic of cooking 
 
Michael Pollan's Cooked takes us back to basics and first principles: cooking with fire, with water, with air and with earth. 
 
Meeting cooks from all over the world, who share their wisdom and stories, Pollan shows how cooking is at the heart of our culture and that when it gets down to it, it also fundamentally shapes our lives. 
 
Filled with fascinating facts and curious, mouthwatering tales from cast of eccentrics, Cooked explores the deepest mysteries of how and why we cook.

Cooked

A Natural History of Transformation

Rio Hogarty

When she was still a child in the 1940s Rio Hogarty rescued an unhappy school mate. Rio decided that her friend must get away from her violent father and that the solution was simple - Rio's own family must open their home and their hearts to the fearful young girl and help to sort out her problems. 
 
Nearly seven decades on and Rio is still at it - opening her home and her heart to children in need. She has fostered more than 140 children and in 2010, in an award created specially for her, she was named Mother of the Year at Ireland's annual People of the Year Awards. 
 
However, Rio is no saintly madonna. Along the way she stood up to armed robbers, hijacked a taxi to drive herself to the hospital when in the throes of labour, caroused in New York bars with stars of the folk music scene, was the first Irish woman to get a HGV licence, smuggled contraband ... When she had to, she cut corners to get what she wanted. And she also surrendered to alcoholism and nearly lost it all. But ultimately her courage, feistiness and zest for life triumphed. 
 
A Heart So Big is the story of a woman who just couldn't turn her back on a child who needed a home. It is also the story of the children whose lives she affected so deeply and a heart-breaking reminder of the price children pay for the failures of adults. But most of all, it is a moving, vivid, uplifting and searingly honest account of an amazing life lived to the full.

A Heart So Big

Neil MacGregor

The Elizabethan age was a tumultuous time, when long-cherished certainties were crumbling and life was exhilaratingly uncertain. Shakespeare's Restless World uncovers the extraordinary stories behind twenty objects from the period to re-create an age at once distant and yet surprisingly familiar. From knife crime to belief in witches, religious battles to the horizons of the New World, Neil MacGregor brings the past to life in a fresh, unexpected portrait of a dangerous and dynamic era.

Shakespeare's Restless World

An Unexpected History in Twenty Objects

Ruth Goodman

Step into the skin of your ancestors . . . We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert. But what was it like for a commoner like you or me? How did it feel to cook with coal and wash with tea leaves? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby? Surviving everyday life came down to the gritty details, the small necessities and tricks of living . . . 
 
How To Be A Victorian by Ruth Goodman is a radical new approach to history; a journey back in time more intimate, personal and physical than anything before. Moving through the rhythm of the day, from waking up to the sound of a knocker-upper man poking a stick at your window, to retiring for nocturnal activities, when the door finally closes on twenty four hours of life, this astonishing guide illuminates the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work and play. Drawing on Ruth's unique first-hand experience, gained from living for a year on a Victorian farm, as well as a life devoted to practical historical study and experimentation, this book will teach you everything you need to know about 19th century living.

How to be a Victorian

John Gray

The powerful, beautiful and chilling sequel to the bestselling Straw Dogs 
 
'By nature volatile and discordant, the human animal looks to silence for relief from being itself while other creatures enjoy silence as their birthright' 
 
Why do humans seek meaning to life? How do our imaginations leap into worlds so far beyond our actual reality? In this chilling and beautiful sequel to Straw Dogs, John Gray explores how we decorate our existence with countless fictions, twisting and turning to avoid acknowledging that we too are animals. Drawing on an extraordinary array of writers who are mesmerized by extremity, from Ballard to Conrad, Gray makes us re-imagine our place in the world.

The Silence of Animals

On Progress and Other Modern Myths

Tough, resourceful, ruthless - as an SAS trooper Nick Stone was one of the best. Now he's back on the streets, working for British Intelligence as a deniable operator. It's the dirtiest job in a very, very dirty world. 
 
Andy McNab's blistering Nick Stone thrillers are bestsellers whose landscape is so compellingly close to the truth that they had to be vetted by the Ministry of Defence, and could only be published as fiction. . .

Nick Stone

Set in modern-day Moscow, an ancient race of humans with supernatural powers have maintained an uneasy truce for centuries. But an ancient prophecy decrees that one supreme "Other" will rise up and tip the balance, plunging the world into a catastrophic war…

Night Watch

A fascinating journey into the historical world of the Nurses of Nightingale Hospital. Follow their story as together they cope with the demands of war, love and loss, and traumas both in and out of the Hospital.

Nightingales

Nightweaver

Nordlys

Norfolk Series

Journey through the reign of William the Conqueror and his sons as they fight to keep civil war at bay and their line on the throne.

Norman Series

Malorie Blackman's ground-breaking, award winning series charts the lives and loves of generations as it takes on race and equality with breathtaking drama and heart wrenching sadness. Set in an alternate reality, where the inferior Noughts live as second class citizens in a world run by Crosses, the four books explore the violent politics of a unstable world, and the ordinary lives caught up in in its terror. Beginning with Noughts and Crosses - and the romance of Seph and Callum - and ending with Double Cross, it is a gripping sequence, and an important, relevant story for our time.

Noughts And Crosses

Noughts and Crosses

Novelisations

Now Age Series

Nowhere

Off the Beaten Track

Oland Quartet

Once/Now/Then/After

One Person Found This Helpful

One of Us Is Lying

Orlando Furioso

Orphans of the Tide

Orson Welles Biographies

Othello

Otto the Book Bear

Out of Sight series

World War II nurse Claire Randall finds herself transported back to 1743 where she meets young Scottish soldier Jamie Fraser, and the two travel from Scotland to America taking part in some of the most momentous events of the time.

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