Amber Leigh

Amber Lone

Amber Marks

Amber Roberts writes contemporary romance about unabashedly nerdy characters in ridiculous situations. She lives with her husband, two children, and formerly feral cats in the Vermont woods, where eating maple creemees is a year-round activity. She spends her time copywriting, forgetting to water her plants, and awkwardly replying “you too” at inappropriate moments. Visit her at amberrobertswrites.com.

Amber Roberts

Ambrose Bierce

Amelia Bullmore

Amelia Evangeline

Amelia Freer (FdSc, DipION, mBANT) is a qualified nutritional therapist and author of the bestselling Nourish &amp; Glow: The 10-Day Plan, Eat Nourish Glow and Cook Nourish Glow. Amelia embarked on a career in nutrition after years of struggling with her own diet and now uses her expertise to transform the lives of her clients and readers. Amelia works with busy clients eager to fulfil their potential by changing their diet. Amongst her success stories are famous names such as Boy George, James Corden and Sam Smith.

Amelia Freer

Amelia Loulli is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University where she researches the poetics of breath and writing trauma. In 2021 she won a Northern Writers' Award and in 2023 she was writer in residence at the British School in Rome. She currently lives in Cumbria with her three teenagers and their whippet.

Amelia Loulli

Emily and Amelia Nagoski are identical twins with doctorates in opposite fields. One a scientist, the other a musician, both are teachers and writers who approach wellbeing from the perspectives of research and practical experience. 
 
Amelia Nagoski is a conductor with a DMA in conducting from the University of Connecticut. An assistant professor and coordinator of music at Western New England university, she regularly presents educational sessions discussing application of communications science and psychological research for audiences of other professional musicians, including 'Beyond Burnout Prevention: Embodied Wellness for Conductors'.

Amelia Nagoski

A full-time book publicist and part-time writer, Amelia Possanza currently lives in Brooklyn with her cat. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Electric Literature, The Millions, and NPR's Invisibilia. Lesbian Love Story is her first book.

Amelia Possanza

Amelia Wasiliev

Amelia Williams

Amelie Auffret

Ami Charlize started creating content when she was 9 years’ old; since then, she has built a loyal multi-million strong following across TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube. Her podcast, Ami Charlize Private Story, in which she interviews some of Gen Z’s biggest social media stars, has consistently featured in the podcast charts since its launch and, in 2023, she became one of PrettyLittleThing’s youngest brand ambassadors. Ami lives in Essex with her family.

Ami Charlize

Ami Rao is a British-American writer who was born in Calcutta and has lived and worked in New York City, London, Paris, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ami has a BA in English Literature from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. As a self-proclaimed foodie, she has written before for Tim Hayward's Fire &amp; Knives. She has always been 'absolutely horse mad' and rides regularly in her spare time. Centaur is her debut book.

Ami Rao

Ami Vitale

Amie Barrodale is the author of the short story collection You Are Having a Good Time. She received the Plimpton Prize in 2012. A teaching-writing fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she received the Maytag Fellowship from them in 2014. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review and other publications. She is a former staff writer for The Onion and a former Fiction Editor at Vice.

Amie Barrodale

Amie McNee is an author, speaker, creative guide, and the founder of the popular Instagram account @InspiredtoWrite. She writes historical fiction novels and writing guides and is known for speaking, teaching, and coaching artists all over the world and helping them to achieve their creative dreams.

Amie Mcnee

AMIE PARNES is the Senior White House correspondent for The Hill newspaper in Washington, where she covers the Obama Administration. A ten-year veteran of political journalism, she travelled with the Clinton, Obama and McCain campaigns while covering the 2008 presidential race for POLITICO. She appears frequently on MSNBC and has also been featured on CNN, Fox News and other networks.

Amie Parnes

Amil is a South Korean writer and translator. She has won numerous awards for her short stories, including the SF Award in the Short-Mid Novel category for ‘Roadkill’ and the SF Award Grand Prize for ‘Rabbi’, both of which feature in her debut story collection in English, Roadkill. Amil has translated works by authors including James Baldwin, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeanette Winterson, R. O. Kwon and Lucas Rijneveld into Korean.

Amil

Amin Ahmad was raised in India and came to America at the age of 17. He worked as an architect for many years before turning to writing. He teaches creative writing at Duke University, and lives in Durham NC with his family and a very mischievous cat. When he’s not writing, he can be found on his front porch, drinking tea and watching the world go by.

Amin Ahmad

Amin Maalouf

Dr Amir Khan is a full-time GP living in the UK. He is a GP Trainer, an Honorary Senior Lecturer at both Bradford and Leeds University, as well as being on the advisory board for the School of Pharmacy and Practice Managers Association. 
 
 
He has appeared on shows such as GPs Behind Closed Doors, How to Lose a stone for Summer and Why Can’t I Sleep? Amir has also been a regular on Lorraine, and numerous other news outlets, providing advice and insight on the coronavirus. 
 
 
Amir is an ambassador for the National Wildlife Trust, combining his credentials as a GP with encouraging schools and councils to reserve land to learn from. 
 
His hobbies include, keeping fit, running, conservation, gardening and keeping on the right side of his mother! 
 
 
Twitter: @DrAmirKhanGP 
Instagram: doctoramirkhan

Amir Khan

Amir Khan was first introduced to the boxing gym when he was 8 years old. He fought his first three fights in Bolton boxing club and went on to fight for Bury Boxing club. By the time he was 16, he had won three schoolboy championships, three junior ABA championships, gold in the junior Olympics and finally won gold at the European student championships in Lithuania. At a regional level, he held the Commonwealth lightweight title from 2007 to 2008 and the WBC Silver welterweight title from 2014 to 2016. Amir Khan announced his retirement from boxing in May 2022. Outside of boxing, he is a philanthropist with his own charity organisation, The Amir Khan Foundation and is the star of the reality show 'Meet the Khans: Big in Bolton' alongside his wife Faryal.

Dr Amir Levine is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. After completing his residency in adult and child psychiatry at Columbia University, Dr. Levine specialized in molecular neuroscience under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel. His patented findings hold potential for innovative treatments for psychiatric disorders in adolescents and adults. Dr. Levine is the coauthor of the international bestseller Attached, which has sold more than two million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages.

Amir Levine

Amit Katwala is a senior editor at WIRED UK.

Amit Katwala

Amitav Ghosh is an award-winning novelist and essayist. His most recent book is The Great Derangement

Amitav Ghosh

Amity Shlaes

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Noam Chomsky

Ilan Pappé

From the targeting of schools and hospitals, to the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus, Israel's conduct in 'Operation Cast Lead' has rattled even some of its most strident supporters. 
 
In this book, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé survey the fallout from that devastation, and place the massacre in Gaza in the context of Israel's long-standing war against the Palestinians. Gaza in Crisis is a rigorous, historically informed and much-needed analysis of the situation and will be welcomed by all those eager for Chomsky's insights into yet another political catastrophe.

Gaza in Crisis

Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

Michio Kaku

The international bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible gives us a stunning and provocative vision of the future 
 
Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world's top scientists, who are already inventing the future in their labs, Kaku-in a lucid and engaging fashion-presents the revolutionary developments in medi­cine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself. 
His astonishing revelations include: 
 
 The Internet will be in your contact lens. It will recog­nize people's faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles. 
 
 You will control computers and appliances via tiny sen­sors that pick up your brain scans. You will be able to rearrange the shape of objects. 
 
 Sensors in your clothing, bathroom, and appliances will monitor your vitals, and nanobots will scan your DNA and cells for signs of danger, allowing life expectancy to increase dramatically. 
 
 Radically new spaceships, using laser propulsion, may replace the expensive chemical rockets of today. You may be able to take an elevator hundreds of miles into space by simply pushing the "up" button. 
 
Like Physics of the Impossible and Visions before it, Physics of the Future is an exhilarating, wondrous ride through the next one hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution. 
 
Internationally acclaimed physicist Dr Michio Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York. He is also an international bestselling author, his books including Hyperspace and Parallel Worlds, and a distinguished writer, having featured in Time, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times and the New Scientist to name but a few. Dr Kaku also hosts his own radio show, 'Science Fantastic', and recently presented the BBC's popular series 'Time'.

Physics of the Future

How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

Jay O'Donnell

Humphrey Price

'The sky had gone: in its place was a wall of water, white horses on the top, readying itself to fall on me.' 
 
What kind of man throws himself out of a helicopter in a storm? 
Or dangles by a thread over mountainous waves? 
Or strikes a panicking sailor to save his life? 
 
Aircrewman Jay O'Donnell, a former Royal Navy Search and Rescue diver, has seen - and lived - it all. Scrambled at a moment's notice, in all weathers - but usually the worst - he and the crew of Sea King Rescue 194 have braved some of the most frightening storms ever to lash the UK. 
 
In this gripping account, O'Donnell describes the mix of bravery and terror that comes with every call. He explains the rigours of training; tells of grisly tasks like fishing bodies out the sea; conveys the horror of being winched 80 feet in a storm while clutching a squirming baby, or being dragged through freezing waters on a loose line. 
 
Culminating in the astonishing, hair-raising rescue of 26 crew from the MSC Napoli disaster in Cornwall, January 2007 - where O'Donnell was decorated for his courage and refusal to give up in appalling conditions - Rescue 194 is an unforgettable tribute to the Royal Navy's search and rescue crews.

Rescue 194

Charles Lamb

A rapturous appreciation of pork crackling, a touching description of hungry London chimney sweeps, a discussion of the strange pleasure of eating pineapple and a meditation on the delights of Christmas feasting are just some of the subjects of these personal, playful writings from early nineteenth-century essayist Charles Lamb. 
 
Exploring the joys of food and also our complicated social relationship with it, these essays are by turns sensuous, mischievous, lyrical and self-mocking. Filled with a sense of hunger, they are some of the most fascinating and nuanced works ever written about eating, drinking and appetite.

A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig & Other Essays

Richard Layard

In this new edition of his landmark book, Richard Layard shows that there is a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most people want more income. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. This is not just anecdotally true, it is the story told by countless pieces of scientific research. We now have sophisticated ways of measuring how happy people are, and all the evidence shows that on average people have grown no happier in the last fifty years, even as average incomes have more than doubled. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe, and Japan. What is going on? Now fully revised and updated to include developments since first publication, Layard answers his critics in what is still the key book in 'happiness studies'.

Happiness

Lessons from a New Science (Second Edition)

Tony Judt

'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay' - Oliver Goldsmith 
 
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of shared purpose. But we have forgotten how to think about the life we live together: its goals and purposes. We are now not only post-ideological; we have become post-ethical. We have lost touch with the old questions that have defined politics since the Greeks: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society? A better world? The social contract that defined postwar life in Europe and America - the guarantee of security, stability and fairness - is no longer assured; in fact, it's no longer part of collective conversation. 
 
In this exceptional short book, Tony Judt reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment and masterfully crystallizes our great unease, showing how we might yet think ourselves out of it. If we are to replace fear with confidence then we need a different story to tell, about state and society alike: a story that carries moral and political conviction. Providing that story is the purpose of this book.

Ill Fares The Land

A Treatise On Our Present Discontents

Margaux Fragoso

I still think about Peter, the man I loved most in the world, all the time. 
 
At two in the afternoon, when he would come and pick me up and take me for rides; at five, when I would read to him, head on his chest; in the despair at seven p.m., when he would hold me and rub my belly for an hour; in the despair again at nine p.m. when we would go for a night ride, down to the Royal Cliffs Diner in Englewood Cliffs where I would buy a cup of coffee with precisely seven sugars and a lot of cream. We were friends, soul mates and lovers. 
 
I was seven. He was fifty-one.

Tiger, Tiger

A Memoir

Oliver Bullough

The Caucasus mountains are a land of jagged peaks and rugged people, who for over 200 years have rebelled against Russia's attempts to add them to its empire. Oliver Bullough's extraordinary debut tells their story for the first time. Travelling from remote village to refugee camp, rocky mountain gorge to forgotten massacre site, he discovers exiles, fighters, lost sects, defiant survivors - and an unbreakable spirit.

Let Our Fame Be Great

Journeys among the defiant people of the Caucasus

David Shields

Reality Hunger questions every assumption we ever made about art, the novel, journalism, poetry, film, TV, rap, stand-up, graffiti, sampling, plagiarism, writing, and reading. In seeking to tear up the old culture in search of something new and more authentic, it is the most vital book of the new century.

Reality Hunger

A Manifesto

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being. 
Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

Jaron Lanier

Something went wrong around the start of the twenty-first century. The crowd was wise. Social networks replaced individual creativity. There were more places to express ourselves than ever before ... yet no one really had anything to say. Does this have to be our future? 
 
In You are not a Gadget digital guru and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier reveals how recent developments in our culture are deadening personal interaction, stifling genuine inventiveness and even changing us as people. Showing us the way to a future where individuals mean more than machines, this is a searing manifesto against mass mediocrity, a creative call to arms - and an impassioned defence of the human.

You Are Not A Gadget

In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky surveys the threats and prospects of our early twenty-first century. Exploring challenges such as the growing gap between North and South, American exceptionalism (even under Obama), the fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli assault on Gaza and the recent financial bailouts, he also sees hope for the future and a way to move forward - in the so-called democratic wave in Latin America and in the global solidarity movements which suggest 'real progress towards freedom and justice'. 
 
Hopes and Prospects is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the primary challenges still facing the human race and is wondering where to find a ray of hope.

Hopes and Prospects

Richard Wilkinson

Kate Pickett

Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. 
 
This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: 
 
- How almost everything - from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is 
- That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off 
- How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future 
 
Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world.

The Spirit Level

Why Equality is Better for Everyone

Toni Maguire

Sally East

The deeply shocking story of a mother's neglect and a father's betrayal 
 
Sally East's heartwrenching story starts when she was only three. It was then that her father first touched her inappropriately, as he started to groom her for the future. 
 
Sally's mother, a woman who suffered from manic depression, neglected her on her 'bad days', as Sally called them. She would turn her face to the wall and ignore her small daughter. But Sally loved her mother and waited for the 'good days' to return. 
 
When she was only six, Sally's mother died. Then when Sally most needed to feel secure, safe and loved, she paid a price that nearly destroyed her: with his wife dead, Sally's father felt free to abuse his daughter whenever he wished. The conflict of wanting to be cared for by the same person who was violating her sowed the seeds of self loathing - something that would haunt her for many years to come until the death of her father. 
 
Now in a supportive relationship and with two children of her own, Sally has at last found happiness. Bestselling author Toni Maguire not only puts a voice to Sally's heart-rending story but shows the long-term damage that child abuse does.

Don't You Love Your Daddy?

Colin Murray Parkes

The loss of a loved one is one of the most painful experiences that most of us will ever have to face in our lives. This book recognises that there is no single solution to the problems of bereavement but that an understanding of grief can help the bereaved to realise that they are not alone in their experience. 
 
This new edition has been revised and extended to take into account recent research findings on both sides of the Atlantic. Parkes and Prigerson include additional information about the different circumstances of bereavement including traumatic loss, disasters, and complicated grief, as well as providing details on how social, religious, and cultural influences determine how we grieve. 
 
Bereavement provides guidance on preparing for the loss of a loved one, and coping after they've gone. It also discusses how to identify the minority in whom bereavement may lead to impairment of physical and/or mental health and how to ensure they get the help they need. This classic text will continue to be of value to the bereaved themselves, as well as the professionals and friends who seek to help and understand them.

Bereavement (4th Edition)

Studies of Grief in Adult Life

Albert Jack

Mr Jack has been nimble and he's been quick, searching through the history of nursery rhymes and he's found out all kind of plum tales, just like little Jack Horner. He's unearthed the answers to some very curious questions... 
 
Who were Mary Quite Contrary and Georgie Porgie? How could Hey Diddle Diddle offer an essential astronomy lesson? And if Ring a Ring a Roses isn't about catching the plague, then what is it really about? This ingenious book delves into the hidden meanings of the nursery rhymes and songs we all know so well and discovers all kinds of strange tales ranging from Viking raids to firewalking and from political rebellion to slaves being smuggled to freedom. 
 
Full of vivid illustrations and with each verse reproduced, here are a multitude of surprising stories you won't be able to resist passing on to everyone you know. Your childhood songs and rhymes will never sound the same again.

Pop Goes the Weasel

The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes

Steven Johnson

Where do good ideas come from? And what do we need to know and do to have more of them? In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson, one of our most innovative popular thinkers, explores the secrets of inspiration. 
 
Steven Johnson has spent twenty years immersed in creative industries, was active at the dawn of the internet and has a unique perspective that draws on his fluency in fields ranging from neurobiology to new media. Why have cities historically been such hubs of innovation? What do the printing press and Apple have in common? And what does this have to do with the creation and evolution of life itself? Johnson presents the answers to these questions and more in his infectious, culturally omnivoracious style, using examples from thinkers in a range of disciplines - from Charles Darwin to Tim Berners-Lee - to provide the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of inspiration. 
 
He identifies the five key principles to the genesis of great ideas, from the cultivation of hunches to the importance of connectivity and how best to make use of new technologies. Most exhilarating is his conclusion: with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. By recognizing where and how patterns of creativity occur - whether within a school, a software platform or a social movement - he shows how we can make more of our ideas good ones.

Where Good Ideas Come From

The Natural History of Innovation

Cass R Sunstein

Sunstein explores the human propensity for gossip and storytelling, and discusses how our fears and hopes can work against common sense. He also investigates the way that the internet can entrench our false beliefs even deeper, and how the wish to conform, our natural biases and even our basic emotions can cause us to fall for untrue accounts.

On Rumours

How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done

Natascha Kampusch

On 2 March 1998 ten-year-old Natascha Kampusch was snatched off the street by a stranger and bundled into a white van. Hours later she found herself in a dark cellar, wrapped in a blanket. When she emerged eight years later, her childhood had gone. 
In 3,096 Days Natascha tells her incredible story for the first time: her difficult childhood, what exactly happened on the day of her abduction, her imprisonment in a five-square-metre dungeon, and the mental and physical abuse she suffered from her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil. 
3,096 Days is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit. It describes how, in a situation of almost unbearable hopelessness, she slowly learned how to manipulate her captor. And how, against inconceivable odds, she managed to escape unbroken.

3,096 Days

Virginia Ironside

Getting old? 
Get over it! 
 
For too long those in short skirts have been telling us oldies we don't matter: 'you're out of touch! Get out of the way, grandma! The next generation is coming through.' 
 
Well, enough is enough. 
 
Because getting old is great. For a start you no longer need to care what anyone thinks. You can let - if you've got any left - your hair down. No one will tell you off for grumbling. And no one minds if you forget (or pretend to forget) who you're talking to. Being rude has never been so easy - or liberating. And that's not all you can get away with now that you've seen it all (and done most of it) . . . 
 
Let Virginia Ironside take you through the top twenty reasons why getting old is good for you - and let the young and dumb keep their callow youth!

The Virginia Monologues

Why Growing Old is Great

Charles Mackay

Describing bizarrely popular Victorian street slang, the madness of crowds, stock market mania (from the South Sea Bubble to Tulip fever), popular fashions, fads, crazes, schemes and scams, this brilliantly entertaining and ever-more relevant study of human folly shows that we are always susceptible to hysteria and bamboozlement. 
 
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Some Extraordinary Popular Delusions

Theodor Herzl

'We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes' 
 
Theodor Herzl's passionate advocacy of the founding of a Jewish state grew out of his conviction that Jews would never be assimilated into the populations in which they lived. Herzl concluded that the only solution for the majority of Jews would be organised emigration to a state of their own. 
 
Herzl's political and social plea was the result of centuries of restrictions, hostility and pogroms against the Jews of Europe. His revolutionary proposal for the solution to anti-Semitism was a Jewish state, where Jews could live in peace, free from persecution - and this hugely influential essay led directly to the creation of Israel. 
 
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

The Jewish State

Rose Callaly

The day Rose Callaly found her daughter Rachel's battered body was only the start of her nightmares. 
 
Shortly afterwards Rose became certain that the person who had killed her beautiful daughter was Rachel's husband, Joe O'Reilly. After what seemed like an eternity, O'Reilly was charged. But that was the start of another ordeal - the revelation of just how much he despised his wife and the unfolding of his ingenious plan to kill her, a plan that set Rose up to discover the murder scene. 
 
Remembering Rachel is the shocking and heart-breaking story of Rachel Callaly's short life and brutal death. It is also a remarkable account of what it is like to be at the heart of a sensational and tragic murder case. And finally, it is a touching portrait of motherly love and the bond that survives death.

Remembering Rachel

A True Story of Betrayal and Murder

Zoe Strimpel

What does he think if I sleep with him on the first date? 
Why is he possessive even when he isn't all that into me? 
What does it mean when he won't call me his girlfriend? 
Why does he freak out when I leave my stuff at his house? 
What the HELL is He Thinking? 
 
Having spent a good part of her post-pubescent life picking apart dating dilemmas with her girlfriends over cocktails, Zoe Strimpel decided it was time to do something once and for all about the mystery that is the male mind. 
 
So, instead of moping about in the Mars/Venus divide, Zoe did something completely crazy: she talked to actual guys, getting them to explain the tales of confusion that she had gathered from her friends. And - would you believe - they had a lot of gems to offer. So while she had their attention, she also asked them the Eighty Questions You Most Want Men to Answer.

What the Hell is He Thinking?

All the Questions You've Ever Asked About Men Answered

John Armstrong

What is civilization? 
Why do we need it? 
And what can civilization offer us in an age of irony? 
 
The idea of civilization is a complex one, tangled up for years in ideas of colonialism and politics. John Armstrong explores the nature and aims of civilization in this elegant and witty book, examining how civilizing forces from the Greeks to the Renaissance have shaped and coloured our ideas of what a Good existence means. Only by bringing conversations about civilization back into our everyday lives, Armstrong reveals, can we rediscover our chance for wisdom and happiness.

In Search of Civilization

Remaking a tarnished idea

Spencer Wells

In The Journey of Man, renowned geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells traced human evolution back to our earliest ancestors, creating a remarkable and readable map of our distant past. Now, in his thrilling and thoughtful new book, he examines our cultural inheritance in order to find the turning point that led us to the path we are on today, one he believes we must veer from in order to survive. 
 
Pandora's Seed takes us on a powerful and provocative globe-trotting tour of human history, back to a seminal event roughly 10,000 years ago, when our species made a radical shift in its way of life: we became farmers rather than hunter-gatherers, setting in motion a momentous chain of events that could not have been foreseen at the time. 
 
Although this decision to control our own food supply is what propelled us into the modern world, Wells demonstrates with the latest genetic and anthropological data that such a dramatic shift in lifestyle had a downside that we're only beginning to recognize. Growing grain crops ultimately made the planet more crowded, sedentary and unhealthy. The expanding population and the need to apportion limiting resources such as water created hierarchies and inequalities. The desire to control - and no longer cooperate with - nature altered the concept of religion, making deities fewer and more influential, foreshadowing today's fanaticisms. The proximity of humans and animals bred diseases that metastasized over time. Freedom of movement and choice were replaced by a pressure to work that is the forebear of anxiety and depression millions feel today. Wells then offers a hopeful prescription for altering a life to which we were always ill-suited, changing priorities and self-destructive appetites before it's too late. 
 
A riveting and accessible scientific detective story, Pandora's Seed is an eye-opening book for anyone fascinated by the past and concerned about the future.

Pandora's Seed

The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization

Penelope Lively

The only child of divorced parents, Penelope Lively was often sent to stay at her grandparents' country house Golsoncott. Years later, as the house was sold out of the family, she began to piece together the lives of those she knew fifty years before. 
 
In a needlework sampler, she sees her grandmother and the wartime children that she sheltered under her roof in 1940. Potted meat jars remind her of the ritual of doing the flowers for church. The smell of the harness room brings her Aunt Rachel - avant-garde artist, fervent horserider - vividly back to life. 
 
In A House Unlocked, Penelope Lively delves into the domestic past of her former home, and tells of her own youth and the contrasts between life today and the way they lived then.

A House Unlocked

Matt Cooper

Having money and not having it; making it and losing it; using it and misusing it; giving it and taking it . . . this is the story of Ireland during the boom, described in jaw-dropping detail in Who Really Runs Ireland? 
 
Leading journalist Matt Cooper has consistently broken stories that the powerful would prefer had not been disclosed. Now, he identifies the most powerful people in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger era, describes how they interacted with each other to mutual benefit, and reveals who are the few to retain their power amid the debris arising from the bursting of our economic bubble. 
 
In particular, Cooper focuses on the role of new-found wealth in Ireland and examines how the volume of money sloshing about influenced the exercise of power, sometimes in ways that were to the detriment of the larger society. 
 
Cooper reveals stories you will not have read before, makes the connections you may not have spotted and provides insights and explanations to stories you may have forgotten that uncover what really goes on.

Who Really Runs Ireland?

The story of the elite who led Ireland from bust to boom ... and back again

Jane Robinson

In 1869, when five women enrolled at university for the first time in British history, the average female brain was thought to be 150 grams lighter than a man's. Doctors warned that if women studied too hard their wombs would wither and die. When the Cambridge Senate held a vote on whether women students should be allowed official membership of the university, there was a full-scale riot. 
 
Despite the prejudice and the terrible sacrifices they faced, women from all backgrounds persevered and paved the way for the generations who have followed them since. By the 1920s, being an 'undergraduette' was considered quite the fashionable thing; by the 1930s, women were emerging from universities as anything from aviation engineers to professional academics. 
 
Bluestockings tells an inspiring story - of defiance and determination, of colourful eccentricity and at times heartbreaking loneliness, as well as of passionate friendships, midnight cocoa-parties and glorious self-discovery.

Bluestockings

The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education

Emily Christie

No little girl could have been safer. Emily Christie grew up surrounded by relatives whose job it was to protect her. Her father was a hard-working policeman, her grandad was a respected paramedic; they were the perfect family. 
 
Or so it seemed. 
 
Evil lurked beneath the surface. When she was just five years old, Emily's beloved grandad started grooming her, calling her his 'special little girl'. In the years that followed she was subjected to countless unforgivable acts of sexual abuse at his hands, that escalated in severity and threatened to tear her life apart. 
 
Knowing her grandad was considered to be a pillar of the community, Emily was too scared to tell the truth. But one day she found the courage to stop the abuse and the strength to start rebuilding her life. 
 
No Safe Place is the inspirational story of a little girl's journey from helpless victim to triumphant survivor.

No Safe Place

Pumpkin Soup

Pure Dead

In this extraordinary series about Queen Victoria, Jean Plaidy re-creates a remarkable life filled with romance, triumph, and tragedy.

Queen Victoria

Incredibly detailed, exciting and vibrant is Plaidy's thrilling Queen of England series which depicts the lives of each queen beginning with Queen Henrietta Maria.

Queen of England Series

Quick Crafts

Quick Reads

Quick Reads 2013

Rains Brothers

Ranger's Apprentice

Ranger's Apprentice The Early Years

When raiders ransack his village, Osric is taken prisoner - and into the good graces of the raiders' chief. Immersed in the Norsemen's world, Osric provides a natural warrior and forges a deep bond with the chief, who renames him Raven. But the Norsemen's world is a savage one, where loyalty is often repaid in blood, and a young man must become a killer to survive . . . 
Raven is the thrilling Viking series that launched the career of acclaimed historical novelist Giles Kristian.

Raven

Read It Yourself

Ready to Eat

Reapers Motorcycle Club

Rebel Voices: Puffin Classics International Women’s Day Collection

Red Sparrow Trilogy

Redville Saints

Redwall

Regeneration

Reginald Perrin is driven to desperation by the rat race and the unpunctuality of Britain's trains. As his small eccentricites escalate to the extreme heleaves the unacceptable face of capitalism behind by driving off in a stolen motorised jelly, embarking on his one-man quest to avoid an everyday existence.

Reginald Perrin

Charlie Resnick is one of the most fully realized characters in modern crime fiction; complex and capable, a man who not only loves justice, jazz and cats, but who can turn the construction of a sandwich into a work of art.

Resnick

Reykjavik Murder Mysteries

Richard Bolitho

Rider Classics: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Minds 
Celebrating 10 books with a collective lifetime sale of over 30 million copies, with striking new jacket designs to inspire a new generation of readers

Rider Classics

Rigante

Detective Jane Rizzoli and Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles are the stars of bestselling Tess Gerritsen's thriller series and the inspiration for the hit US TV series Rizzoli and Isles. 
Inspired by her career as a medical physican, Tess Gerritsen has created a thrilling crime series with two dynamic heroines at the heart. Together, Rizzoli and Isles pick apart the most terrifying murder cases of their careers.

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