Alex Shearer

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, PhD, has spent two decades studying people, technology, and the worlds they make. A Silicon Valley-based futurist and consultant, he has worked with governments and Fortune 500 companies; spoken at venues ranging from CIA headquarters to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Googleplex; and held academic positions at Stanford and Oxford universities. His is the author of the bestselling Rest and Shorter, a guide for companies on how to work less and get more done. Follow @askpang on Twitter and Instagram, or visit strategy.rest.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Alex Stone

Alex Tapscott

Alex Thompson

THE AUTHOR HAS CHOSEN TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS OUT OF CONCERN FOR THE SAFETY OF HIS OR HER SOURCES.

Alex Urban

Alex Wheatle

Alex is an author and best-selling children’s book illustrator. Since he could first hold a pencil, Alex has been drawing characters, bringing each to life with a sense of mischief and fun. After studying Illustration for Children’s Publishing at the North Wales School of Art and Design, he went on to illustrate The Runaway Pea, which was selected for the BookTrust’s 2020 Time to Read Campaign. Alex has won the Inspiread 2023 Book Award for his picture book I Did See a Mammoth, the 2020 Shrewsbury Book Fest award and The FCBG 2020 award for his illustrations in The Runaway Pea, as well as being nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal and was a finalist in the 2020 Oscar’s Book Prize. His books have been translated into multiple languages. A love of fun storytelling and growing up on 80’s cartoons lead Alex to write his own books, which combine captivating characters and quirky exploits, along with a positive moral message. Alex currently lives in his hometown of Northampton with his wife, two sons, and their chihuahua.

Alex Willmore

Alex Y. Ferguson

Alex de Campi's mostly-indie career stretches from her Eisner-nominated debut Smoke (Dark Horse) through recent Eisner nominees Bad Girls (Gallery 13) and Twisted Romance (Image). Plus company work: she's killed off most of Riverdale, twice, in Archie vs Predator I &amp; II. Her next projects are YA adventure The Backups (Imprint / MacMillan, 2020) and a thriller with director Duncan Jones. Catch her YA adventure Reversal on her Patreon, and action-thriller Bad Karma on Panel Syndicate. She also writes for TV and film (the Blade Runner anime &amp; more). She is on social media as @alexdecampi and lives in Manhattan.

Alex de Campi

Alexa Chung

Alexander Aciman

Alexander Armstrong is one half of the comedy duo Armstrong &amp; Miller who had a regular series on Channel 4 from 1997 to 2001 and then returned with three series of the BAFTA winning Armstrong &amp; Miller Show on BBC1 in 2007. Alexander’s many straight acting roles have included Love Life, Life Begins, Mutual Friends and the sitcomHunderby. He frequently hosts Have I Got News For You?, is the voice of Danger Mouse and the narrator of CBeebies cult hit Hey Duggee. Alexander is also a presenter on Classic FM and has a number one bestselling classical album to his name, but is probably best known for presenting the highly successful daytime quiz show Pointless, now in its twelfth series.

Alexander Armstrong

Alexander Barabanov

Alexander Betts

Alexander Breeze

Alexander C. Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. The company, established in Palo Alto, California, in 2003, builds software and artificial intelligence capabilities that are used by defense and intelligence agencies in the United States and allied nations around the world, as well as companies across the commercial sector. Karp is a graduate of Haverford College and Stanford Law School. He earned his doctorate in social theory from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.

Alexander C.Karp

Alexander Chee won a Whiting Award for his first novel, Edinburgh, and is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and NPR, among others, and he is a contributing editor at the New Republic. He has recently been selected as a prestigious LA Times critic-at-large. He lives in New York City.

Alexander Chee

Alexander Douglas was born in Canberra, Australia where he studied music and philosophy. He now teaches the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics at the University of St Andrews. He has published two books on the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza and one on the philosophy of debt. He has grown increasingly interested in combining ideas from Western and East Asian philosophy. He loves music, literature, history, and engineering. He lives with his wife in Edinburgh.

Alexander Douglas

Alexander Freed is the author of the Star Wars Alphabet Squadron trilogy, Star Wars: Battle­front: Twilight Company and Star Wars: Rogue One and has written many short stories, comic books, and videogames. Born near Philadelphia, he currently re­sides in San Francisco, California. He enjoys the city’s culture, history, and secrets, but he misses snow.

Alexander Freed

Alexander Garros

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Humboldt

Alexander Kent's great interest in the ships and men of the eighteenth century navy was aroused when he was still at school. Although he attended fleet reviews and explored modern warships and dockyards with his father, he found that the great days of square riggers and battles at close quarters captured his imagination. H.M.S. Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, was always high on his list of regular visits. 
 
He served in the Royal Navy as a young man, and saw action in the Battle of the Atlantic and other major theatres of war, but his first love of the great days of sail remained unshaken. 
 
Now firmly established as a leading writer of authentic sea stories, he was the author of twenty-eight acclaimed books featuring Richard Bolitho. Under his own name, Douglas Reeman, and in the course of a career spanning forty-five years, he wrote over thirty novels and two non-fiction books. He died in January 2017.

Alexander Kent

Alexander Lee

Alexander Lernet-Holenia was born in Vienna in 1897. He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War and became a protégé of Rainer Maria Rilke. During his life he wrote poetry, novels, plays and was a successful screenwriter. His books were included on the first Nazi blacklist and subsequently burned, but after the end of the Second World War, he again became a vital figure in Austrian cultural life.

Alexander Lernet-Holenia

Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton in Canada. His first collection, Light Lifting, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won an Atlantic Book Award. In 2019, he won an O Henry Prize for his short story, 'Lagomorph', originally published in Granta, and the first story in Animal Person. MacLeod lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

Alexander MacLeod

Alexander Mackendrick

Alex Maskill was born in Watford, and grew up both there and in Eastbourne, East Sussex. He's has just completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Leicester and now has a degree in Politics. He hopes to follow this with an MSc in Computer Science. 
The Hive Construct is his first novel and won the 2013 Terry Pratchett Prize.

Alexander Maskill

Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world's most prolific and most popular authors. His career has been a varied one: for many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Then, after the publication of his highly successful No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty-six languages and become bestsellers through the world. These include the Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in The Scotsman, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the Von Igelfeld series, and the Corduroy Mansions series, novels which started life as a delightful (but challenging to write) cross-media serial, written on the website of the Telegraph Media Group. This series won two major cross-media awards - Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Award 2009 for a Cross Media Project and the New Media Age award. In addition to these series, Alexander writes stand-alone books, including The Forever Girl; Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party and Emma - a reworking of the classic Jane Austen novel. He is also the author of a book on Edinburgh, A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, as well as several collections of short stories, academic works, and over thirty books for children. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the British Book Awards Author of the Year Award in 2004 and a CBE for service to literature in 2007. He holds honorary doctorates from nine universities in Europe and North America. In March of 2011 he received an award from the President of Botswana for his services through literature to that country. Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh. He is married to a doctor and has two daughters.

Alexander McCall-Smith

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Carlos Magdalena

Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens is not your average botanical horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah. 
 
From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction. He has travelled to the most remote and dangerous parts of the world - from the mountains of Peru to isolated Indian Ocean islands to the deepest Australian outback - in search of the rarest exotic species. Then, back in the Tropical Nursery at Kew, he uses pioneering, left-field techniques to help them grow. 
 
Now he's here to spread the gospel. The Plant Messiah is the inspirational story of a man who has devoted - and risked - his life to save incredible species, all in the name of making this Earth a greener and happier place. Amen to that.

The Plant Messiah

Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species

Christian Donlan

'My daughter took her first steps on the day I was diagnosed - a juxtaposition so perfect, so trite, so filled with the tacky artifice of real life that I am generally too embarrassed to tell anybody about it.' 
 
Shortly after his daughter Leontine was born, Christian Donlan's world shifted an inch to the left. He started to miss light switches and door handles when reaching for them. He would injure himself in a hundred stupid ways every day. First playful and then maddening, these strange experiences were the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, an incurable and degenerative neurological illness. 
 
Multiple sclerosis is a fiercely destructive disease, yet it is also, as Donlan starts to discover, a perversely creative force. As his young daughter starts to investigate her environment, he too finds himself exploring a strange new landscape - the shifting and bewildering territory of the brain.

The Unmapped Mind

A Memoir of Neurology, Multiple Sclerosis and Learning How to Live

Nicholas Thomas

Cook's great voyages marked the end of an era in world history. As he sailed into Hawaii in January 1778 he made contact with the last of the human civilizations to grow up independently of the rest of the world. But equally for the Polynesians and Melanesians of the Pacific, Cook's arrival in their midst merely marked a further (if disastrous) twist in diverse histories already many centuries old. 
 
In this immensely enjoyable and absorbing book Cook's journeys are reimagined, attempting toleave behind (or master) our later preoccupations to let us see what Cook and his associates experienced and what the societies he encountered experienced - from the Beothuks of Newfoundland to the Tongans of the Friendly Islands.

Discoveries

The Voyages of Captain Cook

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, The Big Bang is an accessible, authoritative, and entertaining introduction to the greatest discovery in the history of science: that the universe has not existed forever but was born. There was a day without a yesterday. 
 
Written by award-winning writer and former astrophysicist Marcus Chown, The Big Bang details how 13.82 billion years ago all matter, energy, space - and even time - erupted into being in a titanic fireball. 
 
 This mind-bending book addresses the big questions: What was the Big Bang? What drove the Big bang? And what happened before the big bang? The evidence for the Big Bang, it turns out, is all around us...

Big Bang: A Ladybird Expert Book

Discover how the universe began

Iain Stewart

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Plate Tectonics is an accessible and authoritative introduction to what really goes on under the ground beneath our feet. 
 
Written by the celebrated geologist, lecturer and scientific presenter Iain Stewart, Plate Tectonics explores the Earth's building blocks and the geophysical theory that changed the way we look at the world. 
 
You'll learn about the puzzle pieces that make up the Earth today, monsoon-like currents in our planet's radioactive core, magnetic force lines and how the ocean would look without water.

Plate Tectonics: A Ladybird Expert Book

Discover how our planet works from the inside out

Karl Henry

Would you like to be trimmer, fitter and healthier, but do not know where to start? After all, there is so much conflicting advice. 
 
Or do you go on diets and fitness drives all the time, but can't stick with anything? 
 
Karl Henry has been working with people like you for nearly twenty years. He has seen it all, heard it all and knows the secret of making lasting change. 
 
The secret is that there is no secret! Getting trimmer, fitter and healthier is not about the latest 'revolutionary' new diet or fitness regime. It's about simplicity and balance and developing habits and routines that are realistic, affordable and sustainable for you. 
 
Karl's Healthy Living Handbook leads you through each aspect of health - food, movement, lifestyle - and is full of practical advice, including delicious fool-proof recipes and easy exercise routines that you can do at home. It will help you make changes that will add up to permanently improved well-being. 
 
No matter what your starting point, everything in Karl's handbook is a fit for your life. It is a friendly, easy-to-follow guide that will bring you on a journey, page by page, at the right pace for you. As he says: 'You will be amazed at just how easy it is to make straightforward changes and what a difference they can make. Not only that, the benefits of feeling healthier and more active will help you stay on course and motivate you to keep going. My ambition is to help you realize that losing weight and getting fitter can be simple - so simple that you can't not start, no matter how small that start is!'

Karl Henry's Healthy Living Handbook

Ireland’s favourite trainer helps you to lose weight, get fit and stay well

Paul Hawken

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
For the first time ever, an international coalition of leading researchers, scientists and policymakers has come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. All of the techniques described here - some well-known, some you may have never heard of - are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are already enacting them. From revolutionizing how we produce and consume food to educating girls in lower-income countries, these are all solutions which, if deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, could not just slow the earth's warming, but reach drawdown: the point when greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere peak and begin todecline. So what are we waiting for?

Drawdown

The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

Ulrich Raulff

The relationship between horses and humans is an ancient, profound and complex one. For millennia horses provided the strength and speed that humans lacked. How we travelled, farmed and fought was dictated by the needs of this extraordinary animal. They were sculpted, painted, cherished, admired; they were thrashed, abused and exposed to terrible danger. And then, suddenly, in the 20th century the links were broken and the millions of horses that shared our existence almost vanished. Farewell to the Horse is an engaging, brilliantly written and moving discussion of the endlessly various creature who has so often shared and shaped our fate.

Farewell to the Horse

The Final Century of Our Relationship

Wendell Berry

'He is unlike anybody else writing today ... After Donald Trump's election, we urgently need to rediscover the best of radical America. An essential part of that story is Wendell Berry. Few of us can live, or even aspire to, his kind of life. But nobody can risk ignoring him' Andrew Marr 
 
'Wendell Berry is the most important writer and thinker that you have (probably) never heard of. He is an American sage' James Rebanks 
 
Wendell Berry is 'something of an anachronism'. He began his life as the old times and the last of the old-time people were dying out, and continues to this day in the old ways: a team of work horses and a pencil are his preferred working tools. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress, and in defence of the local landscapes that provide our cultural heritage, our history, our home.

The World-Ending Fire

The Essential Wendell Berry

Yiyun Li

'What a long way it is from one life to another. Yet why write if not for that distance?' 
 
Written over two years while the author battled depression, in and out of hospital, Dear Friend is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Interweaving personal memoir with a wide-ranging celebration of writers and books, this is a journey of recovery through literature. 
 
From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Kierkegaard and Larkin, Yiyun Li traces the themes that have preoccupied these writers and herself: time and transformation, presence and absence, the impulse to abandon life and the impulse to carry on. Drawing on personal experiences - her unstable mother, her time in the Chinese army - she constructs a beautiful, interior exploration of selfhood and what is required to choose life.

Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Valter Longo

Fasting diets, such as the 5:2, took the world by storm but weren't sustainable due to the frequency of fasting. Longo's revolutionary research shows how to mimic fasting and The Longevity Diet implements this through FMD - a fasting-mimicking diet - which only limits your calorie intake for five days, up to four times a year. 
 
Not only will FMD rejuvenate the body and help weight loss, the focus of Longo's diet is to reduce the risk of illnesses such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and ultimately improve our health and extend our lifespan. 
 
Including 30 easy recipes for an everyday diet and the FMD plan, The Longevity Diet is the key to living a longer, healthier, fuller life.

The Longevity Diet

‘How to live to 100 . . . Longevity has become the new wellness watchword . . . nutrition is the key’ VOGUE

Daniel Levitin

We live in a world of information overload. Facts and figures on absolutely everything are at our fingertips, but are too often biased, distorted, or outright lies. From unemployment figures to voting polls, IQ tests to divorce rates, we're bombarded by seemingly plausible statistics on how people live and what they think. Bestselling neuroscientist Daniel Levitin teaches us how to effectively ask ourselves: can we really know that? And how do they know that? 
 
This eye-opening, accessible guide teaches you how to: 
-carry out quick plausibility tests 
-understand how numbers are reported 
-separate experts from pseudo-experts. 
 
Daniel Levitin shows us how understanding statistics will enable you to make quicker, smarter decisions about the world around you.

A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics

A Neuroscientist on How to Make Sense of a Complex World

Kaveh Akbar

I could not be held responsible 
for desire 
 he could not be held at all 
 
In Calling a Wolf a Wolf, the reality of love can all too often prove disappointing at best, and life-threateningly ineffectual at worst. As Kaveh Akbar puts it in 'Heritage', a poem dedicated to an Iranian woman executed for killing the man who was attempting to rape her: 'in books love can be war-ending/...in life we hold love up to the light/ to marvel at its impotence.' Yet, as it brings us along on its author's struggle with addiction, this darkly sumptuous first collection by an award-winning poet also shows us that there can, after all, be a power and a beauty to our desires, in the strength of their flow, in their achievements and frustrations, and in the pain and joy of denying oneself for one's own sake. 
 
These are poems of thirst: for alcohol, for other bodies, and for knowledge. They find the speaker poised between life's clatter and rattle, wanting to retreat yet hungering for more; and, though they rush forward at full tilt through a stream of reflections, memories and emotions, they are never simply indulgent. This refreshingly honest and often breathtaking addition to the canon of addiction literature will carry readers with it just as the poet is carried, and leave behind indelible images of an existence richly felt.

Calling a Wolf a Wolf

Daniel C. Dennett

What is human consciousness and how is it possible? These questions fascinate thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. This is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture. Part philosophical whodunnit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett's legendary career at the forefront of philosophical thought. In his inimitable style, laced with wit and arresting thought experiments, Dennett shows how culture enables reflection by installing a profusion of thinking tools, or memes, in our brains. Language, itself composed of memes, turbocharged this interplay. The result, a mind that can comprehend the questions it poses, emerges from a process of cultural evolution. An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and other researchers, this will delight and entertain anyone who hopes to understand human creativity in all its wondrous applications.

From Bacteria to Bach and Back

The Evolution of Minds

Matthew Walker

'Astonishing . . . an amazing book . . . absolutely chocker full of things that we need to know' Chris Evans 
 
'Matthew Walker is probably one of the most influential people on the planet' Evening Standard 
 
THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
TLS, OBSERVER, SUNDAY TIMES, FT, GUARDIAN, DAILY MAIL AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 
 
Sleep is one of the most important aspects of our life, health and longevity and yet it is increasingly neglected in twenty-first-century society, with devastating consequences: every major disease in the developed world - Alzheimer's, cancer, obesity, diabetes - has very strong causal links to deficient sleep. 
 
In this book, the first of its kind written by a scientific expert, Professor Matthew Walker explores twenty years of cutting-edge research to solve the mystery of why sleep matters. Looking at creatures from across the animal kingdom as well as major human studies, Why We Sleep delves into everything from what really happens during REM sleep to how caffeine and alcohol affect sleep and why our sleep patterns change across a lifetime, transforming our appreciation of the extraordinary phenomenon that safeguards our existence. 
 
'Startling, vital ... a life-raft' Guardian 
 
'A top sleep scientist argues that sleep is more important for our health than diet or exercise' The Times 
 
'Passionate, urgent . . . it had a powerful effect on me' Observer

Why We Sleep

The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

Dawna Walter

Like physical clutter in your home, mental clutter slowly creeps up over the years without you even noticing. It starts with attitudes you learn as a child and is compounded by habits that develop over time. 
 
Luckily, it's easier than you might think to 'de-junk' your mind. By assessing your attitudes, beliefs and habits, you can easily identify the ones that are holding you back. 
 
This book will empower you with: 
- Exercises to gain confidence and let go of unwanted feelings 
- Strategies for replacing negative thought patterns with positive thinking 
- Communication techniques that will help you speak up and achieve your goals 
- Ways to keep things in perspective and look for solutions rather than problems 
 
De-Junk Your Mind is packed with practical exercises and a big dose of tough love - it's time to take the plunge and change life for the better... now! You have the power to choose to focus on the thoughts that motivate you rather than drag you down, and once you begin to shed the mental clutter you will feel lighter, more energetic, and ready to face each new day for all that it has to offer.

De-junk Your Mind

Simple Solutions for Positive Living

Eva Fraser

The premise behind Eva Fraser's Facial Workout is simple: that the muscles in your face, if left inactive, will become as saggy as those in any other part of your body. In order to tone them up, they need to be exercised. 
 
This book includes information on why the face ages, how skin works and what can be done about it, as well as the exercise plan that Eva swears by. 
 
This is the non-surgical way to achieve a facelift. By following these exercises, you can firm jaw lines, lift eyelids and plump cheeks - leaving your skin with a natural, youthful glow.

Eva Fraser's Facial Workout

Look Fifteen Years Younger with this Easy Daily Routine

Suzanne Lambert

Christmas, 1953: When little Billy discovers a lost puppy in the grounds of his orphanage home, he knows that the nuns will never allow him to keep a pet. But as Billy stares into the adorable Labrador's big brown eyes, he knows in his heart that he can't bear to be parted from his new friend. So he comes up with a plan. 
 
With the help of his fellow orphans, Billy hides the puppy in the caretaker's cottage. Together the children swear not to reveal the secret to the grown-ups. Yet as Billy and the puppy's special bond develops, his dread of discovery and being separated from his beloved dog grows . . . 
 
The Puppy and the Orphan tells the story of many lost souls who have found refuge at the orphanage, and how love helps each of them to fight for a second chance of somewhere to call home.

The Puppy and the Orphan

Thomas L. Friedman

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WORLD IS FLAT 
 
We all sense it: something big is going on. Life is speeding up, and it is dizzying. Here Thomas L. Friedman reveals the tectonic movements that are reshaping our world, how to adapt to this new age and why, sometimes, we all need to be late. 
 
'A master class ... As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat ... an honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is, without miracle cures or scapegoats' John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review 
 
'Wonderful ... admirably honest ... injects a badly needed dose of optimism into the modern debate' Gillian Tett, Financial Times 
 
'His main piece of advice for individuals, corporations, and countries is clear: Take a deep breath and adapt. This world isn't going to wait for you' Fortune 
 
'A humane and empathetic book' David Henkin, The Washington Post

Thank You for Being Late

An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

Peter Wadhams

'Astonishing ... beautiful, compelling and terrifying' Observer 
 
'Wadhams' writing sparkles ... a lyrical sense of wonder at the natural world ... essential reading ... may be the best reader-friendly account of the greenhouse effect available to date' John Burnside, New Statesman 
 
Ice is beautiful and complex. It regulates our planet's temperature. And it is vanishing - fast. Peter Wadhams, the world's leading expert on sea ice, draws on his lifetime's research in the Arctic region to illuminate what is happening, what it means for the future, and what can be done. 
 
'This most experienced and rational scientist states what so many other researchers privately fear but cannot publicly say' John Vidal, Guardian 
 
'Wadhams brings huge expertise to his subject - and he is an excellent writer' Martin Rees 
 
'Utterly extraordinary' Jonathon Porritt

A Farewell to Ice

A Report from the Arctic

Kate Moore

When Felix arrived at Huddersfield Train Station as an eight-week-old kitten, no one knew just how important this little ball of fluff would become. Although she has a vital job to do as 'Senior Pest Controller', Felix is much more than just an employee. For her colleagues and the station's commuters, Felix has changed their lives in surprising ways. 
Felix seems to have a remarkable ability to save the day time and again: from bringing a boy with autism out of his shell to providing comfort to a runaway child shivering on the platform one night. When tragedy hits the team at Huddersfield, they all rely on Felix to pull them together again. But it's a chance friendship with a commuter that she waits for on the platform every morning that finally gives Felix the recognition she deserves, catapulting her to international stardom... 
Full of funny and heartwarming stories, Felix The Railway Cat is the remarkable tale of a close-knit community and its amazing bond with a very special cat.

Felix the Railway Cat

Susan David

Every day we speak around 16,000 words - but inside minds we create tens of thousands more. Thoughts such as 'I'm not spending enough time with my children' or 'I'm not good enough to present my work' can seem to be unshakable facts. In reality, they're the judgemental opinions of our inner voice. 
 
Drawing on more than twenty years of academic research, consulting, and her own experiences overcoming adversity, Susan David PhD, a psychologist and faculty member at Harvard Medical School, has pioneered a new way to enable us to make peace with our inner self, achieve our most valued goals, make real change, and live life to the fullest. 
 
Emotional Agility describes a new way of living and relating to yourself and the world around you. Become aware of your true nature, learn to face your emotions with acceptance and generosity, act according to your deepest values, and flourish.

Emotional Agility

Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life

Noam Chomsky

C J Polychroniou

We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up, and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be optimistic, grasp the opportunities that surely exist, and maybe help make the world a better place. Not much of a choice. 
 
Another essential work from a peerless political thinker, exploring the rise of neoliberalism, the refugee crisis in Europe, the Black Lives Matter movement, the dysfunctional US electoral system, and the prospects and challenges of building a movement for radical change. Including four up-to-the-minute interviews on the 2016 American election campaign and global resistance to Trump, this Penguin Special is a concise introduction to Chomsky's ideas and his take on the state of the world today.

Optimism Over Despair

Brian Cox

Jeff Forshaw

We dare to imagine a time before the Big Bang, when the entire Universe was compressed into a space smaller than an atom. And now, as Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw show, we can do more than imagine: we can understand. Over the centuries, the human urge to discover has unlocked an incredible amount of knowledge. What it reveals to us is breathtaking. 
 
Universal takes us on an epic journey of scientific exploration and, in doing so, reveals how we can all understand some of the most fundamental questions about our Earth, Sun, Solar System and the star-filled galaxies beyond. Some of these questions - How big is our solar system? How fast is space expanding? - can be answered from your back garden; the answers to others - How big is the Universe? What is it made of? - draw on the astonishing information now being gathered at the frontiers of the known universe. Science reveals a deeper beauty, connects us to our world, and to our Universe; and, by understanding the groundbreaking work of others, reaches out into the unknown. What's more, as Universal shows us, if we dare to imagine, we can all do it.

Universal

A Journey Through the Cosmos

Ramana Maharshi

'Our own Self-realization is the greatest service we can render the world' 
 
The simple but powerful teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, one of India's most revered spiritual masters, continue to enlighten and enrich over sixty years after his death. 
 
Be As You Are is the definitive compendium of his knowledge, edited by the former librarian from Sri Maharshi's ashram, which can be found flourishing at the foot of the holy mountain of Arunchala. The book collects conversations with the many seekers who came to him for guidance, answering the questions sought on the road to enlightenment. 
 
Through this book, we can discover the essence of Sri Ramana's teaching: that self-realisation is the vital quest we must all pursue, before we can attempt to understand the world. 
 
Reissue of the classic spiritual work, updated with a new cover.

Be As You Are

Darian Leader

Throughout history, civilisations have been defined by the work of human hands: inventing tools, writing records, operating machinery, typing, texting, swiping. But beneath this known history is another, secret story: our hands are not the obedient servants that they seem to be. Through conscious and unconscious gesture, they reveal our deepest psychology, our weaknesses and obsessions, our personal history and our social conditioning. 
 
The key to understanding everything around you - and everything within you - is staring you in the face. Using fascinating anecdotes and brilliant psychoanalytic research, from da Vinci to Dickens to Die Hard, Darian Leader reveals that there's much more to your hands than meets the eye.

Hands

What We Do with Them – and Why

Isobel Charman

The creation of a zoo in Dickensian London - when only one other existed across the world - is a story of jaw-dropping audacity. It is the story of trailblazing scientists, rival zookeepers and aristocratic naturalists collecting amazing animals from all four corners of the globe. 
 
It is the story of a weird and wonderful oasis in the heart of a swirling city, and of incredible characters, both human and animal - from Stamford Raffles and Charles Darwin to Jenny the orang-utan and Obaysch the celebrity hippo, the first that anyone in Britain had ever seen. 
 
Against a background of global Empire, domestic reform and industrialisation, this is a new history of a new world.

The Zoo

The Wild and Wonderful Tale of the Founding of London Zoo

Cathy O'Neil

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives - whether we get a job or a loan, how much we pay for insurance - are being made by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated. But as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and incontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination, creating a toxic cocktail for democracy. 
 
Tracing the arc of a person's life, Cathy O'Neil exposes the black box models that shape our future as individuals and as a society. These "weapons of math destruction" score teachers and students, sort CVs, grant or deny loans, evaluate workers, target voters and monitor our health. O'Neil calls on modellers to take more responsibility for their algorithms and on policy makers to regulate their use. But in the end, it's up to us to become more savvy about the models that govern our lives.

Weapons of Math Destruction

How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Aseem Malhotra

Donal O'Neill

A diet that allows red wine, chocolate and the most delicious Italian food you can imagine? The Pioppi Plan offers just that, but so much more - lose weight, de-stress and live healthier and longer with this revolutionary new programme. Pioppi itself, a small Italian village which is home to the healthiest, longest-living people in the world, offers secrets that have never before been shared: until now. 
 
Based on five years of research and drawing on over 100 studies on Pioppi, Dr Aseem Malhotra, a trained cardiologist, has created a plan which is designed to provide readers with the joy and wellbeing of a Mediterranean lifestyle by making small 'marginal gains' over a 21-day period. Each little change the book encourages you to make will add up to weight lost and years gained, across eight key areas: diet, movement, sleep, stress management, sunshine, exercise, posture and social interaction. This isn't a diet or lifestyle which requires saying 'no' to the things you love, nor exercising for hours upon end, but rather making simple, achievable and long-lasting changes.

The Pioppi Diet

The 21-Day Anti-Diabetes Lifestyle Plan as followed by Tom Watson, author of Downsizing

Carlo Rovelli

What are time and space made of? Where does matter come from? And what exactly is reality? Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Here he explains how our image of the world has changed throughout centuries. From Aristotle to Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday to the Higgs boson, he takes us on a wondrous journey to show us that beyond our ever-changing idea of reality is a whole new world that has yet to be discovered.

Reality Is Not What It Seems

The Journey to Quantum Gravity

Jack Reacher Short Stories

Jack Ryan

Jack Ryan Jr

Jack Slater

Jack Stalwart

Jack Tanner

Jack and Millie

Jackson Brodie is a private investigator, originally from Yorkshire. A former soldier and policeman he now makes his money working from investigating infidelity and finding missing cats. Jackson's tough-guy exterior belies a deeply empathetic heart. He's unable to resist coming to the rescue and increasingly he becomes a magnet for the bereaved, the lost and the dysfunctional. His ability to connect comes from his own tragic childhood that still haunts him. 
 
Jackson Brodie has appeared in four of Kate Atkinson's novels. Each can be read in isolation but are best enjoyed in order of publication: Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There Be Good News?, Started Early, Took My Dog.

Jackson Brodie

Jacksonville Rays

Jacky Ha-Ha Series

Jake Cake

Jamaal Target

James Beck

James Bond 007

Jane Smith

Japanese Classics

Meet the hilarious British dilettante Bertram 'Bertie' Wooster who can't seem to help finding himself in the middle of awkward social situations, calling upon his valet Jeeves to escape embarrassment.

Jeeves & Wooster

Jenny Q

Jess Tennant

Joe Rat Adventures

Joey Pigza

Johnny Maxwell

Jon Katz

Jonathon Payne & David Jones

Joseph Stark

Journey into Space

Jumpman

Post-graduation, Allyson Healey decided to embark on a three week tour of Europe. It all goes according to plan until she meets Willem. He is everything she is not; free spirited, a risk taker. She allows herself to be swept away by him for just 24 hours, and then returns home the next day. Willem, determined to find her, puts his trust in fate and travels the world hoping that somewhere he will come across her. This sweepingly romantic trio of novels is filled with emotion, romance and a life affirming belief in fate.

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