Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, was the major novelist at the heart of the inter-war Bloomsbury Group. Her early novels include The Voyage Out, Night and Day and Jacob's Room. Between 1925 and 1931 she produced her finest masterpieces, including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando and the experimental The Waves. Her later novels include The Years and Between the Acts, and she also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, journalism and biography, including the passionate feminist essay A Room of One's Own. Suffering from depression, she drowned herself in the River Ouse in 1941.

Virginia Woolf

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Chandler Burr

In the tradition of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and James Gleick's Genius, The Emperor of Scent tells the story of Luca Turin, an utterly unusual, stubborn scientist, his otherworldly gift for perfume, his brilliant, quixotic theory of how we smell, and his struggle to set before the world the secret of the most enigmatic of our senses.

The Emperor Of Scent

Richard Dawkins

Dave McKean

What are things made of? 
What is the sun? 
Why is there night and day, winter and summer? 
Why do bad things happen? 
Are we alone? 
 
Throughout history people all over the world have invented stories to answer profound questions such as these. Have you heard the tale of how the sun hatched out of an emu's egg? Or what about the great catfish that carries the world on its back? Has anyone ever told you that earthquakes are caused by a sneezing giant? These fantastical myths are fun - but what is the real answer to such questions? 
 
The Magic of Reality, with its explanations of space, time, evolution and more, will inspire and amaze readers of all ages - young adults, adults, children, octogenarians. Teaming up with the renowned illustrator Dave McKean, Richard Dawkins answers all these questions and many more. In stunning words and pictures this book presents the real story of the world around us, taking us on an enthralling journey through scientific reality, and showing that it has an awe-inspiring beauty and thrilling magic which far exceed those of the ancient myths. 
 
We encounter rainbows, our genetic ancestors, tsunamis, shooting stars, plants, animals, and an intriguing cast of characters in this extraordinary scientific voyage of discovery. Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean have created a dazzling celebration of our planet that will entertain and inform for years to come.

The Magic of Reality

How we know what's really true

Mark Miodownik

A series of glasses of transparent liquids is in front of you: but which will quench your thirst and which will kill you? And why? Why does one liquid make us drunk, and another power a jumbo jet? 
 
From the bestselling author of Stuff Matters comes a fascinating tour of the world of these surprising or sinister substances - the droplets, heartbeats and ocean waves we encounter day-to-day. Structured around a plane journey which sees encounters with water, wine, and oil, among others, Miodownik shows that liquids are agents of death and destruction as well as substances of wonder and fascination. Just as in Stuff Matters his unique brand of scientific storytelling brings them and their mysterious properties alive in a captivating new way.

Liquid

The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives

Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some power our engines while others make drinks fizzy? In It's a Gas, Mark Miodownik masterfully reveals an invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling. 
 
Taking us back to that exhilarating – and often dangerous – moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what they had discovered, Miodownik shows that gases are the formative substances of our modern world, each with its own weird and wonderful personality. 
We see how seventeenth-century laughing gas parties led to the first use of anaesthetics in surgery, how the invention of the air valve in musical instruments gave us bicycles, cars and trainers, and how gases made us masters of the sea (by huge steamships) and skies (via extremely flammable balloons). This delight of a book reveals the immense importance of gases to modern civilisation.

It's a Gas

The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World

George Johnson

George Johnson tells the stories of ten beautiful experiments which changed the world. From Galileo singing to mark time as he measured the pull of gravity and Newton carefully inserting a needle behind his own eye, to Joule packing a thermometer on his honeymoon to take the temperature of waterfalls and Michelson recovering from a dark depression to discover that light moves at the same speed in every direction - these ten dedicated men employed diamonds, dogs, frogs and even their own bodies as they worked to discover the laws of nature and of the universe.

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments

Stephen T Johnson

In 1794, Joseph Priestley - amateur scientist, ordained minister and radical thinker - set sail for America to escape persecution. Stephen Johnson tells his incredible story: the discovery of oxygen, the invention of a science, the founding of a church, and, with the great minds of his time, the development of the United States itself. But Priestley's revolutionary ideas put him in terrible danger. 
 
Johnson uses the progress of Priestley and his colleagues not merely to describe the wonder of discovery, but to show us how we have come to understand the world, how far we have travelled with the power of human enquiry - and how one man's curiosity can help build an entire country.

The Invention of Air

An experiment, a journey, a new country and the amazing force of scientific discovery

Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Everything in the universe is made of them, including you. 
 
Like you, the elements have personalities, attitudes, talents, shortcomings, stories rich with meaning. 
 
Here you'll meet iron that rains from the heavens and noble gases that light the way to vice. You'll learn how lead can tell your future while zinc may one day line your coffin. You'll discover what connects the bones in your body with the Whitehouse in Washington, the glow of a streetlamp with the salt on your dinner table. 
 
Unlocking their astonishing secrets and colourful pasts, Periodic Tales is a voyage of wonder and discovery, showing that their stories are our stories, and their lives are inextricable from our own.

Periodic Tales

The Curious Lives of the Elements

Jim Al-Khalili

Quantum Mechanics is the second book of a new series of titles written for an adult readership and produced in the same iconic small hardback format pioneered by the original Ladybirds. 
 
Written by some of the leading lights and outstanding communicators in their fields, the Ladybird Expert books provide clear, accessible and authoritative introductions, informed by expert opinion, to subjects drawn from science, history and culture.

Quantum Mechanics (A Ladybird Expert Book)

Tim Coulson

How did everything start? 
 
And how did we come to exist? 
 
In one book Oxford Professor Tim Coulson seeks to simply explain what science tells us about the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the existence of humanity, and whether our existence was always inevitable or if we are just incredibly lucky. 
 
Coulson's engaging and accessible storytelling will enthral even the most reluctant of readers with its exploration of what thousands of years of study has told us about who we are, where we came from and what happens next.

A Little History of Everything

From the Big Bang to You

Bill Bryson

The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century and has sold over 2 million copies. 
 
 'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist 
'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian 
 'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times 
 
 Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. 
 
 Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. As a result, A Short History of Nearly Everything reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

In this fully revised and updated edition of the best-selling popular science book of the 21st century, Bill Bryson makes complex subjects clear and compelling for everyone with an interest in the world around them. 
 
NOW FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED. 
 
'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist 
 
'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian 
 
Bill Bryson can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 is the result of his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization – how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today. Now fully updated to reflect the many scientific discoveries in the last twenty years since this book was first published, it explains among much else: 
<ul><li>why Pluto is no longer a planet</li><li>how the number of moons in the solar system has more than doubled in 20 years</li><li>how scientists used advances in genetics to discover previously unknown species of early humans</li><li>why we still don't know what most of the universe is made of</li><li>how the little Higgs boson transformed physics</li></ul>This journey through time and space will inform a new generation of readers, young and old, as well as those who read this book on first publication with a new perspective based on what we know now. 
 
Written in his inimitable style, Bryson makes complex subjects fascinating and accessible to everyone with an interest in the world around them. 
 
A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 reveals the world in a whole new way. 
 
Praise for A Short History of Nearly Everything: 
 
‘I doubt that a better book for the layman about the findings of modern science has been written.’ Sunday Telegraph 
 
‘Bill Bryson has an unmatched gift for explaining the most difficult subjects in the clearest possible way.’ Mail on Sunday 
 
'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times 
 
‘Hugely readable and never obfuscating.’ Sunday Times 
 
‘A genuinely useful and readable book... A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again’ Daily Express 
 
‘The very book I have been looking for most of my life... Bryson wears his knowledge with aplomb and a lot of very good jokes.’ Daily Mail 
 
‘Destined to become a modern classic of science writing’ The New York Times

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0

Peter Brannen

All life is made from CO2 . It was there at earth’s birth, and throughout evolution. It has kept our planet habitable for hundreds of millions of years. It has given us all the splendours of the world we know today. And yet it also holds the potential for life's destruction. 
 
In this gripping adventure through eras and places, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen tells the story of the world’s most important molecule. We travel from the beginning of time all the way up to our present reality, witnessing the staggering journey that CO2 has undertaken. 
 
As we watch its movements through the rocks, the air, the oceans and living beings over four billion years, we come to see more clearly what it means for us to be churning through ancient life – in the form of fossil fuels – as we power our industrial world. We are, Brannen shows, performing an unprecedented experiment on our planet. If we are to avoid its catastrophic consequences, we must all begin to deepen our understanding of this curious substance, which has given us everything from the very first life forms on earth to the business titans reshaping our planet today.

The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything

Sam Kean

Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium (Cd, 48)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why did tellurium (Te, 52) lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? 
 
The periodic table is one of our crowning scientific achievements, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal and obsession. The fascinating tales in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold and every single element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, conflict, the arts, medicine and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. 
 
Why did a little lithium (Li, 3) help cure poet Robert Lowell of his madness? And how did gallium (Ga, 31) become the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Disappearing Spoon has the answers, fusing science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, discovery and alchemy, from the big bang through to the end of time.

The Disappearing Spoon...and other true tales from the Periodic Table

** GUARDIAN SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 ** 
 
‘Popular science at its best’ 
Mail on Sunday 
 
‘Eminently accessible and enjoyable’ 
Observer 
 
With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds in the Roman Senate, but the story of his last breath is still unfolding. In fact, you're probably inhaling some of it now. Of the sextillions of molecules entering or leaving your lungs at this moment, some might also bear traces of Cleopatra's perfumes, German mustard gas, particles exhaled by dinosaurs or emitted by atomic bombs, even remnants of stardust from the universe's creation. 
 
In Caesar’s Last Breath, New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean takes us on a journey through the periodic table, around the globe and across time to tell the epic story of the air we breathe.

Caesar's Last Breath

The Epic Story of The Air Around Us

Chris van Tulleken

IT'S NOT YOU. IT'S THE FOOD. 
 
'If you only read one diet or nutrition book in your life, make it this one' Bee Wilson 
 
'You've got to get this book in your life . . . Completely compelling . . . Read a page and think about it for the rest of the week' Chris Evans 
 
We have entered a new 'age of eating' where most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food, food which is industrially processed and designed and marketed to be addictive. But do we really know what it's doing to our bodies? 
 
Join Chris in his travels through the world of food science and a UPF diet to discover what's really going on. Find out why exercise and willpower can't save us, and what UPF is really doing to our bodies, our health, our weight, and the planet (hint: nothing good). 
 
For too long we've been told we just need to make different choices, when really we're living in a food environment that makes it nigh-on impossible. So this is a book about our rights. The right to know what we eat and what it does to our bodies and the right to good, affordable food.

Ultra-Processed People

Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?

Arik Kershenbaum

We are unprepared for the greatest discovery of modern science. Scientists are confident that there is alien life across the universe yet we have not moved beyond our perception of 'aliens' as Hollywood stereotypes. The time has come to abandon our fixation on alien monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing. 
 
Using his own expert understanding of life on Earth and Darwin's theory of evolution - which applies throughout the universe - Cambridge zoologist Dr Arik Kershenbaum explains what alien life must be like: how these creatures will move, socialise and communicate. The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy is the story of how life really works, on Earth and in space.

The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy

What Animals on Earth Reveal about Aliens – and Ourselves

Helen Czerski

Part of the new Ladybird Expert series, Bubbles is a clear, surprising and entertaining introduction to the science of bubbles. 
 
Bubbles are beautiful, ephemeral, fun, fragile, jolly and slightly unpredictable. We're all familiar with them, but we don't often ask what they actually are. 
 
The great scientists of the Western world - Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Lord Rayleigh and more - studied bubbles seriously. They recognised that they had a lot to say about the nature of the physical world, and they poked, prodded and listened to find out what it was. In the years since, we've learned that this bulbous arrangement of liquid and gas does things that neither the gas or the liquid could do by itself. 
 
Written by the celebrated physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, Bubbles explores how everything from the way drinks taste to the Earth's temperature are influenced by bubbles. 
 
This book has a message: never underestimate a bubble!

Bubbles: A Ladybird Expert Book

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Virginia Woolf’s (not so) secret lesbian relationship – in her own words

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Defending The Well of Loneliness

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The best picnic scenes in literature

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Why Mrs Dalloway is the perfect novel for our times

Books that defined the 1920s

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Life according to Jilly Cooper

From Jane Austen's Chawton to Bram Stoker's Whitby, this is the definitive literary tour of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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