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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Michael Symmons Roberts

'This is a rich, lively, profound book' ROWAN WILLIAMS 
 
A personal reckoning with grief, doubt, faith and poetry set to one of the most celebrated musical works of the twentieth century, from the award-winning poet and librettist. 
 
The story goes like this: on a freezing winter night in 1941, a new piece of chamber music was performed to a crowd of prisoners of war on a three-stringed cello, clarinet, violin and pub piano with sticky keys. It was the premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. 
 
Listeners since then have been captivated by the ecstatic music and mythology of Messiaen’s masterpiece. Michael Symmons Roberts’ own lifelong fascination with the Quartet– having chanced upon it in a record shop in his late teens and fallen in love with its title - leads him on a quest to understand its enigmatic power. His fascination – at times frustration – with Messiaen’s vision opens into an exploration of grief, of personal faith and doubt, of the end of time and what may lie beyond it. Interwoven with poetry and wit, this book is an expansive evocation of music, loss, hope and time, seen through the lens of the Quartet's technicolour, apocalyptic vision. 
 
Quartet for the End of Time is a moving, intimate and unforgettable book, attentive to ways of listening – in our noisy world – to birdsong, music, poems and radio silence, and to the call and response that we may find. 
 
'A properly engrossing exploration of music, place, religion and what it is to be human' SARAH TARLOW, author of The Archaeology of Loss

Quartet for the End of Time

On Music, Grief and Birdsong

Christine Rosen

Drawing on decades of research, The Extinction of Experience is a philosophical defence of what makes us human – and a powerful, urgent call to reclaim ourselves in a digital world. 
 
Human experiences are disappearing. 
 
Social media, gaming and dating apps have usurped in-person interaction; handwriting is no longer prioritised in schools; and emotion is sooner expressed through likes and emojis than face-to-face conversations. With headphones in and eyes trained on our phones, even boredom has been obliterated. But, as Christine Rosen expertly shows, when we embrace this mediated life and conform to the demands of the machine, we risk becoming disconnected and machine-like ourselves. 
 
There is another way. For too long, under the influence of corporate giants and tech enthusiasts, we’ve accepted the idea that change always means better. But rapidly developing technology isn’t neutral – it’s ambivalent, and capable of enormous harm. To improve our well-being, help future generations flourish and recover our shared humanity, we must become more critical, mindful users of technology, and more discerning of how it uses us. 
 
From TikTok challenges and algorithms to surveillance devices and conspiracy culture, The Extinction of Experience reveals the human crisis of our digital age – and urges us to return to the real world, while we still can.

The Extinction of Experience

How to Be Human in a Digital World

Reclaiming Our Humanity in a Digital World

Peter Moore

Bestselling historian Peter Moore traces how Enlightenment ideas were exported from Britain and put into practice in America - where they became the most successful export of all time, the American Dream 
 
'Absorbing... fascinating... eloquent' THE TIMES 
'Engaging and thoroughly reader-friendly' TELEGRAPH 
'Wonderfully absorbing and stimulating' SARAH BAKEWELL 
 
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is frequently evoked today as shorthand for the American Dream. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates – of a free and happy world – owes a great deal to British thinkers too. 
 
Centred on the life of Benjamin Franklin, featuring figures like the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the groundbreaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician and revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It takes us back to a vital moment in the foundation of the West and tells a whole new story about the birth of the United States of America – and some of the key principles by which we live to this day. 
 
 
'Deft insights and in clear prose' ALAN TAYLOR 
'A gripping account' STELLA TILLYARD 
'Rollicking...compulsive readability' WASHINGTON POST 
'A great read' LADY HALE

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Endeavour

Maggie Nelson

Like Love is a momentous, raucous collection of essays drawn from twenty years of Maggie Nelson’s brilliant work. These profiles, reviews, remembrances, tributes and critical essays, as well as several conversations with friends and idols, bring to life Nelson’s passion for dialogue and dissent. The range of subjects is wide – from Prince to Carolee Schneemann to Kara Walker to Bjork – but certain themes recur: intergenerational exchange; love and friendship; feminist and queer issues, especially as they shift over time; subversion, transgression and perversity; and the fruits and follies of a life spent devoted to making. 
 
The collection is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson’s own development as a writer, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.Arranged chronologically, Like Love shows the writing, thinking, feeling, reading, looking and conversing that occupied Nelson while writing iconic books such as Bluets and The Argonauts. As such, it is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson's own development and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.Like Love is a portrait of a time, an anarchic party rich with wild guests, a window into Nelson’s own development as a writer, and a testament to the profound sustenance offered by art and artists.

Like Love

Essays and Conversations

Oliver Burkeman

Stop trying to sort your life out. Start living.Our lives can feel defined by the struggle with overwhelm, endless decisions and striving to be productive. Wouldn’t it be good to stop doing all that? What if we could find freedom – and get more of the important things done – by embracing our limitations, and by letting things happen instead of forcing them?Meditations for Mortals begins with the reality in which we actually find ourselves, not with fantasies of an ideal existence. Reflecting on ideas from philosophy, religion, psychology and self-help, it offers us a powerful and practical new way to do what counts: a guiding outlook Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism’.This book is a profound and liberating crash course in living more fully. It overturns much familiar advice and opens a gateway to a saner, freer and more enchantment-filled life.One day at a time.

Meditations for Mortals

A Four Week Guide to Doing What Counts

Four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts

Lyndsey Stonebridge

This bold new take on the life and ideas of political philosopher Hannah Arendt explores her lessons for living in an age of uncertainty 
 
'Compelling and original' OBSERVER 
 
'An absorbing new biography... Admirable' ECONOMIST 
 
'Invigorating and insightful' FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
The violent unease of today's world would have been all too familiar to Hannah Arendt. Tyranny, occupation, disenchantment, post-truth politics, conspiracy theories, racism, mass migration, the banality of evil: she had lived through them all. 
 
Born in the first decade of the last century, Arendt escaped fascist Europe to make a new life for herself in America, where she became one of the world's most influential - and controversial - public intellectuals. She wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and above all about freedom. Questioning - thinking - was her first defence against tyranny. In place of the forces of darkness and insanity, she pitched a politics of plurality, spontaneity and defiance. Loving the world, Arendt taught, meant finding the courage to protect it. 
 
Written with passion and authority, Lyndsey Stonebridge's We Are Free to Change the World illuminates Arendt's life and work and its urgent dialogue with our troubled present. It calls on each of us to think our way, as Hannah Arendt did - unflinchingly, lovingly and defiantly - through our own unpredictable times.

We Are Free to Change the World

Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience

Ann Wroe

The acclaimed biographer and obituarist for The Economist reflects on a career spent pursuing life and capturing it on the page 
 
'Lifescapes is the universe in miniature' 
DAILY TELEGRAPH 
 
It is soul that I go looking for. Or, to put it another way, real life. 
 
'She's a genius, I believe' 
HILARY MANTEL, author of Wolf Hall 
 
'What is life?' asked the poet Shelley, and could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, for all their understanding of how life manifests, thrives and evolves, have still not plumbed that fundamental question. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is. 
 
In this dazzlingly original blend of memoir, biography, observation and poetry, Ann Wroe reflects on the art and impossibility of capturing life on the page. Through her experiences and those of others, through people she has known, studied or merely glimpsed in windows, she movingly explores what makes a life and how that life lingers after. 
 
Animated by Wroe's rare imagination, eye for the telling detail, and the wit, beauty and clarity of her writing, Lifescapes is a luminous, deeply personal answer to Shelley's question.

Lifescapes

A Biographer’s Search for the Soul

Peter Singer

Animal Liberation started a worldwide movement when it revealed the abuse of animals in factory farms and laboratories. It demonstrated that these and other practices were the cause of appalling and unnecessary suffering and therefore morally indefensible. In the fifty years since, science has further vindicated Peter Singer's arguments about animal sentience, vegetarianism has become widespread, and the book has helped change the minds of millions. But the situation for animals has in many ways grown worse. 
 
Despite improvements in animal welfare in some regions - brought about in large part by this book - in many others the scale of their abuse has reached staggering new depths. This revised edition, of which about two-thirds is entirely new, documents these and other developments, such as the impact of meat consumption on climate and the spread of dangerous new viruses. It refines its arguments in light of new evidence, equips the reader with fresh tools and advice, and shows us all the road ahead. The result, Animal Liberation Now, is a book of galvanising power, relevance and importance.

Animal Liberation Now

Kristen Ghodsee

Throughout history and around the world today, forward-thinking communities have pioneered alternative ways of living together, sharing property and raising children. In Everyday Utopia, anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee explores what we can learn from these experiments – from the ancient Greek commune founded by Pythagoras to the trail-blazing feminists of the French Revolution, from the cohousing movement in contemporary Denmark to the flourishing ecovillages of Colombia and Portugal. She shows why utopian thinking is essential to making a fairer world and that many of the best ways of getting there begin at home.

Everyday Utopia

Better Ways of Living Equally

In Praise of Radical Alternatives to the Traditional Family Home

Dina Nayeri

Dina Nayeri's wide-ranging, groundbreaking new book combines deep reportage with her own life experience to examine what constitutes believability in our society. Intent on exploring ideas of persuasion and performance, Nayeri takes us behind the scenes in emergency rooms, corporate boardrooms, asylum interviews and into her own family, to ask - where lies the difference between being believed and being dismissed? What does this mean for our culture? 
 
As personal as it is profound in its reflections on language, history, morality and compassion, Who Gets Believed? investigates the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another.

Who Gets Believed?

When the Truth Isn’t Enough

Robert M Sapolsky

What if free will is an illusion? In Determined one of the world’s greatest scientists of human behaviour overturns one of our most powerful beliefs – that we are the authors of our own actions – and sets out the disturbing yet liberating implications of accepting this fact. 
 
As Robert Sapolsky shows, everything we think and do is caused by the luck of our biology and the influence of our environment, and ultimately both are beyond our control. In a world without free will, we must completely rethink what we mean by choice, responsibility, morality and justice. Sapolsky’s extraordinary book does exactly this, guiding us toward a profoundly fairer, more humane way of living together.

Determined

The Science of Life Without Free Will

Life Without Free Will

Sarah Bakewell

The bestselling, prizewinning author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores the great tradition of humanist writers, thinkers, scientists and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human. 
 
*** THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *** A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR *** 
 
'I can't imagine a better history' PHILIP PULLMAN * 'Fascinating, moving, funny' OLIVER BURKEMAN 
 
If you are reading this, you may already be a humanist. Even if you don't know it. 
 
Do you love literature and the arts? Do you have a strong moral compass despite not being formally religious? Do you simply believe that individual lives are more important than grand political visions? If any of these apply, you are part of a long tradition of humanist thought. 
 
In Humanly Possible Sarah Bakewell asks what humanism is and why it has flourished for so long. By introducing us to the adventurous lives and ideas of famous humanists through 700 years of history, she shows how the humanist values that helped steer us through dark times in the past are just as urgently needed in our world today. 
 
‘An epic, spine-tingling and persuasive work of history’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘As she romps through the centuries, readers will feel assured that they are in the company of a gifted guide’ The Economist

Humanly Possible

The great humanist experiment in living

Yuval Noah Harari

A beautiful new hardback anniversary edition of the multi-million copy sensation 
 
INCLUDES A NEW AFTERWORD FROM YUVAL NOAH HARARI 
 
What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? 
 
One of the world's preeminent historians and thinkers, Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us. 
 
In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going. 
 
PRAISE FOR SAPIENS: 
 
'Interesting and provocative... It gives you a sense of how briefly we've been on this Earth' Barack Obama 
 
'Jaw-dropping from the first word to the last... It may be the best book I've ever read' Chris Evans 
 
'Startling... It changes the way you look at the world' Simon Mayo 
 
'I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who's interested in the history and future of our species' Bill Gates 
 
 
Yuval Noah Harari's books have sold over 2 million copies sold since publication [Nielsen BookScan UK, Circana BookScan US, April 2024]

Sapiens

A Brief History of Humankind (10 Year Anniversary Edition)

THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER

A Brief History of Humankind

Jenny Odell

We're living on the wrong clock - one that tells us time is money - and it's destroying us. 
 
Here is a radical argument for other ways of experiencing time that offer hopeful possibilities for ourselves and the planet. 
 
Our daily experience is dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside. It wasn't devised for people, but for profit. Saving Time rearranges how we experience time, and imagines a world not centred around work, the office clock, or the profit motive. Explaining how we got to the point where time became money, Odell offers us new models to live by - inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological, and geological time. 
 
In this dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful journey, Jenny Odell takes us through other temporal habitats: as planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days, alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire, the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy, or the time it takes to heal. 
 
She urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms, to imagine a source of meaning outside the world of work and profit, and to understand that the trajectory of our lives - or the life of the planet - is not a foregone conclusion. 
 
Now is our moment to rethink. And if we do, time might just save us.

Saving Time

Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

Henry Marsh

**BBC DOCUMENTARY CONFESSIONS OF A BRAIN SURGEON IS OUT NOW** 
 
From the No.1 bestselling author of Do No Harm, an entrancing and uplifting meditation on the gift of life. 
 
‘A book to treasure and reread’ Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being 
 
As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but even he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. 
 
In And Finally, he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient. As the days pass, his mind turns to his career, to the people and places he has known, and to creative projects still to be completed. 
 
Yet he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and nature, by his love for his family, and – most of all – by what it is to be alive. 
 
* A Daily Telegraph, The Times and Financial Times Book of the Year * 
 
‘Magnificent’ Rachel Clarke 
 
‘Vividly wry and honest’ The Times 
 
‘I admire this book enormously’ Philip Pullman 
 
‘Enthralling’ Guardian

And Finally

A Neurosurgeon’s Reflections on Life

Matters of Life and Death, the Sunday Times bestseller from the author of DO NO HARM

Emmanuel Carrère

This is a book about yoga. Or at least, it was. 
 
January 2015. High on literary success and familial bliss, Emmanuel Carrère embarks on a rigorous ten-day meditative retreat in rural France in search of clarity and material for his next book, which he thinks will be a subtle, upbeat introduction to yoga. 
 
But his trip is cut short, and he is brought down to earth with a thud when he returns to a Paris in turmoil in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. From then on, Carrère's life - along with his novel-in-progress - begins to unravel in ever more unexpected ways. 
 
'The story of how a life can fray, tighten itself into a noose, unravel... profound and moving' Geoff Dyer 
 
'Extraordinarily compelling' Financial Times

Yoga

From the bestselling author of THE ADVERSARY

Ibram X. Kendi

How do we talk to our children about racism? 
 
How do we teach children to be antiracist? How are kids at different ages experiencing race? How are racist structures impacting children? How can we inspire our children to avoid our mistakes, to be better, to make the world better? 
 
These are the questions Ibram X. Kendi found himself avoiding as he anticipated the birth of his first child. Like most parents or parents-to-be, he felt the reflex to not talk to his child about racism, which he feared would stain her innocence and steal away her joy. But research into the scientific literature, his experiences as a father and reflections on his own difficult experiences as a student ultimately changed his mind. 
 
In How to Raise an Antiracist Kendi shows that we must all participate in the effort to raise young people as antiracists.

How To Raise an Antiracist

Karen Armstrong

In this hugely powerful book, Karen Armstrong argues that it isn't enough to change our behaviour to avert environmental catastrophe, we must rekindle our spiritual bond with the natural world. From gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence, Armstrong draws themes from the world's religious traditions to offer practical steps to reconnect you with nature. 
 
Speaking to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about environmental destruction, or searching for new actions to save our planet, Sacred Nature will uncover the most profound connections between humans and the natural world.

Sacred Nature

How we can recover our bond with the natural world

In this rousing and deeply empathetic book, Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world's most influential scholars of racism, shows that neutrality is not an option: until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem. 
 
Using his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and story-teller, Kendi helps us recognise that everyone is, at times, complicit in racism whether they realise it or not, and by describing with moving humility his own journey from racism to antiracism, he shows us how instead to be a force for good. Along the way, Kendi punctures all the myths and taboos that so often cloud our understanding, from arguments about what race is and whether racial differences exist to the complications that arise when race intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. 
 
In the process he demolishes the myth of the post-racial society and builds from the ground up a vital new understanding of racism - what it is, where it is hidden, how to identify it and what to do about it.

How To Be an Antiracist

Clare Mac Cumhaill

Rachael Wiseman

WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN 
AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK 
A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 
 
 
Elizabeth Anscombe: defiantly brilliant, chain-smoking, trouser-wearing Catholic and (eventual) mother of seven. 
 
Philippa Foot: pathalogically discreet, quietly rebellious granddaughter of a US president. 
 
Mary Midgley: witty scholar and careful observer of humans and animals alike. 
 
Iris Murdoch: aspiring novelist and Francophile with the power to seduce (almost) anyone. 
 
 
Written with expertise and flair, Metaphysical Animals is a vivid portrait of the endeavours and achievements of these four remarkable women. As undergraduates at Oxford during the Second World War, they shared ideas (as well as shoes, sofas and lovers). From the disorder and despair of war, they went on to breathe new life into philosophy, creating a radically fresh way of thinking about freedom, reality and human goodness that is there for us today. 
 
 
'Evocative and sparkling' New York Times 
 
'A triumph' Mail on Sunday

Metaphysical Animals

How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

Karl Ove Knausgaard

A brilliantly wide-ranging essay collection from the author of My Struggle, spanning literature, philosophy, art and how our daily and creative lives intertwine. 
 
In the Land of the Cyclops is Karl Ove Knausgaard's first collection of essays to be published in English, and these brilliant and wide-ranging pieces meditate on themes familiar from his groundbreaking fiction. 
 
Here, Knausgaard discusses Madame Bovary, the Northern Lights, Ingmar Bergman, and the work of an array of writers and visual artists, including Knut Hamsun, Michel Houellebecq, Anselm Kiefer and Cindy Sherman. 
 
These essays beautifully capture Knausgaard's ability to mediate between the deeply personal and the universal, demonstrating his trademark self-scrutiny and his deep longing to authentically see, understand, and experience the world. 
 
'Knausgaard is among the finest writers alive' New York Times

In the Land of the Cyclops

Essays

What can freedom really mean? 
 
'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' OLIVIA LAING 
 
In this invigorating, essential book, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience or talk about freedom. Drawing on pop culture, theory and real life, she follows freedom - with all its complexities - through four realms: art, sex, drugs and climate. On Freedom offers a bold new perspective on the challenging times in which we live. 
 
'Tremendously energising' Guardian 
 
'This provocative meditation...shows Nelson at her most original and brilliant' New York Times 
 
'Nelson is such a friend to her reader, such brilliant company... Exhilarating' Literary Review 
 
* A New York Times Notable Book *

On Freedom

The electrifying new book from the author of The Argonauts

Four Songs of Care and Constraint

Shahidha Bari

'A sensual and intellectual pleasure from start to finish' - Deborah Levy, author of The Cost of Living 
 
We are all dressed. But how often do we pause to think about the place of our clothes in our lives? What unconscious thoughts do we express when we dress every day? Can memories, meaning and ideas be wrapped up in a winter coat? 
 
These are the questions that interest Shahidha Bari, as she explores the secret language of our clothes. Ranging freely through literature, art, film and philosophy, Dressed tracks the hidden power of clothes in our culture and our daily lives. From the depredations of violence and ageing to our longing for freedom, love and privacy, from the objectification of women to the crisis of masculinity, each garment exposes a fresh dilemma. Item by item, the story of ourselves unravels. 
 
Evocative, enlightening and dazzlingly original, Dressed is not just about clothes as objects of fashion or as a means of self-expression. This is a book about the deepest philosophical questions of who we are, how we see ourselves and how we dress to face the world.

Dressed

The Philosophy of Clothes

The Secret Life of Clothes

Nat Segnit

Retreat takes us on a stunning journey through the many ways humans step back from daily life, both in today's world and in our past. 
 
'Open-minded, elegantly written and comprehensive' Daily Telegraph 
 
From mindfulness and meditation to yoga breaks and spiritual bootcamps, stepping back from daily life remains a human obsession. In this endlessly enlightening book, Nat Segnit experiences retreats around the world as he investigates why we seek solitude, what we get out of it, and what is going on in our brains and bodies when we achieve it. Along the way, he meets yogic scholars, scientists, religious leaders, philosophers and artists, gaining fascinating - and often startling - insights. 
 
'A vivid personal quest...rich and almost eerily timely' William Fiennes, author of The Snow Geese

Retreat

Adventures in Search of Silence, Solitude and Renewal

The Risks and Rewards of Stepping Back from the World

How do we shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people? Olly Alexander, Peppermint, Owen Jones, Beth Ditto, Shon Faye and more share their stories and visions for the future. 
 
'A vital addition to your bookshelf' Stylist, 5 Books for Summer 
 
'Captivating... A must-read' Gay Times, Books of the Year 
 
In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices - actors, musicians, writers, artists and activists - answer this vital question, at a time when the queer community continues to suffer discrimination and extreme violence. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they present a powerful manifesto for how - together - we can change lives everywhere. 
 
'Powerful, inspiring...urgent' Attitude 
 
'Read and be inspired' Peter Tatchell 
 
'Illuminating' Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk 
 
'Friendly and fierce' Jeremy Atherton Lin, author of Gay Bar

We Can Do Better Than This

An urgent manifesto for how we can shape a better world for LGBTQ+ people

Robert Martineau

A spellbinding travel book, exploring the psychology of walking, pilgrimage, solitude and escape. 
 
'An extraordinary, dreamlike journey through West Africa' Adharanand Finn 
 
At the age of twenty-seven and afraid of falling into a life he doesn't want, Robert Martineau quits his office job, buys a flight to Accra and begins to walk. He walks 1,000 miles through Ghana, Togo and Benin, to Ouidah, an ancient spiritual centre on the West African coast. 
 
As he travels alone across rainforest, savannah and mountains, Martineau meets shamans, priests, historians, archaeologists and kings. Through the process of walking each day, and the lessons of those he encounters, Martineau starts to build connections with the natural world and the past - and, at last, to find the meaning he craves. 
 
'Marvellous... A book about how to travel' Jay Griffiths, author of Wild 
 
'[Martineau's] story, beautifully written, of how his pilgrimage of sorts changed him forever' Evening Standard

Waypoints

A Journey on Foot

A life-changing gift of a book: What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts? 
 
**The instant Sunday Times bestseller** 
 
Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. 
 
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. 
 
Embrace your limits. Change your life. Discover how to make your four thousand weeks count in 2025. 
 
'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living' Emma Gannon 
 
'Every sentence is riven with gold' Chris Evans 
 
'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful' Marian Keyes

Four Thousand Weeks

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

Ed Miliband

How do we rein in the power of Big Tech? 
How do we tackle the climate crisis? 
How can all of us play a part in making change happen? 
 
For the past four years, Ed Miliband has been discovering and interviewing brilliant people all around the world who are successfully tackling the biggest problems we face, transforming communities and pioneering global movements. Go Big draws on the most imaginative and ambitious of these ideas to provide a vision for the kind of society we need. 
 
A better world is possible; the solutions are out there. We can all make a difference. We just need to know where to look - and have the courage to think big. 
 
Go Big shows us how. 
 
'Enthralling' PHILIP PULLMAN 
'Such a hopeful book' ELIZABETH DAY 
'Should be the rallying cry of progressives around the world' RUTGER BREGMAN

GO BIG

20 Bold Solutions to Fix Our World

How To Fix Our World

Matthew Crawford

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

Why We Drive

On Freedom, Risk and Taking Back Control

Eric Klinenberg

How can we bring people together? 
 
Sociologist and best-selling author Eric Klinenberg introduces a transformative and powerfully uplifting new idea for health, happiness, safety and healing our divided, unequal society. 
 
'This wonderful book shows us how democracies thrive' Steven Levitsky &amp; Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die 
 
Too often we take for granted and neglect our libraries, parks, markets, schools, playgrounds, gardens and communal spaces, but decades of research now shows that these places can have an extraordinary effect on our personal and collective wellbeing. Why? Because wherever people cross paths and linger, wherever we gather informally, strike up a conversation and get to know one another, relationships blossom and communities emerge – and where communities are strong, people are safer and healthier, crime drops and commerce thrives, and peace, tolerance and stability take root. 
 
Through uplifting human stories and an illuminating tour through the science of social connection, Palaces for the People shows that properly designing and maintaining this ‘social infrastructure’ might be our single best strategy for a more equal and united society.

Palaces for the People

How To Build a More Equal and United Society

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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