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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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Dalai Lama

Desmond Tutu

The Book of Joy

James McDougall

From its birth in seventh-century Arabia, Islam has been a faith on the move. In Worlds of Islam, James McDougall explores its origins and transformations from Late Antiquity to the digital age. 
 
Over the span of a thousand years, armies, missionaries, and merchants carried it to the edges of Europe, the coasts of Southeast Asia, and the remote interior of China. By the nineteenth century, Islam encompassed a world of great diversity, from Muslim-ruled empires to nations where Muslims lived out their faith among many others. In the twentieth century, while monarchs in the Gulf asserted dynastic privilege and fundamentalists in Egypt and Pakistan preached social morality, revolutionaries from Algeria to Indonesia fought for national self-determination, and activists in North America and Europe campaigned for civil liberties and social justice. 
 
As empires fell and new superpowers rose, Muslims proved to be as adaptable and dynamic as modernity itself. Sweeping and authoritative, Worlds of Islam narrates the epic story of how Muslims emerged as a community, built empires, traversed the globe, came to number in the billions, and became modern.

Worlds of Islam

A Global History

Emma Noyes

After Charlie Hudson’s classmate goes missing in the forest she is determined to find out what happened and starts to suspect the mysterious newcomer, Elias Everhart.With his piercing eyes and sharp wit, Charlie knows he has a secret. More than one. What she doesn’t know is that those secrets will lead her to a place she never imagined: a world made of magic, gods, and monsters - and a first love fated to fall apart. 
 
Truths and temptations lurk in the darkness, and for Charlie, the only thing more dangerous than her past, is the boy with the power to change her future.

Soul of Shadow

Aliyah Umm Raiyaan

"A must-have for every Muslim home." -Mufti Menk 
 
Your companion and compass. Let Allah's Words guide you. 
 
In Living with the Qur’an, Sunday Times bestselling author Aliyah Umm Raiyaan invites you to embark upon a beautiful and interactive year-long journey with the Perfect Words of Allah. Through each of its chapters – one for every week of the year – you will discover a 4 step process to: 
<ul><li>Contemplate the meanings of verses of the Qur’an through tafseer, personal stories and spiritual reflections</li><li>Respond to a powerful question to create a shift in your soul</li><li>Take 3 simple actions throughout the week to tangibly apply the verses</li><li>Fall in love with The Author, Allah ‘azza wa jal</li></ul> 
 
Practical, personal and deeply intimate, Living with the Qur’an is for anyone wanting to cultivate a life-long close relationship with the Book of Allah. Through contemplation and personal application, experience the Qur’an as a personal guide specifically for you. May it be your constant companion throughout the journey of your life.

Living with the Qur’an

A yearlong journey to falling in love with Allah’s Words

Tharik Hussain

This revelatory history explores the ancient roots of Muslim Europe, tracing their journey through the Mediterranean. 
 
Our odyssey begins in the little-known Sufi lodges in Cyprus, where Muslims arrived in 647AD. From there, we travel through the continent – visiting places such as Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain – encountering red-haired European Sultans and Arabic-speaking Christian Kings. We meet forgotten Muslim pioneers, such as Abbas Ibn Firnas who gave us flight and Ibn Sina who gave us modern medicine. We see the Islam-inspired mudejar art of fourteenth-century Christians in Spain, and how such cross fertilisation birthed Europe’s ‘Renaissance’. We discover the long-forgotten tombs of European Muslims who knew the Prophet Muhammad, and the author – award-winning writer Tharik Hussain – becomes the first Muslim in over 900 years to pray inside the remains of a nameless Sicilian Mosque. 
 
To remedy Europe’s Islamic amnesia, this ambitious history reveals that Islam is no side show to Western culture – but rather has been integral to its development over 1,400 years.

Muslim Europe

A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History

Olga Ravn

It was a black night in the year 1620 when Christenze Krukow made the wax child, when she melted down beeswax and set it in the image of a small human. For days, she carried it tucked beneath her arm, shaping it with the warmth of her flesh, giving it life. She fashioned for it eyes and ears that cannot open, and yet – it watches and listens. 
 
It looks on as Christenze is haunted by rumour, it hears what the people whisper. It sees how, in the candlelight, she gazes with love at her friends, and hears the things they say in the shadows. It knows pine forest, misty fjord and the crackle of the burning pyre. It observes the violence in men’s eyes and the cruelty of their laws. In time, it begins to understand that once a suspicion of witchcraft has taken hold, it can prove impossible to shake… 
 
Based on an infamous seventeenth century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is the extraordinary new novel from Olga Ravn, one of the most acclaimed and original writers at work today: a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater.

The Wax Child

Marvellous Michael Anson

In Oru L'ore is the only one without agbára - the ability to harness power from the sun. And must conceal it from everyone. Including her best friend, Alawani. 
 
But when the gods declare Alawani an Àlùfáà, he must be stripped of his power in a brutal trial likely to kill him. Unwilling to bear his death, Lóre vows to rescue him. 
 
But in a desperate attempt to channel agbára an icy magic pours from her hands; a power she learns originated from a forbidden, secret land beyond the walls of Oru. 
 
One where she and Alawani must now seek sanctuary and discover a secret that could bring the Kingdom to its knees . . .

Firstborn of the Sun

Lance Richardson

'Magnificent' ROBERT MACFARLANE 
'Fascinating' KATHERINE MAY 
'Irresistible' KATHERINE BUCKNELL 
‘Perceptive and consistently readable’ CAL FLYN 
 
Discover the many lives of Peter Matthiessen – writer, naturalist, activist, CIA agent, Zen master – in this kaleidoscopic biography of an American literary giant. 
 
Author of The Snow Leopard, co-founder of the Paris Review and the only writer to have ever won the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen was a towering figure of twentieth-century American literary culture. He was also, briefly, an undercover agent for the fledgling CIA; an environmental activist; an advocate for Native American rights and California farmworkers; friends with the likes of Truman Capote and William Styron; and a daring explorer who visited every continent on Earth, scaling the Himalayas and floating through the Amazon on a balsawood raft. 
 
Across these many lives, Matthiessen was always searching for what he called his ‘true nature’ – an enlightened state of being, without ego – and this spiritual quest ultimately led him, even as he inflicted great pain on three wives and multiple children, to the highest ranks of Zen. 
 
Readers and critics have struggled to reconcile Matthiessen’s extraordinarily varied achievements and literary output, which included everything from experimental novels to advocacy journalism. Now, for the first time, drawing on rich primary sources and hundreds of interviews, acclaimed biographer Lance Richardson pulls together the seemingly disparate threads of Matthiessen’s story. With page-turning immediacy, Richardson illuminates how the writer’s uncanny gifts enabled him to sense connections between ecological decline, racism and labour exploitation – to express, eloquently and presciently, that ‘in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge’.

True Nature

The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

Mark Mazower

For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infused it with racist pseudo-science. Such threats culminated in the nightmare of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. 
 
The landscape is very different now, as Mark Mazower argues in this piercingly brilliant book. More than four-fifths of the world’s Jews now live in Israel and the United States, with the former’s military dominance of its region guaranteed by the latter while the loudest voices decrying antisemitism see it coming from the Left not the Right. 
 
Mazower clearly and carefully shows us how we got here, seeking to illuminate rather than blame. Very few words have the punch of ‘antisemitism’ and yet no term is more liable to be misunderstood in ways affecting free speech and foreign policy alike. On Antisemitism is a vitally important attempt to draw a line that must be drawn.

On Antisemitism

A Word in History

Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Bible observes that God made humanity ‘for a while a little lower than the angels’. If humans are that close to angels, does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it? In a single lifetime, Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary about-turns in attitudes to sex and gender in human history, bringing liberation for some and fury and fear for others. 
 
This book by Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. It beckons us to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity, an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.

Lower than the Angels

A History of Sex and Christianity

Rich Villodas

Enjoy daily readings to help you slow down, savour the Christmas season and deepen your relationship with Jesus with the beautiful 25-day Advent devotional from the bestselling author of The Deeply Formed Life. 
 
In the busyness of the holiday season, it’s easy to neglect what really matters: reflecting on the glory of Jesus. We want to pray more – to spend time with God – but the tyranny of the urgent leaves us distracted and depleted. 
 
In this inspiring daily devotional, pastor and bestselling author Rich Villodas guides you through 25 days of reflections, prayers and prompts to help you slow down, connect with God and rediscover peace this Advent season. 
 
Each day in this devotional features a short reflection from Rich, followed by a four-fold rhythm:<ul><li>Silence and prayer: Pause for a few moments. Take a breath. Rest.</li><li>Scripture: Read a short passage about the wonder of Jesus.</li><li>Sage wisdom: Read short, inspiring quotes from Christians through the ages.</li><li>Self-reflection: Bring your full self to God and enjoy his presence. Each day offers space for personal reflection, preparing your heart for Jesus’s arrival and culminating in a final devotional on Christmas Day.</li></ul>As you journey through Advent, reclaim joy and behold the wondrous love of God this Christmas with the Waiting for Jesus daily Advent devotional.

Waiting for Jesus

An Advent Invitation to Prayer and Renewal

Rosie Hewlett

You know her name, you know her story. Just not the right one... 
 
Within the depths of the Underworld the formidable snake-haired Gorgon has finally had enough. Tired of being eternally and unjustly brandished a villain, Medusa has found the courage to face her tragic past and speak out. Determined to expose the centuries of lies surrounding her name, Medusa gives unparalleled insight into her cursed life, from her earliest memories and abandonment at birth, right through to her tragic and untimely death at the hands of the hero Perseus. Through telling her story, Medusa finally reveals the lost truth behind antiquity’s most infamous monster. 
 
Medusa breathes new life into an ancient story and echoes the battle that women throughout millennia have continued to wage – the opportunity to simply be heard.

Medusa

Kate Riley

A LitHub most anticipated book of 2025 
 
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. 
 
Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.

Ruth

Shunryu Suzuki

'Our way of sitting is for you to become yourself.' 
 
Shunryu Suzuki was one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the last century, who brought Zen philosophy to millions of people. In this book of teachings, many published for the first time, he shares simple, warm-hearted lessons on a practice that is fundamentally about becoming yourself. Filled with humour and insight, Becoming Yourself speaks directly to the newest beginners while also serving as a touchstone and a continual source of inspiration for even the most experienced practitioners and Zen masters. 
 
Resonant, clear and brimming with insight, Becoming Yourself brings together a lifetime’s wisdom in one remarkable volume.

Becoming Yourself

Teachings on the Zen Way of Life

Biyi Bandele

'Run, Àjàyí, run!' 
 
The day the Malian slave traders invaded the Nigerian town of Òsogùn, thirteen-year-old Àjàyí's life was split in two. 
 
Before, there was his childhood, surrounded by friends and family, watched over by the ancient Yorùbá gods of forest and water, earth and sky. After: capture, slavery - and release, into the service of a new god, his own culture left far behind. So Àjàyí becomes Samuel Crowther - missionary, linguist, minister - and abolitionist: driven to negotiate against his own people to end the miserable trade in human beings which destroyed his family. 
 
From the heart-stopping drama of Àjàyí's last day of freedom to his consecration as the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church, Biyi Bándélé's kaleidoscopic reimagining of Crowther's life is a brilliant tour de force.

Yorùbá Boy Running

Stephen Fry

Troy has fallen. After 10 years of war, the Greeks make their way back to their own lands – but what homes now await them? Agamemnon must return to his wife Clytemnestra, who has been nursing her rage since he sacrificed their daughter to the gods for a favourable wind. Her revenge will know no bounds. 
 
Meanwhile, Odysseus has angered the god Poseidon and he is cursed to wander the seas, facing angry monsters and possessive demi-gods as he attempts to return to Ithaca and his patient, clever wife Penelope.

Odyssey

Joanne Paul

Thomas More is one of the most famous – or infamous – figures in English history. Is he a saintly scholar and an inspiration for statesmen, socialists and intellectuals even today? Or is he the stubborn zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? 
 
Here is the definitive biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning many interpretations of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows More to have been an intellectual and political giant of his age, central to the making of modern Europe. Drawing on new archival discoveries and over a decade's research into More's life and work, this is a richly-told story of family, faith and politics.

Thomas More

A Life and Death in Tudor England

Yehudis Fletcher

As the daughter of a rabbi raised in an Orthodox Jewish community, Yehudis struggled to conform to the strict expectations placed upon her and her siblings. Outspoken, curious and desperate to know more about G-d, she felt fenced in by arbitrary rules and questions left unanswered. 
 
As she grew older, these restrictions intensified and her questions for G-d hung heavier than ever. Repeatedly let down by those who were supposed to protect her and pushed on to a path that seemed to take her further away from who she really was, she began to yearn for a life where she could embrace all facets of herself. 
 
When Yehudis’s sexuality came to blows with the expectations of her family and her community, the pressure to inhabit a binary position reached fever pitch. Confronted with either losing the faith she loved or losing herself, Yehudis made the most daring decision of all: she decided to stay. 
 
Wry and exhilarating, Chutzpah is a fearless exploration of what is possible when one person simply refuses to choose between abandoning their roots and abandoning themselves.

Chutzpah

A memoir of faith, sexuality and daring to stay

Manvir Singh

What are the origins of shamanism and what is its future? Do shamans believe in their powers? What exactly is trance? What can we learn from indigenous healing practices? 
 
In this enlightening book, anthropologist Manvir Singh offers a new explanation for one of the most misunderstood religious traditions. Travelling from Indonesia to the Amazon, living with shamans and observing music, drug use and indigenous curing ceremonies, he journeys into the origins of shamanism. Fundamentally, shamans are specialists who use altered states to engage with unseen realities and provide services like healing and divination. As Singh shows, shamanism’s ubiquity stems from its psychological resonance. Its core appeal is transformation: a specialist uses initiations, deprivation and non-ordinary states to seemingly become a different kind of human, one possessed with the superpowers necessary to tame life’s uncertainty. 
 
Following a fascinating cast of characters, Singh tells a larger story about the ancient and modern expressions of this timeless tradition. He argues that biomedicine can learn from shamanic practices, yet that psychedelic enthusiasts completely misrepresent history. He also shows that shamanic traditions will forever re-emerge – and that by journeying into humanity’s oldest spiritual practice, we come to better understand ourselves, our history and our future.

Shamanism

The Timeless Religion

LJ Andrews

The only thing Lyra has understood about her magic is that she must keep it secret. 
 
But when she’s forced to reveal her abilities to save her family she is found to possess the rarest magic and is claimed by the crown as their Bone Melder. 
 
To be the Bone Melder is a death sentence and Lyra is determined to free herself and take revenge for the persecution of her people. Starting with the silent, brooding guard—Roark Ashwood. 
 
The more she plots, the closer she is drawn to Roark and a forbidden passion grows and exposes a deadly truth that will either being freedom for them both or destroy everything.

Broken Souls and Bones

Ishan Shivanand

Transform your perception of time and learn to truly live in the present with this practical guide from Himalayan monk and spiritual leader Ishan Shivanand. 
 
Born in India, Ishan's formative years were spent in monasteries, learning the importance of achieving Mahakaal - a state where, instead of limiting yourself as a finite being, you infinitely stretch your relationship with the time that you have to create good health, success, happiness and positivity. 
 
Rooted in the principles of meditation and mindfulness, The Practice of Immortality offers proven, effective lessons in becoming immortal, informed by the transformative journey that inspired Ishan to share the wisdom of his lineage with the world.

The Practice of Immortality

A Monk’s Guide to Discovering Your Unlimited Potential for Health, Happiness, and Positivity

Shi Heng Yi

What do you imagine when you think of Shaolin? Ferociously strong warriors flying through the air? 
 
Shaolin is more than just the physical expression of martial arts. Rooted in Zen and Tao philosophy, it also offers a way of reconnecting our minds with our bodies through meditative movement to cultivate the core virtues of discipline and perseverance. 
 
In this book, Shi Heng Yi, founder of Shaolin Temple Europe and lay disciple of the Songshan Shaolin Temple, introduces us to the contemplative practice that underpins Shaolin – a way of life that has existed for over 1,500 years – and shows how it can help us today. 
 
Having experienced the challenges of modern life as a young man, Shi Heng Yi understands the pressures only too well. Here, he highlights key practices to help improve sleep, relationships and decision-making, as much as balance, flexibility and strength, offering a powerful pathway to self-mastery and understanding.

Shaolin Spirit

The Way to Self-Mastery

Salman Rushdie

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. 
 
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey of healing and recovery. This is an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.

Knife

Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Ava Reid

'Channelling the dark magic at the heart of one of Shakespeare's most intriguing anti-heroes, this reimagining of Lady Macbeth is full of witchcraft, deadly power games, dark schemes, supernatural elements, and a touch of romance.' 
Cosmopolitan 
 
'A gargantuan hit...Dark and brooding, skillful storytelling and intricate character development breathe new life into literature's most enigmatic character. Dripping in atmosphere...One to order immediately.' 
Glamour 
 
'Ava Reid has done it again in this gothic, atmospheric reclamation of the story of Lady Macbeth.' 
Vaishnavi Patel, New York Times bestselling author of Kaikeyi 
 
'A triumph of a retelling.' 
Shelley Parker-Chan, bestselling author of She Who Became the Sun------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Fair is foul and foul is fair. 
 
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of A STUDY IN DROWNING comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her. 
 
The Lady knows the stories: that her eyes induce madness in men. 
 
The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed. 
 
The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of survival, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. 
 
But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armour. She does not know that her magic is greater, and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. 
 
She does not know this yet. But she will.

Lady Macbeth

Homer

With his Odyssey, best-selling author and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn has created a momentous new work, hailed by classicists and poets alike – a translation to stand with those of E. V. Rieu and Robert Fagles. 
 
Setting aside the streamlining, modernizing approach of many recent translations, Mendelsohn artfully reproduces the epic’s formal qualities – meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance – and in so doing restores to Homer’s master work its archaic grandeur. His expansive six-beat line, far closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each of Homer’s verses line for line, without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original. 
 
The result is the richest, most precise, and most musical Odyssey in English, one that fully conveys its oral poetics while bringing to vivid life the gripping adventure, profound human insight and powerful themes that make Homer’s work resonate some twenty-eight centuries after its composition. Supported by an extensive introduction and the fullest notes and commentary currently available, Mendelsohn’s Odyssey is poised to become the authoritative English-language version of this magnificent, endlessly enjoyable masterpiece.

The Odyssey

A New Translation by Daniel Mendelsohn

Emily Hauser

THE INSTANT TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
Award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends, and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . . . 
 
'Bold and intellectually thrilling . . . blending history and science, rigorous scholarship and dazzling feats of imagination.' TOM HOLLAND, historian and co-host of 'The Rest is History' podcast 
 
'Absolutely blew me away . . . rich, evocative and original work . . . this book is quite wonderful.' ELODIE HARPER, author of The Wolf Den 
 
'Offers a dazzling new way of thinking about the ancient world . . . a wonderful, beautifully written and important book.' DAN JONES, author of Henry V 
 
'A book the world has been waiting for . . . I loved it.' 
BETTANY HUGHES, author of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World 
 
Contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men – and it's not only men's stories that deserve to be told. 
 
In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them. 
 
A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer’s epics charted entirely by women – from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope – Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece’s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.

Mythica

A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It

Damian Le Bas

'Literary and learned. It goes deep' AMY LIPTROT 
'The most compelling and evocative of underwater odysseys' KATE HUMBLE 
'The most captivating book on diving that I have ever read' MENSUN BOUND 
 
Damian Le Bas explores the meaning we find in sunken ruins around the world in this spellbinding love letter to diving. 
 
Thousands of years ago, an island off the Straits of Gibraltar went to war with ancient Athens. The battle was lost, and an earthquake cleaved the land in two. Overnight the island sank beneath the waves – or so legend tells. 
 
As a young boy, Damian Le Bas was captivated by the story of the lost city of Atlantis. As an adult, he dreams of diving to discover its ruins. After the death of his father, torn between his lifelong desire and the taboo his Romany culture places on the ocean, he comes by chance across a dive shop. He can’t help but go in. 
 
Under the waves, Damian enters a breathtaking world. As he masters the skills of this exhilarating sport, diving with seals in the Farne Islands, exploring submerged Roman ruins in Naples and mapping the sunken city of Port Royal in Jamaica, he is entranced anew, by wonders both man-made and natural. 
 
Plato's writings on Atlantis were a parable about the hubris of humankind; in witnessing our effects on oceans and ocean communities, Damian finds echoes of this in the modern world.

The Drowned Places

Diving in Search of Atlantis

James Baldwin

‘It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate’ 
 
Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice, drawn from Baldwin's early life in Harlem and his experience as a prominent cultural figure of the civil rights movement.

The Fire Next Time

Samantha Ellis

'An optimistic and wryly funny book... rich with insights' OBSERVER 
'I couldn’t put it down’ RUKMINI IYER 
‘I loved this book so much... Think: The Body Keeps the Score in practice not theory’ ELLA RISBRIDGER 
 
Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture – and when to let it go 
 
The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction. 
 
The realisation that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s ‘living in the days of the aubergines’ or ‘chopping onions on my heart’ opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle? 
 
In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah’s Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves. 
 
This is a life-affirming memoir about resilience and repair, and the healing power of dancing to our ancestors’ music, cooking up their recipes and sharing their stories. 
 
‘A moving and resonant lament for the past but also a thought-provoking siren call for the future' ANNE SEBBA 
'Urgent, alive, propulsive. I adored it' MARINA BENJAMIN

Chopping Onions on My Heart

On Losing and Preserving Culture

Catherine Coldstream

‘Evocative’ Sarah Perry 
‘Immersive’ Katherine May 
‘Profoundly moving’ Mark Haddon 
 
Discover Catherine Coldstream’s compelling account of life as a nun in the 1990s, and the dramatic events which led to her flight from the monastery. 
 
After the shock of her father’s death, and with the rest of her family scattered, Catherine was left grieving and alone at twenty-four. A search for meaning led her to the nuns of Akenside Priory. 
 
Here she found a tight-knit community of dedicated women and peace in an ancient way of life. But as she surrenders to her final vows, all is not as it seems behind the Priory’s closed doors. 
 
Catherine comes to realise that divine authority is mediated through flawed and all-too-human channels. She is faced with a dilemma: should she protect the serenity she has found, or speak out? 
 
‘Gripping… A rich memoir’ Daily Telegraph 
 
‘Absorbing and beautifully written’ Financial Times

Cloistered

My Years as a Nun

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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