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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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Christopher de Bellaigue

A ground-breaking, present-tense reconstruction of the life and world of one of the most consequential figures in world history, Suleyman the Magnificent, from the author of The Lion House 
 
Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future are at the mercy of their own dynastic law: whichever of his five sons succeeds him must eventually kill all the others. So why not get a head start? 
 
For the next fifteen years, as Suleyman the Magnificent and his terrifying pirate captain Barbarossa face down imperial enemies across two hemispheres, the self-fulfilling curse of the Ottomans gathers its own unstoppable momentum. 
 
From the burning pyres of Paris to the rain-lashed mountains of Transylvania, from Buda to Basra, from Crimea to the coast of India, The Golden Throne is an intensely gripping yet entirely historical reconstruction of the life and world of the most feared and powerful man of the sixteenth century, revealing the price of succession and the terrible cost of success.

The Golden Throne

The Rule of Suleyman the Magnificent

The Curse of a King

Rachel Louise Driscoll

‘Brilliant… I loved it.’ Santa Montefiore 
 
A FORGOTTEN EGYPTIAN GODDESS. A FAMILY IN DANGER. 
 
Victorian Egyptologist Clemmie’s dark talents have torn her family apart. Now she has one chance to atone for the past. 
 
Clemmie’s gift for reading hieroglyphs shines at the Egyptian relic parties which have made her father the toast of Victorian society. But at one party, the words she interprets from an unusual amulet strike fear into her heart. The childhood game she used to play about the immortal sisters, Isis and Nephthys, takes on a devastating resonance and it is only by following Nephthys' story back to Egypt that she can undo the mistakes of the past. 
 
‘An irresistible page-turner’ Susan Stokes-Chapman, author Pandora 
‘An intoxicating tale of adventure and obsession’ Emilia Hart, author of Weyward 
‘A joy of a book’ Fiza Saeed McLynn, author of The Midnight Carousel 
 
Readers ADORE Nephthys: 
 
‘A total page-turner! ... Wow! What darkness this book holds!’ 
‘Unique and gripping.... this tale of Egypt and England was full of twists and turns.’ 
‘A captivating blend of Victorian society, ancient Egypt, and dark secrets.’

Nephthys

Pankaj Mishra

Memory of the Holocaust, the ultimate atrocity of Europe’s civil wars and the paradigmatic genocide, has shaped the Western political and moral imagination in the postwar era. Fears of its recurrence have been routinely invoked to justify Israel’s policies against Palestinians. But for most people around the world – the ‘darker peoples’, in W. E. B. Du Bois’s words – the main historical memory is of the traumatic experiences of slavery and colonialism, and the central event of the twentieth century is decolonisation – freedom from the white man’s world. 
 
The World After Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West’s triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism, and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the global majority's frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world’s population. 
 
As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis – about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present and future.

The World After Gaza

Afua Hirsch

Our bodies tell our story. 
 
Upon turning forty, Afua Hirsch had an encounter that forever altered her preconceived notions of ancestry and body image, making her question everything from body-modification rituals such as tattoos and piercings to the foundations of sexuality. 
 
Decolonising My Body charts her year-long journey of radical unlearning. Bringing together global scholarship, on-the-ground reportage, personal anecdotes and interviews with beauty experts, practitioners and service users, Hirsch reassesses notions of body image beyond those of the colonial, patriarchal gaze. Taking us from puberty to end-of-life, she shows us that the ways in which we adorn and present ourselves have spiritual implications and shape the possibilities we see for ourselves in the world.

Decolonising My Body

On Ancestry, Tradition and Cultural Reinvention

A radical exploration of rituals and beauty

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

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

Michael Taylor

Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world. 
 
‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject' PETER FRANKOPAN 
'As thrilling as it is sweeping' TOM HOLLAND 
'This book dazzles in its originality . . . a triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERA 
 
In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline - and so sparked a crisis that would engulf science and religion for the next six decades. By its end, the literal reading of the Bible had been overturned, science had been liberated from religion and the secular age had begun. Impossible Monsters takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women whose discovery of the dinosaurs revolutionised our understanding of the world, as well as those who resisted them and those, like Charles Darwin, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins. It is the riveting story of a group of people who dared to think impossible things and then showed them to be true. 
 
‘Truly marvellous ... an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES 
‘A stunning work ... of surprises and revelations’ STEVE BRUSATTE

Impossible Monsters

How the Discovery of Dinosaurs Changed the World

Marie-Elsa R. Bragg

A unique, intimate and beautiful exploration of grief, loss, healing and faith 
 
'This is a beautiful book, a remarkable, cadenced recollection of how grief lives in the body. It is poetry as a kind of dance. You have to read it' EDMUND DE WAAL 
 
We sat in the kitchen across the small wooden table from each other. She cried like banks bursting, then silence; like winds blowing through her shoulders, chest bouncing, then long shallow breaths. She ruptured and I watched, still, emotionless. 'You must stop crying.' 
 
When Marie-Elsa was just six years old, her mother took her own life. Now, many years later, she returns to that night. Going back to that moment, inhabiting this defining tragedy, allows for an exploration of the grief but also brings healing. 
 
Written partly as a series of unsent letters to both her mother and father, Sleeping Letters is a way of connecting to past family, an attempt to reconcile with loss, as well as a radical exploration of Marie-Elsa&rsquo;s own faith. It is an unforgettable book, with a luminous sense of a daughter&rsquo;s loss. 
 
With a Foreword by Rowan Williams 
 
&lsquo;Truly remarkable... This book carries its readers to a place where inhibitions and fears about loss and death give way to something more hopeful and, in their own way, real&rsquo; Daily Telegraph

Sleeping Letters

On Grief, Loss, Healing and Faith

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

Leanda de Lisle

A myth-busting biography of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, which retells the dramatic story of the civil war from her perspective 
 
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE 
 
Henrietta Maria, Charles I's queen, is the most reviled consort in British history. Condemned as the 'Popish brat of France' and a 'notorious whore', she remains in popular memory the woman who turned the king Catholic - so causing a civil war - and a cruel and bigoted mother. 
 
Leanda de Lisle unpicks these myths to reveal a very different queen. We meet a new bride who enjoyed annoying her uptight husband, who was a passionate advocate for the female voice in public affairs and who, when civil war came, proved crucial to Charles's campaign. The image of the Restoration queen as an irrelevant crone is replaced with Henrietta Maria as an influential 'phoenix queen'. It is time to look again at this despised queen and judge if she is not in fact one of our most remarkable. 
 
 
'Brilliantly written, mesmerising, superb scholarship and totally immersive... A total game changer' KATE WILLIAMS, author of Rival Queens 
 
'This is revisionist history at its absolute best' ANDREW ROBERTS author of Churchill 
 
'Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating' ALEXANDER LARMAN author of The Crown in Crisis 
 
'Popular history of the finest kind' RONALD HUTTON author of The Witch

Henrietta Maria

Conspirator, Warrior, and Phoenix Queen – the true story of Charles I’s wife

Conspirator, Warrior, Phoenix Queen

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

Matt Rowland Hill

An extraordinarily brave memoir about faith, family, shame and addiction - an Observer, New Statesman and Sunday Times Book of the Year 
 
'Brilliant... lively, engaging and extremely well written - scrupulously, painfully honest... sharply funny' PANDORA SYKES, SUBSTACK 
 
 
Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict and the fear of damnation. After a devastating loss of faith in his late teens, Matt began his search for salvation elsewhere, eventually becoming addicted to crack and heroin - an ordeal that stretched over a decade and culminated in a period of hopeless darkness. 
 
Recklessly honest, and as funny as it is grave, Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction. It's about looking for answers to life's big questions in all the wrong places, how hope can arrive in the most unexpected forms, and how the stories we tell might help us survive. 
 
'Remarkable, funny, arrestingly well-written... Brings to mind Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, but is also entirely, exhilaratingly its own thing' The Times 
 
'Electric... Artfully structured with novelistic verve... Hill is a blazing talent' Observer 
 
'A beautifully controlled tale of a life spiralling out of control... One of the best books I've read this year' Sunday Times 
 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE AND WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

Original Sins

An extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction

Susan Stokes-Chapman

**THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE NEW VOICE IN HISTORICAL FICTION** 
 
A pure pleasure of a novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance. 
 
'Weaves together Ancient Greek myth with suspenseful mystery and beguiling romance...utterly irresistible' Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne 
 
*Longlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award* 
 
Perfect for fans of THE LEVIATHAN and THE SONG OF ACHILLES. 
 
London, 1799. Dora Blake lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents' famed shop of antiquities. 
 
When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle's suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young antiquarian scholar. For Edward, the ancient vase is the key to unlocking his professional future. For Dora, it's a chance to restore the shop to its former glory, and to escape her nefarious uncle. 
 
But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it... 
 
 
'A gripping narrative in which secrets from the past are slowly and ingeniously revealed' Sunday Times, *Historical Fiction Book of the Month* 
 
'An immersive, evocative story full of romance and intrigue' Red 
 
'Romantic, suspenseful and beautifully written... a glorious treat' Daily Mail 
 
Readers love Pandora: 
'So addictive... the perfect mix of historical fiction, mystery, fantasy and romance' 
'Wonderfully atmospheric' 
'A beautifully written piece of historical fiction' 
'Crackles with danger and mystery... a joy to read' 
'An utterly magical book full of secrets, love and hope' 
'Beautifully written, gripping and evocative'

Pandora

The instant no.1 Sunday Times bestseller

Charlotte Higgins

Chris Ofili

In this spellbinding new collection, Charlotte Higgins reinterprets some of Greek mythology's most enduring stories. 
 
 'A great storyteller' Madeline Miller, author of Circe 
 
 Here are the myths of Heracles and Theseus, the Trojan war, Thebes and Argos and Athens. They are stories of love and desire, adventure and magic, destructive gods, helpless humans, fantastical creatures and resourceful witches. 
 
 In this telling the female characters take centre stage as Athena, Helen, Circe, Penelope and others weave these stories into elaborate imagined tapestries. In Charlotte Higgins's thrilling new interpretation of these ancient stories, their tales combine to form a dazzling, sweeping epic of storytelling. 
 
 With a series of original drawings by Chris Ofili.

Greek Myths

A new retelling of your favourite myths that puts female characters at the heart of the story

A New Retelling, with drawings by Chris Ofili

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

Jeet Thayil

'Dazzling' MARLON JAMES, BOOKER PRIZE WINNER 
'Original and thought-provoking' SPECTATOR 
'Electrifying' TESSA HADLEY 
 
Under a predawn sky, humming with starlight and the songs of birds, a group of determined women return to the cave where they have laid the body of their saviour. When they arrive, it is empty. 
 
Names of the Women tells the stories of fifteen women whose lives overlapped with the life of Christ. Women who stayed with Christ through the crucifixion, when his disciples had abandoned him, and who spread his radical message - one that made them equals and a profound threat to power within the church. 
 
Together, the voices of the women dare us to reimagine the story of the New Testament in a way it has never before been told. 
 
*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND NEW STATESMAN*

Names of the Women

'Charlotte Higgins's Red Thread is a masterwork' Ali Smith 
 
A thrillingly original, labyrinthine journey through myth, art, literature, history, archaeology and memoir. 
 
 The tale of how the hero Theseus killed the Minotaur, finding his way out of the labyrinth using Ariadne's ball of red thread, is one of the most intriguing, suggestive and persistent of all myths, and the labyrinth - the beautiful, confounding and terrifying building created for the half-man, half-bull monster - is one of the foundational symbols of human ingenuity and artistry. 
 
 Charlotte Higgins, author of the Baillie Gifford-shortlisted Under Another Sky, tracks the origins of the story of the labyrinth in the poems of Homer, Catullus, Virgil and Ovid, and with them builds an ingenious edifice of her own. Along the way, she traces the labyrinthine ideas of writers from Dante and Borges to George Eliot and Conan Doyle, and of artists from Titian and Velázquez to Picasso and Eva Hesse. 
 
 Her intricately constructed narrative asks what it is to be lost, what it is to find one's way, and what it is to travel the confusing and circuitous path of a lived life. Red Thread is, above all, a winding and unpredictable route through the byways of the author's imagination - one that leads the reader on a strange and intriguing journey, full of unexpected connections and surprising pleasures.

Red Thread

On Mazes and Labyrinths

Mohsin Zaidi

WINNER of the Polari First Book Prize 2021 
WINNER of the LAMBDA 2021 Literary Award for Best Gay Memoir/Biography 
 
A Dutiful Boy is Mohsin's personal journey from denial to acceptance: a revelatory memoir about the power of love, belonging, and living every part of your identity. 
 
Growing up in a devout Muslim household, it felt impossible for Mohsin to be gay. Unable to be open with his family, and with difficult conditions at school, he felt his opportunities closing around him. Despite the odds, Mohsin's perseverance led him to become the first person from his school to attend Oxford University, where new experiences and encounters helped him to discover who he truly wanted to be. Mohsin was confronted with the biggest decision he would ever make: to live the life that was expected of him or to live as his authentic self. 
 
A Guardian, GQ, and New Statesman Book of the Year 
 
'Genuinely inspiring... Beautifully written, dignified and ultimately redemptive, this challenging story abounds with light and love' Attitude | 'An Incredibly important read' Jyoti Patel

A Dutiful Boy

A memoir of secrets, lies and family love (Winner of the LAMBDA 2021 Literary Award for Best Gay Memoir/Biography)

A memoir of a gay Muslim’s journey to acceptance

Catherine Fletcher

The Italian Renaissance shaped Western culture - but it was far stranger and darker than many of us realise. 
 
'Brilliant and gripping, here is the full true Renaissance in a history of compelling originality and freshness' Simon Sebag Montefiore 
 
We know the Mona Lisa for her smile, but not that she was married to a slave-trader. We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his art, but few now appreciate his ingenious designs for weaponry. We visit Florence to see Michelangelo's David, but hear nothing of the massacre that forced the republic's surrender. In fact, many of the Renaissance's most celebrated artists and thinkers emerged not during the celebrated 'rebirth' of the fifteenth century but amidst the death and destruction of the sixteenth century. 
 
The Beauty and the Terror is an enrapturing narrative which includes the forgotten women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, prostitutes, farmers and citizens who lived the Renaissance every day. Brimming with life, it takes us closer than ever before to the reality of this astonishing era, and its meaning for today. 
 
'Terrifying and fascinating' Sunday Times 
 
'Enlightening...exactly the alternative history you might wish for' Daily Telegraph

The Beauty and the Terror

An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance

Jean Sprackland

'A refreshingly original meditation... I wish I had written it myself' Literary Review 
 
Graveyards are oases: places of escape, peace and reflection. Liminal sites of commemoration, where the past is close enough to touch. Yet they also reflect their living community - how in our restless, accelerated modern world, we are losing our sense of connection to the dead. 
 
Jean Sprackland - the prize-winning poet and author of Strands - travels back through her life, revisiting her once local graveyards. In seeking out the stories of those who lived and died there, remembered and forgotten, she unearths what has been lost.

These Silent Mansions

A life in graveyards

Emmanuel Carrère

Read the definitive essay collection from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Adversary, dubbed 'France's greatest writer of non-fiction' (New York Times) 
 
'The most exciting living writer' Karl Ove Knausgaard 
 
Over the course of his career, Emmanuel Carrère has reinvented non-fiction writing. In a search for truth in all its guises, he dispenses with the rules of genre. For him, no form is out of reach: theology, historiography, reportage and memoir - among many others - are fused under the pressure of an inimitable combination of passion, curiosity and intellect that has made Carrère one of our most distinctive and important literary voices today. 
 
97,196 Words introduces Carrère's shorter work to an English-language audience. Featuring more than thirty extraordinary texts written over an illustrious twenty-five-year period of Carrère's creative life, the book shows a remarkable mind at work. Spanning continents, histories, and personal relationships, 97,196 Words considers the divides between truth, reality and our shared humanity, exploring remarkable events and eccentric lives, including Carrère's own. 
 
* A New York Times Notable Book *

97,196 Words

Essays

Jonathan Phillips

'Superbly researched and enormously entertaining... One of the outstanding books of the year' The Times 
 
An epic story of empire-building and bloody conflict, this ground-breaking biography of one of history’s most venerated military and religious heroes opens a window on the Islamic and Christian worlds’ complex relationship. 
 
WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 
 
When Saladin recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, returning the Holy City to Islamic rule, he sent shockwaves throughout Christian Europe and the Muslim Near East that reverberate today. 
 
It was the culmination of a supremely exciting life. Born into a significant Kurdish family in northern Iraq, this warrior and diplomat fought under the banner of jihad, but at the same time worked tirelessly to build an empire that stretched from North Africa to Western Iraq. Gathering together a turbulent coalition, he was able to capture Jerusalem, only to trigger the Third Crusade and face his greatest adversary, King Richard the Lionheart. 
 
Drawing on a rich blend of Arabic and European sources, this is a comprehensive account of both the man and the legend to which he gave birth, describing vividly the relentless action of his life and tracing its aftermath through culture and politics all the way to the present day. 
 
'An authoritative and brilliantly told account of the life of one of the world's greatest – and most famous – military leaders' Peter Frankopan

The Life and Legend of the Sultan Saladin

'An amazingly wide-ranging book, showing that the world's religious texts can be a force for good today' John Barton, author of A History of the Bible 
 
In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. The Quran, the Torah and the Bible are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths. 
 
 But as Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon. Armstrong argues that only by rediscovering an open engagement with their holy texts will the world’s religions be able to curtail arrogance and intolerance. And if scripture is used to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways, we will find that it still has a great deal to teach us. 
 
‘Magisterial… A dazzling accomplishment’ New York Times 
 
‘Glorious… Armstrong is the most articulate and generous-hearted exegete of religion writing in English at the present time’ A.N. Wilson, New Statesman

The Lost Art of Scripture

Stephen Greenblatt

Selected as a book of the year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times 
 
What is it about Adam and Eve’s story that fascinates us? What does it tell us about how our species lives, dies, works or has sex? 
 
The mythic tale of Adam and Eve has shaped conceptions of human origins and destiny for centuries. Stemming from a few verses in an ancient book, it became not just the foundation of three major world faiths, but has evolved through art, philosophy and science to serve as the mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires. 
 
In a quest that begins at the dawn of time, Stephen Greenblatt takes us from ancient Babylonia to the forests of east Africa. We meet evolutionary biologists and fossilised ancestors; we grapple with morality and marriage in Milton’s Paradise Lost; and we decide if the Fall is the unvarnished truth or fictional allegory.

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

The Story that Created Us

Simon Schama

A passionate history of Judaism; a world unfolding across many continents and five centuries by one of our greatest and internationally bestselling historians. 
 
Belonging is a magnificent cultural history abundantly alive with energy, character and colour. From the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492 it tells the stories not just of rabbis and philosophers but of a poetess in the ghetto of Venice; a boxer in Georgian England; a general in Ming China; an opera composer in nineteenth-century Germany. The story unfolds in Kerala and Mantua, the starlit hills of Galilee, the rivers of Colombia, the kitchens of Istanbul, the taverns of Ukraine and the mining camps of California. It sails in caravels, rides the stage coaches and the railways; trudges the dawn streets of London, hobbles along with the remnant of Napoleon’s ruined army. 
 
The Jewish story is a history that is about, and for, all of us. And in our own time of anxious arrivals and enforced departures, the Jews’ search for a home is more startlingly resonant than ever. 
 
 ‘A magnificent achievement…’ Jonathan Freedland, Guardian 
 
 ‘An extraordinary cultural journey, filled with astonishingly colourful and outrageous characters … Schama delivers a superb and thrilling ride, both inspirational and tragic’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mail on Sunday

Belonging

The Story of the Jews 1492–1900

Peter Ackroyd

‘Droll, provocative and crammed to busting with startling facts’ Simon Callow, Guardian 
 
In this powerful Sunday Times bestseller Peter Ackroyd looks at London in a whole new way – through the history and experiences of its gay population. 
 
In Roman Londinium the city was dotted with lupanaria (‘wolf dens’ or public pleasure houses), fornices (brothels) and thermiae (hot baths). Then came the Emperor Constantine, with his bishops, monks and missionaries. And so began an endless loop of alternating permissiveness and censure. 
 
Ackroyd takes us right into the hidden history of the city; from the notorious Normans to the frenzy of executions for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. He journeys through the coffee bars of sixties Soho to Gay Liberation, disco music and the horror of AIDS. 
 
Today, we live in an era of openness and tolerance and Queer London has become part of the new norm. Ackroyd tells us the hidden story of how it got there, celebrating its diversity, thrills and energy on the one hand; but reminding us of its very real terrors, dangers and risks on the other.

Queer City

Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day

Richard Lloyd Parry

'A remarkable and deeply moving book' Henry Marsh, bestselling author of Do No Harm 
 
'A breathtaking, extraordinary work of non-fiction' Times Literary Supplement 
 
On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. 
 
Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the epicentre. Learning about the lives of those affected through their own personal accounts, he paints a rich picture of the impact the tsunami had on day to day Japanese life. 
 
Heart-breaking and hopeful, this intimate account of a tragedy unveils the unique nuances of Japanese culture, the tsunami's impact on Japan's stunning and majestic landscape and the psychology of its people. 
 
Ghosts of the Tsunami is an award-winning classic of literary non-fiction. It tells the moving, evocative story of how a nation faced an unimaginable catastrophe and rebuilt to look towards the future. 
 
**WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE**

Ghosts of the Tsunami

Death and Life in Japan

Roy Hattersley

The story of Catholicism in Britain from the Reformation to the present day, from a master of popular history – 'A first-class storyteller' The Times 
 
Throughout the three hundred years that followed the Act of Supremacy – which, by making Henry VIII head of the Church, confirmed in law the breach with Rome – English Catholics were prosecuted, persecuted and penalised for the public expression of their faith. Even after the passing of the emancipation acts Catholics were still the victims of institutionalised discrimination. 
 
The first book to tell the story of the Catholics in Britain in a single volume, The Catholics includes much previously unpublished information. It focuses on the lives, and sometimes deaths, of individual Catholics – martyrs and apostates, priests and laymen, converts and recusants. It tells the story of the men and women who faced the dangers and difficulties of being what their enemies still call ‘Papists’. It describes the laws which circumscribed their lives, the political tensions which influenced their position within an essentially Anglican nation and the changes in dogma and liturgy by which Rome increasingly alienated their Protestant neighbours – and sometime even tested the loyalty of faithful Catholics. 
 
The survival of Catholicism in Britain is the triumph of more than simple faith. It is the victory of moral and spiritual unbending certainty. Catholicism survives because it does not compromise. It is a characteristic that excites admiration in even a hardened atheist.

The Catholics

The Church and its People in Britain and Ireland, from the Reformation to the Present Day

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 
 
'An eye-opening, well-written and very timely book' Yuval Noah Harari 
 
'The best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent and illuminating' Pankaj Mishra 
 
'It strikes a blow…for common humanity' Sunday Times 
 
The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise and adapt. Yet in this sweeping narrative and provocative retelling of modern history, Christopher de Bellaigue charts the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment – the social movements, reforms and revolutions that transfigured the Middle East from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Modern ideals and practices were embraced across the region, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from purdah and the development of democracy. 
 
The Islamic Enlightenment looks behind the sensationalist headlines in order to foster a genuine understanding of Islam and its relationship to the West. It is essential reading for anyone engaged in the state of the world today.

The Islamic Enlightenment

The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason

Farida Khalaf

Andrea C. Hoffmann

Our world as it once was 
 
In August 2014, Farida was, like any ordinary teenager, enjoying the last days of summer before her final year at school. However, her peaceful mountain village in northern Iraq was an ISIS target as their genocide against the Yazidi people began. 
 
The catastrophe 
 
ISIS murdered the men and boys in the village, including Farida's father and brother, and took the women hostage. Farida was one of them. She was held in a slave camp, in the homes of ISIS members and finally in a desert training camp. Continually she struggled, resisted and fought against her captors, showing unimaginable strength and bravery. 
 
This is my story 
 
Eventually, Farida managed to plot her escape and fled into the desert with five young girls in her care, but defeating ISIS was just the first step in her journey. In this book she tells her remarkable and inspiring story.

The Girl Who Escaped ISIS

Farida's Story

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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