Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning contemporary authors. Translated into over forty languages, his sixteen works of fiction include Midnight’s Children – for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker of Bookers on the 25th anniversary of the prize and Best of the Booker on the 40th anniversary – Shame, The Satanic Verses, Quichotte and Victory City. His latest book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Khan is the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. His lessons on YouTube have revolutionized learning, garnering billions of views globally. Recognized as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, Khan is also the founder of schoolhouse.world, Khan Lab School, and Khan World School, and the author of The One World Schoolhouse. He holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Salman Khan

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Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

Yeganeh Torbati

A moving, riveting and immersive story of six Iranians who, together, lived the entire arc of modern Iranian history: the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by the Islamic mafia state and a people’s undying spirit of resistance. 
 
Fuelled by Iranians’ dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah’s ailing, repressive monarchy. But in its place the revolution’s leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his acolytes built a system that served his narrow Islamic fundamentalist faction and worsened every failing and brutality that had existed under the shah. Award-winning journalists Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a powerful new lens on Iran’s recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope: 
 
• Mehdi Karroubi: a devotee of Khomeini, he rose to the heights of power on the wave of the revolution, before being cast out of its inner circle. 
 
• Hila Sedighi: a young activist, who gave voice through her poetry to her peers’ hopes during the reform years and ultimately immortalised their shattered dreams. 
 
• Amir Moghadam: an ambitious government bureaucrat, who witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth. 
 
• Said Rahmani: a successful global tech entrepreneur who returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country, and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself. 
 
• Rozhin Yousefzadeh and Kosar Eftekhari: both born in the 1990s, they escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran, where they joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price. 
 
Through vivid and original reporting, Stolen Revolution offers a compulsively readable new story of Iran, centring ordinary Iranians’ lives, whilst providing a visceral understanding of how life is actually lived under a modern authoritarian state. This is a harrowing story of power, corruption and greed – and those brave individuals who fought back.

Stolen Revolution

Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran

Devi Sridhar

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER | BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK** 
 
The definitive story of COVID-19 and how global politics shape our health - from a world-leading expert and the pandemic's go-to science communicator 
 
Professor Devi Sridhar has risen to prominence for her vital roles in communicating science to the public and speaking truth to power. In Preventable she highlights lessons learned from outbreaks past and present in a narrative that traces the COVID-19 pandemic - including her personal experience as a scientist - and sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come. 
 
In gripping and heartfelt prose, Sridhar exposes the varied realities of those affected and puts you in the room with key decision makers at crucial moments. She vibrantly conveys the twists and turns of a plot that saw: deadlier varients emerge (contrary to the predictions of social media pundits who argued it would mutate to a milder form); countries with weak health systems like Senegal and Vietnam fare better than countries like the US and UK (which were consistently ranked as the most prepared); and the quickest development of game-changing vaccines in history (and their unfair distribution) 
 
Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, this definitive book dissects the global structures that determine our fate, and reveals the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart - it will challenge, outrage and inspire. 
 
'A brutally compelling reminder that if voices like Devi's had been listened to, so many more could have lived' OWEN JONES 
 
'One of the most brilliant scientists in the world who has been proven consistently right in this crisis' PIERS MORGAN 
 
'Excellent . . . Fair, clear and compelling' NICOLA STURGEON 
 
'Those who have found Professor Devi Sridhar's expertise and calm advice invaluable since the arrival of Covid-19 will be glad to know that she has written Preventable' RACHEL COOKE, Guardian, Non-fiction to look out for in 2022

Preventable

How a Pandemic Changed the World & How to Stop the Next One

Les Payne

Tamara Payne

The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle and the story of the twentieth century. Renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne paints vivid and dramatic scenes from start to finish, from Malcolm's clandestine meeting with the KKK in 1961 to a minute-by-minute account of his murder in 1965, in which Payne reveals the complicity of the American government. 
 
Payne interviewed everyone he could find who had known Malcolm X in a nearly thirty-year-long quest - including siblings, classmates, friends, cellmates, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders. Conjuring a never-before-seen world of one of the twentieth century's most compelling figures, this magisterial work sets his life not only within the political struggles of his day but also against the larger backdrop of American history.

The Dead Are Arising

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Jane Goodall

Douglas Abrams

A NEW SCIENTIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'A true hero' Greta Thunberg 
 
A legendary conservationist. A lifetime spent fighting for nature. An indispensable message of hope. 
 
 
In a world that seems so troubled, how do we hold on to hope? 
 
Looking at the headlines – the worsening climate crisis, loss of biodiversity, political upheaval – it can be hard to feel optimistic. And yet hope has never been more desperately needed. 
 
In this urgent book, Jane Goodall, legendary conservationist and the world's most famous naturalist, and Douglas Abrams, the bestselling co-author of The Book of Joy, explore one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. Through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue, The Book of Hope focuses on Jane Goodall’s "Four Reasons for Hope": The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People, and The Indomitable Human Spirit. 
 
Filled with inspiring stories and original photographs, The Book of Hope is a rare and intimate look at the nature of hope. It is a journey into the heart and mind of a woman who revolutionized how we view the world and spent a lifetime fighting for our future. 
 
There is still hope, and this book will help guide us to it.

The Book of Hope

A Survival Guide for an Endangered Planet

Nadifa Mohamed

Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, petty criminal. He is many things, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. Witnesses allegedly saw him enter a shop that night and love lends him immunity too: the fierce love of his wife, who forgives his gambling in a heartbeat, and his children. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of returning home dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and cruelty - and the truth may not be enough to save him.

The Fortune Men

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

William Boyd

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a tragedy: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals. 
 
As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story. . .

Gabriel's Moon

Sathnam Sanghera

In Britain, imperialism is everywhere - though we often choose not to see it. From the way we travel and the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism and wealth, it is central to the way we think and conduct politics. In his bestselling book, Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of modern Britain - including the exceptionalism that inspired Brexit and our response to the COVID-19 crisis - is rooted in our imperial past. 
 
Empire is foundational to modern Britain yet is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums. At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Empireland is a groundbreaking revelation - a much-needed and illuminating portrait of modern British society with the power and potential to change minds.

Empireland

How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

Erin Goeres

The definitive character-led history of the most famous year in history, written in authoritative and dynamic prose by Dr Erin Goeres. 
 
On 5 January 1066, Edward the Confessor's death plunged the nation into a succession crisis that would indelibly change England forever. Mere hours after Edward’s remains had been laid to rest, his brother-in-law Harold II seized power, inciting the wrath of two formidable challengers: King Haraldr of Norway and Edward’s ambitious cousin, William, Duke of Normandy. 
 
In this startling new history, Dr Erin Goeres unveils the intense drama that unfolded over the tumultuous nineteen days between the Battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings in the Autumn of 1066, and which led to the deaths of two monarchs, ending a centuries-long Anglo-Scandinavian rule. 
 
Drawing on sources from England, Normandy and Scandinavia, Goeres uncovers complex histories, characters, and motivations. We meet the women at the heart of the fray – such as William's enigmatic wife, Matilda of Flanders, the alleged lover of Harold of England and the ‘driving force’ behind her husband's invasion – as well as the regular people who were swept up in events beyond their control, such as a farmer, beheaded for an unwillingness to give his jacket to a Norwegian invader. 
 
Nineteen Days in Autumn is a gripping tale of three nations entwined, the devastating consequences of their unravelling and the subsequent memorialisation of this saga, which has given rise to the nationalistic myths of today.

Nineteen Days in Autumn

A New History of 1066

Simon Park

Wreckers sinks the old narratives of imperialism, revealing the violent, chaotic and improvised reality of empire-building from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. 
 
While figures such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan are celebrated for their maritime achievements – reaching the Americas, India, and circumnavigating the globe – focusing solely on these voyages distorts our perspective on the past. Many explorers ended up as castaways, clinging to the splintered timbers of their wrecked ships, while those who survived often faced resistance and ridicule from indigenous communities across the globe. 
 
Drawing on maritime stories from various languages and continents – from Brazil and Southeast Africa to India and the Philippines – Wreckers shares dramatic tales of the sea and the events on land that followed. This offers an alternative timeline for the century after Columbus’ 1492 voyage and sheds light on the fractures and fault lines that accompanied the increasing geographical range of European ships. 
 
Simon Park argues that even when Europeans arrogantly claimed their own superiority, the truth was that they were often driven by a profound sense of greed and envy, and their actions included numerous mishaps. For example, in his hunt for gold, Martin Frobisher – who fancied himself England’s Columbus and Cortés combined – transported worthless rocks across the Atlantic by the tonne. In the search for spices, Captain and profiteer Manuel de Sousa de Sepúlveda’s ship was so overladen, it spewed its fragrant cargo when it crashed off the coast of South Africa. Moreover, in every place they went, Europeans depended on local know-how and goodwill – relying on indigenous knowledge of languages, geography, food and medicines. 
 
Wreckers reveals the precarious balance between imperious European powers, cunning locals who colluded to further their own agendas, and others who showed great tenacity in their resistance to European incursions. By focusing on stories of failure, defiance and comeuppance, Wreckers – a term Park uses to refer both to those who were wrecked and those involved in wrecking – offers a gripping and original account of a tumultuous period. It challenges the notion of unstoppable European dominance and enables a reimagining of history as a space of possibilities then, now and in the future.

Wreckers

Disaster in the Age of Discovery

Will Buxton

In Grand Prix, celebrated broadcast journalist and commentator on Netflix's Formula 1: Drive to Survive Will Buxton chronicles the history of Formula 1, highlighting the achievements and stories of forty-five notable Formula 1 drivers and other key figures. Readers will be introduced to historical heroes like Formula 1’s first world champion, Giuseppe Farina, and Ferrari icon Niki Lauda, as well as modern-day legends like the iconic Lewis Hamilton and defending champion Max Verstappen. Spanning more than seventy years of Formula 1 – decades packed with incredible trials, stories, and lore – this captivating collection also contains features on car mechanics, tires, track design, the art and science of the pit stop, and more. 
 
Filled with immersive and engaging information with illustrations as dynamic and bold as the daring sport itself, Grand Prix is the definitive introduction to the world's fastest sport.

Grand Prix

An Illustrated History of Formula 1

Jerry Schilling

On a lazy Sunday in 1954, twelve-year-old Jerry Schilling wandered into a Memphis touch football game, only to discover that his team was quarterbacked by a nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley, the local teenager whose first record, &quot;That&rsquo;s All Right,&quot; had just debuted on Memphis radio. The two became fast friends, even as Elvis turned into the world&rsquo;s biggest star. In 1964, Elvis invited Jerry to work for him as part of his &quot;Memphis Mafia,&quot; and Jerry soon found himself living with Elvis full-time in a Bel Air mansion and, later, in his own room at Graceland. Over the next thirteen years Jerry would work for Elvis in various capacities &mdash; from bodyguard to photo double to co-executive producer on a karate film. But more than anything else he was Elvis&rsquo;s close friend and confidant: Elvis trusted Jerry with protecting his life when he received death threats, he asked Jerry to drive him and Priscilla to the hospital the day Lisa Marie was born and to accompany him during the famous &quot;lost weekend&quot; when he traveled to meet President Nixon at the White House. 
 
Me and a Guy Named Elvis looks at Presley from a friend&rsquo;s perspective, offering readers the man rather than the icon &mdash; including insights into the creative frustrations that lead to Elvis&rsquo;s abuse of prescription medicine and his tragic death. Jerry offers never-before-told stories about life inside Elvis&rsquo;s inner circle and an emotional recounting of the great times, hard times, and unique times he and Elvis shared. These vivid memories will be priceless to Elvis&rsquo;s millions of fans, and the compelling story will fascinate an even wider audience.

Me and a Guy Named Elvis

My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley

Christopher Lee

Lord Carrington was Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Secretary when the Argentinians invaded the Falklands in 1982. Absent in Israel on the eve of the invasion, he promptly resigned since it was, he said, a point of honour. He is seen by many today as the last of his breed in politics, an honourable man committed to public service. 
 
The descendant of a famous banking family, Carrington served as a minister in every Conservative government from Churchill to Thatcher. In this full biography, authorised but not read by the subject, author of This Sceptred Isle Christopher Lee offers a fascinating portrait of a Tory icon whose career is a window into post-war British politics and life as a politician and diplomat. 
 
He could be viewed as a typical Tory grandee, yet he disliked the Party, claiming late in his life that he was no longer a member, and could be fiercely independent. And there were recurring oddities in his career. He was forced to offer his resignation to Churchill for bad judgement over the Crichel Down Affair. As Navy Minister he was caught in the glare of a spy ring, and, though Defence Secretary, kept out of the loop of the military operation which culminated in Bloody Sunday. 
 
Margaret Thatcher said there was something innately reassuring walking into a room where Carrington stood. Was this a barbed compliment? Did he in fact lack the steel required of a modern politician? He certainly represents a bygone era, as this vivid and expert biography shows.

Carrington

An Honourable Man

Naguib Mahfouz

After an assassination attempt and in waning health, Naguib Mahfouz became more cautious in his twilight years. At the same time, in nightly dreams, his imagination began to roam his beloved city, Cairo, with a rare freedom. 
 
In this collection of vivid vignettes linked together by the author’s precisely rendered nocturnal wanderings through Cairo, figures from Mahfouz’s personal life blend with his anxieties about Egypt’s political past and future. Each dream is layered with philosophical and spiritual musings, hopes and disappointments. Over the course of the book, they build to a rich and complex picture of Mahfouz’s subconscious.

I Found Myself...The Last Dreams

Erling Kagge

** The North Pole: The History of an Obsession by Erling Kagge is out now ** 
 
'Erling Kagge transforms and consoles us' Alain de Botton 
____________________________ 
 
Surviving extreme conditions can teach us to lead a fulfilled life. No one knows this better than Erling Kagge, who was the first man in history to reach all of the Earth's poles by foot - the North, the South, and the summit of Everest. In Philosophy for Polar Explorers he brings together the wisdom and expertise he has gained from the expeditions that have taken him to the limits of the earth, and of human endurance. 
 
In sixteen meditative but practical lessons - from cultivating an optimistic outlook, to getting up at the right time, to learning to take pleasure in the small things and comfort in solitude - Erling Kagge reveals what survival in the most extreme conditions can teach us about how to lead a meaningful life. Wherever we may be headed. 
____________________________ 
 
'His wisdom will soothe and awaken' Fearne Cotton 
 
'A delightful book that explores the strange land between getting out of bed in the morning and reaching for the moon Tristan Gooley 
 
'A wonderfully deft Swiss army knife of a book' Dan Richards 
 
'As an explorer Erling Kagge is world class; as a writer he is equally gifted' Sir Ranulph Fiennes 
 
'Erling Kagge is a philosophical adventurer - or perhaps an adventurous philosopher' The New York Times 
 
'An author for our noisy times, full of a rare and deeply redemptive languor and perspective' Alain de Botton

Philosophy for Polar Explorers

An Adventurer’s Guide to Surviving Winter

Jon Ronson

** AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW ** 
 
The million-copy bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and the award-winning BBC podcast Things Fell Apart moves to Penguin for his first book in eleven years, a darkly comic true crime mystery set within the masculinity crisis, The Castle. 
 
I honestly have no clue what is going on. 
This is very weird. 
We left. Was completely fucked. All good now. 
 
When Jon Ronson received a series of disquieting texts after his son Joel had been lured to a mysterious castle in the forests of New England under false pretences late one evening, it set Ronson Sr. off on an extraordinary adventure into a world of unmoored men on a desperate search for purpose, whatever the cost. 
 
Why did the wealthy scion of a gilded age tycoon entice Jon’s son to his castle on the pretext of a party, when the reality was something else entirely? Could Jon uncover what was really going on inside that strange castle? Why was a popular online lawncare influencer wrongly implicated in a bizarre plot to traumatize millions of unsuspecting children? And, more pressingly, why are two recently paroled murderers on their way to pay Jon an ominous visit? 
 
Against the backdrop of the sometimes moving, often disturbing masculinity crisis, Jon follows the trail of those men who are acting out, checked out or just plain out of time. Drawing on his trademark brand of humour, psychological insight and unrivalled prescience, and told in the riveting style of a true crime thriller, The Castle marks Jon Ronson’s triumphant return to the written page in his darkest and most wildly enjoyable journey yet – deep into the recesses of the Castle and the secret lives of men. 
 
PRAISE FOR JON RONSON: 
 
‘Simultaneously frightening and hilarious’ The Times 
 
‘Funny and compulsively readable’ Louis Theroux 
 
‘His scalpel-sharp journalistic mind comes wrapped in disarming, diffident warmth’ Miranda Sawyer, Guardian 
 
‘Ronson is one of our most important modern-day thinkers’ US News & World Report 
 
‘Funny and thought-provoking . . . original, inspired journalism’ Financial Times 
 
‘Gutsy and smart’ New York Times 
 
‘Simmering with humour, weirdness and pathos’ Sunday Times 
 
‘A diligent investigator and a wry, funny writer, Ronson manages to be at once academic and entertaining’ Boston Globe 
 
‘The belly laughs come thick and fast – my God, he is funny’ Observer

The Castle

John Robins

John Robins is a critically acclaimed stand-up comedian, Taskmaster champion, and an award-winning broadcaster. He is also an alcoholic.But what does that mean? What is an alcoholic? 
In Thirst, John tells the story of his life through the lens of alcohol, the drinks that made him, and those that broke him. From his earliest drinking experiences – pretending to be drunk after a sip of champagne aged five, spraying aftershave into his mouth at the school play afterparty, and university nights spent downing red wine alone in his room – to his last drink in 2022 and the journey into sobriety that followed, John explores our relationship with alcohol through reflections on decades of his own drinking.From hazy memory to sudden clarity he sheds light on subjects from mental health to friendship, from creativity to the lies we tell ourselves, and answers questions such as: are alcoholics born or made? How can we make sense of youthful missteps? And can Buddhism provide relief when dealing with haemorrhoids? 
Filled with insights and epiphanies from the world of addiction and recovery, Thirst blends John’s trademark raw honesty and hilarious digressions with the collective wisdom of alcoholics and those around them to offer a compelling, powerful and morbidly funny narrative for anyone who has ever asked 'why do we drink?', 'why do I drink?' or 'do I drink too much?'.

Thirst

Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life

Edgar Allan Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Gold-Bug - some of the most famous tales of terror and the most macabre detective stories ever written. Acknowledged master of suspense, Poe was also a poet and - as his stories of mesmerism and time travel prove - a pioneer of science fiction. In this collection, probing to the depths of the human psyche, Poe's haunted genius will chill and enthral you.

The Penguin Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

Mihail Sebastian

Stefan Valeriu, a young Romanian student, holidays alone in the Alps, where he soon becomes entangled in romantic relationships with three different women who pass through his guesthouse. We follow Stefan after his return to Paris as he reflects on the women in his life, at times playing the lover, and at others observing shrewdly from the periphery. 
 
Women's four interlinked stories offer nuanced and deeply moving portraits of romantic relationships in all their complexity, from unrequited love and passionate affairs to tepid marriages of convenience. In light, elegant prose, Mihail Sebastian, widely regarded as the greatest Romanian writer of the 20th century, explores longing, otherness, empathy, and regret.

Women

Ben Macintyre

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon. 
 
‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets, compelled to swap sides by a shaming secret of his own. Facing exposure, with both the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and his own KGB colleagues closing in, he demanded that MI6 try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan. 
 
This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications. 
 
Drawing on never-before-seen material from archives in multiple countries, and interviews with the participants including officers from MI6 and MI5, the KGB and CIA, Redwood combines the shadowy world of the Spy and the Traitor with the action of SAS: Rogue Heroes. It lifts the lid on an unknown and highly significant Cold War victory, on the machinations of history's Great Game, and on how espionage really works. 
 
Without Redwood, our world would be very different – and might not exist at all.

Redwood

The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy

Simon Schama

Churchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a naked John Lennon five hours before his death. 
 
Simon Schama has written a tour de force about British portraits over the centuries in which the image-maker, the subject and everyone else looking on are brought unforgettably to life. Mesmerising in its extraordinary storytelling, and beautifully illustrated, The Face of Britain will change the way we see our past - and ourselves.

The Face of Britain

The Stories Behind the Nation’s Portraits

The Nation through Its Portraits

Art Spiegelman

For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. 
 
Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. 
 
He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics (which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks), he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that convey-with his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and wit-the unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy.

In the Shadow of No Towers

Ben Hinshaw

Surrounded by the dramatic beauty of Guernsey, a teenager discovers a secret and finds his betrayal has the power to ruin adult lives. In London, a marriage shot through with infidelity leads to a quest for revenge, resulting in a series of simultaneously comical and catastrophic events. And in California, as wildfires threaten landscapes and lives, a young veteran struggles with the trauma of war, seeking solace at a local ranch. 
 
In this extraordinary debut, a cast of characters grapple with unexpected betrayal, the loss of innocence and the lies we tell. With sharp insight, Ben Hinshaw illuminates the unnerving nature of what it means to grow up, to be a teenager playing at adulthood and an adult playing games.

Exactly What You Mean

The BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick

Elliot Ackerman

TWO MISFITS. 
ONE MISSION. 
ZERO BACK-UP. 
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? 
 
‘You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . glorious . . . hilarious' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure' WASHINGTON POST 
 
Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck after being screwed over by the US military. Skwerl used to work for the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing until he was unceremoniously fired after a raid went bad in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary Afghan pilot also formerly employed by the CIA, is stuck working the graveyard shift at the local gas station. 
 
Armed with a ton of unique and not obviously useful skills for peacetime living, both are recruited into a shadowy network of so-called ‘sheepdogs’ working jobs for an anonymous dispatcher. 
 
Their first mission? To repossess a luxury private jet stranded on a remote Ugandan airfield. Their fee: a cut of the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up. Their contact vanishes. Their handler’s motives are suspect. And when the women in their lives get involved – one pregnant wife and one dominatrix – the stakes skyrocket overnight. 
 
From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, Sheepdogs is a sly, hilarious, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo. Operating in the moral grey zone between predator and prey, this is a wild ride through the absurd underworld of war and intelligence. 
 
‘Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian – these characters are totally addictive. I couldn’t put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride’ HARLAN COBEN 
 
‘Sheepdogs is the best thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished . . . an absolute gem of a novel’ KEVIN POWERS

Sheepdogs

Hillary Chute

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman is one of our most influential contemporary artists, and it is hard to overstate his effect on postwar American culture and the world of comics. Maus has shaped the fields of literature, history, and art, and enlivened our collective sense of what these practices can accomplish. Collecting responses to the work that confirm its unique and terrain-shifting status, Maus Now sees writers such as Philip Pullman, Adam Gopnik, Ruth Franklin, and others approaching the complexity of Maus from a wide range of viewpoints and traditions. Organized into three loosely chronological sections ("Contexts", "Problems of Representation" and "Legacy"), the book offers translations of important French, Hebrew, and German essays on Maus for the first time. 
 
Maus is revelatory, and generative, in profound and long-lasting ways. With this collection, American literary scholar Hillary Chute, an expert on comics and graphic narratives, assembles the world's best writing on this classic work of graphic testimony.

Maus Now

Selected Writing

Gabriel García Márquez

"I don't want to be remembered for One Hundred Years of Solitude or for the Nobel Prize but rather for my journalism," Gabriel García Márquez said in the final years of his life. And while some of his journalistic writings have been made available over the years, this is the first volume to gather a representative selection from across the first four decades of his career - years during which he worked as a full-time, often muckraking, and controversial journalist, even as he penned the fiction that would bring him the Nobel Prize in 1982. 
 
The Scandal of the Century brings together the first pieces he wrote while working for newspapers in the coastal Colombian cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla . . . his longer, more fiction-like reportage from Paris and Rome . . . his monthly columns for Spain's El País. And while all the work points to his fiction in its style, wit, depth, and passion, these fifty pieces are, more than anything, a revelation of the writer working at the profession he believed to be 'the best in the world'.

The Scandal of the Century

and Other Writings

Gianluigi Buffon

During his twenty-eight-year long career Buffon broke many records from the most time in Serie A without conceding a goal (974 minutes) to the most capped player for Italy (176). The numbers, however, only tell half the story of a player famously nicknamed “Superman” for his athletic prowess. 
 
In Saved Buffon reveals that even superheroes struggle with their inner demons. From dealing with depression between games to opening up about gambling, Buffon tells the story of the man behind the myth. Buffon’s memoir is both a meditation on the art of goalkeeping and a love letter to the golden age of Italian football.

Saved

Vaclav Smil

From the internationally bestselling author, a revealing look at the surprising numbers that uncover the hidden forces shaping our world 
 
'There is no author whose books I look forward to more' Bill Gates 
 
‘There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil’ Guardian 
 
What do marriage, milk and the black market tell us about the state of humanity? Most people would say, not much at all. But the numbers reveal startling truths about who we are, how we live and where we’re headed. For centuries we’ve told ourselves stories about how the world works – yet the data often point to a very different reality. In Numbers Tell Stories, Vaclav Smil shows how statistics challenge conventional thinking and illuminate the hidden forces shaping our lives. 
 
Take marriage. Weren’t people in the past married off as children? In fact, in eighteenth-century France, the median age was 29 for men and 27 for women – not that different to today. Or longevity. Should we look to Japan to unlock the secrets of a long, healthy life? Perhaps – but only one in five Japanese men and women retains full independence in old age. Even the world’s healthiest nation still has far to go. And waste. It sounds absurd, but discarded electronics contain more gold per ton than gold ore itself – our rubbish is richer than our mines. 
 
Climate change is another challenge we know is huge – but the real shock is the scale of the economic effort required to act in time. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions on the recommended timescale would demand 15 to 20 per cent of annual GDP in wealthy countries – roughly equivalent to the resources mobilised by the Allies to win the Second World War. Numbers on that scale are not abstract: they would transform daily life. 
 
Behind every familiar story, Smil uncovers the statistics that can reframe the past, jolt our view of the present, and change how we think about the future.

Numbers Tell Stories

How Data Reveals the Surprising Truths About Our World

Stefania Rousselle

Award-winning journalist and documentary maker Stefania Rousselle had stopped believing in love. She had covered a series of bleak assignments, from terrorist attacks to the rise of the far right. Her relationship had fallen apart. Her faith in humanity was shaken. She decided to set out alone on a road trip across France, sleeping in strangers' homes, asking ordinary men and women the one question everyone wants to know the answer to: What is love? 
 
From a baker in Normandy to a shepherd in the Pyrénées, from a gay couple estranged from their families to a widow who found love again at 70, Amour is a treasure trove of poignant and profound stories about love, accompanied by beautiful full-colour photographs.

Amour

How the French Talk about Love

Bruno Vincent

The greatest detective of all time has returned*! 
 
Meet an older, wiser and slightly more irritable Sherlock Holmes in a hilarious series of brand new mysteries as he pits his famously considerable wits against assassins, master-thieves, website cookie settings and an air fryer of truly cosmic power . . . 
 
 
*(again)

Sherlock Holmes and the Air Fryer of Doom

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