Anita Desai

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Sophie Elmhirst

**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER** 
**WINNER OF THE NERO AWARDS GOLD PRIZE BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
**A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
 
An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love 
 
'An enthralling, engrossing story of survival' Bill Bryson 
‘An absolute jewel of a book’ India Knight 
‘A gripping tale of adventure’ Elizabeth Day 
‘An extraordinary survival story’ Sunday Times 
 
Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maurice and Maralyn plan their escape: sell the house, build a boat, set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway around the world, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alone on a tiny raft, their love is put to the test. This is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive – not just at sea, but in life. 
 
‘This skilful storytelling drew me in…very touching indeed’ James Rebanks 
‘With the adrenaline kick of Jaws . . . A remarkable portrait of a marriage kept afloat against the odds’ Financial Times 
‘This dramatic, profound human story is so beautifully told. I really could not put it down’ Nina Stibbe 
 
A Guardian, Observer & Waterstones Non-fiction Book of the Year 
 
**READERS ADORE MAURICE & MARALYN** 
‘A riveting tale of survival . . . and of the power of love when all appears lost’ 
‘A mind-blowing story of resilience and love in the face of adversity’ 
‘The very best kind of true story, and beautifully written’ 
‘I couldn’t put this book down’ 
‘I was absolutely hooked from the outset’ 
 
Published as A Marriage at Sea in the USA

Maurice and Maralyn

An extraordinary true story of shipwreck, survival and love

A Whale, a Shipwreck, a Love Story

Horatio Clare

*A Newstatesman Book of the Year* 
 
‘Nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting’ Observer 
 
Bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north. 
 
'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' 
 
 
A message from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice. 
 
 
Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and explores Finland’s history and character. Surrounded by the extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

Icebreaker

A Voyage Far North

Robert Pirsig

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

40th Anniversary Edition

Jody Rosen

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023** 
 
'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday 
 
A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine. 
 
A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance: the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much? 
 
Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters: women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity. 
 
By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance. 
 
'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik 
 
'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence' Economist 
 
'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe

Two Wheels Good

The History and Mystery of the Bicycle

Martin Buckley

In this exciting and unusual travel book, Martin Buckley journeys through many places, from Benbecula to Rarotonga, from Sudan to New Zealand, from Corsica to Tucson, Arizona - but the country he explores is a romantic and dangerous place that seduces all who travel there - the sky. 
 
Three years ago, Martin Buckley gained a pilot's licence, and set off to 'hitch-hike' by plane around the world. His encounters with a range of sometimes eccentric and always obsessive pilots led to aid flights through war zones in a UN Cessna, aerobatics in a jet fighter, chasing goats across snowy mountains by helicopter and touching the edge of the stratosphere in a Learjet. 
 
The result is a wholly original travel book, free-spirited and often very funny, weaving a bird's-eye view of aviation's peculiar history into the narrative and offering intimate insights into the passion and perils of the pilot's seat.

Absolute Altitude

A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Sky

Mark Vanhoenacker

**Sunday Times Bestseller** 
**Book of the Week on Radio 4** 
 
'A beautiful book about a part of the modern world which remains genuinely magical’ Mark Haddon 
 
'One of the most constantly fascinating, but consistently under-appreciated aspects of modern life is the business of flying. Mark Vanhoenacker has written the ideal book on the subject: a description of what it’s like to fly by a commercial pilot who is also a master prose stylist and a deeply sensitive human being. This is a man who is at once a technical expert – he flies 747s across continents – and a poet of the skies. This couldn’t be more highly recommended.' Alain de Botton 
 
Think back to when you first flew. When you first left the Earth, and travelled high and fast above its turning arc. When you looked down on a new world, captured simply and perfectly through a window fringed with ice. When you descended towards a city, and arrived from the sky as effortlessly as daybreak. 
 
In Skyfaring, airline pilot and flight romantic Mark Vanhoenacker shares his irrepressible love of flying, on a journey from day to night, from new ways of mapmaking and the poetry of physics to the names of winds and the nature of clouds. Here, anew, is the simple wonder that remains at the heart of an experience which modern travellers, armchair and otherwise, all too easily take for granted: the transcendent joy of motion, and the remarkable new perspectives that height and distance bestow on everything we love. 
 
‘A beautiful, contemplative book… What Skyfaring gives is something we need: elevation; another perspective… Normally when I find a volume where prose style and subject matter fuse so pleasingly, I tear through it in a day. Here, I found myself pausing on almost every page, as I absorbed its detail or phrasing.’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 
 
**A 2015 Book of the Year – The Economist, The New York Times, GQ and more**

Skyfaring

A Journey with a Pilot

Gillian Tindall

Crossrail, the ‘Elizabeth’ line, is simply the latest way of traversing a very old east–west route through what was once countryside to the city and out again. Visiting Stepney, Liverpool Street, Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, Gillian Tindall traces the course of many of these historical journeys across time as well as space. 
 
The Tunnel Through Time uncovers the lives of those who walked where many of our streets still run. These people spoke the names of ancient farms, manors and slums that now belong to our squares and tube stations. They endured the cycle of the seasons as we do; they ate, drank, worked and laughed in what are essentially the same spaces we occupy today. As Tindall expertly shows, destruction and renewal are a constant rhythm in London’s story.

The Tunnel Through Time

Discover the secret history of life above the Elizabeth line

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