Carlo Rovelli is an internationally acclaimed writer whose books, including Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, Helgoland and White Holes, have been number one bestsellers around the world and translated into over forty languages. As a theoretical physicist, he has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time and he is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique théorique in Marseille, France.

Carlo Rovelli

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Annemarie Neary

'Artful and beautifully ambiguous' Irish Independent 
 
'Captivating and entertaining' RTE 
 
Eight-year-old Jess and her little brother were playing at the water's edge when their parents vanished. 
 
For hours the children held hands and waited for them to return. But nobody ever came back. 
 
Years later, Jess has become a locker of doors. Now a lawyer and a mother, she is determined to protect the life she has built around her. But her brother Ro has grown unpredictable, elusive and obsessive. 
 
When new evidence suggests that their mother might be alive, Ro reappears, convinced that his sister knows more than she claims. 
 
And then bad things start to happen.

The Orphans

Neil Blackmore

__________________________ 
'Seductive, decadent, cruel and utterly thrilling - just like Horace Lavelle himself. This is The Talented Mr Ripley for the twenty-first century.' Emma Flint, author of Little Deaths 
 
'An enjoyable dip into decadence.' Observer 
__________________________ 
Brothers Benjamin and Edgar have so far led a quiet life, but change is afoot as they enter a world of glorious sights and People of Quality on their Grand Tour of Europe. But a trunk full of powdered silver wigs and matching suits isn't enough to embed them into high society. 
 
As Edgar clings on to conventions, Benjamin pushes against them. And when the charming, seductive Horace Lavelle promises Benjamin a real adventure, it's only a matter of time before chaos and love ensue. 
__________________________ 
'A fizzing, seductive queer romance.' i Paper 
 
'Wildly entertaining and painfully heartbreaking ... Neil Blackmore writes with a fizzy wit that bounds his characters off the page.' Ben Aldridge

The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle

Shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize for LGBTQ+ Fiction

Andromeda Romano-Lax

When Feliu Delargo is born, late-nineteenth-century Spain is a nation slipping from international power and struggling with its own fractured identity, caught between the chaos of post-empire and impending Civil War. 
 
Feliu's troubled childhood and rise to fame lead him into a thorny partnership with an even more famous and eccentric figure, the piano prodigy Justo Al-Cerraz. The two musicians' divergent artistic goals and political inclinations threaten to divide them as Spain plunges into Civil War. But as Civil War turns to World War, shared love for their trio partner -- an Italian violinist named Aviva -- forces them into their final and most dangerous collaboration.

The Spanish Bow

Amor Towles

OVER 4 MILLION COPIES SOLD 
 
A Showtime/Paramount+ series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov 
 
From the number one New York Times-bestselling author, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel 
 
'A wonderful book' - Tana French 
 
'This novel is astonishing, uplifting and wise. Don't miss it' - Chris Cleave 
 
'No historical novel this year was more witty, insightful or original' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
'[A] supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 
 
'Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year 
 
On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. 
 
Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. 
 
Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? 
 
A BOOK OF THE DECADE, 2010-2020 (INDEPENDENT) 
THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
A MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
A DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 
ONE OF BILL GATES'S SUMMER READS OF 2019 
NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS WEEK AWARD 
'A wonderful book' - Tana French 
 
'This novel is astonishing, uplifting and wise. Don't miss it' - Chris Cleave 
 
'No historical novel this year was more witty, insightful or original' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year 
 
'[A] supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 
 
'Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year 
 
On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. 
 
Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. 
 
Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? 
 
A BOOK OF THE DECADE, 2010-2020 (INDEPENDENT) 
THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
A MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
A DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 
ONE OF BILL GATES'S SUMMER READS OF 2019 
NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS WEEK AWARD

A Gentleman in Moscow

Marlena de Blasi

'If you loved Under the Tuscan Sun, you’ll love this' Red Magazine 
 
 
Every week on a Thursday evening, a group of four rural Italian women gather in an old stone house in the hills above Italy’s Orvieto. There – along with their friend, Marlena – they cook together, sit down to a beautiful supper, drink their beloved local wines, and talk. 
 
Surrounded by candle light, good food and friendship, the four women tell Marlena their evocative life stories, and of cherished ingredients and recipes whose secrets have been passed down through generations.

The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club

Hillary Jordan

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CAREY MULLIGAN, GARRETT HEDLUND &amp; MARY J. BLIGE 
 
When Henry McAllan moves his city-bred wife, Laura, to a cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta in 1946, she finds herself in a place both foreign and frightening. Henry's love of rural life is not shared by Laura, who struggles to raise their two young children in an isolated shotgun shack under the eye of her hateful, racist father-in-law. When it rains, the waters rise up and swallow the bridge to town, stranding the family in a sea of mud. 
 
As the Second World War shudders to an end, two young men return from Europe to help work the farm. Jamie McAllan is everything his older brother Henry is not and is sensitive to Laura's plight, but also haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the farm, comes home from war with the shine of a hero, only to face far more dangerous battles against the ingrained bigotry of his own countrymen. These two unlikely friends become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale.

Mudbound

Barry Unsworth

For five hundred years a statue of the Madonna has watched over Venice. Now, dulled by time and pollution, she is prepared for restoration. As Simon Raikes immerses himself in the painstaking task of cleaning and repairing, he is inexorably drawn to the stories of violence and lust which have surrounded this stone virgin. 
 
Simon’s investigations lead him to Chiara Litsov, the wife of a renowned sculptor. A dangerous attraction develops between them and it appears inevitable that once again the stone virgin will bear witness to passion, betrayal and murder.

Stone Virgin

Alissa Nutting

A HBO Max series starring Ray Romano and Cristin Milioti 
 
'Exudes valiant charm' New Yorker 
 
'Blisteringly smart and feverishly inventive' Garth Greenwell 
 
'Brilliant... hilarious... both satisfying and unexpected' Roxane Gay 
 
Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane - his sex doll companion. Life with Hazel's father is strained at best, but it's got to be better than her marriage to dominating tech billionaire, Byron Gogol. For over a decade, Hazel has been quarantining in Byron's family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. So when Byron demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips, turning Hazel into a human guinea pig, Hazel makes a run for it. Will Hazel be able to free herself from Byron's virtual clutches before he finds her? 
_________________________ 
A gloriously absurd and hugely entertaining satire about intimacy and love from the provocative writer of the acclaimed novel Tampa.

Made for Love

Catherine Banner

'Ten years ago, my top holiday read was Victoria Hislop's The Island; this summer's great escape belongs to Catherine Banner.' The Pool 
 
'Delightful ... A captivating tale of love ... and loyalty peopled by wonderfully vivid characters.' Sunday Express 
 
'Readers, prepare to be captivated.' Irish Independent 
 
On a tiny island off the coast of Italy, surrounded by the sound of the sea and the scent of bougainvillea, the Esposito family have been running the bar, the House at the Edge of Night, for generations. 
 
Over the course of a century, as the town is transformed by war, fascism, tourism and recession, the spirited Esposito women are determined to keep the doors to the bar open. It is, after all, the place where unexpected friendships are forged, betrayals are discovered and great love affairs begin.

The House at the Edge of Night

Andrea Wulf

One January morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London's Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram in the American colonies. But it was not bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds... 
 
Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever: Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary; the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany; the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on Captain Cook's Endeavour. 
 
This is the story of these men - friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants. Set against the backdrop of the emerging empire and the uncharted world beyond, The Brother Gardeners tells the story how Britain became a nation of gardeners.

The Brother Gardeners

Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession

Katie Waldegrave

Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, were life-long friends. They were also the daughters of best friends: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two poetic geniuses who shaped the Romantic Age. 
 
Living in the shadow of their fathers’ extraordinary fame brought Sara and Dora great privilege, but at a terrible cost. In different ways, each father almost destroyed his daughter. Growing up in the shadow of genius, each girl made it her life’s ambition to dedicate herself to her father’s writing and reputation. Anorexia, drug addiction and depression were part of the legacy of fame, but so too were great friendship and love. 
 
Drawing on a host of new sources, Katie Waldegrave tells the never-before-told story of how two young women, born into greatness, shaped their own legacies.

The Poets' Daughters

Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge

Helen Rappaport

A vivid and compelling account of the final thirteen days of the Romanovs, counting down to the last, tense hours of their lives. 
 
On 4 July 1918, a new commandant took control of a closely guarded house in the Russian town of Ekaterinburg. His name was Yakov Yurovsky, and his prisoners were the Imperial family: the former Tsar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey. Thirteen days later, at Yurovsky's command, and on direct orders from Moscow, the family was gunned down in a blaze of bullets in a basement room. 
 
This is the story of those murders, which ended 300 years of Romanov rule and began an era of state-orchestrated terror and brutal repression.

Ekaterinburg

The Last Days of the Romanovs

Thomas Harding

'I was riveted: this is a fascinating social history.' NIGELLA LAWSON 
 
'Five stars... history on a scale at once intimate and grand.' TELEGRAPH 
 
A panoramic new history of modern Britain, as told through the story of one extraordinary family, and one groundbreaking company. 
 
This is the story of how a family transformed themselves from penniless immigrants to build a company that revolutionised the way we eat, drink and are entertained. For over a century, Lyons was everywhere. Its restaurants and corner houses were on every high street, its coffee and tea in every cup, its products in every home. But it was a victory that was not easily won. 
 
Told through the lives of five generations, Legacy is at once intimate and sweeping, charting the tragedy and unimaginable success of one of Britain's most famous families. It is also an illuminating new exploration of Britain and its place in the world, from the bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake. 
 
'A magnificent book... endlessly fascinating.' JEWISH CHRONICLE 
 
'How the Lyons company took on the world... a satisfying slab of dynastic history.' GUARDIAN, 'Book of the Day' 
 
'Written with love and imagination... a masterclass in historical empathy.' TLS 
 
'An affectionate and colourful family history.' FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
'Rich... Fascinating... Harding is to be congratulated on this panoramic history.' EVENING STANDARD 
 
'Endlessly fascinating and hard to put down... this is a tour de force.' JULIA NEUBERGER

Legacy

The Remarkable History of J Lyons and the Family Behind It

One Family, a Cup of Tea and the Company that Took On the World

Neil Powell

Benjamin Britten was the greatest English composer of the twentieth century and one of the outstanding musicians of his age. 
 
Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, in 1913, Britten was the youngest child of a dentist father and amateur musician mother. After studying at the Royal College of Music, he became a vital part of London’s creative and intellectual life during the 1930s, collaborating with W. H. Auden and meeting his lifelong partner, the tenor Peter Pears. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Britten and Pears were already in America, earning a precarious living as freelance musicians before re-crossing the Atlantic by ship in the perilous days of 1942. 
 
But the east coast of England was where Britten, as he himself said, belonged: this was where he returned to write his most famous opera, Peter Grimes, and – with Pears and Eric Crozier – to found the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948. In the years that followed, his worldwide reputation grew steadily, helped by a busy schedule of international tours and, for many, crowned by the extraordinary success of his War Requiem. Meanwhile, his festival went from strength to strength, its progress symbolised by the opening of Snape Maltings Concert Hall in 1967. 
 
Britten was a mass of paradoxes: a solitary, introspective thinker who came to ebullient life in the company of young people, for whom he composed some of his most memorable works; a man of the political left who was on the friendliest terms with members of the royal family; a composer inspired by some of the twentieth century’s deepest preoccupations who combined innovation with a profound understanding of musical tradition. Devoted to his friends, protégés and fellow musicians, he was, above all, someone who lived for music. 
 
Neil Powell’s book is the landmark biography for Britten’s centenary year: a subtle and moving portrait of a brilliant, complex and ultimately loveable man.

Benjamin Britten

A Life For Music

Duncan Hamilton

'Without football, we were strangers under a shared roof. With it, we were father and son.’ 
 
Inspired by his father’s devotion to Newcastle United and the heroes of yesteryear, Duncan Hamilton brings to life a bygone age telling the story of British football from the hardscrabble 1940s and the ‘never-had-it-so-good’ ’50s right through to the dowdy First Division of the ’70s and ’80s, and today’s slick Premiership. Hamilton recalls some of football’s most sublime players, managers and characters, from Bill Shankly and Jackie Milburn to George Best and Lionel Messi. 
 
But at the heart of The Footballer Who could Fly is Hamilton’s relationship with his own father. Here he tells how football became the only real connection between two people who, apart from their love of the beautiful game, were wholly different from one another.

The Footballer Who Could Fly

Marc Morris

This is the first major biography for a generation of a truly formidable king. Edward I is familiar to millions as 'Longshanks', conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace ('Braveheart'). Edward was born to rule England, but believed that it was his right to rule all of Britain. His reign was one of the most dramatic of the entire Middle Ages, leading to war and conquest on an unprecedented scale, and leaving a legacy of division that has lasted from his day to our own. 
 
In his astonishingly action-packed life, Edward defeated and killed the famous Simon de Montfort in battle; travelled across Europe to the Holy Land on crusade; conquered Wales, extinguishing forever its native rulers, and constructed - at Conwy, Harlech, Beaumaris and Caernarfon - the most magnificent chain of castles ever created. After the death of his first wife he erected the Eleanor Crosses - the grandest funeral monuments ever fashioned for an English monarch.

A Great and Terrible King

Edward I and the Forging of Britain

Tom Dyckhoff

'A great storyteller . . . you would be hard pushed to find a more knowledgeable or entertaining [guide]' Icon 
 
'Such an interesting book . . . I cannot recommend it enough.' Lauren Laverne 
 
 
In Dubai, a luxury apartment block is built in the shape of a giant iPod. In China, President Xi Jinping denounces the trend of constructing ‘bizarre’ new buildings in wacky shapes and colours. In Cincinnati, celebrity architect Zaha Hadid is paid millions to design a single ‘iconic’ structure – with the hope of single-handedly transforming the region’s ailing fortunes. These incidents are all part of the same story: the rise of the age of spectacle. 
 
Over the last fifty years, there has been a revolution in how our cities operate. In The Age of Spectacle, Tom Dyckhoff tells the story of how architecture became obsessed with the flashy, the monumental and the ostentatious – and how we all have to live with the consequences. Exploring cityscapes from New York to Beijing, and from Bilbao to Portsmouth, Dyckhoff shows that we are not just witnessing a new kind of building: we are living through a fundamental transformation in how our urban spaces work. The corporate explosion of the last few decades has fundamentally shifted the relationship between architects, politicians and cities’ inhabitants, fostering innovative new kinds of engineering and design, but also facilitating ill-conceived vanity projects and commercial power-grabs. 
 
Timely, passionate and bursting with new ideas, The Age of Spectacle is both an examination of how twenty-first century cities work, and a manifesto for a radically new kind of urbanism. Our cities, Dyckhoff shows, can thrive in the age of spectacle – but only if they engage us not just with dazzling structures, but by responding to the needs of the people who inhabit them. 
 
'Engaging . . . The “iconic” building is the most obvious architectural phenomenon of our age yet, somehow, no one has quite done what Tom Dyckhoff does with The Age of Spectacle, which is to tell its story clearly and plainly.' Rowan Moore, Observer 
 
'First class. Finally, a book that nails the iconic movement – Tom Dyckhoff’s The Age of Spectacle is the book that I wish I had written.' Simon Jenkins 
 
'Unusually accessible [and] well argued.' Evening Standard

The Age of Spectacle

The Rise and Fall of Iconic Architecture

Adventures in Architecture and the 21st-Century City

Amy Waldman

A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner's name – and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. 
 
The memorial's designer is Mohammad Khan, an enigmatic, ambitious architect. His fiercest defender on the jury is its sole widow, the mediagenic Claire Burwell. But when the news of his selection leaks to the press, Claire finds herself under pressure from outraged family members and in collision with hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians, fellow jurors, and Khan himself. All will bring the emotional weight of their own histories to bear on the urgent question of how to remember, and understand, a national tragedy.

The Submission

Jonathan Miles

'This extraordinary book brings to life an astonishing place. Beautiful prose renders brutality vivid' The Times - BOOK OF THE WEEK 
 
From Peter the Great to Putin, this is the unforgettable story of St Petersburg – one of the most magical, menacing and influential cities in the world. 
 
St Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis, risen from the freezing mists and flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia. It was a new capital in an old country. Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter-the-Great, its dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly fashioned by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. 
 
This city, in its successive incarnations – St Petersburg; Petrograd; Leningrad and, once again, St Petersburg – has always been a place of perpetual contradiction. It was a window on to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of the glory of Russia was created here: its literature, music, dance and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets. It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin’s power-hungry brutality. 
 
In St Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this absurd and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when – once more – its fate hangs in the balance. This is an epic tale of murder, massacre and madness played out against squalor and splendour. It is an unforgettable portrait of a city and its people.

St Petersburg

Three Centuries of Murderous Desire

Jessica Soffer

A heartbreaking debut about family, love, grief and food. Perfect for fans of Joanne Harris' Chocolat and Julia Powell's Julie &amp; Julia. 
 
Victoria, eighty and recently bereaved, is lonely and needs to find a way to reconnect with the world. When she starts teaching cooking classes she doesn’t expect Lorca, a troubled teenager, to be her first pupil. Lorca is desperate to find a way into her mother’s affections and as a last attempt decides to track down the recipe for her ideal meal, an obscure Middle Eastern dish called masgouf. 
 
As Lorca and Victoria form an unexpected bond over almond and pistachio cookies and baklava, they begin to suspect they are connected in more ways than just their love of food.

Tomorrow There Will be Apricots

A follow-up to Andrea Wulf's award-winning and critically acclaimed history of British gardening, this is the story of how George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison's passion for nature, plants, agriculture and gardens shaped the birth of America. 
 
Through a series of vignettes spanning the Declaration of Independence to the death of Adams and Jefferson exactly fifty years to the day afterwards, these stories that weave the political, the personal and the botanical and are in turns funny, fascinating and moving. The Founding Gardeners shows that it is impossible to understand these visionary men and the American nation without considering their love of gardening.

The Founding Gardeners

How the Revolutionary Generation created an American Eden

Conspirator is the compelling story of Lenin's exile: the years in which he and his political collaborators plotted a revolution that would change 20th century history. 
 
It tells the story of Lenin in the long and difficult years leading up to the Russian Revolution, years that were spent constantly on the move in and around Europe in the company of his loyal and longsuffering wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. 
 
Conspirator strips away the arid politics of Lenin's official life and reveals the real man, as well as describing his many conflicts, personal and political, with those who shared his exile. 
 
It also looks at the loyal circle of women who unquestioningly supported Lenin, at Russian émigré lives in the enclaves of the cities in they lived and the risks taken in support of Lenin's vision by the wider network of Russian revolutionaries in the underground movement, both at home and abroad.

Conspirator

Lenin in Exile

Anthony Sattin

In the winter of 1849, Florence Nightingale was an unknown 29-year-old - beautiful, well-born and deeply unhappy. After clashing with her parents over her refusal to marry, she had been offered a lifeline by family friends who suggested a trip to Egypt, a country which she had always longed to visit. 
 
By an extraordinary coincidence, taking the same boat from Alexandria was an unpublished French writer, Gustave Flaubert. Like Nightingale, he was at the crossroads in his life that was to lead to future 
acclaim and literary triumph. Egypt for him represented escape and freedom as well as inspiration. 
 
But as a wealthy young man travelling with male friends, he had access to an altogether different Egpyt: where Nightingale sought out temples and dispensaries, Flaubert visited brothels and harems. 
 
In this beguiling book, Anthony Sattin takes a key moment in the lives of two extraordinary figures on the brink of international fame, and provides a fascinating insight into the early days of travel to one of 
the greatest tourist destinations on the planet.

A Winter on the Nile

Christopher Stocks

In Forgotten Fruits, Christopher Stocks tells the fascinating - often rather bizarre - stories behind Britain's rich heritage of fruit and vegetables. Take Newton Wonder apples, for instance, first discovered around 1870 allegedly growing in the thatch of a Derbyshire pub. Or the humble gooseberry which, among other things, helped Charles Darwin to arrive at his theory of evolution. Not to mention the ubiquitous tomato, introduced to Britain from South America in the sixteenth century but regarded as highly poisonous for hearly 200 years. 
 
This is a wonderful piece of social and natural history that will appeal to every gardener and food aficionado.

Forgotten Fruits

The stories behind Britain's traditional fruit and vegetables

Haley Tanner

Funny, heartbreaking, rich and wise, this is a story with the power to cast a spell all of its own. 
 
Vaclav and Lena seem destined for each other. They first meet as children at their English class in Brooklyn. Vaclav dreams of becoming a famous magician with Lena as his lovely assistant. But then Lena disappears; it seems that life can play cruel tricks too. Vaclav says goodnight to Lena every night for seven years to keep her safe, and then discovers why she was taken from him. Is their connection strong enough to survive the truth, or is happily ever after only an illusion?

The Adventures of Vaclav the Magnificent and his lovely assistant Lena

John Niven

GARY is a sweet and decent man. Only two things would improve his life - having children with his gorgeous wife Pauline, and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely. 
 
PAULINE is wondering how she ended up living in an ugly little house, driving a second-hand car and making a living dressing up as Tinkerbell. She's planning to leave Gary for a self-made carpet millionaire. 
 
FINDLAY, the Carpet King of Scotland, wants to trade in his obese wife for a younger model. But if he goes for a divorce she'll take him to the cleaners. If only there was some way she could be made to disappear... 
 
LEE, Gary's luckless brother, has botched one too many drug deals. Local crime overlord Ranta Campbell gives him one more job - one last chance to get it right. Lee's done some bad things - but murder? 
 
When Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and miraculously develops an absolutely perfect swing, everyone finds their fates rest on the final day of the Open Championship...

The Amateurs

David McKie

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
Surnames are much more than convenient identity tags; they are windows into our families’ pasts. Some suggest ancestral trades (Butcher, Smith, Roper) or physical appearance (Long, Brown, Thynne). Some provide clues to where we come from (McDonald, Evans, Patel). And some – Rymer, Brocklebank, Stolbof – offer a hint of something just a little more exotic or esoteric. 
 
All are grist to the mill for David McKie who, in What’s in a Surname?, sets off on a journey around Britain to find out how such appellations have evolved and what they tell us about ourselves. En route he looks at the surname’s tentative beginnings in medieval times, and the myriad routes by which particular names became established. He considers some curious byways: the rise and fall of the multi-barrel surname and the Victorian reinvention of ‘embarrassing’ surnames among them. He considers whether fortune favours those whose surnames come at the beginning of the alphabet. And he celebrates the remarkable and the quirky, from the fearsome Ridley (the cry of which once struck terror in the hearts of their neighbours) to the legend-encrusted Tichborne, whose most famous holders were destined to suffer misfortune and controversy. Elegiac and amusing by turns, he offers a wonderfully entertaining wander along the footpaths of the nation’s history and culture, celebrating not just the Smiths and Joneses of these islands but the Chaceporcs and Swetinbeddes, too.

What's in a Surname?

A Journey from Abercrombie to Zwicker

Michael Scott

'This vivid and engaging book brings to life some of the most important moments in ancient history, moments that have shaped not only the politics and culture of bygone eras, but the institutions, thoughts and fantasies of our time.' Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens) 
 
'A bold and imaginative page-turner that challenges ideas about the world of antiquity.' Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads) 
 
'As panoramic as it is learned, this is ancient history for our globalised world.' Tom Holland (Dynasty, Rubicon) 
________________________________________ 
Acclaimed historian and TV presenter Michael Scott guides us through an epic story spanning ten centuries to create a bold new reading of the classical era for our globalised world. 
 
Scott challenges our traditionally western-focused perception of the past, connecting Greco-Roman civilisation to the great rulers and empires that swept across Central Asia to India and China - resulting in a truly global vision of ancient history. 
 
With stunning range and richness Ancient Worlds illustrates how the great powers and characters of antiquity shared ambitions and crises, ways of thinking and forms of governing: connections that only grew stronger over the centuries as political systems evolved, mighty armies clashed, universal religions were born and our modern world was foreshadowed. 
 
Scott focuses on three epochal 'moments' across the ancient globe, and their profound wider significance: from 509-8 BCE (birth of Athenian democracy and Rome's republic, also the age of Confucius's teachings in China); to 218 BCE (when Hannibal of Carthage challenged Rome and China saw its first emperor); to 312 CE, when Constantine sought to impose Christianity on the Roman world even as Buddhism was pervading China via the vast trading routes we now know as the 'Silk Roads.' 
 
A major work of global history, Michael Scott's enthralling journey challenges the way we think about our past, re-draws the map of the classical age to reveal its hidden connections, and shows us how ancient history has lessons for our own times.

Ancient Worlds

An Epic History of East and West

James Ellroy

________________________ 
'Ellroy writes with raw power … undeniably one of the most influential crime writers of our time' THE TIMES 
 
'a tangled fever-dream … Ellroy offers a grandiose, Wagnerian vision of wartime LA' SUNDAY TIMES 
________________________ 
A brilliant historical crime novel, set in Los Angeles and Mexico during the pulse-pounding aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. 
 
January, ’42. L.A. reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. 
 
The cops tag it a routine dead-man job. They’re wrong. It’s an early-warning signal of Chaos. 
 
There’s a murderous fire and a gold heist exploding out of the past. There’s Fifth Column treason – at this moment, on American soil. There are homegrown Nazis, commies and race racketeers. There’s two dead cops in a dive off the jazz-club strip. And three men and one woman have a hot date with History. 
 
Elmer Jackson is a corrupt Vice cop. He’s a flesh peddler and a bagman for the L.A. Chief of Police. Hideo Ashida is a crime-lab whiz, lashed by anti-Japanese rage. Dudley Smith is a PD hardnose working Army Intelligence. He’s gone rogue and gone all-the-way fascist. Joan Conville was born rogue. She’s a defrocked Navy lieutenant and a war profiteer to her core. 
 
L.A., ’42. Homefront madness ascendant. Early-wartime inferno – This Storm is James Ellroy’s most audacious novel yet. It is by turns savage, tender, elegiac. It lays bare and celebrates crazed Americans of all stripes. 
________________________ 
‘Epic crime writing from a master’ DAILY MAIL 
 
‘Ellroy is unique. There is nobody writing this way … Nobody has done or is doing what he is doing’ BOOKMUNCH

This Storm

Charlotte Gordon

***AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4*** 
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER 
 
'A gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs of two of history's most formidable female intellectuals, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Gordon has reunited mother and daughter through biography, beautifully weaving their narratives for the first time.' Amanda Foreman 
 
English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and author Mary Shelley were mother and daughter, yet these two extraordinary women never knew one another. Nevertheless, their passionate and pioneering lives remained closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies eerily similar. 
 
Both women became famous writers and wrote books that changed literary history, had passionate relationships with several men, were single mothers out of wedlock; both lived in exile, fought for their position in society, and interrogated ideas of how we should live. 
 
Romantic Outlaws takes the reader on a vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England to explore in this ground-breaking dual biography of the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the author who wrote Frankenstein - mother and daughter - a pair of visionary women, who should have shared a life, but who instead share a powerful literary and feminist legacy.

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