Meik Wiking founded the world's first Happiness Research Institute in 2013, in Copenhagen, Denmark and is a New York Times and Sunday Times Bestselling author. Meik has been called The Indiana Jones of Smiles and probably the World's Happiest Man by The Times. He is the author of four globally bestselling books which have sold over 2 million copies worldwide: The Little Book of Hygge, The Little Book of Lykke, The Art of Making Memories and My Hygge Home.

Meik Wiking

Sue Meikle has always been obsessed with picture books, and after working as an Early Years Specialist for over 25 years, she has read stories to children from Stockport to South Africa. In schools, in early years centres, while on forest school adventures... Sue has even read stories on a travelling play bus! So, perhaps it was always in the stars for Sue to not just read books, but write them, too! When she's not reading or writing stories, Sue can be found walking her dog or chauffeuring her teenagers around the Greater Manchester area (because that’s where they live… in a home that they made from a derelict barn!)

Sue Meikle

David Meikle is a TV scriptwriter and Sunday Times bestselling author. He has written and co-written seven books, including the autobiographies of Charlie Richardson and Bobby Cummines.

David Meikle

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Pang-Mei Natasha Chang

After long afternoons spent with her great-aunt Yu-i, Pang-Mei, a first-generation Chinese-American, paints this unforgettable saga of a woman, born in Shanghai at the turn of the century to a well-to-do family, who continually defied the expectations of her class and culture. 
 
'In China, a woman is nothing,' began Yu-i over tea and dumplings. 'This is the first lesson I want to give so that you will understand.' Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last Emperor and the Communist Revolution, Yu-i led a life marked by a series of rebellions that changed the course of her life, including the first and most lasting: her refusal to have her feet bound. And as Yu-i confides her innermost dreams and demons to her great-niece in this dual memoir, the deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China is blended with the very Western story of a young woman's search for identity and belonging.

Bound Feet And Western Dress

Martin Booth

Martin Booth died in February 2004, shortly after finishing the book that would be his epitaph - this wonderfully remembered, beautifully told memoir of a childhood lived to the full in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire... 
 
An inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s. Unrestricted by parental control and blessed with bright blond hair that signified good luck to the Chinese, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a 'pale fellow' like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learnt Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into the secret lair of the Triads and visited an opium den. Along the way he encountered a colourful array of people, from the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, a drunken child molester, and the Queen of Kowloon, the crazed tramp who may have been a member of the Romanov family. 
 
Shadowed by the unhappiness of his warring parents, a broad-minded mother who, like her son, was keen to embrace all things Chinese, and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family's interest in 'going native', Martin Booth's compelling memoir is a journey into Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life that glows with infectious curiosity and humour.

Gweilo: Memories Of A Hong Kong Childhood

Polly Evans

When she learnt that the Chinese had built enough new roads to circle the equator sixteen times, Polly Evans decided to go and witness for herself the way this vast nation was hurtling into the technological age. But on arriving in China she found the building work wasn't quite finished. 
 
Squeezed up against Buddhist monks, squawking chickens and on one happy occasion a soldier named Hero, Polly clattered along pot-holed tracks from the snow-capped mountains of Shangri-La to the bear-infested jungles of the south. She braved encounters with a sadistic masseur, a ridiculously flexible kung-fu teacher, and a terrified child who screamed at the sight of her. 
 
In quieter moments, Polly contemplated China's long and colourful history - the seven-foot-tall eunuch commander who sailed the globe in search of treasure; the empress that chopped off her rivals' hands and feet and boiled them to make soup - and pondered the bizarre traits of the modern mandarins. And, as she travelled, she attempted to solve the ultimate gastronomic conundrum: just how does one eat a soft-fried egg with chopsticks?

Fried Eggs With Chopsticks

Jack Perkowski

After a highly successful career on Wall Street, in the early 1990s Jack Perkowski needed a new challenge. Having decided that China would be the future, he set about investigating this little-known market and the business opportunities it offered. Before long, Jack set up ASIMCO, a manufacturing business specializing in car components, which now has an annual turnover of over $500 million. 
 
In Managing the Dragon Jack provides an insider's view of China, its many peculiarities and working practices. For example, we see how China's economy and government are highly decentralized and how the country tends to operate like a series of villages spread across a vast landscape; we discover how much influence 'the Party' has on the banks, and how economic incentives at local government level causes China to create overcapacity in virtually every industry. This may explain why the country has, almost single-handedly, placed the entire world in a cost / price squeeze. 
 
Managing the Dragon is a revealing and thought-provoking memoir offering a fresh perspective on a country at the dawn of a new age. Through its colourful narrative it also tells the story of one of the most influential and pioneering entrepreneurs of today.

Managing the Dragon

Building a Billion-Dollar Business in China

Elizabeth Kim

I don't know how old I was when I watched my mother's murder, nor do I know how old I am today.' 
 
The illegitimate daughter of a peasant and an American GI, Elizabeth Kim spent her early years as a social outcast in her village in the Korean countryside. Ostracized by their family and neighbours, she and her mother were regularly pelted with stones on their way home from the rice fields. Yet there was a tranquil happiness in the intense bond between mother and daughter. Until the day that Elizabeth's grandfather and uncle came to punish her mother from the dishonour she had brought on the family, and executed her in front of her daughter. 
 
Elizabeth was dumped in an orphanage in Seoul. After some time, she was lucky enough to be adopted by an American couple. But when she arrived in America she found herself once again surrounded by fanaticism and prejudice. 
 
Elizabeth's mother had always told her that life was made up of ten thousand joys as well as ten thousand sorrows, and, supported by her loving daughter, and by a return to her Buddhist faith, she finally found a way to savour those joys, as well as the courage to exorcise the demons of her past.

Ten Thousand Sorrows

It is not unreasonable to believe that potentially the greatest threat to world civil order...comes from Chinese international criminal syndicates and gangs otherwise collectively referred to as the Triads' FBI briefing report 
Triad societies are today the most widespread and ruthless criminal group in the history of the world, posing the most important criminal threat to world stability that has ever existed. Just as the Mafia are organised as 'families', so the Triads are organised as 'brotherhoods', often along clan lines. They are in essence over 2,000 years old. The father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was a Triad society member, creating and financing the great Republic of China through the degenerate trade of opium, which has now become the multi-million dollar heroin industry. Martin Booth's remarkable study encompasses not only the more 'traditional' localised crime - prostitution, theft, racketeering - but also their more repercussive activities on a global scale: the drugs trade, money laundering, stock market manipulation and insider dealing, computer hacking, international prostitution, infiltration of media assets, art smuggling, and much more. 
Today the Triads are poised to achieve what no organised crime gang has ever dared dream of - a complete, international criminal network, exclusively Chinese, almost impossible to infiltrate and with its fingers on the world's pulse through its own banking networks, legal affairs and political protection. Today, it would appear the Triads are ready to make the next century a Chinese century...seemingly, nothing can stop them. 
The Dragon Syndicates tells the full, incredible story of the Triads - their evolution over two millennia, their rituals and mythologies, their role in shaping this century, and the criminal history and lives of the main players. Sources within the UN claim the Triads pose the greatest criminal threat the world has ever known - after reading Martin Booth's authoritative, dynamic, superbly written and riveting new study, you'll understand why...

The Dragon Syndicates

Sara Davies

INCLUDES CHRISTMAS CRAFT IDEAS! 
 
'Treat yourself with the crafting bible, Craft Your Year with Sara Davies.' Michael Ball, BBC Radio 2 
 
Step-by-step seasonal crafting guide with over 70 projects to make throughout the year, including Christmas baubles and wreaths and great gift ideas. 
 
This easy-to-follow crafting guide from the queen of crafting Sara Davies will help you and your family craft throughout the year, with projects for beginner, intermediate and advanced crafters. 
 
Packed full of ideas, tips and tricks to help you grow in confidence and creativity, as well as useful lists of tools, must-have items and a glossary explaining the key crafting terms and phrases you'll hear time and again as you craft. 
 
This practical book includes photographs and simple step-by-step instructions to help you make everything need throughout the year, from a Mother's Day card in spring to a macrame flower hanger in summer, from Halloween treat bags in autumn to a Christmas wreath in winter and everything in-between.

Craft Your Year with Sara Davies

Crafting Queen, Dragons’ Den and Strictly Star

Ian Denys Peek

In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Denys Peek and his brother were just two of tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers and citizens taken prisoner. 
Eight months later, he and his comrades were packed into steel goods wagons and transported by rail to Siam. They were to become part of the slave labour force destined for the massive construction project that would later become infamous as the Burma Thailand Railway. He would spend the next three years in over fifteen different work and 'hospital' camps on the railway, stubbornly refusing to give in and die in a place where over 20,000 prisoners of war and uncounted slave labourers met their deaths. 
Narrated in the present tense and written with clarity, passion and a remarkable eye for detail, Denys Peek has vividly recreated not just the hardships and horrors of the railway and the daily struggle for survival but also the comradeship, spirit and humour of the men who worked on it. It stands as a haunting, evocative and deeply moving testimony to the suffering of those who lived and died there - a salutary reminder of man's potential for inhumanity to his fellow man.

One Fourteenth Of An Elephant

Jackie Ellis

This journey through the changing seasons at Rowfoot Farm - tupping time in the autumn, winters as wet, bleak and cold here in Cumbria as elsewhere, lambing and the glories of spring, a bucolic, bee-filled Eden Valley summer with its many shows and fairs - will reveal much that you need to know about the countryside, its quirky customs and ways, and most likely a great deal that you don't. They no longer burn witches (not because they're lily-livered, it's just that getting the necessary timber from sustainable forests is a real chore). You'll find nothing here about welly-wanging either. Jackie doesn't wang her wellies, she just gets them muddy. You won't need to, of course, as this book will ensure you experience rural life vicariously and very cleanly. 
 
Along the way, Jackie bumps into friends old and new, peeps back over her shoulder every now and then to recall times past, oh and it wouldn't be her if she didn't have the occasional impassioned rant or take the odd pop at the establishment, but rest assured she's quite gentle with them. 
So join Jackie (and Katie the Lurcher, Blossom the Cob and Rowfoot's many other residents, four- and two-legged) as she recounts the occasional pitfall and many pleasures of running a small farm in one of the most beautiful parts of England.

Sheepwrecked

Kobie Kruger

When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom. Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives. 
 
Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees. 
 
But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him. 
 
Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.

The Wilderness Family

James Redfield

In the remote snow-covered mountains near Tibet lies a community long thought to be a mere myth called Shambhala, or Shangri-La. Here, in this place, is knowledge that has been kept hidden for centuries, and an insight that can have a profound impact on the way each of us lives our lives. Your search for Shambhala begins with the words of a child and the vision of an old friend. Those slender clues and a powerful synchronicity will lead to Kathmandu, Nepal, and then to Lhasa, Tibet. 
 
Amid blowing snows and perilous mountains, you will meet the members of the secret Tibetan sect that guards mysterious legends - the verbal instructions handed down for centuries that describe the inner changes one must undergo before entering Shambhala. 
 
Finally, with Chinese Agents in pursuit, you will pass through regions where anger and compassion struggle for ascendancy, and arrive at a place where the stunning reality about human prayer-energy - our underdeveloped ability to increase the synchronicity in our lives and influence what will happen to us in the future - is revealed. 
 
Like James Redfield's other books, The Secret of Shambhala has a parable effect. Open yourself to this amazing adventure and the experience will stretch your world view. It will also leave you determined to channel your thoughts and wishes into a dynamic force that can help you to liberate your life, enhance the lives of others and actively change the world.

The Secret Of Shambhala: In Search Of The Eleventh Insight

Following on from Sara's bestselling introduction to crafting for crafters of every level in Craft Your Year, this new crafting guide includes over 70 projects for intermediate to advanced crafters. It focusses on crafting ideas for the important occasions in everyone's life: from birthdays and parents' days to weddings and new babies, from new job and new home to graduation and retirement, and everything in between. 
 
Crafting a card or gift for those you love to mark these special occasions shows them just how much care, while also being a pleasurable and relaxing pastime enabling your creativity to flourish. 
 
Sara teaches you how to make the most memorable cards and gifts for every occasion with easy-to-follow instructions and how-to photos guiding you every step of the way.

Crafting for All Occasions with Sara Davies

With over 70 papercraft and gift projects

John Man

China's Great Wall north of Beijing is one of the world's most famous sights. Millions every year climb the line of stone snaking over mountains. We all feel we know the Wall. But we are wrong. It is too big, too varied, too complex to be captured by a few images or a day-trip. 
 
Myths surround it. Many believe that the stone barrier marches across all China, that it has been in existence for over 2,000 years, and that it is the only man-made structure visible from the Moon. In fact, most of it is made of earth, and much of it is not there at all. It cannot even be seen from earth orbit, let alone the Moon. Estimates of its length vary from 1,500 to 5,000 miles. Even its name is deceptive - it is not an it, a single entity, but many walls (hence the uncertain length), built at different times. 
 
Yet behind the confusion are great simplicities. The many walls are united by two ideas - self-protection and unity - which go back to the First Emperor, who founded the nation in 221 BC. For 2,000 years, the Wall marked the border between China and nomadic peoples to the north and west. Mutual hostility inspired centuries of attacks, counter-attacks and Wall-building, until the northward spread of China in the 20th century made the Wall redundant. 
 
For this riveting account, John Man travelled the Wall from the far western deserts to the Pacific, exploring the grandest sections and many 'wild' ones. He is the first writer to describe two unknown walls in Mongolia. He covers two millennia of history, from the country's first unification to the present day, when the Great Wall, built and rebuilt over centuries of war, has become a symbol of tranquillity.

The Great Wall

Catherine Cheremeteff Jones

Foreigners who spend time in Russia soon discover two distinct worlds: the public Russia, often perceived as cold and shadowed, cautious and traditional; and the private Russia, where warmth and hospitality flourish over tea at a friend's kitchen table or sautéed mushrooms in a village dacha.A Year of Russian Feasts invites you on an enchanting journey through Russia's vibrant traditions—from the lively springtime bliny festival and Easter feast to the serene beauty of a small village's natural bounty, a mystical quest for autumn mushrooms, and the festive spirit of Red Square during Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Along the way, experience the camaraderie of a vegetarian dinner in a communal apartment, the joy of a birthday party, the solemnity of a baptism, the charm of a tea party, and the celebration of a Russian wedding. Jones unveils how forty exquisite dishes have been lovingly preserved and passed down through the feast days of the Russian Orthodox Church, the gentle rhythm of country life, and a vast nation of undiscovered beauty.This captivating glimpse into Russia is not merely about the country, but also the people at its heart, offering a chance to reconnect with a rich and colourful cultural heritage.

A Year Of Russian Feasts

The name 'Samurai' is synonymous with the ultimate warrior. With their elaborate armour, fierce swordsmanship and code of honour, the samurai have become iconic figures whose influence can still be felt today . From Kurosawa's epic Seven Samurai to the figure of Darth Vader in Star Wars, to Manga comics and video games, the figure of the fighting samurai still inspires us today. In John Man's new book we discover the truth behind the legend. 
 
From his birth in the shadow of the great volcano Sakurajima, to his glorious death by ritual suicide and disembowelment, Saigo Takamori was the ultimate Samurai leader. His fall brought about the end of hundreds of years of Samurai tradition and in many ways marks the birth of modern Japan. Saigo was a man trapped by paradox: a faithful servant to the emperor, and yet a leader of rebel troops; a mighty Samurai warrior, and also a master of Chinese poetry. His life, and ultimately his death, offer a window into the hundreds of years of culture and tradition that defined the samurai.

Samurai

When Polly Evans read a survey claiming that the last bastion of masculinity, the real Kiwi bloke, was about to breathe his last, she was seized by a sense of foreboding. Abandoning the London winter she took off on a motorbike for the windswept beaches and golden plains of New Zealand, hoping to root out some examples of this endangered species for posterity. But her challenges didn't stop at the men. 
 
Just weeks after passing her test, Polly rode from Auckland's glitzy Viaduct Basin to the vineyards of Hawkes Bay and on to the Southern Alps. She found wild kiwis in the dead of night, kayaked among dolphins at dawn, and spent an evening on a remote hillside with a sheep-shearing gang. As she travelled, Polly reflected on the Maori warriors who carved their enemies' bones into cutlery, the pioneer family who lived in a tree, and the flamboyant gold miners who lit their pipes with five-pound notes, and wondered how their descendents have become pathologically obsessed with helpfulness and Coronation Street. 
 
The author of the highly acclaimed It's Not About the Tapas reaches some unexpected conclusions about the new New Zealand man - and finds that evolution has taken some unlikely twists.

Kiwis Might Fly

Around New Zealand On Two Big Wheels

Peter Moore

No Shitting In The Toilet is named after a sign Peter Moore saw on the door of the lavatory at Jack's Café in Dali, Yunnan Province, in China. It's a sign that encapsulated his travel philosophy: that things never quite turn out as you expect. You end up in situations that defy logic, rational thought and, quite often, general well-being - and yet you have a brilliant time, not in spite of these situations, but because of them. 
And this is the philosophy behind this book and the reason why&nbsp;it isn't really a normal travel guide. OK, it might look like one in its structure and choice of topics, but in fact it's quite the opposite. Instead of practical hints, it gives you impractical ones (How to avoid jet lag - avoid jets ...) and rather than tell you the best places to stay, it tells you the worst. Instead of celebrating transcendental travel experiences, it revels in the most demeaning ones (On checking the hygiene in restaurants: there are 2 things you don't really want to see in life. The first is your parents having sex. The second is the state of the kitchen in restaurants catering for backpackers.). But in that sense NSITT is more in touch with the way things really are. The world of NSITT is one where you're more likely to find a cockroach on your pillow than a complimentary mint, a world where you take your life in your own hands every time you get on a bus, a world where everything goes wrong, and you still end up loving every minute of it. 
Based on the author's award-winning travel website, NSITT is not only hugely entertaining but also eminently practical, with advice on everything from Backpacking and Souvenirs, to Sex and Romance and Health and Eating (and some words of advice for vegetarians: hope you like rice...).

No Shitting In The Toilet

The Terracotta Army is one of the greatest, and most famous, archaeological discoveries of all time. 6,000 life-size figures of warriors and horses were interred in the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of China - each is individually carved, and they are thought to represent real members of the emperor's army. This is the remarkable story of their creation, the man who ordered them made, their rediscovery and their continuing legacy as a pre-eminent symbol of Chinese greatness. 
 
The First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, was king of the Chinese state of Qin and the first man to unite China into a single empire. He built the first Great Wall and brought a single written script to the whole country. He was an inspired and ruthless ruler, but one also beset by paranoia and a desire for immortality. He is still considered the founding father of the modern state of China. On his death in 210 BC he was buried in a giant mausoleum near modern-day Xi'an. Legends of the treasures contained therein still tantalize the imagination today. 
 
In 1974 local farmers digging a well for water broke through into the burial mound and found the first of the Terracotta warriors. Further excavations have revealed the full splendour of the buried army. But the majority of the mausoleum is yet to be opened, including the burial chamber itself - myth tells us that amongst the treasures yet to be uncovered is a vast map of the First Emperor's kingdom with rivers marked with channels of flowing mercury. The story of the First Emperor and the Terracotta Army is a fascinating one, not least for the discoveries yet to be made.

The Terracotta Army

Olivia St Claire

Olivia St Claire returns to refine the art of driving him wild with the hottest techniques ever. In her inimitable straight-forward and no-holds-barred style, the author helps her readers aim for nothing less than a joie de vivre between the sheets. 
 
These proven methods are designed not only to perfect the reader's craft, but to refine her erotic state of mind, the starting point for turning on any man. Olivia St Claire helps you identify your Passion Triggers, safely guides you to the edge of your sexual boundaries, and lets you in on everything you ever wanted to know about the forbidden caverns, tidal waves and uncharted waters of passion. 
 
For the first time, here is straightforward advice that covers everything from the art of the blindfold to the ecstasies of oriental lovemaking; from 21st century toys to ancient love rituals. 302 stunning secrets, potent tips and devastating techniques that are accessible, easy-to-follow, and erotic to read. 
 
Any woman - whether romantic, shy, innovative or adept - can use this dazzling selection of sex techniques to ignite her deepest passions and bring any man to his knees.

302 Advanced Techniques for Driving a Man Wild in Bed

Layli Miller Bashir

Fauziya Kassindja

Like the bestsellers Princess and Not Without My Daughter, Do They Hear You When You Cry? tells the dramatic, compulsively readable story of a woman fighting to free herself from the injustices of her culture. Fauziya Kassindja's harrowing story begins in Togo, Africa, where she enjoyed a sheltered childhood, shielded by her progressive father from the tribal practice of polygamy and genital mutilation. But when her father died in 1993, Fauziya's life changed dramatically. At the age of seventeen, she was forced to marry a man she barely knew who already had three wives, and prepare for the tribal ritual practice of genital mutilation - a practice that is performed without painkillers or antibiotics. But hours before the ritual was to take place, Fauziya's sister helped her escape to Germany, and from there she travelled to the United States seeking asylum - and freedom. Instead she was stripped, shackled and imprisoned for sixteen months by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. 
Enter Layli Miller Bashir, a twenty-three-year-old law student who took on Fauziya's case. When the two women met, Layli found a broken, emaciated girl with whom she forged an extraordinary friendship. Putting her heart into Fauziya's case, Layli enlisted help from the American University International Human Rights Clinic. The clinic's acting director Karen Musalo, an expert in refugee law, assembled a team to fight on Fauziya's behalf. Ultimately, in a landmark decision that has given hope to many seeking asylum on the grounds of gender-based persecution, Fauziya was granted asylum on 13 June 1996. 
Here, for the first time, is Fauziya's dramatic personal story, told in her own words, vividly detailing her life as a young woman in Togo and her nightmarish day-to-day existence in American prisons. It is a story of faith and freedom, courage and inspiration - one that you will not easily forget.

Do They Hear You When You Cry

Gavin Menzies

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the world in Confucian harmony. 
Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook... 
The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind - from sunken junks to the votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea. 
Already hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding of world exploration but also rewrites history itself.

1421

The Year China Discovered The World

Alicia Appleman-Jurman

'This memoir is heartbreaking.' Elie Wiesel, author of Night 
 
Alicia Jurman is five-years-old when her story begins. It is 1935 and she is living in the East Polish town of Buczacz. Although brought up in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism, nothing could have prepared her for the Russian invasion of Poland and the full horror of the Nazi Occupation. 
 
At thirteen, while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland, Alicia began saving the lives of strangers. Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother's brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child's faith in human goodness - or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds. 
 
After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine. She swore on her brother's grave that if she survived, she would speak for her silenced family. This book is the eloquent fulfilment of that oath.

Alicia

Memoirs of A Survivor

Michael Calvin

1966, with London declared ‘a swinging city’ and John Lennon proclaiming the Beatles ‘more popular than Jesus’, the year’s football World Cup convenes an international community standing at an inflection point, emerging from the long shadow of the Second World War and hurtling towards the future. 
 
Propelled by social change, civil rights movements and technological advancement serve as beacons of hope and possibility. Yet, Cold War tensions, the escalation of the Vietnam War, and the space race between America and the Soviet Union project a different image. As China’s Cultural Revolution begins, and talks are initiated to reunify Germany, football has the potential to inflame ideological rivalries, unite old enemies, and allow nations to demonstrate their prowess on a global stage. 
 
Through the prism of the extraordinary tournament and the eight teams that reached the quarter finals – England, West Germany, Uruguay, Argentina, Portugal, Soviet Union, North Korea and Hungary – Michael Calvin provides a vivid portrait of a critical moment in world history. Examining the sporting, social and cultural significance of the competition and its backdrop, this hugely entertaining book brings to life a world and a sport caught in a tide of change, and shows how this critical year would change both forever.

1966

The Year that Changed Everything from Fashion to Football

Mark Obmascik

Each year, hundreds of people set out across North America determined to set a new record in a spectacularly competitive event. Is it tennis? Golf? Racing? Poker perhaps? No, it's bird-watching, and a contest known as the Big Year - a grand, gruelling, expensive (and occasionally vicious) 365-day marathon to identify the most species. 
THE BIG YEAR is the rollicking chronicle of the 275,000-mile odyssey of three unlikely adventurers who take their bird-watching so seriously it nearly kills them. From Texas in pursuit of the Rufus-capped Warbler to British Columbia in search of Xantus' Hummingbird, these obsessive enthusiasts brave roasting deserts, storm-tossed oceans, infested swamps and disgruntled lions (not to mention some of the lumpiest hotel mattresses known to man) as they vie to become North America's number one bird-watcher in what would prove to be the biggest Big Year of them all... 
This captivating tour of human and avian nature, of courage and deceit, of passion and paranoia reveals the extremes to which Man will go to pursue his dreams, to conquer and to categorize...

The Big Year

Antony Worrall Thompson

Antony Worrall Thompson's passage to culinary stardom has not exactly been smooth. Abandoned by his father, a Shakespearean actor, when he was just three, Antony was sexually abused and maltreated throughout his childhood. 
 
Antony's story very nearly came to an abrupt halt at sixteen when his face was crushed in a horrific rugby accident, which left him badly disfigured and chronically insecure. But pioneering surgery saved the day, enabling him to pursue what was to become the enduring love of his life - cooking. 
 
After much hard graft and some close encounters of the violent gangster kind, AWT's flamboyant style as a restaurateur soon bought him to the attention of cookery's cognoscenti and today Antony is to the culinary establishment what a bull is to a china shop. His no-nonsense style in the kitchen is loathed by a few, but loved by millions. 
 
Stuffed with hugely entertaining anecdotes and lightly sprinkled with AWT's no-holds-barred opinions, RAW is a heartrendingly honest story of triumph over adversity. Along the way we go behind the scenes with the foodie mafia and Antony lifts the lid on a few triple-Michelin-starred scandals. The knives (and the forks!) are very definitely out ...

My Autobiography

BBC Studios

THE PERFECT GIFT FOR FANS OF THE HIT TV SHOW! 
 
Are you in the top 50% of the country? 
The top 10%? Or even the top 1%? 
This is your chance to find out. 
 
The 1% Club, the quiz for 100% of the people. 
 
The 1% Club Official Quiz Book, brought to you by the team behind the hit TV show, is a quiz book for all the family, where an 8-year-old has as much chance of winning as an 80-year-old, where intelligence is not based on how many exams you passed, it’s all about how your brain works. Logic and common sense are the key to success. 
 
To win, you need to be able to correctly answer a set of fifteen questions that get progressively harder with each round, starting with a question that 90% of the country can get right down to a question that only 1% of the country can answer. 
 
Suitable for contestants of all ages because, unlike most quizzes, no swotting up is required to win. Have you got what it takes to be part of The 1% Club? 
 
'Brilliant brain-teasing gift!' &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
 
'Just like the show!' &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; 
 
'Love the book!' &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088; &#11088;

The 1% Club Book 1

The Official Quiz Book

Sarah MacDonald

After backpacking her way around India, 21-year-old Sarah Macdonald decided that she hated this land of chaos and contradiction with a passion, and when an airport beggar read her palm and insisted she would come back one day - and for love - she vowed never to return. 
 
But twelve years later the prophecy comes true when her partner, ABC's South Asia correspondent, is posted to New Delhi, the most polluted city on earth. Having given up a blossoming radio career in Sydney to follow her new boyfriend to India, it seems like the ultimate sacrifice and it almost kills Sarah - literally. After being cursed by a sadhu smeared in human ashes, she nearly dies from double pneumonia. It's enough to send a rapidly balding atheist on a wild rollercoaster ride through India's many religions in search of the meaning of life and death. 
 
From the 'brain enema' of a meditation retreat in Dharamsala to the biggest Hindu festival on earth on the steps of the Ganges in Varanasi, and with the help of the Dalai Lama, a goddess of healing hugs and a couple of Bollywood stars - among many, many others - Sarah discovers a hell of a lot more.

Holy Cow!

An Indian Adventure

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure dome decree 
 
Kublai Khan lives on in the popular imagination thanks to these two lines of poetry by Coleridge. But the true story behind this legend is even more fantastic than the poem would have us believe. He inherited the second largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan. He promptly set about extending this into the biggest empire the world has ever seen, extending his rule from China to Iraq, from Siberia to Afghanistan. His personal domain covered sixty-percent of all Asia, and one-fifth of the world's land area. 
 
The West first learnt of this great Khan through the reports of Marco Polo. Kublai had not been born to rule, but had clawed his way to leadership, achieving power only in his 40s. He had inherited Genghis Khan's great dream of world domination. But unlike his grandfather he saw China and not Mongolia as the key to controlling power and turned Genghis' unwieldy empire into a federation. Using China's great wealth, coupled with his shrewd and subtle government, he created an empire that was the greatest since the fall of Rome, and shaped the modern world as we know it today. He gave China its modern-day borders and his legacy is that country's resurgence, and the superpower China of tomorrow.

Kublai Khan

Brad Newsham

'I am in exactly the right place, thinking, doing and feeling exactly the right things...' 
 
This was the affirmation that Brad Newsham repeated daily as he cycled alone across the Japanese Alps to Mount Fuji, free to wander wherever he chose. But back home in San Francisco, life hadn't been so rosy: his wife had met someone else and wanted a divorce. He tried everything to change her mind, eventually leaving his job and buying a one-way ticket to Asia in the hope that she would miss him. It worked...and then HE met someone else on a bus in Hong Kong. 
 
One of the first wave of Western backpackers to blaze a trail through China and Russia, Brad Newsham travelled from the neon-lit streets of Tokyo to the epic prairies of Mongolia in a journey that took him across Asia by bicycle, boat, bus and the Trans-Siberian railway. With its rich and fascinating cast of characters, ALL THE RIGHT PLACES is classic travel writing at its very best.

All The Right Places

When Peter Moore announced he was going to travel from London to his home in Sydney without boarding an aeroplane he was met with a resounding Why? The answer was perversity and a severe case of hippie envy - hippies had the best music, they had the best drugs, they had the best sex. But most of all, they had the best trips. Over the eight months (and twenty-five countries) that followed, Moore retraced the steps of many who had made the overland journey from London to the East circa 1967 with the knowledge that his funds were painfully inadequate and the chances of actually making it through places like the Balkans, Iran and China were, in a word, slim. 
THE WRONG WAY HOME is the hilarious account of this life-enhancing Grand Tour by means of bone-rattling bus rides, furnace-like trains and exorbitantly-priced taxis. Along the way, Moore took in the world's most expensive disco in Albania; the bombed out villages and military checkpoints of Croatia; the opium fields of Laos; student riots in Jakarta, and an all-night beach rave on a small island in southern Thailand. He describes the places - and the people he encountered there - with a mixture of awe, irreverence and self-deprecation. Striking a chord with all those travellers, young and old, who have stood where Moore stood, THE WRONG WAY HOME entertains and alarms those of us who love to read about off-the-beaten-track travel adventures but would never be fool enough to pack our rucksacks and go.

The Wrong Way Home

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