Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery, London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015, and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin from 2015 to 2018. His previous books include A History of the World in 100 Objects, Shakespeare's Restless World and Germany: Memories of a Nation, all available in Penguin and now between them translated into more than a dozen languages. In 2010, he was made a member of the Order of Merit, the UK's highest civil honour. In 2015 he was awarded the Goethe Medal and the German National Prize. In 2018 the radio series Living with the Gods received the Sandford Saint Martin Award for Religious Broadcasting.

Neil MacGregor

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Thomas Harding

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2015 
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016 
A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 
 
'A superb portrait of twentieth century Germany seen through the prism of a house which was lived in, and lost, by five different families. A remarkable book.' Tom Holland 
 
'Personal and panoramic, heart-wrenching yet uplifting, this is history at its most alive.' A.D. Miller 
 
'A passionate memoir.' Neil MacGregor 
_______________________________________ 
In 2013, Thomas Harding returned to his grandmother's house on the outskirts of Berlin which she had been forced to leave when the Nazis swept to power. What was once her 'soul place' now stood empty and derelict. A concrete footpath cut through the garden, marking where the Berlin Wall had stood for nearly three decades. 
 
In a bid to save the house from demolition, Thomas began to unearth the history of the five families who had lived there: a nobleman farmer, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned Nazi composer, a widow and her children and a Stasi informant. Discovering stories of domestic joy and contentment, of terrible grief and tragedy, and of a hatred handed down through the generations, a history of twentieth century Germany and the story of a nation emerged.

The House by the Lake

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

Neil Smith

From Neil Smith, author of the award-winning, internationally acclaimed story collection Bang Crunch, comes a dark but whimsical debut novel about starting over in the afterlife in the vein of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. 
 
When Oliver 'Boo' Dalrymple wakes up in heaven, the eighth-grade science geek thinks he died of a heart defect at his school. But soon after arriving in this hereafter reserved for dead thirteen-year-olds, Boo discovers he’s a 'gommer', a kid who was murdered. What’s more, his killer may also be in heaven. With help from his volatile classmate Johnny, Boo sets out to track down the mysterious Gunboy who cut short both their lives. 
 
In a heart-rending story written to his beloved parents, the odd but endearing Boo relates his astonishing heavenly adventures as he tests the limits of friendship, learns about forgiveness and, finally, makes peace with the boy he once was and the boy he can now be.

Rob Cowen

ONE OF BRITAIN'S FAVOURITE NATURE BOOKS AS FEATURED ON BBC's WINTERWATCH 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016 
 
'Bold and beautiful.' Robert Macfarlane 
 
'Sensitive, thoughtful and poetic ... leading us into a whole new way of looking at the world' Michael Palin 
 
'Touched by genius' John Lewis-Stempel 
 
'Absolutely mesmerizing, utterly beautiful and engrossing' Joanne Harris 
 
After moving from London to a new home in Yorkshire, and about to become a father for the first time, Rob Cowen finds himself in unfamiliar territory. Disoriented, hemmed in by winter and yearning for open space, he ventures out to a nearby edge-land: a pylon-slung tangle of wood, hedge, field, meadow and river that lies unclaimed and overlooked on the outskirts of town. 
 
Digging deeper into this lost landscape, he begins to uncover its many layers and lives – beast, bird, insect, plant and people – in kaleidoscopic detail. As the seasons change and the birth of his child draws closer, his transformative journey into the blurry space where human and nature meet becomes increasingly profound. In bringing this edge-land to life, Cowen offers both a both a unique portrait of people and place through time and an unforgettable exploration of the common ground we share with the natural world, the past and each other.

Common Ground

One of Britain’s Favourite Nature Books as featured on BBC’s Winterwatch

Dylan Jones

** Shortlisted for the NME Best Music Book Award 2018 ** 
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 
A HERALD BOOK OF THE YEAR 
AN IRISH INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'The definitive book on Bowie' The Times 
 
Drawn from a series of conversations between David Bowie and Dylan Jones across three decades, together with over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators - some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie - this oral history is an intimate portrait of a remarkable rise to stardom and one of the most fascinating lives of our time. 
 
Profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry, Bowie was a man of intense relationships that often came to abrupt ends. He was a social creature, equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra, and in Dylan Jones's telling - by turns insightful and salacious - we see as intimate a portrait as could possibly be drawn. 
 
Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones’s interviews with him across three decades, DAVID BOWIE is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time. 
 
***NOW REVISED AND EXPANDED***

David Bowie

A Life

James Ellroy

'There has never been a writer like James Ellroy.' Telegraph 
 
Los Angeles, December 6, 1941. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. War fever and race hate grip the city and the internment of Japanese-Americans begins. 
 
Following the hellish murder of a Japanese family, three men and one woman are summoned. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police. He's superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith - Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer and fledgling war profiteer. Kay Lake is a 21-year-old dilettante looking for adventure. Hideo Ashida is a brilliant police chemist and the only Japanese on the payroll. 
 
Four driven souls - rivals, lovers, history's pawns - thrown into an investigation which will not only rip them apart but take America to the edge of the abyss at a crucial moment in its history.

Perfidia

Alonso Cueto

Adrián Ormache, a high-flying lawyer with a beautiful wife and two daughters, leads a privileged and glamorous life in one of Lima’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. But when his mother dies, he discovers a letter amongst her possessions making shocking claims about her now long-dead husband, Adrián’s father – a commander in the army during the Peruvian Civil War of the 1980s. As well as being linked to atrocities committed against the ‘Shining Path’ guerrillas, it appears that he also kidnapped and kept a local girl, whose family now seeks retribution. 
 
Shocked out of his comfortable existence, Adrián becomes obsessed with finding the girl at the heart of the mystery, and sets out to face the harrowing realities of Peru’s recent past, and uncover the truth about his father.

The Blue Hour

John Bargh

‘John Bargh's Before You Know It moves our understanding of the mysteries of human behaviour one giant step forward. A brilliant and convincing book.’ – Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and David and Goliath 
 
How much of what we say, feel and do is under our conscious control? How much is not? And most crucial of all: if we understood how our unconscious worked – if we knew why we do what we do – could we finally, fundamentally, know ourselves? 
 
From checking a dating app to holding a cup of coffee or choosing who to vote for, our unconscious secretly governs everything we feel, think and do. In Before You Know It, Dr John Bargh – the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind – reveals the psychological forces that are at work behind the scenes as we go about our daily lives, and offers simple steps to improve your sleep, boost your memory and live better.

Before You Know It

The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do

John Niven

Kennedy Marr is a novelist from the old school. Irish, acerbic, and a borderline alcoholic and sex-addict, his mantra is drink hard, write hard and try to screw every woman you meet. 
 
He’s writing film scripts in LA, fucking, drinking and insulting his way through Californian society, but also suffering from writers block and unpaid taxes. Then a solution presents itself – Marr is to be the unlikely recipient of the W. F. Bingham Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Modern Literature, an award worth half a million pounds. But it does not come without a price: he must spend a year teaching at the English university where his ex-wife and estranged daughter now reside. 
 
As Kennedy acclimatises to the sleepy campus, inspiring revulsion and worship in equal measure, he’s forced to reconsider his precarious lifestyle. Incredible as it may seem, there might actually be a father and a teacher lurking inside this ‘preening, narcissistic, priapic, sociopath’. Or is there… 
 
Straight White Male is a no-holds-barred look into the mid-life crisis and the contemporary male sexual psyche. It is a brilliant new satire from one of Britain’s sharpest writers.

Straight White Male

Lauren Groff

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FATES AND FURIES AND MATRIX 
 
'Everything a reader might have expected from this gifted writer, and more' Stephen King 
 
'Bold and beautiful' Lorrie Moore 
 
'Pleasurably surreal' Guardian 
 
'Will give you paper cuts from turning pages' Marie Claire 
 
Willie Upton returns to her ancestral home of Templeton, New York after a disastrous affair with her married archaeology professor. 
 
The same day, Willie discovers a hard truth about her long-lost father's identity and a prehistoric monster is discovered in the nearby Lake Glimmerglass, bringing frenzy to the quiet town and her life. 
 
As Willie investigates her family tree, dark secrets come to light, past and present are blurred and old mysteries are finally put to rest. The Monsters of Templeton is an extraordinary novel by literary virtuoso Lauren Groff. 
 
'A vivid tale of unearthing past truths, horrors and lies' Good Housekeeping

The Monsters of Templeton

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

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

Jenni Fagan

ONE OF GRANTA MAGAZINE'S BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION, THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE FOR THE PANOPTICON and THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2021 
 
'One of the most stunning literary experiences I've had in years' Irvine Welsh 
 
'Dazzlingly ambitious' Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain 
 
'A gloriously transgressive novel' Ian Rankin 
 
1910, Edinburgh. Jessie, the devil's daughter, arrives on the doorstep of an imposing tenement building and knocks on a freshly painted wooden door. She has been sent by her father to bear a child for a wealthy couple, but, when things go wrong, she places a curse on the building and all who live there - and it lasts a century. 
 
Caught in the crossfire are the residents of 10 Luckenbooth Close, and they all have their own stories to tell. While the world outside is changing, inside, the curse creeps up all nine floors and through each door. Soon, the building's longest kept secret - the truth of what happened to Jessie - will finally be heard.

Luckenbooth

Nick Harkaway

'Gloriously exuberant and entertaining.' Guardian 
 
'A funny, moving and thought-provoking tale ... It's brilliant.' Independent on Sunday 
 
Sergeant Lester Ferris is a good man in need of a rest. He’s spent a lot of his life being shot at. He has no family, he’s nearly forty, burned out and about to be retired. 
 
The island of Mancreu is the perfect place for Lester to serve out his time – and the perfect place for shady business, too, hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: listening stations, money laundering operations, drug factories and deniable torture centres. None of which should be a problem, because Lester’s brief is to turn a blind eye. 
 
But Lester has made a friend: a brilliant, internet-addled street kid with a comic-book fixation who might, Lester hopes, become an adopted son. As Mancreu’s small society tumbles into violence, the boy needs Lester to be more than just an observer. He needs him to be a hero.

Tigerman

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

Steven Carroll

'That exotic tribe was us. And the time we have taken, our moment.' 
 
1970, Glenroy. One summer's morning Rita is awakened by a dream of her husband, only to look out onan empty bed.It's been years sinceVic moved north and left her life, but her house holds memories and part of her remains tied to a different time. As their son Michael enters the tender and challenging realm of first love, he too discovers that innocence can only be sustained for so long. 
 
As they prepare to celebrate Glenroy's 100th anniversary, the residents of the Melbourne suburb look back on a time of radical change. The time has come for them to consider the real meaning of progress - both as a community and in their personal lives. 
 
The Time We Have Taken is a powerful and poignant look at the extraordinary that lies within the ordinary, from a writer of breathtaking prose.

The Time We Have Taken

Tara Westover

THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER 
 
A BETWEEN THE COVERS PICK 
 
Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE 
 
'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day 
'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill 
'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times 
 
Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old. 
 
At sixteen, to escape her father's radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it. 
 
'It will make your heart soar' Guardian 
'Jaw-dropping and inspiring, everyone should read this book' Stylist 
'Absolutely superb . . . so gripping I could hardly breathe' Sophie Hannah

Educated

The international bestselling memoir

You thought you could leave the past behind. 
 
Think again. 
 
 
Donnie Miller counts himself lucky. Living in a beautiful, spacious house in the wild and remote landscape of central Canada, he spends his days writing for the local newspaper, working on a film script, and acting as house-husband. After a troubled and impoverished upbringing in Scotland, he now has all he wants: a caring wife, a bright and happy son, a generous father-in-law. As the brutal northern winter begins to bite, he can sit back and enjoy life. 
 
But his peace is soon broken. There are noises in the nearby woods, signs of some mysterious watcher. When the family dog disappears, Donnie makes a horrifying discovery. Is it wolves, as the police suspect, or something far more dangerous, far darker? What secrets has Donnie been keeping? And why does he have the terrible sense that his dream was never going to last? 
 
A taut, shocking and visceral novel that will leave you gasping for breath, Cold Hands is the first thriller by the remarkable John Niven.

Cold Hands

Tim Pears

Leonard and Rosemary Cannon summon their middle-aged offspring, along with partners and children, to the family home in the Welsh Marches for the Christmas holiday. As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings - Rodney, Jonny and Gwen - are surprised when they are invited to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents. 
 
Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary's thirteen-year-old grandson, Theo, who observes how from these innocent beginnings age-old fissures open up in the relationships of those around him. Looking back at this Christmas gathering from his own middle-age - a narrator at once nostalgic and naïve - Theo Cannon remembers his imperious grandmother Rosemary, alpha-male uncle Jonny, abominable twin cousins Xan and Baz; he recalls his love for his grandfather Leonard and the burgeoning feelings for his cousin Holly. And he asks himself the question: if a single family cannot solve the problem of what it bequeaths to future generations, then what chance does a whole society have of leaving the world intact?

Disputed Land

Kevin Ashton

WINNER OF THE 800-CEO-READ BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015 
 
In the vein of Susan Cain's QUIET and Malcolm Gladwell's DAVID AND GOLIATH, HOW TO FLY A HORSE is a smart, empowering book that dispels the myths around genius and creativity. 
 
There is a myth about how something new comes to be; that geniuses have dramatic moments of insight where great things and thoughts are born whole. Symphonies are composed complete. Science is accomplished with eureka shrieks. Businesses are built by magic touch. 
 
The myth is wrong. Anyone can create. 
 
Acclaimed technology pioneer Kevin Ashton takes us behind the scenes of creation to reveal the true process of discovery and how ‘new’ comes to be. From Archimedes to Apple, from Kandinsky to the Coke can, from the Wright brothers – who set out to ‘fly a horse’ – to Woody Allen, he exposes the seemingly unremarkable individuals, gradual steps, multiple failures and countless ordinary and often uncredited acts that led to our most astounding breakthroughs.

How To Fly A Horse

The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery

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

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

___________________ 
6 JULY, 1972 
 
David Bowie appears on Top of the Pops for a third time. 
 
His quiff is big, bold, and the colour of fire. His make-up is lavish. His jumpsuit is a wild burst of colourful patterns, like a fluorescent fish skin. He carries a brand-new blue acoustic guitar. There's excitement, mixed with incredulity. And then he begins to play. 
 
It's a moment that will change the world of music forever. 
 
This is Ziggy Stardust, what would become Bowie's most famous persona. It's an instant seismic shift in the zeitgeist. This one performance embeds Ziggy Stardust into the nation's consciousness, and music will never be the same again. 
 
In When Ziggy Played Guitar, Dylan Jones looks back at one of the most influential moments in pop history,the birth of an icon, and the myriad unexpected ways that David Bowie reshaped pop culture.

When Ziggy Played Guitar

David Bowie and Four Minutes that Shook the World

David Bowie, The Man Who Changed The World

Tess Callahan

April and Oliver are soul mates, the attraction between them has always been palpable. But as the years have passed this once inseparable couple have become strangers. Only after the sudden death of April's brother do their wildly different lives collide once again. Oliver, the responsible, newly engaged law student, finds himself drawn ever closer to the reckless, mystifying April - and cracks begin to appear in his carefully constructed life. 
 
Even as Oliver attempts to rescue his childhood friend from her grief, her menacing boyfriend, and herself, it is obvious that Oliver has some secrets of his own - secrets he has never shared with anyone. April alone knows, and her reappearance derails him. 
 
But is it April's life that is unravelling, or his own? And will their magnetic attraction for one another ever lead to happiness? Or are they better apart?

April & Oliver

There they are, still as a photograph, listening for the distant thud of the sun as it prepares to drop from the sky... 
 
On a hot summer's night, a family of three are off to a party in their bristling suburbia. But nothing is as it seems and soon we are walking with them through the past lives of a bully, a drunk and a disaffected youth. 
 
As the story of the neighbourhood unfolds the old and the new, diesel and steam, town and country all collide - and nobody will be left unaffected. 
 
The Art of the Engine Driver is a luminous and evocative take on ordinary suburban lives told with an extraordinary power and depth.

The Art of the Engine Driver

Barry Unsworth

It is the spring of 1767, two years after the events of Barry Unsworth’s Booker Prize-winning novel Sacred Hunger. Erasmus Kemp, the son of a Liverpool slave ship owner, has had the rebellious sailors of his father’s ship brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. However, Sullivan, the Irish fiddler, has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing and scamming as he goes. 
 
In London, Kemp is looking to invest some of his fortune on Britain’s new industries: coal-mining and steel. When he receives a tip about some mines for sale in East Durham, Kemp sees the business opportunity he has been waiting for, and he too makes his way north, to the very same village that Sullivan is heading for…

The Quality of Mercy

David Vann

David Vann has loved boats all his life. So when his academic career seems to be stuck in the doldrums, he leaps at the opportunity to start an educational charter business, teaching creative writing workshops aboard a sailboat. But a trip to Turkey seems him dreaming bigger - and before he knows it, he is at the helm of his own ninety-foot boat, running charters along the Turkish coast. 
 
And here his troubles begin. Sinking deep into debt, and encountering everything from a lost rudder to freak storms, Vann is on the verge of losing everything - including his life. 
 
Part high-seas adventure, part journey of self-discovery, A Mile Down is a gripping and unforgettable story of struggle and redemption, by a writer at the top of his game.

A Mile Down

The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea

Liz Moore

'A staggeringly beautiful meditation on love, legacy and the emotional necessities that make life worth living.' Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife 
 
BOSTON, 1980 
 
Ada Sibelius is twelve years old and home-schooled. Her days are spent in a lab with her father David, a computer science professor, and the brilliant minds of his colleagues. 
 
David is widely regarded as one of best in his field. That is, until he starts to forget things. 
 
When David is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Ada’s world falls apart. But when he leaves a floppy disk for his beloved daughter, she has no idea that the coding within it holds the key to a past that her father refused to talk about. Navigating her teenage years without his guidance, will Ada be able to piece together the father she lost?

The Unseen World

Carys Bray

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, now she’s not sure. She’d like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories. 
 
Darren has done his best. He's studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want - everything he can think of, at least - to be happy. 
 
What Clover wants is answers. This summer, she thinks she can find them in the second bedroom, which is full of her mother's belongings. Volume isn't important, what she is looking for is essence; the undiluted bits: a collection of things that will tell the full story of her mother, her father and who she is going to be. 
 
But what you find depends on what you're searching for.

The Museum of You

WINNER OF THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2015 AND THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2015 
 
Meet the Bradleys. 
 
In lots of ways, they’re a normal family: 
Zippy is sixteen and in love for the first time; Al is thirteen and dreams of playing for Liverpool. 
 
And in some ways, they’re a bit different: 
Seven-year-old Jacob believes in miracles. So does his dad. 
 
But these days their mum doesn’t believe in anything, not even getting out of bed. 
 
How does life go on, now that Issy is gone?

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