Nigella Lawson has written eleven bestselling cookery books including the classics How to Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess – the book that inspired a whole new generation of bakers. These books, and her TV series, have made her a household name around the world. 
 
www.nigella.com 
@Nigella_Lawson

Nigella Lawson

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Richard Beard

'Read this book' Alastair Campbell 
 
'A really wonderful book' Nigella Lawson via Twitter 
 
In 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron. 
 
He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show. 
 
A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge? 
 
'The most important book I've read this year' Adam Rutherford

Sad Little Men

Inside the secretive world that shaped Boris Johnson

The revealing book about the world that shaped Boris Johnson

Private Schools and the Ruin of England

Anna Del Conte

'The best Italian food writer around...anyone who loves food - reading about it, cooking it, eating it - should have this book. I kiss the ground she walks on' Nigella Lawson 
 
In this book Anna Del Conte has collected together the best of her delicious recipes along with tips, anecdotes and reminiscences about her life in Italy and London. Packed with inspiring information from the best way to make a tomato sauce and a tiramisu to more unusual dishes such as nettle risotto and chestnut mousse, each chapter is devoted to a different ingredient. 
 
As well as explaining the basics and introducing more surprising recipes, Anna includes special additional chapters describing traditional regional and historical menus. So whether you want to eat tagliatelle with ham and peas or rabbit with rosemary and tomato, a Roman Late Supper or a Renaissance Dinner, you will find what you need here.

Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes

The Best of Anna Del Conte

Aoife Abbey

An insightful, tender and inspiring memoir that explores the reality of life on the NHS front line. 
 
 ‘Brilliant, compelling… A hugely life-affirming book’ Mail on Sunday 
 
 Grief. Anger. Joy. Fear. Distraction. Disgust. Hope. 
 
 All emotions we expect to encounter over our lifetime. But what if this was every day? And what if your ability to manage them was the difference between life and death? 
 
 For Aoife Abbey, a doctor in intensive care, these experiences are part of the job – from grief when you make a potentially fatal mistake to joy when the ward unexpectedly breaks into song. Seven Signs of Life is Abbey’s extraordinary account of what it means to be alive and how it feels to care for a living. 
 
 ‘Sensitive, honest and, yes, brave… Compulsive reading’ Nigella Lawson 
 
 ‘Heartfelt, honest, illuminating and wise’ Julia Samuel, author of This Too Shall Pass

Seven Signs of Life

Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor

Tim Spector

'Life-changing' DAVINA McCALL 
'A must-read' Dr RUPY AUJLA 
'Fascinating' NIGELLA LAWSON 
'Empowering' LIZ EARLE 
 
**AS HEARD ON THE DIARY OF A CEO PODCAST** 
 
**THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE FOOD FOR LIFE COOKBOOK** 
 
Food is our greatest ally for good health, but the question of what to eat in the age of ultra-processed food has never seemed so complicated. 
Drawing on cutting-edge research and personal insights, Professor Tim Spector offers clear answers in this definitive, easy-to-follow guide to the new science of eating well. 
 
Empowering and practical, Food for Life is nothing less than a new approach to how to eat - for our health and the health of the planet. 
 
‘No fads, no nonsense, just practical, science-based advice on how to eat well’ Daily Mail, Books of the Year 
 
'A rigorously academic book that welcomes the layperson with open arms' The Times 
 
** A THE TIMES and SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR** 
** WINNER OF THE FORTNUM & MASON SPECIAL AWARD **

Food for Life

Your Guide to the New Science of Eating Well

A wonderful, evocative memoir by the woman who first brought Italian cooking to Britain and fuelled a culinary revolution. 
 
'Anyone who cooks should have Anna's books, it is the simple truth' Nigella Lawson 
 
Born in Milan, Anna del Conte grew up in Italy in a gentler time. When war came to Italy everything changed: her family had to abandon their apartment and the city for the countryside, where the peasants still ate well, but life was dangerous... As a teenager, Anna became used to throwing herself into a ditch as the strafing planes flew over, and was imprisoned, twice. Her story is informed and enlivened by the food and memories of her native land - from lemon granita to wartime risotto with nettles, from vitello tonnato to horsemeat roll, from pastas to porcini. 
 
Anna arrived in England in 1949 to a culinary wasteland. She married an Englishman and stayed on, and while bringing up her children, she wrote books which inspired a new generation of cooks. This is a memoir of a life seen through food - each chapter rounded off with mouthwatering recipes.

Risotto With Nettles

A Memoir with Food

Zahra Hankir

'Fascinating' Nigella Lawson 
'Awe-inspiring' Funmi Fetto 
'A treat to read' Kassia St Clair 
 
A Sunday Times Style Barometer and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick 
 
For centuries, humans have been drawn to lining our eyes. The aesthetic trademark of icons from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools: ancient royals and Gen Z influencers alike have harnessed its power. 
 
Through Zahra Hankir&rsquo;s kohl-lined eyes, this ubiquitous product becomes proof of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space. Exploring intimate conversations &ndash; with Chadian nomads, Japanese geisha, Indian dancers, New York&rsquo;s drag queens and more &ndash; Eyeliner embraces the profound significance of its namesake, especially among communities of colour. 
 
What emerges is a delightful and unexpectedly moving journey through streets and stages around the world, and a stirring reclamation of a key piece of our collective history. 
 
Featuring stunning portrait illustrations by Mercedes deBellard

Eyeliner

A Cultural History

Paul Kalanithi

** SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER** 
 
 'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal 
 
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. 
 
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. 
 
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? 
 
Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both. 
 
 'A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living' Nigella Lawson

When Breath Becomes Air

The ultimate moving life-and-death story

Merlin Sheldrake

The smash-hit Sunday Times bestseller that will transform your understanding of our planet and life itself. 
 
'Astonishing ... it seems somehow to tip the natural world upside down' Observer 
 
'Completely mind-blowing ... reads like an adventure story' Sunday Times 
 
*WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY BOOK PRIZE 2021* 
*WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRTITING 2021* 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021* 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021* 
 
The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them. They can change our minds, heal our bodies and even help us avoid environmental disaster; they are metabolic masters, earth-makers and key players in most of nature's processes. In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake takes us on a mind-altering journey into their spectacular world, and reveals how these extraordinary organisms transform our understanding of our planet and life itself. 
 
'Dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing' Robert Macfarlane 
'Urgent, astounding and necessary' Helen Macdonald 
'Gorgeous!' Margaret Atwood (on Twitter) 
'Wonderful' Nigella Lawson 
'This book is like one surprise after another' David Byrne 
'Uplifting' Jeanette Winterson 
 
* A Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Times, Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday, BBC Science Focus and Time Book of the Year *

Entangled Life

How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

David Chang

The celebrated chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix's Ugly Delicious gets uncomfortably real in his New York Times bestselling memoir. 
 
In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in Manhattan's East Village. 
 
Its young chef-owner, David Chang, served ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. 
 
Eat a Peach chronicles Chang's journey to becoming one of the most influential chefs of his generation. Laying bare his mistakes and feelings of otherness and inadequacy, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life... 
 
'Full of humour and honesty, it provides nourishment and a sense of solidarity' New York Times 
 
For fans of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and Nigel Slater's Toast

Eat A Peach

A Chef's Memoir

A Memoir

Nigel Hamilton

The twentieth century has been called 'the American Century'. Not since the days of the Roman emperors has there been such a succession of rulers holding the fate of the world in their hands. Now, award-winning biographer Nigel Hamilton gives us the lives of the twelve men, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, who presided over America's imperial fortunes - the good, the bad and the truly awful. 
 
How did these American Caesars reach the White House? What were the challenges they faced when they got there and how did they meet them? And who were these men in their private lives? 
 
Compulsively readable, packed with unforgettable characters as well as stories, lessons and revelations, American Caears is essential reading for our times.

American Caesars

Lives of the US Presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush

Graeme Lawson

Wonderfully engaging, expansive and ambitious, Sound Tracks tells the history of our relationship with music in sixty detective stories, each focusing on the discovery of a musical instrument - or its fragments - in archaeological digs around the world. Taking us from the present day - finding a 100-year-old wax cylinder recording on a flea market - all the way back to the dawn of time - the thrilling discovery of a prehistoric flute - long-lost music is itself reconstructed as we enter the worlds of those who created it. 
 
We feel the delight of a child in Peru in 700 AD, playing with a water-filled pot designed to chirp like a bird; we appreciate the difficult task of a soldier sending signals by trumpet to the next watchtower on Hadrian's Wall; we can almost hear the sounds of the sixty-four bells buried in a tomb in China in the 5th century BC. 
 
Graeme Lawson takes us on a grand tour of the world's greatest musical discoveries, revealing that music is part of human DNA - not just in its role as pastime, entertainment or religious expression but also as a medium in which we commemorate our pasts, communicate with each other, and shape our identities, relationships and communities. 
 
Written with verve and passion and brimming with astonishing insights, Sound Tracks is an enthralling alternative history of humanity in which the silences of the past are filled with a wonderful treasure hoard of forgotten sounds and voices.

Sound Tracks

A Musical Detective Story

Uncovering Our Musical Past

Laura Cumming

WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 
 
Selected as a Book of the Year in the Herald 
 
In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velázquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile. 
 
Fusing detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velázquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before.

The Vanishing Man

In Pursuit of Velazquez

Daren King

Nine-year-old Tom Boler comes home one day to find his mother gone. What happens next is his story as he negotiates a new, perilous, adult world. He is visited by Uncle Dustman, who collects rubbish bags and is obsessed with donkeys; he is adopted briefly by Primula Spatula, a posh dipsomaniac, and has a run-in with bad boys in the park before being retrieved by the mysterious Boxy, who lives with Roxy. Tom becomes part of their strange family with all its secrets and quickly meets their friends - including the sinister Robert Tablet: the one with the bags of 'spangles' that make everything go peculiar. Then Tom's real adventures begin. 
 
In this extraordinary prequel to Boxy an Star, Daren King looks obliquely at the inner-city world of ecstasy, sexual promiscuity and sexual confusion, class conflict and poverty - all through the wide-open eyes of nine-year-old Tom: very innocent, but very eager to try it all.

Tom Boler

Amanda Gorman

The breakout poetry collection by Sunday Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman 
 
&lsquo;Poetry so alive you want to hold it and protect it&rsquo; Malala Yousafzai 
 
The luminous poetry collection captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, these poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future. 
 
&lsquo;A new collection full of hope and healing from the young American poet who electrified the world&rsquo; Guardian 
 
&lsquo;Reading these poems, I feel at once haunted, heartened and formidably ministered to&rsquo; Tracy K. Smith 
 
&lsquo;The liberating force of the stories these poems tell about our resilience and survival showcases a powerful griot for our times&rsquo; Oprah Daily

Call Us What We Carry

From the presidential inaugural poet

Grayson Perry

Wendy Jones

Every inch of Grayson's childhood bedroom was covered with pictures of aeroplanes, and every surface with models. Fantasy took over his life, in a world of battles ruled by his teddy bear, Alan Measles. He grew up. And in 2003, an acclaimed ceramic artist, he accepted the Turner Prize as his alter-ego Clare, wearing his best dress, with a bow in his hair. 
 
Now he tells his own story, his voice beautifully caught by his friend, the writer Wendy Jones. Early childhood in Chelmsford, Essex is a rural Eden that ends abruptly with the arrival of his stepfather, leading to constant swerving between his parents' houses, and between boys' and women's clothes. But as Grayson enters art college and discovers the world of London squats and New Romanticism, he starts to find himself. At last he steps out as a potter and transvestite.

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Girl

Helen Rappaport

A TRUE STORY OF LIES, BEAUTY AND BLACKMAIL IN VICTORIAN LONDON 
_________________________ 
Madame Rachel had everything. 
 
A Mayfair address; the title of 'purveyor to Her Majesty the Queen'; a shop full of exotic, expensive creams and potions; and a clientele of the aristocratic, the rich - and the gullible. 
 
Little did they suspect that Madame Rachel had once been a poor fish-fryer in a disease-ridden, grubby corner of Victorian London. Her shop in New Bond Street lured her wealthy clients in their droves, enticed by the promise of eternal beauty. What they found there was a con-woman and fraudster who made a career out of lies, treachery and the desperate hopes of women wanting to be 'beautiful for ever'. 
 
Beautiful For Ever is a thrilling tale of love affairs, scandal, blackmail, high-profile court cases, suicide and fraud, with the extraordinary Madame Rachel right at the centre of it all.

Beautiful For Ever

Madame Rachel of Bond Street - Cosmetician, Con-Artist and Blackmailer

Jehanne Wake

The Caton sisters were Southern belles descended from the first settlers in Maryland, and were expected to 'marry a Plantation'. But they were independent, fascinated by politics, clever with money, romantic in mood. Arriving In London in 1816 the three sisters forged their own destinies in the face of intense prejudice, against both Americans and Catholics. The widowed Marianne shocked the world by marrying the Wellington's wayward elder brother, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and appearing as a 'Catholic Yankee' among the Protestant Anglo-Irish. Louisa eventually became Duchess of Leeds, and a friend of Queen Victoria, while the sphere in which Bess shone was the stockmarket, as queen of speculators. 
 
Based on intimate unpublished letters, Sisters of Fortune is a brilliant portrait of love between sisters, a most unusual story of money and power and a fascinating glimpse of how these extraordinary women influenced the social and international relations of their time.

Sisters of Fortune

The First American Heiresses to Take England by Storm

Paul Strathern

A dazzling piece of Italian history of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo 
 
Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. 
 
Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns. 
 
‘A great overview of one family's centuries-long role in changing the face of Europe’ Irish Independent

The Medici

Godfathers of the Renaissance

Lorenzo de' Medici: 
The embodiment of Florence's most powerful family, a brutal man who ruled the city with an iron fist, whilst protecting it from the shifting mire of Italian politics. 
 
Fra Girolamo Savonarola: 
An unprepossessing provincial monk whose sermons, filled with Old Testament fury, resonated with the disenfranchised population of the city. 
 
The battle between these two men would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events - including a mighty foreign invasion, trial by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths - featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.

Death in Florence

The Medici, Savonarola and the Battle for the Soul of Man

Jon Canter

For Richard and Sarah, leaving the rat-race of London for the sleepy village of Worth feels like a dream come true. But their new life isn’t quite as idyllic as it first seems. The cottage is tiny and the neighbours are excruciating. Soon they find themselves reverse-commuting back to London on the weekends, just to be with people they like. Then Catherine moves in next door. Smart, sophisticated, beautiful Catherine seems like the answer to their prayers. But will their new best friend turn out to be their enemy?

Worth

Vesna Goldsworthy

'A piercingly evocative East-West love story' The Times 
 
 
This is a story of East and West. A story of love, betrayal, and lost illusions... 
 
The end of the Cold War seems unimaginable for Milena, a Red Princess trapped in a lifetime of limitless luxury. 
 
Yet when she meets Jason, a confident British poet, it's not long before she's secretly planning her escape to Britain. 
 
1980s London defies her privileged expectations. And when she discovers Jason's concept of freedom confronts her deepest-held beliefs, the very ideas of family and state come into question... 
 
 
'A wonderful, perfectly-pitched novel: full of delightful intrigue and wry insight about the human predicament and its unique tensions' William Boyd 
 
'Witty, poignant and full of surprises - every detail of this cross-cultural story of love and disillusionment rings true' Clare Chambers

Iron Curtain

A Love Story

Phoebe McIntosh

'A must-read... compulsively timely novel' Stylist 
 
When Layla and Andy first meet, they can't believe they have the same surname. It feels like fate… 
 
Sera, Layla’s best friend, has her doubts about Andy. As the couple fall deeper in love, Sera becomes more and more vocal about Layla settling down with a white boy. And then, only a few weeks before their wedding, Layla makes a devastating discovery – could their families be linked in the worst possible way? 
 
What seemed like a fairy-tale romance is rapidly derailed as Layla begins to uncover parts of her history and identity that she had never imagined – or, perhaps, had simply learnt to ignore. 
 
And now, she faces an impossible choice. 
 
**A STYLIST UNMISSABLE BOOK FOR 2024** 
 
‘A warm, sweet love story, and a thought-provoking examination of the British slave trade and its legacy’ MARIAN KEYES 
 
'I loved this book' JACQUELINE CROOKS, author of Fire Rush 
 
'So kind and smart and clear-eyed' HOLLY GRAMAZIO, author of The Husbands 
 
READERS LOVE DOMINOES: 
‘Tender, thought-provoking and hard-hitting’ 
‘Kept me second guessing how things would turn out until the very end’ 
‘Incredibly thought-provoking’ 
‘Such an important novel’ 
‘I laughed, I cried, I learned A LOT’ 
‘So much more than a love story’

Dominoes

Layne Fargo

To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession. 
 
‘Perfect if you’re a fan of Daisy Jones and the Six’ Cosmopolitan 
‘Brilliant… will keep you guessing until its very last page’ Jodi Picoult 
'A delight - I was completely hooked' Sophie Cousens 
 
 
***** READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THE FAVOURITES***** 
‘A true gold medal 5-star book’ 
‘Forever changed me’ 
‘Completely captivating’ 
‘Spectacular drama’ 
‘My book of 2025 – already’ 
‘Get ready to be obsessed’ 
 
The whole world was obsessed with Kat and Heath. 
 
Childhood sweethearts turned Olympic champions, they captivated fans with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style and rollercoaster relationship – on and off the ice. 
 
Until that fateful day. As the world watched, the unthinkable happened. 
 
Everyone saw it. 
 
Nobody knows the truth. 
 
But that’s about to change. 
 
NOW INCLUDES A BONUS STORY TOLD FROM HEATH'S PERSPECTIVE

The Favourites

Roy Hattersley

William Cavendish, the father of the first Earl, dissolved monasteries for Henry VIII. Bess, his second wife, was gaoler-companion to Mary Queen of Scots during her long imprisonment in England. Arbella Stuart, their granddaughter, was a heartbeat away from the throne of England and their grandson, the Lord General of the North, fought to save the crown for Charles I. 
 
With the help of previously unpublished material from the Chatsworth archives, The Devonshires reveals how the dynasty made and lost fortunes, fought and fornicated, built great houses, patronised the arts and pioneered the railways, made great scientific discoveries, and, in the end, came to terms with changing times.

The Devonshires

The Story of a Family and a Nation

Belinda Jack

'George Sand' (Aurore Dupin, 1804-1876) was France's bestselling writer, rivalled in her time only by Victor Hugo. She was at the centre of French intellectual and artistic life: her circle included Liszt and Delacroiz, Blazac and Flaubert. Yet she was known as much for her excessive life as for her plays, stories and enduring novels like Indiana, Lelia and Mauprat. 
 
The daughter of a prostitute and an aristocrat, Sand grew up acutely aware of social injustice and prejudice. Convent-educated, she became a mischievous, flamboyant rebel: her long, troubled romance with Chopin was just one of many affairs with well-known figures, but her most desperate love was for a beautiful actress.

George Sand

Paolo Cognetti

The remote alpine village of Fontana Fredda lives by the seasons. These quiet, complex rhythms appeal to Fausto, who has left the city of Milan behind, and with it his relationship. He takes a job as chef in a little restaurant and entrusts himself to new beginnings. 
 
Silvia is also seeking change: her sights are on the glaciers where, she has read, climbing a thousand metres towards the sky is equivalent to travelling ten times the same distance to the north. She is in search of her personal North Pole. 
 
When Fausto and Silvia meet one night, their story begins: a tender story of love and renewal; of the community that sustains them; and of lives humbled by the implacable strength and beauty of the mountains. 
 
As intimate in focus as it is epic in scope, The Lovers is a luminous meditation on our quest to understand our place in one another's lives, and in the magnificence of the world around us.

The Lovers

Alan Warner

The Sopranos are back: out of school and out in the world, gathered in Gatwick to plan a super-cheap last-minute holiday reunion. Kay, Kylah, Manda, Rachel and Finn are joined by Finn's equally gorgeous friend Ava and are ready to go on the rampage. 
 
Will it be Benidorm or Magaluf, Paris or Las Vegas? One thing is certain: the girls will have a hell of a time getting there. Pitch perfect, darkly comic and brimming with life - in all its squalor, rage, tears and laughter - this is an unforgettable story of female friendship. 
 
Longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

The Stars in the Bright Sky

Rosemary Ashton

142 Strand was the home of the brilliant, unconventional young publisher John Chapman. All the daring and avant-garde writers and thinkers of Victorian London gathered here, among them Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray; Americans like Emerson and refugees from revolutionary Europe like Mazzini. In 1851 Chapman brought Marian Evans - the future George Eliot - to London where her arrival caused rows in the household, which included Chapman's wife and also his mistress. 
 
The Strand was packed with booksellers, magazine publishers, theatres, clubs, and quack doctors. Only a short distance away were Westminster, the Houses of Parliament and the disreputable pornographers of Holywell street. Chapman's circle touched all these worlds, and the vivid story of these unconventional lives and unorthodox views - marvellously told by Rosemary Ashton - takes us to the heart of Victorian culture, uncovering its surprising energy, its doubts and arguments, and, above all, its passionate reforming spirit.

142 Strand

A Radical Address in Victorian London

Colin Thubron

**TOP TEN BESTSELLER** 
 
'I would rather read Colin Thubron than any other travel writer alive' John Simpson 
 
 Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world's mountains - holy to one fifth of humanity. Isolated beyond the central Himalayas, its summit has never been scaled, but for centuries the mountain has been ritually circled by Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims. 
 
 Colin Thubron joins these pilgrims, after an arduous trek from Nepal, through the high passes of Tibet, to the magical lakes beneath the slopes of Kailas itself. He talks to secluded villagers and to monks in their decaying monasteries; he tells the stories of exiles and of eccentric explorers from the West. 
 
 Yet he is also walking on a pilgrimage of his own. Having recently witnessed the death of the last of his family, his trek around the great mountain awakes an inner landscape of love and grief, restoring precious fragments of his own past.

To a Mountain in Tibet

John Burnside

With wit, precision and grace, John Burnside's second memoir traces the aftershocks of a troubled childhood into troubled adulthood. 
 
With a new introduction by Sarah Perry 
 
‘Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched’ Andrew O’Hagan 
 
In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a ‘Surbiton of the mind.’ But the suburbs are not quite as normal as he had imagined, and he relapses into chaos. 
 
He encounters a homicidal office worker who is obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and Petula Clark, an old lover, with whom he reprises a troubled, masochistic relationship and, finally, the seemingly flesh-and-blood embodiments of all his private phantoms, as he drifts further into unreality. 
 
The second of John Burnside’s extraordinary trilogy of memoirs, Waking Up in Toytown is the story of one man’s search for sanity – but also the story of love that outgrows its restraints and a scorching enquiry into the soul, from one of our greatest contemporary writers. 
 
‘Burnside’s memoir deserves to become a classic. Has anyone written about the direct experience of mental illness with such scrupulous observation and wit?’ Daily Express

Waking Up in Toytown

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