Search results for ""Profile Books Ltd""

A gritty, dark tale of infectious disease gone wrong - the timely graphic novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Val McDermid, stunningly illustrated by Kathryn Briggs 'A brilliant and timely story, told with McDermid's verve, style and passion. I couldn't stop turning the pages, even when I could barely take the tension. Wonderful.' Denise Mina It's the summer solstice weekend, and 150,000 people descend on a farm in the northeast of England for an open-air music festival. At first, a spot of rain seems to be the only thing dampening the fun - until a mystery bug appears. Before long, the illness is spreading at an electrifying speed and seems resistant to all antibiotics. Can journalist Zoe Meadows track the outbreak to its source, and will a cure be found before the disease becomes a pandemic? A heart-racing thriller, Resistance imagines a nightmare pandemic that seems only too credible in the wake of COVID-19. Number one bestseller and queen of crime Val McDermid has teamed up with illustrator Kathryn Briggs to create a masterful graphic novel. 'One of today's most accomplished crime writers' Literary Review 'A powerful, unique look at the benign origins of catastrophe' Kirkus Reviews

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'Kind, realistic and genuinely helpful' Observer 'Bravo on the publication of this witty, wise guide to solo working' Alice Lascelles 'Filled to the brim with advice . . . Such a brilliant book' Emma Gannon Whether by choice or circumstance, as a freelancer or a company employee working from home, more of us are becoming solo workers than ever before. But once you've made the leap, how to do you actually work well in isolation? And how can you thrive while working alone? Picking up where the freelancer bibles stop, Solo addresses what we gain but also miss when we shift from the structure of an office environment to the solitary confines of our homes or studios. Blending the latest research in psychology, economics and social science with guided self-examination and more than ten years of freelance experience, Rebecca Seal shows you how to stay resilient, productive and focused in a company of one. Practical and inspiring, she also explores the idea of meaningful work and helps you define your own success.

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** WINNER OF THE CRIME & THRILLER BRITISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ** * THE PHENOMENAL SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE QUEEN OF COSY CRIME * * LONGLISTED FOR THE THEAKSTON OLD PECULIAR CRIME NOVEL AWARD * A SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022 A TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF 2022 A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2022 A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022 'Every page is a joy. The queen of unreliable narrators' SUNDAY TIMES 'Brilliant - a mind-bending, heartwarming mystery not to be missed' OBSERVER 'She's an absolute master of what she does' RICHARD COLES Can you crack the Twyford Code? Edith Twyford was once a world-famous children's author, but now her only legacy is the rumoured existence of the Twyford Code: a series of clues hidden in her books leading to... what? No one knows - but that hasn't stopped the speculation. Steve Smith can trace nearly all the bad things in his life back to Edith Twyford. As a child he found one of her books, covered in strange symbols. He showed it to his teacher, Miss Iles, who was convinced it held the key to the code. Within weeks Miss Iles had disappeared, and Steve has no idea if she is dead or alive - or if she was right. Now he's determined to find out. But the Twyford Code hides secrets some would do anything to possess, and Steve isn't the only one on its trail. The race is on to solve the mystery of the century. Could you get there first? The top ten bestselling cosy crime sensation of the summer from the author of The Appeal, perfect for fans of Richard Osman and S. J. Bennett.

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We all live online now, but what does that mean in IRL? How do strange subcultures on reddit affect our local shopping centres, what do night gyms owe to Twitter, and where can we really go to get some decent sleep? Our every move online is watched, but can we see ourselves? In these wide-ranging, witty essays, Roisin Kiberd offers immersive insight into the strange worlds, habits and people who have grown up with the internet, and shows the way our world is changing to fit the online fever-dream. Unsettling, clear-sighted and perversely fun, she traces the lines between Netflix and nap hotels, vaporwave music and camgirls, self-optimisation and insomnia, dating apps and a grand unified theory of Monster Energy Drinks. As well as holding up the zeitgeist for scrutiny, she turns an equally frank eye on her own life online, and asks what we have gained, what we have lost, and what we have given willingly away in exchange for this connected world.

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** AN INSTANT TIMES BESTSELLER ** ** A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR ** ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD ** ** LONGLISTED FOR THE THEAKSTON OLD PECULIAR CRIME NOVEL AWARD ** 'A TRULY GRIPPING READ' - GUARDIAN 'FABULOUS, A DELIGHT' - S.G. MACLEAN 'A FINE ADVENTURE REMINISCENT OF PATRICK O'BRIAN' - SUNDAY TIMES This is the secret report of Laurence Jago. Unwilling spy. Reluctant sailor. Accidental detective. New Year 1795, and Laurence Jago is aboard the Tankerville mail ship, en route to Philadelphia. Laurence is travelling undercover, supposedly as a journalist's assistant. But his real mission is to protect a civil servant, en route to Congress with a vital treaty that will stop the Americans from joining the French in their war against Britain. When the civil servant meets an unfortunate - and apparently accidental - end, the treaty disappears, and Laurence realises that only he can keep the Americans out of the war. Trapped on the ship with a strange assortment of travellers including two penniless French aristocrats, an Irish actress and a dancing bear, Laurence must hunt down both the lost treaty and the murderer, before he has a tragic 'accident' himself... The new page-turning historical mystery from the author of BLACK DROP, a 2021 TIMES Book of the Year. Perfect for readers of Andrew Taylor, Laura Shepherd-Robinson and S.J. Parris.

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In nearly every realm of daily life there is an invisible velvet rope that divides how we live. On one side, appointments are secured, queues are skipped and doors are opened. On the other, people fight for an empty seat on the plane, a place in line at a theme park or even a medical exam. Schwartz shows how business innovators have stepped in to exploit the gap between the rich and everyone else, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to profit by serving the privileged. The frictionless world of VIP experiences seems like good business, but as this model expands, the costs are mounting. Schwartz's gripping account takes us on a glittering, behind-the-scenes tour of this new reality - and shows the toll the velvet rope divide is taking on society.

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In 2021, GW Pharmaceuticals plc was sold for $7.2 billion (£5.2 billion), but Dr Geoffrey Guy started it with just a licence from the UK Home Office and his personal cheque book. A Worthwhile Medicine tells the story of how and why he persuaded reluctant health regulators, sceptical investors and a conservative medical establishment that cannabis really could form the basis for a modern pharmaceutical - which he defines as 'a worthwhile medicine that can make money'. He had built up one publicly quoted pharmaceutical company only to have to step down from the top job after a failed attempt to float on the UK stock market. Undeterred, he started another venture after hearing heartrending tales of how multiple sclerosis sufferers were being denied symptom-relief because cannabis was a prohibited drug. He believed the answer was not to change the law and decriminalise recreational drugs but to create a licensed medicine from cannabis that doctors could prescribe safely for their patients. Looking to the future, Dr Guy has established a foundation to explore the exciting new area of quantum biology - the science of sub-atomic particles - which is completely changing our understanding of the ways in which all life functions.

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'It's a little book of wonder, it's fantastic' Chris Evans 'A fabulously sparky, wide-ranging and horizon-broadening little study ... joyously unboring' Sunday Times Friends do it, strangers do it and so do chimpanzees - and it's not just deeply embedded in our history and culture, it may even be written in our DNA. The humble handshake, it turns out, has a rich and surprising history. So let's join palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi as she embarks on a funny and fascinating voyage of discovery - from the handshake's origins (at least seven million years ago) all the way to its sudden disappearance in March 2020. Drawing on new research, anthropological insights and first-hand experience, she'll reveal how this most friendly of gestures has played a role in everything from meetings with uncontacted tribes to political assassinations - and what it tells us about the enduring power of human contact. Because the story of the handshake ... is far from over.

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Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction 2022 A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 PEN AMERICA OPEN BOOK AWARD A Times Book of the Month One of Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Picks 'A feat of monumental thematic imagination' - The New York Times Book Review 'An elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed' - Roxane Gay Libertie Sampson was named by her father as he lay dying, in honour of the bright, shining future he was sure was coming. The only daughter of a prosperous Black woman physician, she was born free in a country still blighted by slavery. But she has never felt free. Shrinking from her mother's ambitions for her future, Libertie ventures beyond her insulated community, hoping that somehow, somewhere, she will create a life that feels like her own. Immersive, lyrical and deeply moving, Libertie is a novel about legacy and longing, the story of a young woman struggling to discover what freedom truly means - for herself, and for generations to come.

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'When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology ...' It is 1950 and Nikolai Lobachevsky, great-grandson of his illustrious namesake, is surveying a bog in the Irish Midlands, where he studies the locals, the land and their ways. One afternoon, soon after he arrives, he receives a telegram calling him back to Leningrad for a 'special appointment'. Lobachevsky may not be a great genius but he is not foolish: he recognises a death sentence when he sees one and leaves to go into hiding on a small island in the Shannon estuary, where the island families harvest seaweed and struggle to split rocks. Here Lobachevsky must think about death, how to avoid it and whether he will ever see his home again

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'A rollicking cultural adventure... fascinating and true' Grayson Perry This funny and personal memoir is the account of an audacious attempt by James Birch, a young British curator, to mount the ground-breaking retrospective of Francis Bacon's work at the newly refurbished Central House of Artists, Moscow in 1988. Side-lined by the British establishment, Birch found himself at the heart of a honey-trap and the focus for a picaresque cast of Soviet officials, attachés and politicians under the forbidding eye of the KGB as he attempted to bring an unseen western cultural icon to Russia during the time of 'Glasnost', just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Bacon in Moscow is the story of the evolution of an exhibition that was at the artistic and political heart of a sea of change that culminated with the fall of the USSR. 'A rollicking cultural adventure before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the meteoric rise of contemporary art in the nineties' Grayson Perry

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'So chillingly addictive you'll forget to breathe' CHRIS WHITAKER, author of WE BEGIN AT THE END THEY BELIEVE HIS LIES. SHE KNOWS THE TRUTH. You can't lie to Izzy Lambert. Her highly developed empathic abilities allow her to read people's emotions with terrifying accuracy - and consequences. As a child her insights sparked her parents' divorce. As an adult she avoids getting too close to people for fear of what she might learn. But now young girls are going missing in her town. The police have no suspects but, seeing her old school caretaker interviewed on the news about the story, Izzy comes to a chilling realisation: he knows where the missing girls are. When the police won't take her seriously despite the lives at stake, she will risk everything to uncover the truth. Perfect for fans of Steve Cavanagh, Adrian McKinty and Harlan Coben, NO SECRETS will keep you turning the pages until the very last line. 'Hitchcockian suspense' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Intriguing, absorbing, with a great twist that I genuinely didn't see coming' MANDASUE HELLER 'A proper page turner, dark, thrilling, twisty and full of surprises' NADINE MATHESON 'David Jackson is the master of the unputdownable thriller' MICHAEL WOOD

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'Sarai Walker has done it again ... upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal.' Maria Semple, bestelling author of Where'd You Go Bernadette 'A riveting, gothic page-turner' the New York Times 'Wonderful... A book one doesn't want to put down... I highly recommend' Sarah Jessica Parker The reclusive Sylvia Wren, one of the most important American artists of the past century, has been running from her past for sixty years. Born Iris Chapel, of the Chapel munitions dynasty, second youngest of six sisters, she grew up in a palatial Victorian 'Wedding Cake House' in New England, neglected by her distant father and troubled, haunted mother. The sisters longed to escape, but the only way out was marriage. Not long after the first Chapel sister walks down the aisle, she dies of mysterious causes, a tragedy that repeats with the second sister, leaving the rest to navigate the wreckage, with heart-wrenching consequences. The Cherry Robbers is a wonderfully atmospheric, propulsive novel about sisterhood, mortality and forging one's own path.

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'A classy thriller that will appeal to fans of Leila Slimani's Lullaby... A hot holiday read' Sunday Times 'A superb debut novel... Anyone who enjoyed The White Lotus will love Thomas's scalpel-sharp skewering of the mores and idiocies of the idle rich' Observer 'A dark and brilliant read . . . our bet is that this is going to be on the small or big screen' Glamour On a balmy evening in late March, an oligarch's wife hosts a party on a superyacht moored in the Maldives. Tables cover the massive deck, adorned with orchids, champagne bottles, name cards of celebrities. This is what Kata has wanted for a long time: acceptance into the glittering world of high society. But there are those who aim to come between Kata and her goal, and they are closer to home than she could have imagined. Witness to the corruption and violence underneath the shiny surfaces is Mel, a young English woman employed to tutor Kata's precocious daughter and navigate her through the class codes of English privilege. Now the closest Mel gets to such privilege is as hired help to the wealthy, and she is deeply resentful. Exquisitely written and deliciously unreliable, Queen K takes the reader to some of the most luxurious places in the world. But a dark refrain sounds from the very beginning of the story and grows towards its operatic finale: a novel about insatiable material desire can only ever be a tragedy.

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Winner of a PEN Translates Award Named a Most Anticipated Book by Literary Hub When Anya is arrested at a Moscow anti-corruption rally under false pretences, she is given a 10-day sentence at a detention centre. Her cellmates are five other ordinary women arrested on petty charges. Ten listless days stretch before Anya and, as she appeals her sentence and recalls her progress from apolitical youth to informed citizen, she is troubled by strange, dreamlike visions, and wonders if her cellmates might somehow not be as ordinary as they seem. A brilliant exploration of what it means to be marginalized both as an independent woman and in an increasingly intolerant Russia in particular, The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number Three introduces one of the most urgent and gripping new voices in international literature.

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'Every detail is sharply placed ... a scorching sense of humor and a soft spot for humanity down here on Earth' The New York Times 'Fleishman Is In Trouble, but in space' Bobby Palmer A NEW YORK TIMES READERS' FAVOURITE OF 2023 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE Kevin is a thirtysomething homebody, happily committed to his hydroponics-expert girlfriend, Amber, as they grow weed in their basement in Vancouver. Out of the blue, Amber announces that she has been selected for a reality show where she will compete for one of two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars. If selected, she must stay on Mars for good, because the technology to come home doesn't exist yet. Is this a suicide mission or a bold new frontier? Girlfriend on Mars is the story of love unravelling in a world where truth is dictated by Facebook ads and 'reality TV' is as scripted as any politician's speech. With rapt viewers voting for Amber to stay on the show and crates of Mars-mission branded protein shakes arriving at his door, is it any wonder Kevin wants to stay in the basement forever?

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