Search results for ""times books""

A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Science & Technology Book Prize ‘The most entertaining writer in science’ – The Times, Books of the Year War. Mention it and most of us think of history, of conflicts on foreign soil, of heroism and compromise, of strategy and weapons. But there’s a whole other side to the gruesome business of the battlefield. In Grunt, the inimitable Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Setting about her task with infectious enthusiasm, she sniffs World War II stink bombs, tests earplugs in a simulated war zone and burns the midnight oil with the crew of a nuclear submarine. Speaking to the scientists and the soldiers, she learns about everything from life-changing medical procedures to innovations as esoteric as firing dead chickens at fighter jets. Engrossing, insightful and laugh-out-loud funny, this is an irresistible ride to the wilder shores of modern military life.

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'A gripping psychological thriller. Readers will be awake deep into the night, trying to untangle the truth' The Times 'Books of the Year'A marriage. A murder. One of them will hang for it. **PRE-ORDER DISOBEDIENT, THE GRIPPING NEW NOVEL FROM ELIZABETH FREMANTLE**________Autumn, 1615.Frances Carr is imprisoned in a cold, lightless room. She is accused of murder.In a cell nearby is her co-accused - her husband Robert.Kept apart, Frances can only tell her side of the story.How did she come to be here?Can she somehow prove her innocence?And what lengths will she go to to save herself?__________'Engaging, vivid and revelling in historical detail' Sarah Perry, bestselling author of The Essex Serpent'The Miniaturist meets Gone Girl. Gripping and full of surprises' BBC History 'Books of the Year''A tale of intrigue and ambition, this is a rich and fascinating book' Guardian'Immaculately detailed, dark, clever and compulsive' Daily Mail

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Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair Estha and Rahel, seven-year-old twins, are growing up amidst vats of banana jam, mountains of peppercorns and scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. But when their beautiful young cousin Sophie arrives, their world is irrevocably shaken. An illicit liaison and tragedies both accidental and intentional expose things that lurk unsaid, in a country drifting dangerously towards unrest. Winner of the Booker Prize, The God of Small Things is lush, lyrical and unnerving: a literary sensation and a modern classic. ‘A voice of breathtaking beauty… a masterpiece’ Observer

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101 chance meetings, juxtaposing the famous and the infamous, the artistic and the philistine, the pompous and the comical, the snobbish and the vulgar, told by Britain’s funniest writer. Life is made up of humans meeting one another. They speak, or don’t speak. They get on, or fall out. They laugh, they cry, are excited, are indifferent. One on One is a chain of 101 extraordinary but true encounters, from Tolstoy rumbling Tchaikovsky in 1876 to George Galloway baiting Michael Barrymore in 2006. The Royal Family giggle at T.S. Eliot, Walter Sickert draws the curtains on the carol-singing Edward Heath, Youssoupoff assassinates Rasputin, Marilyn Monroe commissions Frank Lloyd Wright. Circular in its construction, panoramic in its breadth, One on One is a book like no other. ‘Brown’s glorious book is an original and a complete delight’Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times, Books of the Year

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Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. What if intelligent life on earth not only evolved on land, but also in the sea? Other Minds is a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself – a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development over millennia, Other Minds explores the incredible evolutionary journey of the cephalopods. What kind of intelligence do they possess? And how did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? Heralded as the ‘scuba-diving philosopher’ when Other Minds first published, Peter Godfrey-Smith explores the underwater world and the concept of sentience to trace the question of inner life back to its roots. By comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Other Minds casts crucial new light on the octopus mind – and on our own.

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Lost in history . . . losing her self. Uncover Tudor heroine Arbella Stuart's incredible story, reimagined by Elizabeth Fremantle in this tense, historical thriller.Hardwick Hall, sixteenth-century England. Formerly a beacon of wealth and power. Now a gilded prison. Hidden away, forgotten, one young woman seeks escape. But to do so she must trust those on the outside.Those who have their own motives...Discovery means death. But what choice has any woman trapped in a man's world?Imprisoned by circumstance, Arbella Stuart is an unwilling contender for the throne. In a world where women are silenced, what chance does she have to take control of her destiny? Praise for The Girl in the Glass Tower: 'A top-notch literary thriller' Daily Telegraph'Thrilling, clever and beautifully written' The Times, 'Books of the Year''Filled with dense, dark political and social intrigue' Daily Mail'Shots are fired, troths are plighted, sea voyages taken, escapes dared and mysteries solved' Daily Telegraph'Beautifully written, completely engrossing and a book that stays with you after the pages are closed' Historia

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Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. That girl didn’t want to die. She just wanted out of that house. She wanted out of that decorating scheme. The five Lisbon sisters – beautiful, eccentric and, now, gone – had always been a point of obsession for the entire neighbourhood. Although the boys that once loved them from afar have grown up, they remain determined to understand a tragedy that has defied explanation. The question persists – why did all five of the Lisbon girls take their own lives? This lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life announced the arrival of one of the greatest American novelists of the last thirty years. ‘A flare from my own secret world, all the inchoate longings and obsessions of being a teenager somehow rendered into book form’ Emma Cline, author of The Girls

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**SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE 2021***A FINANCIAL TIMES 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK*Ransom, the new collection from Michael Symmons Roberts, is an intense and vivid exploration of liberty and limit, of what it means to be alive, and searches for the possibility of hope in a fallen, wounded world. The poems in Ransom display all the lyrical beauty and metaphysical ambition for which his work is acclaimed, but with a new urgency, a ragged edge to what the Independent described as his 'dazzling elegance'. At the heart of this new book are three powerful sequences - one set in occupied Paris, one an elegy for his father, and one a meditation on gratitude - that work at the edges of belief and doubt, both mystical and philosophical. The idea of 'ransom' is turned and turned again, poem by poem, seen through the lenses of personal grief and loss, cinematic scenes of kidnap and release, narratives of incarnation and atonement. This is a profound and timely book from one of our finest poets.

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'Hastings is one of our greatest living biographers' Simon Heffer, Daily TelegraphSybille Bedford's life contained all the grand feeling and seismic events of the twentieth century: war and peace, love and trauma, friendship and death. Her father died when she was just fourteen and her mother, a great socialite and litterateur, fell victim to a debilitating morphine addiction. A bon viveur, she roamed from country to country in search of fresh experience, with ear and eye attuned to her surroundings, typewriter at the ready. Full of intense friendships (Aldous Huxley, Martha Gellhorn and Elizabeth Jane Howard among them), a fierce commitment to the craft of writing, as well as an insatiable appetite for love and sex, Sybille Bedford blazed her own path in her life and her art.'Selina Hastings' wonderful, gossipy biography is a gem, revealing not just the shy writer, but also the colourful, turbulent 20th-century literary world in which she lived' Sunday Times, Books of the Year'A wonderful biography' Sara Wheeler, Spectator'An extraordinary story' The Times'A richly entertaining biography' Daily Mail, Books of the Year

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Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence – street cricket, barbecues, painting windows… A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever. Jon McGregor's first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. Breathtakingly original, humane and moving, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is an astonishing debut.

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*SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2015* SHORTLISTED FOR THE LA TIMES BOOKS PRIZE 2015 A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE NOTABLE BOOK OF 2014 A BOSTON GLOBE BEST FICTION OF 2014 ROXANE GAY’S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2014 AN AMAZON BEST SHORT STORY COLLECTION OF 2014 AN iBOOK BEST OF 2014 Perfectly pitched and gorgeously penned, this astonishingly bold collection of stories explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized. Pitting human beings against the extremes of nature, Diane Cook surgically peels back the layers of civilization to lay bare our vulnerabilities and the ease with which our darker, primal urges emerge. These exhilarating and terrifying tales are set in worlds that are distorted versions of our own, where an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals, a marooned woman defends her house against the rising flood and hordes of desperate refugees, and a pack of not-needed boys take refuge in a murky forest and compete against one another for food. Wry, transgressive and utterly unique, Cook’s wildly inventive debut collection illuminates, with surreal humour and heartbreak, humankind’s struggle not only to thrive, but survive.

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'A book of wonders' Bee Wilson, Sunday Times Books of the YearWinner of the Wainwright Prize 2022 - Eating to Extinction is an astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, showing why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital.'Saladino inspires us to believe that turning the tide is still possible' Yotam OttolenghiFrom a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to an exploding corn in Mexico, there are thousands of foods that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover their stories, meeting the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are defending food traditions and fighting for change.Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past. It is about the crisis facing our planet today, and why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.* With a new preface by the author *Winner of multiple awards, including the Fortnum & Mason Food Book Award and the Guild of Food Writers Food Book Award.'I love this book... I wish the whole world could read it' Raymond Blanc'A brilliant read' Tim Spector

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THE GUNS ARE SILENT. THE DEAD ARE NOT 'The world has been waiting for a worthy successor to Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong - now Philip Gray has delivered it' David Young, author of Stasi Child. 1919. On the battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the task of gathering up the dead for mass burial. Amy Vanneck's fiancé is one soldier lost amongst many. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved. Meanwhile, Captain Mackenzie cannot bring himself to go home until his fallen comrades are laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint. It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.*Longlisted for the 2023 CWA Historical Dagger Award* 'An atmospheric portrayal of the pity of the war' The Times, Books of the Year

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TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016FINANCIAL TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015WINNER OF THE PUSHKIN HOUSE RUSSIAN BOOK PRIZE 2016 'Magisterial... reveals how much is at stake for world order in Ukraine and Syria.' Rachel Polonsky'As much as anything, World War I turned on the fate of Ukraine'The decision to go to war in 1914 had catastrophic consequences for Russia. The result was revolution, civil war and famine in 1917-20, followed by decades of communist rule. Dominic Lieven's powerful and original book, based on exhaustive and unprecedented study in Russian and many other foreign archives, explains why this suicidal decision was made and explores the world of the men who made it, thereby consigning their entire class to death or exile and making their country the victim of a uniquely terrible political experiment under Lenin and Stalin.Dominic Lieven is a Senior Research Fellow of Trinity College,Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His book Russia Against Napoleon (Penguin) won the Wolfson Prize for History and the Prize of the Fondation Napoleon for the best foreign work on the Napoleonic era.

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CHOSEN AS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE OBSERVER, NEW YORKER, NEW YORK TIMES BOOKS REVIEW, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT AND THE TIMES ‘Lucid and exhilarating … A great gift’ New York Review of Books ‘Tantalizes and compels ... A welcome reminder of how a novel can be defiantly and brilliantly novel’ Douglas Kennedy, New Statesman Jules Epstein has vanished: first slowly, then all at once. He begins divesting himself of all of his worldly possessions. Now he’s fallen off the face of the earth, and all the search parties can find is his empty monogrammed briefcase, abandoned in the Judean foothills. In her room at the Tel Aviv Hilton, an American novelist has also left home to undergo a transformation. But when a stranger recruits her for a project involving Kafka, she is drawn into a mystery that will take her on a metaphysical journey and change her in ways she could never have imagined.

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'Hilarious, heartbreaking and utterly extraordinary.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times Books of the Year'Superbly entertaining.' Financial Times'Jaw-dropping.' Sunday Times'Fascinating.' Guardian'Gripping.' The Times'Terrific . . . A page-turning history of imperial hubris and nemesis, deceit and delusion, love and betrayal on a grand scale.' Sunday TimesIn 1864, a young Austrian archduke by the name of Maximilian crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne. He had been lured into the voyage by a duplicitous Napoleon III. Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor had promised Maximilian a hero's welcome. Instead, he walked into a bloody guerrilla war. With a head full of impractical ideals - and a penchant for pomp and butterflies - the new 'emperor' was singularly ill-equipped for what lay in store.This is the vivid history of this barely known, barely believable episode - a bloody tragedy of operatic proportions, the effects of which would be felt into the twentieth century and beyond.

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Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come. A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their daughter fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then she was placed on life support. Days later, the Dunnes were sitting down to dinner when John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. This powerful book is Didion’s ‘attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness’. The result is a personal yet universal portrait of marriage and life, in good times and bad, from one of the defining voices of American literature. ‘Beautiful and devastating … Didion has always been a precise, humane and meticulously truthful writer, but on the subject of death she becomes essential’ Zadie Smith

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The second book in Charles Cumming’s gripping new thriller series surrounding BOX 88 – a covert intelligence organization that operates below the radar. A spy in one of the most dangerous places on Earth…1993: Student Lachlan Kite is sent to Russia by secret intelligence agency BOX 88. To the outside world, he is there as a language teacher. In reality, he is there as a spy. But Kite’s mission soon goes wrong and he is left stranded with a former KGB officer on his trail. An old enemy looking for revenge…2020: Kite discovers he has been placed on the ‘JUDAS’ list –enemies of Russia who have been targeted for assassination. His only hope of survival is to confront the Russian secret state head on… Who will come out on top in this deadly game of cat and mouse? ‘Judas 62 has all you could want from a tense, topical and intelligent spy thriller’ The Times Books of the Year

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From Steven Johnson, the bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From, comes How We Got to Now, the companion book to his six-part BBC One television series exploring the power and the legacy of great ideas.How did photography bring about social reform? What connects refrigeration to Hollywood? And how did our battle against dirt help create smartphones? In this story of ingenious breakthroughs and unsung heroes, Steven Johnson explores the essential innovations that changed the world and how we live in it.'A new Steven Johnson book is something not to be missed. The author has become the leading writer on how inventions happen' Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, Books of the Year'Graceful and compelling ... you'll find yourself exhilarated' The New York Times Book Review'Readable, entertaining, and a challenge to any jaded sensibility that has become inured to the everyday miracles all around us' Peter Forbes, Guardian'This nimble history of invention . . .is a many-layered delight' Nature

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Irish Times Books Of The Year 2013Observer Books Of The Year 2013Guardian Readers' Books Of The Year 2013Short Listed For Guardian's Not The Booker Prize 2013Unloved sons turn their aggression on the outside world. Unloved daughters destroy the people they love, and then themselves.In this daring portrayal of Magda Goebbels – wife of Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels – Meike Ziervogel unveils an historical tale of abusive mother and daughter relationships that reaches a terrifying conclusion in the last days of Nazi Germany.Magda is born at the beginning of the 20th century, the illegitimate child of a maidservant who feels burdened with a daughter she does not want. The girl grows up to become an ambitious woman, desperate for love and recognition. When Magda meets Joseph Goebbels, he appears to answer all her needs, and together they have six children. Towards the end of the Second World War, Magda has become physically and emotionally sick. As she takes her children into the Führer’s bunker, her eldest daughter Helga experiences an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

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SHORTLISTED for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, WINNER of the UKLA'A masterpiece from beginning to end.' Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U GiveAND THEN THERE WERE SHOTSEverybodyran,ducked, hid, tuckedthemselves tight. Pressed our lips to thepavement and prayedthe boom, followed by the buzz of a bullet,didn't meet us.After Will's brother is shot in a gang crime, he knows the next steps. Don't cry. Don't snitch. Get revenge. So he gets in the lift with Shawn's gun, determined to follow The Rules. Only when the lift door opens, Buck walks in, Will's friend who died years ago. And Dani, who was shot years before that. As more people from his past arrive, Will has to ask himself if he really knows what he's doing.This haunting, lyrical, powerful verse novel will blow you away.'A heartrending and convincing blank verse narrative.' Sunday Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR'Astonishing.' Kirkus Reviews'A tour de force.' Publishers Weekly'Will attract teenagers who don't consider themselves 'readers'.' The Inis Reading Guide

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A captivating new book from Wade Davis - winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Into the Silence - that brings vividly to life the story of the great Río Magdalena, illuminating Colombia's complex past, present, and future.For Wade Davis, Colombia was the first country that captured his heart and gave him license to be free. Here, he tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of their remarkable land.Braiding together memoir, history and journalism, Magdalena is at once an absorbing adventure through a spectacular landscape and a kaleidoscopic picture of Colombia as it stands on the verge of a new period of peace.'Outstanding... Davis tells epic tales of passion, violence and ambition with tremendous narrative verve' Sunday Times, Books of the Year'A wonderful evocation of a lifetime's travel in Colombia' Spectator, Books of the Year

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'Wonderful. A manifesto of horticultural delight' Literary Review 'Beautiful. Perfect for literary garden lovers' Good Housekeeping'Rich and unusual, a book to treasure. Few recent gardening books come anywhere close to its style, intelligence and depth' Observer'The two central activities in my life - alongside writing - have been reading and gardening.'Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin. 'Exquisite and original' Daily Telegraph 'A gentle survey of the garden's place in Western culture, which morphs into a personal meditation on time, memory and a life well lived' i 'Scholarly bedtime reading' The Times, Books of the Year

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**SOON TO BE A MAJOR HBO SHOW STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND MAYA ERSKINE**THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA RICHARD AND JUDY PICKWINNER OF THE DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDSA SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY'Creepy, shocking, compulsive' The Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR'Unnerving, addictive.' Grazia'The smartest thriller you'll read this year.' IndependentThe baby is dead. It took only a few seconds.When Myriam, a brilliant lawyer, decides to return to work, she and her husband look for a nanny for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic Paris apartment, stays late without complaint and hosts enviable birthday parties. But as the couple and their nanny become more and more dependent on each other, jealousy, resentment and suspicions increase, until Myriam and Paul's idyllic domesticity is shattered . . .What readers are saying:***** 'Haunting. . . I will be pressing it into the hands of anyone who passes me.'***** 'Shocking, daring, and utterly compelling.' ***** 'It had me hooked right from the start.' **PRE-ORDER WATCH US DANCE - THE SEDUCTIVE, VIBRANT NEW NOVEL FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR**

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***A SPECTATOR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021*** By turns dark and hilarious, at times solemn and mysterious, Your Duck is My Duck cements Deborah Eisenberg’s reputation as one of America’s greatest living writers of fiction. “Hugely intelligent, funny, subtle, beautifully written, these stories reach beyond New York into the world."—Tessa Hadley “If our culture can produce a writer this wonderful, there must be something beautiful about us yet.”—George Saunders “[A] scintillating showcase.”-Anthony Cummins, The Observer “Shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny.”—The New York Times Now in B-format Paperback Each of the six stories that make up this new collection—Eisenberg’s first for twelve years—has the heft and complexity of a novel. With her own inexorable logic and uncanny ability to conjure up the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through the lives of her characters. In her world, the forces of money, sex and power cannot be escaped, and the force of history, whether confronted or denied, cannot be evaded. No one writes better about time, tragedy and grief, and the indifferent but beautiful universe around us. "Ducks are having a literary moment."—The Times' Books Bulletin “Comic, elegant and pitch perfect.”—Vanity Fair

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Step right up for the most captivating read of the year . . .Filled with the sights and sounds of Victorian England, Circus of Wonders is the instant Sunday Times bestseller from Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory.‘Intensely satisfying’ – Stacey Halls, author of The FamiliarsEngland, 1866. When Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders arrives in a coastal village, Nell soon catches the showman’s eye. Shunned by her community because of the birthmarks speckling her skin, to Jasper she is a prize – she could be his very own leopard girl. But how to make her his?Soon Nell finds herself the star of Jasper’s show. Suddenly she is famous. Crowds rush to watch her soar through the air. Figurines are cast in her image. Even Queen Victoria wants to see her perform. But is Nell free to live and love as she chooses? And when her fame begins to eclipse Jasper’s own, could she be in danger? After all, the higher you fly, the steeper the fall . . .‘Filled with character and life’ – The Times‘Utterly beguiling’ – Daily Mail‘Brilliantly involving’ – Daily Express‘Exhilarating’ – Sunday Times, Books of the Year‘An immersive gem’ – Red‘Joyous, frightening, heartbreaking’ – Independent‘Deliciously vivid’ – Woman & HomeThe Burial Plot, Elizabeth's latest cat-and-mouse thriller, is available to pre-order now!

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Longlisted for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2020'This pioneering memoir . . . engagingly balances the highs of captaincy and grand slams with striking emotional honesty as to herregrets' Guardian Books of the Year'Her struggle is that of women’s rugby and it is told here with great honesty' Sunday Times Books of the YearCatherine Spencer was the captain of the England women’s rugby team for three years. She scored eighteen tries for England, won six of the eight Six Nations competitions she took part in, and captained her team to three championship titles, a European cup, two Nations Cup tournament victories and the World Cup final held on home soil in 2010, which thrust women’s rugby into the limelight. All of this while holding down a full time job, because the women’s team, unlike the men’s, did not get paid for their sport. Mud, Maul, Mascara is an effort to reconcile alleged opposites, to show the woman behind the international sporting success. Painfully honest about the mental struggles Catherine faced during, and after, her career as an elite athlete, it is also warm, funny and inspirational – a book for anyone who has ever had a dream, or self-doubt, or a yearning for a really good, mud-proof mascara.

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WINNER OF THE THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2019'The book everyone is talking about' The Times 'A comedy for our times' Guardian __________________ The country is changing and, up and down the land, cracks are appearing - within families and between generations. In the Midlands Benjamin Trotter is trying to help his aged father navigate a Britain that seems to have forgotten he exists, whilst in London his friend Doug doesn't understand why his teenage daughter is eternally enraged. Meanwhile, newlyweds Sophie and Ian can find nothing to agree on except the fact that their marriage is on the rocks . . .A hilarious follow-up to The Rotters' Club and Closed Circle, Jonathan Coe captures the state of our nation once again! __________________ 'Coe's back with a bang. Middle England is the novel about Brexit we need' Daily Telegraph 'A pertinent, entertaining study of a nation in crisis' Financial Times, Books of the Year 'Very funny. Coe - a writer of uncommon decency - reminds us that the way out of this mess is through moderation, through compromise, through that age-old English ability to laugh at ourselves' ObserverWritten with his signature wit, Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel, Bournville, is available to pre-order now!

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WINNER OF THE FRANCO-BRITISH SOCIETY LITERARY AWARD 2020'Art is a Tyrant recounts [Bonheur's] life with no little brio.' Michael Prodger, The Times Books of the Year 2020 'A diligently researched, beautifully produced and insistently sympathetic biography.' Kathryn Hughes, GuardianA new biography of the wildly unconventional 19th-century animal painter and gender equality pioneer Rosa Bonheur, from the author of the acclaimed Mistress of Paris and Renoir's Dancer.Rosa Bonheur was the very antithesis of the feminine ideal of 19th-century society. She was educated, she shunned traditional 'womanly' pursuits, she rejected marriage - and she wore trousers. But the society whose rules she spurned accepted her as one of their own, because of her genius for painting animals. She shared an intimate relationship with the eccentric, self-styled inventor Nathalie Micas, who nurtured the artist like a wife. Together Rosa, Nathalie and Nathalie's mother bought a chateau and with Rosa's menagerie of animals the trio became one of the most extraordinary households of the day. Catherine Hewitt's compelling new biography is an inspiring evocation of a life lived against the rules.

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'This is the most important conversation of our time, and Tegmark's thought-provoking book will help you join it' Stephen HawkingTHE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEARSELECTED AS ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2018AI is the future - but what will that future look like? Will superhuman intelligence be our slave, or become our god?Taking us to the heart of the latest thinking about AI, Max Tegmark, the MIT professor whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial, separates myths from reality, utopias from dystopias, to explore the next phase of our existence.How can we grow our prosperity through automation, without leaving people lacking income or purpose? How can we ensure that future AI systems do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will AI help life flourish as never before, or will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, and even, perhaps, replace us altogether? 'This is a rich and visionary book and everyone should read it' The Times

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The number one Irish Times bestseller In 1970, Taoiseach Jack Lynch accused two cabinet ministers, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, of smuggling arms to the IRA in Northern Ireland. The criminal prosecution that followed was a cause célèbre at the time. All the accused were acquitted, but it generated a political crisis that would be one of the major events of modern Irish history. In the fifty years since, myth and controversy has surrounded the trial and its aftermath. Michael Heney has unearthed astonishing new evidence, raising serious questions about Lynch and his relationship with Haughey. The Arms Crisis of 1970 is the first comprehensive investigation into the arms trial prosecution, and how the jury came to their verdict of acquittal. Reviews: 'An indisputable, forensic interpretation of the events of 1970... Impressive for its methodology, and is indispensable for anyone interested in what actually happened 50 years ago' Colm Tóibín, Irish Times, Books of the Year 'Persuasive... A real life whodunnit written with the pace and drama of a political thriller' Eilis O'Hanlon, Irish Independent 'Heney strips away the lies associated with the great Irish scandal of 1970... A ground-breaking book' Diarmaid Ferriter 'Brilliant de-bunking of the myths, heroes and villains of the Arms Crisis' Mary O'Rourke, Sunday Independent

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'The most inspiring book I've ever read' Bill Gates, 2017'A brilliant, mind-altering book ... Everyone should read this astonishing book' Guardian'Will change the way you see the world' Daily MailShortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2012Wasn't the twentieth century the most violent in history? In his extraordinary, epic book Steven Pinker shows us that this is wrong, telling the story of humanity in a completely new and unfamiliar way. From why cities make us safer to how books bring about peace, Pinker weaves together history, philosophy and science to examine why we are less likely to die at another's hand than ever before, how it happened and what it tells us about our very natures. 'May prove to be one of the great books of our time ... he writes like an angel' Economist'Masterly, a supremely important book ... For anyone interested in human nature, it is engrossing' The New York Times 'Marvellous ... riveting and myth-destroying' New Statesman'A marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling, written in Pinker's distinctively entertaining and clear personal style ... I was astonished by the extent to which violence has declined in every shape, form and scale' Financial Times'An outstandingly fruitful read, with fascinating nuggets on almost every page' Sunday Times, Books of the Year

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From Norman Davies, the acclaimed author of Europe: A History, comes the magical history of Europe's lost realms, selected as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Independent, Guardian and Financial Times.Europe's history is littered with kingdoms, duchies, empires and republics which have now disappeared but which were once fixtures on the map of their age. What happened to the once-great Mediterranean 'Empire of Aragon'? Where did the half-forgotten kingdoms of Burgundy go? Which current nations will one day become a distant memory too? This original and enthralling book peers through the cracks of history to discover the stories of lost realms across the centuries.'Dazzling, provocative and brilliant' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 'A luminous account ... there are few better ways of understanding the multilayered splendours and horrors of Europe's past than through the pages of this wise, humane and unfailingly engaging book' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph'Vanished Kingdoms is great history and also great art. It is written with verve, passion and profound empathy' David Marquand, New Statesman, Books of the Year'A magnificent achievement. Brocaded with scholarship, the book is unlikely ever to be equalled' Ian Thomson, Independent

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A fascinating, practical guide to making better decisions with our money, health and personal lives from Gerd Gigerenzer, the author of Reckoning with Risk.Numbers don't lie - but they often mislead us. From health risks to financial decisions, we often find it hard to make decisions because the statistics have been presented to us by 'experts' who misinterpret the data themselves. Here Gerd Gigerenzer shows how we can all use simple rules to become better-informed, risk-savvy citizens. 'Important, Gigerenzer draws valuable lessons . . . his clear explanations will be a great help to all' Omar Malik, Times Higher Education'Gerd Gigerenzer argues that when it comes to taking risks in life, we are often much better off following our instincts than expert advice' Oliver Burkeman, Guardian'Things will only get better, he shows, when specialists, particularly doctors and investment advisers, improve on their appalling record of analysing and communicating risks in their fields' Clive Cookson, Financial Times, Books of the Year'Gigerenzer is brilliant' Steven PinkerGerd Gigerenzer is Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and former Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books on heuristics and decision making, including Reckoning with Risk.

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Analyses Muslim-Muslim divisions within northern Nigeria, which are as important for understanding the violence in the region as those between Muslim and Christian (for which, see the companion volume, Creed and Grievance),with consequences for long-term peacemaking. Nigerian society has long been perceived as divided along religious lines, between Muslims and Christians, but alongside this there is an equally important polarization within the Muslim population in beliefs, rituals and sectarian allegiance. This book highlights the crucial issue of intra-Muslim pluralism and conflict in Nigeria. Conflicting interpretations of texts and contexts have led to fragmentation within northern Nigerian Islam, and differentIslamic sects have often resorted to violence against each other in pursuit of 'the right path'. The doctrinal justification of violence was first perfected against other Muslim groups, before being extended to non-Muslims: conflict between Muslim groups therefore preceded the violence between Muslims and Christians. It will be impossible to manage the relationship between the latter, without addressing the schisms within the Muslim community itself. Nigeria: Premium Times Books Abdul Raufu Mustapha is Associate Professor in African Politics, University of Oxford. His publications include (co-edited with Lindsey Whitfield) Turning Points in African Democracy (James Currey, 2009). Forthcoming: Creed & Grievance: Muslims, Christians & Society in Northern Nigeria edited by Abdul Raufu Mustapha and David Ehrhardt.

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A masterful history of the great dynasty of the Netherlands' Middle Ages. 'A sumptuous feast of a book' The Times, Books of the Year 'Thrillingly colourful and entertaining' Sunday Times 'A thrilling narrative of the brutal dazzlingly rich wildly ambitious duchy' Simon Sebag Montefiore 5 stars! Daily Telegraph 'A masterpiece' De Morgen 'A history book that reads like a thriller' Le Soir At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a compulsively readable narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals and the awakening of individualism and of cities, the struggle for dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns and fatally bad marriages. It is also a remarkable cultural history, of great art and architecture and music emerging despite the violence and the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties.

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Read Costa Award-winning author Christie Watson's incredible No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling memoir of nursing today. 'It made me cry. It made me think. It made me laugh' Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt and Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas Christie Watson was a nurse for twenty years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astounding account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness. We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient's agonising heart-lung transplant, and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive. In our most extreme moments, when life is lived most intensely, Christie is with us. She is a guide, mentor and friend. And in these dark days of division and isolationism, she encourages us all to stretch out a hand.'A powerful insight into the life of nurses' The Times, Books of the Year'A remarkable book about life and death and so brilliantly written it makes you hold your breath' Ruby Wax

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**A GUARDIAN, OBSERVER AND FINANCIAL TIMES 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK****A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021**From the bestselling, award-winning author of Fun Home comes this Christmas's must-gift graphic novel.All her life, Alison Bechdel has searched for an elusive secret...The secret to superhuman strength.She has looked for it in her favourite books, the lives of her heroes, celibacy, polyamory, activism, therapy, and most obsessively, in her lifelong passion for exercise. Skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga, weightlifting - you name it, she's tried it. "Oh, to be self-sufficient! Hard as a rock! An island!"But as she gets older, her body isn't getting any stronger. And in a changing, sometimes overwhelming world, are "cantaloupe-sized guns" all a person needs? Maybe the all-important secret is not where she expected to find it . . .'The Secret to Superhuman Strength practically glows with a beguiling mixture of intellect, warmth and humour' Daily TelegraphIn this, her third graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel has written a deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation. This is an extraordinary, laugh-out-loud chronicle of the conundrums we all grapple with as we seek our true place in the world. Truly, a must-gift book this Christmas.

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The award-winning, bestselling verse novel is now a stunning graphic novel with illustrations by Danica Novgorodoff.SHORTLISTED for the CILIP Carnegie MedalWINNER of the Yoto Kate Greenaway Medal and UKLA'A masterpiece from beginning to end.' Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U GiveAND THEN THERE WERE SHOTSEverybodyran,ducked, hid, tuckedthemselves tight. Pressed our lips to thepavement and prayedthe boom, followed by the buzz of a bullet,didn't meet us.After Will's brother is shot in a gang crime, he knows the next steps. Don't cry. Don't snitch. Get revenge. So he gets in the lift with Shawn's gun, determined to follow The Rules. Only when the lift door opens, Buck walks in, Will's friend who died years ago. And Dani, who was shot years before that. As more people from his past arrive, Will has to ask himself if he really knows what he's doing.This haunting, lyrical, powerful verse novel will blow you away.'A heartrending and convincing blank verse narrative.' Sunday Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR'Astonishing.' Kirkus Reviews'A tour de force.' Publishers Weekly'Will attract teenagers who don't consider themselves 'readers'.' The Inis Reading Guide

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‘Eric Liddell deserves a definitive biography. This is it.’Sunday Times, Books of the YearFaster. Higher. Stronger. No one has embodied the ideals of the Olympic movement quite like Eric Liddell, star of the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. After refusing to compete on religious principle in the event in which he was favourite, the 100 metres, at the 1924 Games in Paris, Liddell won an astonishing gold medal in the 400 metres. But instead of pursuing a path of global fame and fortune, he chose to follow his calling as a missionary in the country of his birth, China, a land which then fell under the iron grip of a brutal Japanese army.Liddell became the inspirational leader of the work camp in which he, like many thousands, was interned, and For the Glory is the full story of his life, of his family, of his fellow prisoners and the terrible hardships and atrocities they experienced in the Far East. This is the tale of a sporting icon, a man of honour and principle who paid the ultimate sacrifice while becoming the moral centre of an otherwise unbearable world.

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* Shortlisted for Debut Food Book of the Year at the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards 2021 *One of The Times Books of the Year 2020_____________'Fascinating and entertaining - a pleasure to read.' Claudia RodenAs a nation of food-lovers we have been munching on fruit and veg, drinking tea and coffee and adorning our dishes with oils and spices for generations, but have you ever stopped to wonder how our most beloved foods came to be the way they are now?In this series of enlightening and highly entertaining essays, award-winning food writer Mark Riddaway travels back through the centuries to tell the fascinating, surprising and often downright bizarre stories of some of the everyday ingredients found at London's Borough Market.Discover how the strawberries we eat today had their roots in a clandestine trip to South America by a French spy whose surname happened to be Strawberry, why three-quarters of Britain's late-18th-century intake of tea was sold on the black market, and what Sigmund Freud found so fascinating about eel genitalia.From the humble apples and onions that we've grown on these shores for centuries, to more exotic ingredients like cinnamon and bananas that travel from across the world to finesse our food, Borough Market: Edible Histories offers a chance to digest the charming stories behind every last morsel.

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Mark Greengrass's gripping, major, original account of Europe in an era of tumultuous changeSUNDAY TIMES and FINANCIAL TIMES Books of the Year 2014This addition to the landmark Penguin History of Europe series is a fascinating study of 16th and 17th century Europe and the fundamental changes which led to the collapse of Christendom and established the geographical and political frameworks of Western Europe as we know it. From peasants to princes, no one was untouched by the spiritual and intellectual upheaval of this era. Martin Luther's challenge to church authority forced Christians to examine their beliefs in ways that shook the foundations of their religion. The subsequent divisions, fed by dynastic rivalries and military changes, fundamentally altered the relations between ruler and ruled. Geographical and scientific discoveries challenged the unity of Christendom as a belief-community. Europe, with all its divisions, emerged instead as a geographical projection. It was reflected in the mirror of America, and refracted by the eclipse of Crusade in ambiguous relationships with the Ottomans and Orthodox Christianity. Chronicling these dramatic changes, Thomas More, Shakespeare, Montaigne and Cervantes created works which continue to resonate with us. Christendom Destroyed is a rich tapestry that fosters a deeper understanding of Europe's identity today.'The Penguin History of Europe series ... is one of contemporary publishing's great projects' New Statesman

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Guardian's Best Paperback of the Month ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S and FINANCIAL TIMES' BOOKS OF 2020 'In intimate, often tender prose, Gevisser brings to life the complex movement for queer civil rights and the many people on whom it bears.' Colm Toibin, Guardian 'Powerful... meticulously researched' Andrew McMillan, Observer Book of the Week Six years in the making, The Pink Line follows protagonists from nine countries all over the globe to tell the story of how LGBTQ+ Rights became one of the world's new human rights frontiers in the second decade of the twenty-first century. From refugees in South Africa to activists in Egypt, transgender women in Russia and transitioning teens in the American Mid-West, The Pink Line folds intimate and deeply affecting stories of individuals, families and communities into a definitive account of how the world has changed, so dramatically, in just a decade. And in doing so he reveals a troubling new equation that has come in to play: while same-sex marriage and gender transition are now celebrated in some parts of the world, laws to criminalise homosexuality and gender non-conformity have been strengthened in others. In a work of great scope and wonderful storytelling, this is the groundbreaking, definitive account of how issues of sexuality and gender identity divide and unite the world today.

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A masterful history of the great dynasty of the Netherlands' Middle Ages. 'A sumptuous feast of a book' The Times, Books of the Year 'Thrillingly colourful and entertaining' Sunday Times 'A thrilling narrative of the brutal dazzlingly rich wildly ambitious duchy' Simon Sebag Montefiore 5 stars! Daily Telegraph 'A masterpiece' De Morgen 'A history book that reads like a thriller' Le Soir At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a compulsively readable narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals and the awakening of individualism and of cities, the struggle for dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns and fatally bad marriages. It is also a remarkable cultural history, of great art and architecture and music emerging despite the violence and the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties.

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A Blessing the Boats Selection A New York Times Books New & Notable Poetry Book One of Big Other's "Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2020" On The Rumpus's list of "What To Read When 2020 Is Just Around the Corner" In the tradition of women as the unsung keepers of history, Deborah Paredez’s second poetry collection tells her story as a Latina daughter of the Vietnam War. The title refers to the year 1970—the “year of the Metal Dog” in the lunar calendar—which was the year of the author’s birth, the year her father prepared to deploy to Vietnam along with many other Mexican-American immigrant soldiers, and a year of tremendous upheaval across the United States. Images from iconic photographs and her father’s snapshots are incorporated, fragmented, scrutinized, and reconstructed throughout the collection as Paredez recalls untold stories from a war that changed her family and the nation. In poems and lamentations that evoke Hecuba, the mythic figure so consumed by grief over the atrocities of war that she was transformed into a howling dog, and La Llorona, the weeping woman in Mexican folklore who haunts the riverbanks in mourning and threatens to disturb the complicity of those living in the present, Paredez recontextualizes the historical moments of the Vietnam era, from the arrest of Angela Davis to the haunting image of Mary Ann Vecchio at the Kent State Massacre, never forgetting the outcry and outrage that women’s voices have carried across time.

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'[An] absolute must-read. It has stunned and moved everyone who has read it' Arifa Akbar, Independent This multi-award winning novel is the extraordinary story of the twentieth century traced through the various possible lives of one woman She is a baby who suffocates in the cradle. Or perhaps not? She lives to become as an adult and dies beloved. Or dies betrayed. Or perhaps not? Her memory is honoured. Or she is forgotten by everyone. From a small Galician town at the turn of the twentieth century, through pre-war Vienna and Stalin's Moscow to modern-day Berlin, the twists of fate of her lives take us to some of the most vivid moments in European history. But it is our heroine's choices, her struggles and her humanity - as she faces everything from Nazi-occupied Austria, Soviet secret police and the trials of old age - that make this book so profoundly moving, insightful and unforgettable. Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Hans Fallada Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and an English PEN Award. 'The End of Days prises open the troubled box that is 20th-century European history and entrenches [Erpenbeck's] position as the most brilliant European writer of my generation' Neel Mukherjee, Irish Times Books of the Year 'Jenny Erpenbeck makes swift work of the one-life-multiple-outcomes conceit touched on by Kate Atkinson and David Mitchell - and is the best of the bunch' Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

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THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2018 GUARDIAN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2018BOOKS IN THE MEDIA BEST CRIME BOOKS OF 2018FEATURED ON CRIME TIME BEST OF THE YEAR 2018 WINNER OF THE CWA DEBUT DAGGER'[A] brilliant debut' Sunday Times Crime Club'A fresh and exciting new voice to the genre' Ann Cleeves'Gritty, compelling and authentic' Daily Express'Fascinating' CJ Carver'Enjoyable. Fast-paced. Recommended.' Observer'Raw! Authentic! The crime thriller that I've been waiting for' Khurram Rahman'Terrific' The Times'One of the best books I've read this year' The Crime Novel Reader'Impressive, Brutal, Convincing' Mail on Sunday 'You won't be putting this book down' Hardeep Singh Kohli'A satisfying slice of action-led crime . . . readers (will be) hooked from the off' Skinny***THEY'RE NOT BOUND BY FAMILY. BUT A FAMILY COULD TEAR THEM APART.Southall, West London. After being released from prison, Zaq Khan is lucky to land a dead-end job at a builders' yard. All he wants to do is keep his head down and put the past behind him. But when Zaq is forced to search for his boss's runaway daughter, he quickly finds himself caught up in a deadly web of deception, murder and revenge. With time running out and pressure mounting, can he find the missing girl before it's too late? And if he does, can he keep her - and himself - alive long enough to deal with the people who want them both dead?

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'A glorious green adventure story.' Ann Treneman, The Times 'Books of the Year''The most enthralling historical book I’ve read this year.' Claire Tomalin, New Statesman 'Books of the year' Daringly innovative when it opened in 1848, the Palm House in Kew Gardens remains one of the most beautiful glass buildings in the world today. Seemingly weightless, vast and yet light, the Palm House floats free from architectural convention, at once monumental and ethereal. From a distance, the crowns of the palms within are silhouetted in the central dome; close to, banana leaves thrust themselves against the glass. To enter it is to enter a tropical fantasy. The body is assaulted by heat, light and the smell of damp vegetation. In Palace of Palms, Kate Teltscher tells the extraordinary story of its creation and of the Victorians’ obsession with the palms that filled it. It is a story of breathtaking ambition, of scientific discovery and, crucially, of the remarkable men whose vision it was. The Palm House was commissioned by the charismatic first Director of Kew, Sir William Hooker, designed by the audacious Irish engineer, Richard Turner, and managed by Kew’s forthright curator, John Smith, who battled with boilers and floods to ensure the survival of the rare and wondrous plants it housed.

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