Unbound

One woman's road trip across America in search of her lost libido.

Arriving in New York with a failing relationship and a body she felt out of touch with, Stephanie Theobald set off on a 3,497 mile trip across America to re-build her orgasm from the ground up. What started as a quest for the ultimate auto-erotic experience became a fantastic voyage into her own body.

She takes us from ‘body sex’ classes with the legendary feminist Betty Dodson to an interview with the former US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who was fired for suggesting that masturbation should be talked about in schools. Along the way, we are immersed in a weird, countercultural America of marijuana farms and ‘ecosexual sexologists’.

Sex Drive is a memoir about desire and pleasure, merging sexuality and spirituality, eighteenth-century porn and enlightenment philosophy. A new sexual revolution has begun – and this time round, it’s all about the women.

Over half a million copies sold

Six murders. One hundred pages. Millions of possible combinations… but only one is correct. Can you solve Torquemada’s murder mystery?

In 1934, the Observer’s cryptic crossword compiler, Edward Powys Mathers (aka Torquemada), released a novel that was simultaneously a murder mystery and the most fiendishly difficult literary puzzle ever written.

The pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard order, but it is possible – through logic and intelligent reading – to sort the pages into the only correct order, revealing six murder victims and their respective murderers.

Only three puzzlers have ever solved the mystery of Cain’s Jawbone: do you have what it takes to join their ranks?

Please note: this puzzle is extremely difficult and not for the faint-hearted.

A Passion for Passion is a love letter to romance fiction. It celebrates the joyful silliness of books that are written to follow the rules.

Alice Fraser has a special place in her heart for the sweeping silliness of romance novels. The journey to reach a believable Happily Ever After can go via an unbelievable rollercoaster of intensity, through wildly entertaining twists and unlikely turns. To celebrate the unparalleled joy this genre can bring to readers and defy its oft maligned status, Alice has created the author, D'Ancey LaGuarde, the ineffably mysterious, outrageously prolific, undisputed regent of the art of romance.

Collecting together excerpts, book cover designs, character sketches and synopses of ‘D'Ancey’s’ most absurdly frivolous and outlandishly whimsical works: from A Knight of Passion to The Dragon Lord's Lady and Luring the Laird to A Cowboy Called Home, this is an exclusive glimpse into the tropes and dreams that rise like perfumed bubbles through the fecund swamp of the romantic mind, and a fulsome challenge to anyone denying the importance of joy purely for its own sake.

This book will be a constant source of solace and encouragement for romance fans worldwide, and the perfect companion to smuggle into your next ball . . .

Twenty Gentle Protest craft projects to help you make a positive difference in our world.

If we want our world to be more beautiful, kind and fair, can we make our activism more beautiful, kind and fair? ‘Gentle Protest’ is a unique methodology of strategic, compassionate and visually intriguing activism using handicrafts as a tool. Since its creation in 2009, the award-winning global Craftivist Collective has helped change laws, policies, hearts and minds around the world as well as expand the view of what activism can be.

Dreams inspire positive action, so stitch a Dream Cloud to hang up at home or work and prompt you to think past a problem to the solution. Sew a Gentle Nudge Label to help keep your conscience sharp and your spirit strong. Craft your own Mini Protest Banner to turn heads and influence change, or fly solidarity’s flag for those suffering as a result of the world’s injustices. Stitch a Handmade Hedgerow to champion one of the solutions to the climate crisis or if you are nervous about protesting in public or if there’s a ban on public rallies where you live, let a doll speak your truth by creating a Toy Protest.

This handbook is for everyone, wherever you are in the world: whether you are a skilled crafter or a burnt-out activist, an introvert, highly sensitive person, or struggling with anxiety or overwhelm. These 20 projects and tools use the slow, soothing and thoughtful process of craft to help channel feelings of sadness, anger or powerlessness into proactive, encouraging effective actions to help make hope possible.

A gorgeous set of 100 postcards by acclaimed artist Jackie Morris

From the beloved artist and writer Jackie Morris—The Unwinding, in a beautiful set of cards Jackie Morris—the creative genius behind The Lost Words, The Lost Spells (both with Robert MacFarlane), and The Unwinding—has designed a special set of cards. The front of each card features on of Jackie’s paintings from The Unwinding; the back of each has a short quote, a spell, or a poem from the book, plus space for you to write your own message, or to draw or paint your own addition. In Jackie Morris’s own words, use them to “spread peace and beauty to the people you love and care about.” Inspired by dreams and wishes, these cards will ease the soul and offer respite wherever they land. Designed by Alison O’Toole, who helped Jackie create the original book and the award-winning phenomenon that is The Lost Words, this postcard box will be an elegant work of art in its own right, as useful as it is beautiful.

I Could Read the Sky is a collaboration, in the shape of a lyrical novel, between writer Timothy O'Grady and photographer Steve Pyke. 

It tells the story of a man coming of age in the middle of this century. Now at its end, he finds himself alone, struggling to make sense of a life of dislocation and loss. He remembers his childhood in the west of Ireland and his decades of bewildered exile in the factories, potato fields and on the building sites of England. He is haunted by the faces of the family he left behind and by the land that is still within him. He remembers the country and the seascapes, the bars and the boxing booths, the music he played, and the woman he loved. This elegiac narrative is accompanied by a succession of photographs taken by Pyke during his travels in Ireland – from starkly beautiful landscapes to unforgettable portraits and scenes from everyday life – which in their counterpoint with the text produce a powerful evocation of the Irish emigrant experience.

Words from the Hedge is a passionate evocation of the history, beauty and importance of our hedgerows by a craftsman who has been laying hedges for almost three decades and has the scars to prove it.

Hedges are as old as civilisation and as emblematic of the British countryside as chalk streams, hay meadows and oak trees. But unlike woodland and rivers, farmland hedges remain on the periphery of the public consciousness, often going unnoticed and almost always under-appreciated. Wielding his pen as deftly he does a billhook, professional hedgelayer Richard Negus takes us on a journey that reveals these ribbons of thorn and barb are so much more than mere decoration or boundary markers. They are essential for much-needed wildlife recovery. If we don’t get our hedges right, there is little hope for species like the almost-extinct turtledove.

And yet, no hedge is truly 'wild'; each one is a testament to generations of human skill and labour, requiring ongoing maintenance to survive and thrive. But there is a problem: we need more hedgelayers, and this is something Negus is trying to solve.

Introducing a lively band of fellow countrymen and countrywomen along the way, Negus explores everything from the practical complexities of modern farming and land ownership to the challenges faced by conservationists. Written with vigour and humour, as well as rare insight and honesty, Words from the Hedge is a timely exploration of how we can use hedges to make the British countryside a place where nature has a home.

Listen with Father is a book about the transformative power of listening, and about how we remember those we have loved and lost.

At four years old, Caroline Sanderson fell in love with the music of Mozart after listening to it with her father. At eight, she fell even harder for the songs of David Bowie. Her dad made many gentle attempts to persuade her to back to his world of classical music, but it wasn’t until after he died that she returned to it, in memory of him. Listen with Father tells of how she set out to listen, with great care and attention, to the music her dad loved, to work out why he so appreciated it and whether she could too.

In a beguiling blend of memoir and biography, Sanderson explores the music of composers from Igor Stravinsky to Clara Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, hearing Mozart recitals in Salzburg, visiting Sibelius’s house near Helsinki and playing Robert Schumann at home on the piano. Beautifully touching and absorbing, Listen with Father is a story of a beloved father, told through the classical music he cherished.

An astounding insight into how white feminism is intertwined with Islamophobia, and why Muslim women are so often left out of the conversation.

Growing up, journalist Shahed Ezaydi was asked how she could possibly call herself a feminist if she also practised her faith. By treating Muslim women as invisible and excluding them from feminist spaces, or hyper-visible with an obsession of ‘saving’ them, we are perpetuating gendered Islamophobia and white feminism. But Muslim women don’t need to be saved, and religion is not the only form of oppression.

The Othered Woman is the book Ezaydi wishes her younger self could have turned to, to dispel the myths of how Muslim women are oppressed and who by. It shows that these myths translate into very real harm at state level in the UK and globally, and showcases the many intersectional feminists fighting for liberation in their own way. Accessible and compelling, this is urgent reading for anyone who considers themselves a feminist.

Tales Accursed is the second collection of classic supernatural stories selected by the artist Richard Wells. Each of the sixteen tales is accompanied by one of Richard’s striking lino-print illustrations.

This anthology contains work from both the established masters of folk horror, and some more surprising contributors: from Shirley Jackson and M. R. James to E. F. Benson and William Croft Dickinson. Tales Accursed will raise the hairs on your neck and keep you alert to the slightest rustle in the trees: through the chill splendour of moonlit nights come apparitions through the orchard; sea-witches perch on the sharp fangs of rocks as they weave their spells; fir-woods lie unnaturally still with no birdsong, no breeze, nor any undergrowth; and hooded creatures crouch on grey secluded beaches. This book combines ancient horrors from the wilderness with sinister shadows of the landscape to remind us of the settings of our ancestors.

Tales Accursed is a gloriously creepy collection of chilling folk horror tales that is both thrilling and unnerving.

A groundbreaking collection of essays about food and its powerful link to identity, culture and community, from twenty exciting voices around the world.

We hear about a family ritual of drying mango and pickling limes in India, and the search for a father’s favourite hotdog in North Carolina. We investigate Latino food in cinema and vegetarianism in Buddhist diets, the cultural appropriation of Chinese food and the effect of gentrification on Black communities. And we learn about the grassroots organisations fighting for change, for equality for farmers and for better mental health provisions in kitchens, where toxicity and micro-aggressions are rife.

Edited by renowned chef and activist Zoe Adjonyoh, and featuring a foreword by acclaimed author and broadcaster Yasmin Khan, Serving Up is an electric, urgent anthology campaigning for representation around our dinner tables, wherever that dinner table may be.

Includes essays from: Abigail Koffler, Apoorva Sripathi, Chris Nigro, Cynthia Greenlee, Duron Chavis, Fatima Tarkleman, Hassel Aviles, Izzie Ramirez, Lee Tran Lam, Lenore Adkins, Mavis-Jay Sanders, Samah Dada, Scott Alves Barton, Selasie Dotse, Tambra Raye Stevenson, Tiffani Rozier, Vanessa Parish, Yoshivel Elise Chirinos.

'Excellent' Tom Parker Bowles

Folklorist Ben Gazur guides you through the dark alleys of British history to uncover how our food habits have been passed down through generations of folklore.

We investigate the origins of famous food superstitions – why do we throw salt over our shoulder and think carrots can help us see in the dark? – as well as much more bizarre and lesser-known tales too, from what day the devil urinates on blackberries to how to stop witches using eggshells as escape boats.

Hilarious and fascinating, A Feast of Folklore will introduce you to the gloriously eccentric folk who aren’t often noticed by historians. Here lies a smorgasbord of their dark remedies and deadly delicacies, waiting to be discovered.

'Will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about your dinner plate’ Dee Dee Chainey, author of A Treasury of British Folklore

'Diverting, delightful and deliciously weird enough to satisfy the most demanding appetite' Christopher Hadley, author of The Road

'A must read the next time you are sitting down to a sausage roll' Max Miller, creator of Tasting History

What does the future hold for the evolution of our species?

Prepare to embark on a speculative odyssey in All Tomorrows: an extraordinary exploration of the potentials and pitfalls of human evolution. In this visionary classic, author and artist C. M. Kosemen imagines how life will be shaped by genetic manipulation, alien intervention and the relentless forces of evolutionary change. From the colonisation of Mars to the ultimate destiny of humanity, the future is bound to unfold in unexpected and unsettling ways...

All Tomorrows is a thrilling tale of survival and a breathtaking work of imagination that catalogues the progress of new human species and documents the trials they face on distant worlds. Some will flourish while others fade into oblivion, but the vital essence of humanity persists against all odds.

This print edition of Kosemen’s cult classic features his original illustrations and bonus material including a species commentary, sketchbook excerpts and never-before-seen artwork.

An Accordion Book doesn’t open, it unfolds. One side is filled with beautiful watercolour images of an animal: sometimes in motion, sometimes at rest. The other is filled with text – poems, descriptions, invocations – inspired by the same animal.

Together they work as spells to summon the animal’s spirit. Jackie Morris has painted them using antique watercolours, some from boxes which hadn't been opened for over 150 years, woken from their slumber with a single drop of water.

Hare and Hound will join the first two Accordions, Fox and Otter, in a series that will go on to include Owl and Cat among many others.

'A master storyteller with an ear, an eye and a voice that should be the envy of many men with weightier reputations' Daniel Day-Lewis on The Grass Arena

With imaginative prose and startling imagery, Healy takes us on a journey where he first works in a late-night cafe serving whores, pimps, druggies, window-ledgers, handbag snatchers, narks, and the odd psychopath. Situated at the dim end of the counter at the furthest corner from God’s light on earth, he plans his escape and ends up in a world more treacherous and dangerous than he could ever have imagined. In this world of middle-class literature, living hand to mouth, he writes The Grass Arena. To become suddenly famous in an unfamiliar world of power and privilege was completely disorienting. He finds himself thrown into unpredictable situations that call for a tact where he was more used to situations where people achieved their aims through brutality.

The Glass Cage is an unrepentant account of a life few of us could imagine. A worthy sequel to The Grass Arena, it is John Healy’s crowning achievement.

An Accordion Book doesn’t open, it unfolds. One side is filled with beautiful watercolour images of an animal: sometimes in motion, sometimes at rest. The other is filled with text – poems, descriptions, invocations – inspired by the same animal.

Together they work as spells to summon the animal’s spirit. Jackie Morris has painted them using antique watercolours, some from boxes which hadn't been opened for over 150 years, woken from their slumber with a single drop of water.

Hare and Hound will join the first two Accordions, Fox and Otter, in a series that will go on to include Owl and Cat among many others.

The Lights of Shantinagar is a warm and lively portrait of family life set in modern India where new philosophies are reshaping old traditions and one woman’s astute observations can change everything.

Aspiring quantum physicist Sumi is newly married and has moved into her husband’s family home. Here she observes that the beguilingly tranquil middle-class town of Shantinagar is not very different from her beloved quantum world: the happenings in one house are cryptically entangled with things next door, objects mysteriously disappear and unexpected interactions reveal surprising truths.

As the line between right and wrong begins to blur, new discoveries force the residents of Shantinagar to reflect on what they truly know about themselves and the ones they love. Meanwhile, Sumi must blend logic with love to make sense of her new circumstances.

Wild Folk comprises seven richly illustrated fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future.

These tales from the stones are neither new nor old. They are full of ‘wild folk’, shape-shifting spirits that carry the energy that connects all things. You will meet selkies and silver trout and the black fox, as big as a wolf and so fast and cunning she drives the lord of the manor to madness and oblivion; the woman of flowers who is happier living as an owl; the boy who learns to feel the songs and stories of trees through his skin; Wayland, the smith who can hammer metal to such airy thinness he makes his own wings; and the great white raven, a bird so rare it awakens the king who sleeps beneath the stones of the wild west cliffs of Wales.

This book brings together the words of Jackie Morris and the stained-glass paintings of Tamsin Abbott, but the stories come from both, a true collaboration born out of friendship and hope. These are tales to make you see, listen and most of all feel the wild magic that links stone, tree, fox and star.

‘Wild, anarchic, and wonderfully head-spinning’ Neil Jordan, award-winning film director

A dark theatrical comedy about the vexed and violent relationship between Britain and Ireland, from twice Booker-shortlisted author Patrick McCabe.

It’s the summer of Brexit, and in a seedy hotel room on the South Coast of England, Chenevix Meredith finds his old comrade Henry Plumm murdered in the bathtub. Piecing together their shared history, Meredith looks back at the years they spent in Dublin half a century ago, running a theatrical agency and rubbing shoulders with actors and assassins alike in the swirling smoke of public houses. What their clients didn’t know, is that the flamboyant pair were undercover agents of the British state, posted to identify terrorist networks.

Goldengrove is a deeply immersive, satirical novel in which nothing is as it seems and no one is who they say there are. Steeped in film noir, classic crime and popular culture, McCabe blurs the lines between what’s real and what’s staged in this absurd game of cat and mouse.

'Yet again Patrick McCabe summons the ghost of Flann O'Brien in this wild rollick of a novel . . . Wonderful, shape-shifting stuff' Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon

'Thunderously compelling and downright ecstatic . . . This is nothing less than the work of a genuine master, a must-read’ Billy O’Callaghan, author of Life Sentences

'One hears Joyce and Beckett and Paul Muldoon in the background. Not because there is any borrowing, but because all alike draw from that same dazzling tradition of oral storytelling' Mark Bowles, author of All My Precious Madness

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Queer as Folklore takes readers across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Join any Pride march and you are likely to see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads trailing sequins, drag queens wearing mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. But these are not just accessories: they are queer symbols with historic roots.

To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past and Queer as Folklore is a celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.

Moving from West Belfast and County Monaghan to the streets of San Francisco, Timothy O’Grady’s exhilarating new novel is an epic portrait of art and war, authenticity and selling out, told through the fates of three men.

Ronan Treanor, Monaghan native and teller of this tale, is a celebrated theorist of post-modern architecture in New York. Paul Crane, single son of a hotel maid in Indiana, turns his mathematical gift into a multi-million-dollar career as an investment banker. And the mysterious Ryan, who drew as a boy in besieged West Belfast, but was swept up in the war against the British and lived a decade of extreme and escalating violence as a sniper. Through him, the war in Ireland and its psychic legacy are brought into close focus in a way rarely seen in contemporary fiction.

Their lives merge and conflict, rise and fall, as one man becomes the undoing of the next. Hauntingly beautiful, lyrical and profound, this is a novel about what happens when you cannot escape your past, featuring drawings and paintings by Anthony Lott.

The next challenge for fans of Cain's Jawbone: the TikTok sensation and international bestseller.

A body is found stabbed to death in a locked room. The police find no weapon, no motive and no suspects.

However, the murderer has in their possession a box of one hundred cryptic picture postcards which – if properly understood – would explain not just this murder, but nine others. This book contains those cards.

Solvers must rearrange the pages of text to unravel the story and identify the murderer, victim and location for each of the ten murders. They must also consider the separate puzzles presented by the curious images on the other sides.

Torquemada taught us that complete dedication is key and from devising detective pinboards to daily investigation diaries, Cain’s Jawbone puzzlers did him proud. But now the time has come to dust off that magnifying glass, because a global movement to solve the first picture postcard puzzle is about to begin. Do you have what it takes to explain The Researcher’s First Murder?

The Paradox Paradox is a dark sci-fi comedy set hundreds of years in the future. It's also set a fair few years in the past.

Osheen Shupple has been working his entire life to resolve the paradox of a desperate audio message from years ago, one which holds a horrifying secret that will change the course of history. His plan: build a time machine and return to the source of the message. But he can’t do it alone. Fortunately, the universe has supplied a perfect team: an archaeologist serving twenty-eight life sentences, a veterinarian with an identity crisis and no original body parts, a cheating university student, and a famous but very, very dead starship captain.

Together, they will be propelled across the past, and to worlds beyond their timelines, on a temporal treasure-hunt to trace the tragic truth behind whoever Austin Lang turns out to be. But time is not to be trifled with, and every misstep unmasks another layer of chronological chaos. The past can’t be changed – but will there be a future worth saving...?

The Paradox Paradox is a darkly hilarious and compelling ride into the future, the past and various alternate dimensions that arise when powerful masterminds wrestle to control the universe.

Featuring seventeen essays from people all around the world, Bloody Hell! is a collection of adventures in menopause from across the personal and political spectrum that aims to light a fire of shamelessness and break the boundaries surrounding this ‘taboo’ topic.

As a feminist of colour who often resorts to writing what she has long wanted to read, editor Mona Eltahawy has seen first-hand how when a movement takes a brave dive into the deep end of a taboo, representation can be limited. Bloody Hell! is the antidote.

This is not a medical textbook, nor is it a guide on how to remedy or fix anything. Rather, it is a collection of menopausal individuals – women, transmasculine and non-binary people – with their own entry point into that transition who can share unique insights and anecdotes about menopause that are deeply intimate, highly informative and hugely relatable.

Menopause can be a confusing and anxiety-ridden time spent navigating the unknown. However, it can also be an opportunity for transformation, liberation and self-love. Bloody Hell! is a chance for new beginnings, knowledge and power and these essays encourage us to embrace the messy and beautiful nature of change.

An action-packed dystopian drama following a group of neurodivergent teenagers on their quest to free the British people from an army of cloned soldiers.

War is raging. Numbers are dwindling. It's a dangerous world for an underdog.

The Underdogs of Spitfire’s Rise are falling apart. In the series’ penultimate novel, the remnants of Britain’s last army are called into battle again – this time to avert the violent deaths of tens of thousands of prisoners. The neurodiverse skills and defiant bravery of the Underdogs are pitched against the might of military science and the terrifying Acceleration project.

Meanwhile, Oliver Roth has been offered a promotion that would make him the second most powerful person in Britain. But it’s conditional on the success of his next mission: the discovery and annihilation of Spitfire’s Rise.

The Underdogs fight for the safety of countless prisoners, clueless that their home is being hunted. As each side launches their respective attacks, it’s only a matter of time until one triumphs decisively over the other.

love lay down beside me and we wept is Helen Murray Taylor’s lyrical memoir of devastating mental illness.

Helen Murray Taylor was finding her feet as a young doctor and trying to maintain some semblance of a life in the shadow of a punishing schedule when she witnessed a horrific road traffic accident. The impact of this fatal collision caught Helen off guard and had terrible repercussions. Both her career and her mental health took a battering. After a succession of other distressing events left Helen emotionally shattered and seriously depressed, she was admitted to a psychiatric ward and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. At her lowest, she almost succeeded in taking her own life. love lay down beside me and we wept sprang from these difficult times, from Helen’s months on the ward and the psychological upheaval of being restrained against her will, and from the challenge of being a doctor turned patient, but also from the moments of pure comedy and unexpected comradeship that she encountered there.

This is a profoundly moving and masterful account of one woman's physical and psychological breakdown, it's a tribute to the love that supported her through it, and it's an offering to the reader who might find comfort or understanding in this story.

'I love this book' Fern Britton

'Laugh out loud funny' Kate Bottley

An explosive satire of gender stereotypes that flips patriarchy on its head to highlight sexist double standards.

Exploring subjects like work and comedy, history and sport, the beauty industry and domesticity, anonymous author Man Who Has It All imagines a world in which men are bombarded with the same stereotypical bullshit as women. What if men's T-shirts were emblazoned with slogans encouraging them to be smiley, positive and kind? What if we laughed at jokes about fathers-in-law, male drivers and middle-class men of a certain age? What if men's history was a niche topic? Behind the jokes about crazy cat gentlemen, testerical men and the twenty-four-hour moustache, lies a deeper, darker message about language, power and control.

Smart and provocative, Man Who Has It All shines a powerful light on the prejudice ingrained in our society. Told through fictionalised scenarios and wider cultural analysis, this is a feminist handbook that will arm you against the patriarchy.

'Funny and insightful, but also fiercely radical' Victoria Smith

'Takes on patriarchy with wit, verve and a mighty dose of good old British sarcasm' Viv Groskop, author of How to Own the Room

'We need to hide copies in every locker room, Wetherspoons and B&Q' Eleanor Morton, comedian and actor

'Man Who Has It All does a remarkable job of channelling anger into humour . . . a galvanising read' Rachel Hewitt, author of In Her Nature

Since 2016, podcasting legend Jeff Cannata has delighted Filmcast listeners with show-stopping movie reviews in poetic form. Now, lovers of the silver screen can enjoy reels of these laugh-out-loud limericks in Best Summed Up: a must-have quiz compendium for cinephiles.

From applauding filmmaking mastery in box office sell-outs to damning dismissals of action big hitters that have missed the mark, Cannata critiques every genre of contemporary film and unpicks all must-see releases from 2018 to 2024 with his signature wit and wisdom.

The challenge is simple: readers must identify the film described by each verse in five, delightfully moreish levels of brain-teasing poems. So grab some popcorn and see if you can achieve award-winning status of your own by completing the ultimate test for movie buffs.

An action-packed dystopian drama following a group of neurodivergent teenagers on their quest to free the British people from an army of cloned soldiers.

It’s the last days of the war. The fate of humanity is at stake. The stage is set for the Underdogs’ final battle.

After thirteen months of vicious warfare, the fight between the Underdogs and Nicholas Grant’s forces is almost at an end. The neurodiverse heroes of Spitfire’s Rise have fought a war to be proud of, however their greatest challenge still lies ahead.

In this epic conclusion to the series, the world is on the brink of annihilation and the survival of humankind hangs in the balance. Grant is finally in a position where he could be defeated – but, once again, the Underdogs do not have numbers on their side. They must overcome the odds that have been stacked against them since day one and infiltrate New London to prevent global destruction.

Underdogs: Uprising sees the Great British Rebellion come to a head in a cataclysmic showdown. Nobody knows what the country and the wider world will look like once the dust settles around the survivors; the only certainty is that the final night of the war will determine the destiny of the human population.

‘Go to Empty Wigs for prose that never ceases to dazzle, for an extended holiday from contemporary pieties and to disgrace yourself with laughter’ Paul Genders, Literary Review

Empty Wigs is a hallucinatory ride through the twentieth century that will cement Jonathan Meades as one of the great imaginative writers of our age.

It moves from bloody Algiers in 1962 to the Welsh Marches in the late nineteenth century, from Lüneburg Heath to suburban southern England. Its characters are damned and doomed. They exert free will so make terrible choices. Their appetites are base. Their lives are without end. They lurch to extremes. From euthanasia to terrorism and political assassination, with secrets and betrayals, great gothic houses and pseudo-scientific experiments, Empty Wigs is a vast compendium of tales from the jungle of existence which show humankind at its most abject.

Many of its stories are bleak, perverse, harrowing. Many are tragically farcical. But the writing is neon-rich, gorgeous and baroque, funny and joyfully offensive. Told through frames within frames, mazes within mazes, colliding narratives and quick changing moods, Empty Wigs is a late modern masterpiece and a return to the novel’s origins.

'Meades finds the mot juste, the striking reference, to complete every brilliant line. Is it all a bit too much? Reader, it is' Stephen Smith, Observer

'A head-spinning turn that can quicken from high farce into deep seriousness, vaulting across time and space' Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph

We all want to live more healthily and ethically. This book is not just for vegans; it’s for anyone who is curious about veganism, its principles and what even non-vegans can learn from its practice.

According to reports, the number of vegans in the UK has more than quadrupled since 2014 and with the rise in plant-based foods and cruelty-free products showing no sign of stopping, Think Like a Vegan is a timely exploration of how vegan ethics can be applied to every area of our lives.

Through a personal and often irreverent lens, the authors explore a variety of contemporary topics related to animal use. From the basics of vegan logic to politics, economics, love and other aspects of being human, each chapter draws you into a thought-provoking conversation about your daily ethical decisions that will open your eyes to a new way of living in a plant-powered world.

Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before. This is not a book about myth or narrative; rather, it is a sequence of incantations, a series of battles.

Each of the three journeys sees Shaw walk alone into a Dartmoor forest and wait. What arrive are stories – fragments of myth that he has carried within him for decades: the deep history of Dartmoor itself; the lives of distant family members; Arthurian legend; and tales from India, Persia, Lapland, the Caucasus and Siberia. But these stories and their tellers don’t arrive as the bearers of solace or easy wisdom. As with all quests, Shaw is entering a domain of traps and tests.

Bardskull can be read as a fable, as memoir, as auto-fiction or as an attempt to undomesticate myth. It is a magnificent, unclassifiable work of the imagination.

A magical, long-forgotten masterpiece, The Romance of William and the Werewolf is the story of two princes who overcame their wicked family to reclaim their inheritance and build a society based on tolerance and equality.

Originally titled William of Palerne, it was first translated from French and then converted into an alliterative Middle English romance by an obscure Gloucestershire scribe in c. 1350. It has never been translated into modern English – until now.

Written over 600 years ago, it is a multi-layered tale of poverty, justice, exile and 'otherness'; its themes of inheritance, the freedom of women, fairness and forgiveness, familial responsibility and social class, speak to us just as clearly today, and challenge us to reflect upon our class-driven politics and the corruption, entitlement and indifference which underlie it.

As with Michael Smith’s other translations – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and King Arthur’s Death – The Romance of William and the Werewolf will feature a detailed historical introduction, a comprehensive glossary and notes, and Michael’s own rich and beautiful linocut illustrations.

'Hot Singles in Your Area is a long joke, an experimental novel, and a conversation starter' Locus Magazine

'Shiveley writes like a ghoul living in the haunted house that is the internet' Meg Elison, author of 'The Road to Nowhere' trilogy

A biting, post-modern horror about day jobs and monsters – one of which will devour you whole, but perhaps not the one that you think.

Noah desperately needs a new job that involves less blood and piss than his current one. So, when he spots an ad for a newspaper with ‘No experience preferred’, he puts on his good shirt and marches down to their average-looking office to unknowingly sign his life away.

Malachia is the only human left in the City of Silence and she spends her time wandering its empty, bone-filled streets. Until one day she finds a lone figure hunched over a typewriter, his fingers enmeshed with the keys. Could he be the answer to finding her missing girlfriend?

Propelled by their pursuits for rent money and truth, Noah and Malachia are pushed to their limits by a sinister media powerhouse. Will either of them survive the darkness that ensues?

Everyone's talking about Hot Singles in Your Area. . .

'Came for the body horror, stayed for the detailed world-building and pinpoint satire' – Reader review

'If The Hitchhiker's Guide and The Ministry of Time had a horrific baby with multiple rows of teeth' – Reader review

'One of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had this year. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before' – Reader review

A manifesto for Gentle Protest: how to change our world one stitch at a time.

Award-winning campaigner and founder of the global Craftivist Collective Sarah Corbett shows how to respond to injustice not with apathy or aggression, but with gentle, effective protest.

This is a manifesto – for a more respectful and contemplative activism; for conversation and collaboration where too often these is division and conflict; for using craft to engage, empower and encourage us all to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Sarah's craftivism has helped change laws and business policies as well as hearts and minds; here, with thoughtful principles and practical examples, she shows that quiet action can speak as powerfully as the loudest voice.

Written by an award-winning behavioral change expert, this practical guide shows how recent discoveries in the behavioural sciences can help you lead a more positive and rewarding life.

As 95 per cent of our brain activity carries on at a subconscious level, we’re not always aware of why we think what we think and do the things we do. Sometimes these subconscious wirings can make us think or act in ways that are not optimal for our happiness – they can bring out the illogical in us all.

How Your Brain Is Wired draws on recent breakthroughs in our understanding of how the brain really works, empowering the reader to take control over their own behavior. Full of insight and practical advice, it equips you with a toolkit of simple changes you can put into action to: reduce conflict and anxiety, achieve a positive mindset, make better decisions, have more fun and reach new goals.

This book is about rewiring your attitudes; re-seeing yourself and your choices. It reveals something rather magical: how tiny tweaks to your behavior can be all you need to deliver a big, sometimes thrilling, reboot to your life.

'A powerful manifesto for women who long to walk alone – and safely – in the countryside' Dr. Sharon Blackie, author of If Women Rose Rooted

Why is it radical for women to walk alone in the countryside, when men have been doing so for centuries? The Hard Way is a powerful and illuminating book about addressing this imbalance, reclaiming fearlessness and diving into the history of the landscape from a woman’s point of view.

Setting off to follow the oldest paths in England, the Ridgeway and the Harrow Way, Susannah Walker comes across artillery fire, concern from passing policemen and her own innate fear of lone figures in the distance: a landscape shaped by men, from prehistoric earthworks to today’s army bases.

But along the way, Susannah finds Edwardian feminists, rebellious widows, forgotten writers and artists, as well as all their anonymous sisters who stayed at home throughout history. They become her companions over 135 miles of walking, revealing how much, or how little, has changed for women now.

'An urgent call' Guy Shrubsole, author of Who Owns England?

'A fascinating personal journey' Sophie Pierce, author of The Green Hill

'Thought provoking, rich and interesting' Andrew Ziminski, author of The Stonemason

'Powerful' Irenosen Okojie, author of Butterfly Fish

The year is 1748. Elewa, known as ‘the Daughter of Peace’, bears a heavy responsibility on her young shoulders: to maintain the fragile truce between the warring peoples of her West African kingdom.

But as she begins to understand her role in the peace negotiations, even greater pressures emerge. Elewa discovers that she has Yeseni, a powerful gift that allows her to see events from any point in time, and to travel into the past and future.

When she experiences horrific visions of life aboard a slave ship, she realises she has to face the ultimate crossroads. She could use her gift to intervene in the past and try to prevent the transatlantic slave trade ever taking place. But that means she, as the Daughter of Peace, would be leaving her village behind at a precarious moment in the reconciliation process.

Whichever path she chooses to take, the future of her people lies on her shoulders.

The rollicking behind-the-scenes story of Sharpe's Rifles, one of British TV's most beloved shows, featuring a foreword by Sharpe author Bernard Cornwell.

In the summer of 1992, Jason Salkey was cast in a role that would change his life forever. Sharpe’s Rifles, a Napoleonic war drama, was to be shot in the Crimean Peninsula. Little did the producers know that they would be sending Jason and the crew to film in a rapidly disintegrating Soviet Union. There they faced near-starvation and danger round every corner as they set about creating one of Britain’s most successful and critically acclaimed television programmes.

From Crimea with Love documents the mishaps, blunders, incompetence and downright corruption that made Sharpe’s Rifles go down in British television folklore for its unique tales of hardship. Follow the cast through intense depravation and constant catastrophe until they become every bit the jaded, battle-hardened soldiers we saw on screen. Tapping into his diaries, photo journals and video log, Jason brings you an eye-opening, jaw-dropping insider’s account of one of the best-loved shows ever made.

An action-packed dystopian drama following a group of neurodivergent teenagers on their quest to free the British people from an army of cloned soldiers.

Three weeks have passed since the events of Underdogs. The British population continues its imprisonment in Nicholas Grant's giant walled Citadels, under the watchful eye of innumerable cloned soldiers. The heroes of Oakenfold Special School remain their last chance of freedom.

As a result of their last mission, Grant has been forced to speed up his plans for Great Britain and beyond. Ewan, Kate, McCormick and the rest of the Underdogs must face the horrors of his new research, knowing that it raises the stakes as high as they will go. Failing this battle will not merely result in losing soldiers and friends, but in losing the war entirely. 

According to the odds, the Underdogs are near-certain to fail. But they have spent their whole lives being underestimated and did not survive this long by respecting the odds.

YouTube sensation Stuart Ashen is back with his second instalment of terrible old computer games you’ve probably never heard of... because what the world needs right now is to know exactly how bad Domain of the Undead for the Atari 8-bit computers was.

Attack of the Flickering Skeletons is even bigger than the original Terrible Old Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of – this second excavation of gaming’s buried past will not only unearth more appalling excuses for digital entertainment, but also feature guest contributors and several special interest chapters not based around single specific games.

These are NOT the games you’ve heard of a million times in YouTube videos. This is a compilation of truly obscure and dreadful games. Dripping with wry humour and featuring the best, worst graphics from the games themselves, this book encapsulates the atrocities produced in the days of tight budgets and low quality controls.

Welcome to a world of games you never knew existed. You will probably wish you still didn’t.

Billy Elliot meets Bend It Like Beckham in this unforgettable debut about aiming high and defying expectation – the perfect uplit read this year.

Joyful, defiant and dazzling, this is the story of Rafi Aziz – a Northern boy dreaming of his name up in lights.

It's 1981 in the suburbs of Blackburn and, as Rafi’s mother reminds him daily, the family moved here from Pakistan to give him the best opportunities. But Rafi longs to follow his own path. Flamboyant, dramatic and musically gifted, he wants to be a Bollywood star.

Twenty years later, Rafi is flying home from Australia for his best friend’s wedding. He has everything he ever wanted: starring roles in musical theatre, the perfect boyfriend and freedom from expectation. But returning to Blackburn is the ultimate test: can he show his true self to his community?

Navigating family and identity from boyhood to adulthood, as well as the changing eras of ABBA, skinheads and urbanisation, Rafi must follow his heart to achieve his dreams.

A memoir of first love, first lust, first heartbreak – and the many disappointments in between.

Rosemary Mac Cabe was always a serial monogamist – never happier than when she was in a relationship or, at the very least, on the way to being in one. But in her desperate search for ‘the one’ – from first love to first lust, through a series of disappointments and the searing sting of heartbreak – she learned that finding love might mean losing herself along the way.

This Is Not About You is a life story in a series of love stories. About Henry, with the big nose and the lovely mum, with whom sex was like having a verruca frozen off in the doctor’s surgery: ‘uncomfortable, but I had entered into this willingly’. About Dan, with the goatee. About Luke, who gave her a split condom. About Frank, who was married…

But mostly, it’s about Rosemary, figuring out just how much she was willing to sacrifice for her happy ending.

Beware the buried skull underfoot and watch out for children with fur on their backs...

Blood on Satan's Claw is widely regarded as part of the ‘unholy trinity’ of cult classics which gave birth to the film genre that would become known as folk horror. Along with The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General, it found new ways to terrify audiences using elements of superstition and folklore.

Now, fifty years after its release, readers can experience the unearthing of this terror in the film’s first official novelisation: a compelling and frightening retelling of the fate of unfortunate villagers sacrificed by their own children as devil worship infiltrates their rural existence.

Written by the film’s original screenwriter Robert Wynne-Simmons and featuring haunting new illustrations from Richard Wells, it is an atmospheric and defining cult classic in the making.

From Far Around They Saw Us Burn is the eagerly awaited first short story collection from Alice Jolly, one of the most exciting and accomplished voices in British fiction today.

Words begin to lose their meanings, flaking off into air like moths. Friendships cultivated over a lifetime fall apart in testing circumstances. What does the stranger with yellow eyes really want?

The extraordinary range of work gathered here is united by a fascination with how everyday interactions can transform our lives in unpredictable ways. These are stories of lonely people, outcasts and misfits, and the ghosts that inhabit our intimate spaces. The result is a compelling, arresting and, at times, devastating collection – not least in the title story, which was inspired by the tragic true events of the 1943 Cavan orphanage fire.

Written with an exemplary eye for detail and an intimate understanding of the complexities of human nature, Jolly's collection builds up towards the ultimate question: what is revealed of us when we peel away the surfaces, and is it enough?

A bold follow-up to the very popular Damnable Tales: Full of thrillingly chilling tales from Shirley Jackson, M. R. James, William Croft Dickinson and many more

This anthology contains work from both the established masters of Folk Horror, and some more surprising contributors: from Shirley Jackson and M. R. James to E. F. Benson and William Croft Dickinson. Tales Accursed will raise the hairs on your neck and keep you alert to the slightest rustle in the trees: through the chill splendour of moonlit nights come apparitions through the orchard; sea-witches perch on the sharp fangs of rocks as they weave their spells; fir-woods lie unnaturally still with no birdsong, no breeze, nor any undergrowth; and hooded creatures crouch on grey secluded beaches. This book combines ancient horrors from the wilderness with sinister shadows of the landscape to remind us of the settings of our ancestors.

Tales Accursed is a gloriously creepy collection of chilling Folk Horror tales that is both thrilling and unnerving.

The letters that led to Edith Thompson's execution in 1923, collected in print for the first time by the award-winning author of Rex vs Edith Thompson.

A hundred years ago, on the night of 3 October 1922, a thirty-two-year-old clerk named Percy Thompson was stabbed to death as he walked home to his suburban villa in Ilford. With him was his wife, twenty-eight-year-old Edith. His killer was Edith’s lover: Frederick Bywaters, a merchant seaman aged twenty. Bywaters was hanged for murder on 9 January 1923. So too was Edith Thompson.

Despite a lack of any tangible evidence linking her to the murder, Edith found herself condemned by a society steeped in sexism. What sealed her fate were the letters she had penned to her lover, which were interpreted by the law as incitement to murder. These letters are remarkable documents. Charged with the vitality of Edith's voice, they are moving, perplexing, maddening, banal, spectacularly sensual, infused with a stream-of-consciousness immediacy. And they have never been collected in print, until now.

In Au Revoir Now Darlint Laura Thompson – author of the CWA Gold Dagger-shortlisted Rex vs Edith Thompson – gathers the letters together alongside illuminating commentary to tell the remarkable story of a woman ahead of her time and an extraordinary imagination that ultimately led to appalling tragedy.

"Original, compelling, witty and historically illuminating – hilarious and essential reading." — Helen Lederer, comedian, actress and founder of Comedy Women in Print

Paris, 1940. The course of Fatiha Bin-Khalid’s life is changed forever when she befriends the Muslim feminist Doria Shafik. But after returning to Egypt and dedicating years to the fight for women’s rights, she struggles to reconcile her political ideals with the realities of motherhood.

Cairo, 1966. After being publicly shamed when her relationship with a bisexual boyfriend is revealed, Fatiha’s daughter is faced with an impossible decision. Should Yasminah accept a life she didn’t choose, or will she leave her home and country in pursuit of independence?

Bristol, 2011. British-born Nadia is battling with an identity crisis and a severe case of herpes. Feeling unfulfilled (and after a particularly disastrous one-night stand), she moves in with her old-fashioned Aunt Yasminah and realises that she must discover her purpose in the modern world before it’s too late.

Following the lives of three women from the Bin-Khalid family, Daughters of the Nile is an original and darkly funny novel that examines the enduring strength of female bonds. These women are no strangers to adversity, but they must learn from the past and relearn shame and shamelessness to radically change their futures.

Everyone’s talking about Daughters of the Nile...

"A writer to watch." — @ElementaryMyDear_

"Mesmerising." — @alicetheunique

"Not to be missed." — @Silvia_reviews

"A true gem." — @stratospherekawaiigirl

Fair or Foul considers different aspects of ambition and its place in our lives. It asks: what does success mean? When is enough enough? And is Lady Macbeth right to suggest that only those with the 'illness' of ambition achieve the highest goals?

Stefan Stern draws on the major themes of Macbeth and discusses how they can be applied to ambition in modern life. From the success of the first US woman vice president, Kamala Harris, the obstacles she faced and the possibilities that still lie ahead, to Boris Johnson's young aspirations to be 'world king' and the pathological intensity of his ambition, Stern considers the careers and personal lives of politicians, sports stars and business people, to name a few, to illuminate this strange and powerful driver. Expect to discover how ambition and success work together, how attitudes have shifted over time, and how gender roles have an impact on our goals.

Incisive, contemporary and accessible, this book is for anyone who is looking for a change of direction or emphasis on how to move forward. It will also provide consolation, amusement and plenty of insightful meditations on the complex nature of ambition.

An action-packed dystopian drama following a group of neurodivergent teenagers on their quest to free the British people from an army of cloned soldiers.

One million cloned soldiers. A nation imprisoned. A group of neurodiverse rebels fighting back.

Britain as we know it lies destroyed. In the aftermath of the most daring military coup in history, the surviving population is crammed inside giant Citadels, watched over by an army of cloned soldiers. The hope of a nation lies in a tiny number of freedom fighters hidden in the abandoned countryside – most of whom are teenagers who escaped the attack on their special school.

Seen by many as no more than misfits and ‘problem children’, this band of fighters could never have imagined the responsibility that now rests on their shoulders. But perhaps this war needs a different kind of hero. After a lifetime of being defined by their weaknesses, the teenagers must learn how to play to their strengths, and become the best they can be in a world that has never been on their side.

The beginner’s guide to the Universe— in a cosmic, coffee-table book package, perfect for anyone who wants to brush up on their astronomical ABCs.

Ever wanted to cry out, “What on Earth is a black hole?” but been afraid you’d be shouting into the abyss? Ever wanted to find out how gravity works but never found the book to pull you in? 

DARK is an easily digestible beginner’s guide to the Universe in a handy A to Z format, with entries on everything from Dark Matter and Quantum Physics to NASA and the Zoo Hypothesis.

Includes a number of stunning design elements throughout, including original artworks and bespoke lettering to accompany each of the twenty-six chapters, as well as enlightenin and amusing quotes about space rendered in exquisite typography.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Queer as Folklore takes readers across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Join any Pride march and you are likely to see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads trailing sequins, drag queens wearing mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. But these are not just accessories: they are queer symbols with historic roots.

To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past and Queer as Folklore is a celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.

"One delight after another. Told with an open heart, a questing curiosity, and a healthy sense of mischief, Queer as Folklore is essential for every seeker of hidden histories." — PATRICK NESS, author of the 'Chaos Walking' series

"Endlessly informative and leaning hard into the British Isles’ reputation for the off-beat, this is a delight." — Publisher's Weekly

Folklorist Ben Gazur guides you through the dark alleys of British history to uncover how our food habits have been passed down through generations of folklore.

Who was the first person to throw salt over their shoulder? Why do we think carrots can help us see in the dark? When did we start holding village fairs to honour gigantic apple pies? Or start hurling ourselves down hills in pursuit of a wheel of cheese? Gazur investigates the origins of famous food superstitions as well as much more bizarre and lesser-known tales too, from what day the devil urinates on blackberries to how to stop witches using eggshells as escape boats.

Hilarious and fascinating, A Feast of Folklore will introduce you to the gloriously eccentric folk who aren’t often noticed by historians. Here lies a smorgasbord of their dark remedies and deadly delicacies, waiting to be discovered.

"This is a book of life and why we should celebrate our roots before it is too late. Fascinating." — John Connell, bestselling author of The Cow Book

Where Are the Fellows Who Cut the Hay? is an ode to rural life, charting traditions of the past, how they were lost and why we need to reconnect.

Exploring the relationship between everyday items and the communities that make them, Robert Ashton provides a snapshot of twenty-first century England. Where are the people who grow barley, milk cows and produce wool? How have their farming methods become less ethical, sustainable and natural over time? And what are we doing today to reverse that change?

Inspired by George Ewart Evans’s Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, Ashton gives voice to local people and travels rural Suffolk in search for innovation, interweaving his own personal connection to Evans and to the land. Part memoir, part social history, Ashton’s thought-provoking book is a manifesto for why, against all odds, we need to step back in order to progress.

"An earthy and immensely thoughtful book, full of experience and wisdom ...Essential reading for anybody who wants to understand rural life, how we got here, and what we’ve lost." — Patrick Galbraith, author of In Search of One Last Song

"We hear the authentic voices of local people, still in the middle of great forces of transformation. Now we hope these will create more sustainable and progressive futures." — Jules Pretty, author of The East Country

"Informed by a deep familiarity with the county, Ashton reveals how an intimate knowledge of the rural past and present can contribute to shaping a meaningful future." — Professor Gareth Williams, biographer of George Ewart Evans

A practical guide to human rights work and being a good ally, from internet sensation Bilbo the Cat.

‘Bboy’ means ‘boy’ in a very particular form of internet cat-speak. You can pronounce it ‘boy’, ‘buh-boy’ or ‘bee-boy’, whatever makes your heart happiest. 

It’s not always easy to live your life with kindness, but Ellen Murray and her cat Bilbo are doing their best to spread messages of positivity to their followers. As an LGBT+ and disability activist, Ellen’s goal has always been to make love, care and safety a reality for all – but fighting for your own rights or standing as an ally to others can be daunting, intimidating and confusing work.

How to Be a Good Bboy is an accessible guide to understanding what human rights work is all about: how to get involved, navigate the inevitable pitfalls, overcome imposter syndrome and own your vulnerability and power.

It is about Bilbo, and about Ellen. About her work, and about how Bilbo’s online presence is not just an accessory to that work but a way to channel the greater goals of her activism to a wider audience. It is about dignity, respect and justice, and ultimately how to be a very good bboy.

A groundbreaking deep dive into the history, politics and lived experiences of three often-misunderstood identities: Asexuality, Aromanticism and Agender.

How did asexual identity form? What is aromanticism? How does agender identity function? Researcher and writer Michael Paramo explores these misunderstood experiences, from the complex challenge of coming out to navigating the western lens of attraction. Expertly mapping their history, Paramo traces the emergence of vital online communities to the origins of the Victorian binaries that still restrict us today.

Powerfully persuasive and thought-provoking, Ending the Pursuit asks us to reimagine sexuality, romance and gender without the borders imposed by society.

With a groundbreaking blend of memoir and poetry, online articles and discussions, Ending the Pursuit is a much-needed addition to the cultural conversation. It encourages us to end the search for ‘normalcy’ and gives voice to an often-misunderstood community.

Magic Realms celebrates the incredible art of the brilliant and highly respected fantasy and science fiction artists who, over the years, worked with the Fighting Fantasy authors to bring their interactive adventures to vivid life.

Each artist is profiled along with select examples of their best work – in vibrant full colour, the astonishing detail on display in all its glory. It features the work some of the world’s best fantasy artists including Chris Achilléos, John Blanche, Jim Burns, Les Edwards, Karl Kopinski, Iain McCaig, Martin McKenna, Ian Miller and Russ Nicholson, among others.

Written by Fighting Fantasy co-creator Ian Livingstone and Fighting Fantasy historian Jonathan Green, Magic Realms is a Who’s Who of fantasy art – an absolutely essential collector's item for any Fighting Fantasy fan.

"Unapologetic about the cross-over of cultures, it’s bright, vibrant and dynamic." — Vivek Singh

"Packed full of approachable and inspiring recipes . . . thoroughly modern and highly rewarding." — Ravinder Bhogal

"Every recipe is packed with flavour." — Dan Lepard

Sanjana Feasts is a collection of dazzling recipes of modern Indian diaspora vegetarian and vegan food.

Sanjana Modha’s flavourful and vibrant recipes are rooted in her Indian heritage, East African family background, and Yorkshire childhood. This book showcases the varied ingredients and unique combinations that are authentic to Sanjana’s upbringing, and includes signature dishes such as Ruffled Biryani, Madras Mac and Cheese with Naan Crumbs, Desi-inspired French Bread Pizza and Sticky Toffee Gulab Jamun, as well as delicious Indian classics.

Over the last few years Sanjana has seen a visible shift in the Western understanding of what Indian food is. It’s gone from curry-house creations, to an exploration of regional food, to fusion cuisine and more recently, an appreciation of street food and casual dining. Today, Indian food is a cacophony of all these elements and more, and Sanjana is forging yet another new direction with the food of diasporic communities, and the flavours of a new generation.

Sanjana Feasts will inspire you both to incorporate these delicious recipes into your everyday cooking, and to raise your game in the kitchen with her tips for the classics.

A new translation of the classic English poem that inspired Malory, stunningly illustrated with linocuts by the author.

King Arthur’s Death (commonly referred to as the Alliterative Morte Arthure) is a Middle English poem that was written in Lincolnshire at the end of the fourteenth century. A source work for Malory’s later Morte d’Arthur, it is an epic tale which documents the horrors of war, the loneliness of kingship and the terrible price paid for arrogance.

This magnificent poem tells of the arrival of emissaries from Imperial Rome demanding that Arthur pays his dues as a subject. It is Arthur’s refusal to accept these demands, and the premise of foreign domination, which leads him on a quest to confront his foes and challenge them for command of his lands.

Combining heroic action, probing insight into human frailty and a great attention to contemporary detail, King Arthur’s Death is not only a lesson in effective kingship, it is also an astonishing mirror on our own times, highlighting the folly of letting stubborn dogma drive political decisions.

An unofficial guide to Alien: Isolation, the greatest, scariest horror game ever made.

There aren’t many computer games that can justify an entire book, but for superfans, Alien: Isolation is truly extraordinary and Perfect Organism reveals all there is to know about every aspect of this masterful game.

Discover the rationale and authenticity of the set design and art direction, learn about the alien’s unnerving abilities to second-guess the players and the importance of its unique height, find out more about the importance of the dynamic audio and the use of seventies archive soundbites, as well as the darkly beautiful music. And immerse yourself in the technical brilliance of the level design and the user interface, before reading about the deleted content, and the scenes and features that never made the final cut.

Alien: Isolation is a game of remarkable depth, complexity, and detail, and together with a level-by-level mission guide, this book will answer all of your questions, as well as many you haven’t yet thought to ask!

The next challenge for fans of Cain's Jawbone: the TikTok sensation and international bestseller.

A body is found stabbed to death in a locked room. The police find no weapon, no motive and no suspects. However, the murderer has in their possession a box of one hundred cryptic picture postcards which – if properly understood – would explain not just this murder, but nine others. These are those cards.

Readers must rearrange the pages of text to unravel the story and identify the murderer, victim and location for each of the ten murders. They must also consider the separate puzzles presented by the curious images on the other sides. 

Torquemada taught us that complete dedication is key and from devising detective pinboards to daily investigation diaries, Cain’s Jawbone puzzlers did him proud. But now the time has come to dust off that magnifying glass, because a global movement to solve the first picture postcard puzzle is about to begin. Do you have what it takes to explain The Researcher’s First Murder?

As Daniel Hardcastle careers towards thirty, he looks back on what has really made him happy in life: the friends, the romances… the video games. Told through encounters with the most remarkable – and the most mind-boggling – games of the last thirty-odd years, Fuck Yeah, Video Games is also a love letter to the greatest hobby in the world.

From God of War to Tomb Raider, Pokémon to The Sims, Daniel relives each game with countless in-jokes, obscure references and his signature wit, as well as intricate, original illustrations by Rebecca Maughan. Alongside this march of merriment are chapters dedicated to the hardware behind the games: a veritable history of Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Atari consoles.

Joyous, absurd, personal and at times sweary, Daniel's memoir is a celebration of the sheer brilliance of video games.

This first ever collection of his personal letters has been meticulously curated, transcribed and annotated by Jamesian scholar Jane Mainley-Piddock to offer an unprecedented and overdue insight into a great and singular mind. Through notoriously illegible handwriting, we learn of James's fear of spiders and his love of cats; his musings on the work of other contemporary authors; and a whole life's thoughts on a host of subjects – which shed light on the man himself: his family, his work, his relationships and preoccupations. 

Essential reading for any fan, *Casting the Runes *brings at last to the fore a writer adored for his fiction who himself has long remained in the shadows.

We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes. The 32 is a collection of memoir and essays in celebration of the working class, from thirty-two established and emerging Irish voices including Kevin Barry, Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Lisa McInerney, Lyra McKee and many more. Too often, working-class writers find that the hurdles they come up against are higher and harder to leap over than those faced by writers from more affluent backgrounds. The 32 sees writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind. Without these working-class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives, or role models for working-class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer. 

Contributors include:

Claire Allan Kevin Barry Dermot Bolger Kate Burns June Caldwell Martin Doyle Roddy Doyle Paul Dunne Trudie Gorman Marc Gregg Angela Higgins Jason Hynes Riley Johnston Erin Lindsay Dave Lordan Alison Martin Rosaleen McDonagh Linda McGrory Lisa McInerney Lyra McKee Danielle McLaughlin Eoin McNamee Maurice Neill Michael Nolan Abby Oliveira Stephen O’Reilly Rick O’Shea Dr Michael Pierse Lynn Ruane Theresa Ryder Jim Ward Elaine Cawley Weintraub

THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Over 60 boxes full of notebooks, research, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches, to-do lists, hard drives and even poems…Welcome to the incredible archive of Douglas Adams.

After his death in 2001, Douglas Adams's papers were loaned to his old Cambridge college, St John's. Reproduced here, in facsimile form and in close association with Adams’s family and literary estate, 42 is a full-colour, large-format hardback that follows Adams career from early collaborations with Graham Chapman to his work on Doctor Who, through the Hitchhiker years, Dirk Gently, his groundbreaking non-fiction book Last Chance to See and his later digital work. Alongside this are details of projects that never came to fruition like a proposed theme park ride and a TV series provisionally entitled The Secret Empire. 

Edited by Kevin Jon Davies, who has worked on a number of Hitchhiker-related projects and had a personal friendship with Adams spanning more than twenty years.

Each of the three journeys sees Shaw walk alone into a Dartmoor forest and wait. What arrive are stories – fragments of myth that he has carried within him for decades: the deep history of Dartmoor itself; the lives of distant family members; Arthurian legend; and tales from India, Persia, Lapland, the Caucasus and Siberia. But these stories and their tellers don’t arrive as the bearers of solace or easy wisdom. As with all quests, Shaw is entering a domain of traps and tests. Bardskull can be read as a fable, as memoir, as auto-fiction or as an attempt to undomesticate myth. It is a magnificent, unclassifiable work of the imagination.

It covers the hardware, software, and social history of the era showing how they're linked through numbers, such as 48K, C90, and 35899. Each entry starts with a number, and by choosing a related number you'll create a unique adventure through the book and into a web of forgotten geek lore and incredible facts. With luck, you'll find a way to arrive at the number used to grant infinite lives in Jet Set Willy!

“An entertaining and eclectic anthology of nature writing by women about the ‘east Atlantic archipelago’ or British isles.… For readers in search of a new take on the genre, this is a great place to start.” — Publishers Weekly

Now in paperback—a landmark gathering of writing, by women, about the natural world.

Women, through the centuries and to present time, writing about the natural world, in this landmark anthology—with pieces gathered from works of fiction, poetry, but also household planners, gardening diaries, recipe books…

For the very first time, this anthology collects together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of that archipelago. Alongside the traditional forms of the travelog, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head.

Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s writing to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite nun Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices.

Women on Nature presents a groundbreaking vision of the natural world which, in addition to being a rich and scintillating anthology that shines a light on many unjustly overlooked writers, is of unique importance in terms of women’s history and the history of writing about nature.

From the gothic fantasies of Walpole’s Otranto to post-modern takes on the country house by Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan, Phyllis Richardson guides us on a tour through buildings real and imagined to examine how authors’ personal experiences helped to shape the homes that have become icons of English literature. 

We encounter Jane Austen drinking “too much wine” in the lavish ballroom of a Hampshire manor, discover how Virginia Woolf’s love of Talland House at St. Ives is palpable in To the Lighthouse, and find Evelyn Waugh remembering Madresfield Court as he plots Charles Ryder’s return to Brideshead. 

Drawing on historical sources, biographies, letters, diaries, and the novels themselves, House of Fiction opens the doors to these celebrated houses while offering candid glimpses of the writers who brought them to life.

 This is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the Colony Room Club in Soho. It’s a hair-raising romp through the underbelly of the post-war scene: during its sixty-year history, more romances, more deaths, more horrors and more sex scandals took place in the Colony than anywhere else. 

 Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like to frequent the Club. With a glass in hand you’ll move through the decades listening to personal reminiscences, opinions and vitriol, from the authentic voices of those who were actually there. On your voyage through Soho’s lost bohemia, you’ll be served a drink by James Bond, sip champagne with Francis Bacon, queue for the loo with Christine Keeler, go racing with Jeffrey Bernard, get laid with Lucian Freud, kill time with Doctor Who, pick a fight with Frank Norman and pass out with Peter Langan. All with a stellar supporting cast including Peter O’Toole, George Melly, Suggs, Lisa Stansfield, Dylan Thomas, Jay Landesman, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and many, many more.

A full-colour illustrated history of the store that changed gaming for ever, as told by its founders.

Games Workshop, Warhammer, White Dwarf, Citadel Miniatures and Fighting Fantasy are names which trigger powerful memories for millions of people around the world. The cultural impact of Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy has been remarkable. But how did it all begin? 

Since starting out in 1975 as a part-time mail-order business in a modest third-floor flat in West London, Games Workshop has grown from its humble beginnings to become a FTSE 250 company listed on the London Stock Exchange. From distributing Dungeons & Dragons, to living in the back of a van, to opening Games Workshop stores, to creating Fighting Fantasy, to launching Warhammer, co-founders Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson tell their remarkable story for the first time. 

Dice Men is the fascinating, never-before-told story of an iconic company which changed the world of tabletop gaming for ever. It's an insight into the rollercoaster first year of Games Workshop and the birth of the industry.

Eileen: The Making of Orwell is the first on this extraordinary woman who has been until now unjustly overlooked. It examines the Blairs' nine year marriage, from a tiny village where they grew vegetables and tended their own goats and chickens, through the dangers of the Spanish Civil War, nursing George in Morocco after a severe bout of tubercular bleeding, narrowly escaping the destruction of their London apartment in World War II, and even adopting a baby boy when it became apparent that they were unable to have their own child. And their partnership produced some of the greatest works in English literature.

“Now,” George told a friend the night he met Eileen O’Shaughnessy, “that’s the kind of girl I would like to marry.” The year before, Eileen had published a futuristic poem called "End of the Century, 1984." Later, George would name his greatest work, 1984, in homage to the memory of Eileen.

“An entertaining and eclectic anthology of nature writing by women about the ‘east Atlantic archipelago’ or British isles.… For readers in search of a new take on the genre, this is a great place to start.” —Publishers Weekly

Now in paperback—a landmark gathering of writing, by women, about the natural world

Women, through the centuries and to present time, writing about the natural world, in this landmark anthology—with pieces gathered from works of fiction, poetry, but also household planners, gardening diaries, recipe books…

For the very first time, this anthology collects together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of that archipelago. Alongside the traditional forms of the travelog, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head.

Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s writing to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite nun Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices.

Women on Nature presents a groundbreaking vision of the natural world which, in addition to being a rich and scintillating anthology that shines a light on many unjustly overlooked writers, is of unique importance in terms of women’s history and the history of writing about nature. 

As a teacher in an inner-city school, Lucy Crehan was exasperated with ever-changing government policy claiming to be based on lessons from ‘top-performing’ education systems. She resolved to find out what was really going on in the classrooms of countries whose teenagers ranked top in the world in reading, maths and science.

Cleverlands documents Crehan’s journey around the world, weaving together her experiences with research on policy, history, psychology and culture to offer extensive new insights into what we can learn from these countries.

What if we responded to death... by throwing a party?

By the time Erica Buist’s father-in-law Chris was discovered, upstairs in his bed, his book resting on his chest, he had been dead for over a week. She searched for answers (the artery-clogging cheeses in his fridge?) and tried to reason with herself (does daughter-in-law even feature in the grief hierarchy?) and eventually landed on an inevitable, uncomfortable truth: everybody dies.

While her husband maintained a semblance of grace and poise, Erica found herself consumed by her grief, descending into a bout of pyjama-clad agoraphobia, stalking friends online to ascertain whether any of them had also dropped dead without warning, unable to extract herself from the spiral of death anxiety… until one day she decided to reclaim control

With Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities as a starting point, Erica decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world – one for every day they didn’t find Chris. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia – with a stopover in New Orleans, where the dead outnumber the living ten to one – Erica searched for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety.

This Party’s Dead is the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death – and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all.

Not all games are released equal. The barriers of language and culture can leave our world divided, and this includes the video games that we get the chance to play. Matt Barnes, Dazz Brown and Greg S-C of DidYouKnowGaming? created the YouTube series Region Locked to give people an insight into the weird and wonderful titles that never left their home countries, and now they bring their expertise to you in this book.

Encounter masterpieces you never knew existed from your favourite series and developers, as well as some utterly bizarre creations that seem so outlandish you might wonder how on earth they were released in the first place. The authors explore what it's like to play these games and investigate the fascinating characters behind them to discover why such remarkable creations never enjoyed international exposure.

The book covers games from all eras and a variety of platforms so there’s sure to be something to pique the interest of everyone, from casual gamers to hardcore fans.

Yet while there is huge demand for this kind of information in his private practice, there is very little reliable public information out there for the LGBTQ+ community to access. Naked Nutrition seeks to change that: it is the first LGTBQ+ focused guide to diet and lifestyle, taking an honest, inclusive, and non-judgemental approach to the questions Daniel is asked most frequently.

“John Robb is as punk rock as The Clash.” — Alan McGee

Do You Believe in the Power of Rock & Roll? is a history of alternative rock from music writer John Robb, with the music still ringing in his ears. This collection follows Robb’s journey from the late 1970s, when he was first caught up in punk’s high-octane thrill, to the present day, via the early days of the rave scene, the birth of electronic and techno, and myriad bands that spun off on their own idiosyncratic paths. 

Robb was the first person to write about Nirvana, he coined the term Britpop, and he documented the Stone Roses’ rise out of Manchester before anyone else was interested. He was at every pivotal gig, and has interviewed every key player in the business, including Jordan, the queen of punk, founding father of new American rock Steve Albini, goth-rock guitarist Daniel Ash, infamous Oasis co-founder Noel Gallagher, and music greats like Lemmy and Poly Styrene. Few others have witnessed first-hand so many important moments of the last forty years of rock history. Here, they come together to form the essential history of a personal quest to document the ever-changing soundtrack of the modern world.

Deep underwater lurks a mysterious man-made illness. It has gone by many names over the years —Satan’s disease, diver’s palsy, the chokes—but today, doctors call it decompression sickness. You know it as the bends. That’s the devil British diver Martin Robson faces each time he plunges beneath the surface. 

In the winter of 2012, Robson was part of an expedition to Blue Lake, southern Russia, which sought to find a submerged cave system never seen by the human eye. On the final day of the expedition, as Robson returned from diving deeper into the lake than anyone had before, disaster struck: just seventy-five feet down, he was ambushed by the bends. Robson knew that if he continued up to the surface he would probably die before help arrived. Instead, he sank back into the water, gambling on an underwater practice most doctors believe is a suicidal act. Soon the only hope he had of saving his life would rest in the hands of a dramatic mercy mission organized at the highest levels of the Russian government. 

Between the Devil and the Deep is the first book to tell the terrifying true story of what it feels like to get the bends, taking you inside the body and mind of a man who suffered the unthinkable. Writer Mark Cowan also explores the grimly fascinating history of decompression sickness, the science behind what causes the disease, and the stories of the forgotten divers who pushed the limits of physical endurance to help find a solution.

Why should we adopt animals?

What’s the problem with organic meat?

What are the economics of plant-based foods?

What about honey?

What is the relationship between veganism and feminism?

What is vegansexualism?

Veganism is on the rise. Plant-based foods and cruelty-free products showing no sign of stopping, Think Like a Vegan explores how vegan ethics can be applied to every area of our daily lives.

We all want to live more healthily and ethically.

This book is for anyone interested in veganism, its ideals and what even non-vegans can learn from its practice. Through a personal and often irreverent lens, the authors explore a variety of contemporary topics related to animal use: from the basics of vegan logic to politics, economics, love and other aspects of being human, each chapter draws you into a thought-provoking conversation about your daily ethical decisions.

Have your kids ever shaved the dog? Or decided pants are optional? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Parenting is hard and this mommy is f*cking tired. 

Inspired by the story of a beloved caterpillar, The Very F*cking Tired Mommy is an all-too-relatable tale of the frustration, exhaustion and sometimes unexpected joy of parenthood.

Here we follow the journey of one mommy over the course of a week, taking everything life throws at her with a side of wine, coffee, chocolate from last Christmas, the kids’ leftover lunch and even the occasional dog treat.

It will comfort anyone for whom eight hours of sleep seems like a distant memory, and serve as a welcome reminder that sometimes, just sometimes, we all need a break…

"I loved the creativity, the unpredictability, its dazzling coverage of so many ideas." — Rob Cowan 

"Superb . . . An original character and an original book." — David Quantick, Record Collector 

Can John Nightly be brought back to life again? 

John Nightly (b. 1948) finds his dimension in pop music, the art form of his time. His solo album becomes one of 1970's bestselling records – but success turns out to have side effects. 

Supermaxed in LA after a dazzling career, John renounces his gift, denying music and his very being, until he is rediscovered in Cornwall thirty years later by a teenage saviour dude, who persuades him to restore and complete his quasi-porto-multimedia eco-Mass, the Mink Bungalow Requiem. 

This epic novel mixes real and imagined lives in the tale of a young singer-songwriter, to tell a story about creativity at the highest level – the level of genius.

We all experience recovery at some point in our lives, whether from addiction, physical illness, mental health issues, or loss. Many of us heal, and we may discover ways to live with our changed selves, to reclaim a life. We may find a new voice, or unearth a voice that has been submerged. Vitally, recovery can mean community. This anthology—which grew out of a small creative writing class run by Lily Dunn at Hackney Recovery Service, and was later broadened into a nationwide call for submissions by Dunn and her teaching partner, Zoe Gilbert—represents a community of writers: new, unheard voices alongside emerging and established authors. Theirs are stories from the dark back alleys, the deep crevices of the mind, and from the wild, ecstatic heights of life before, during and after recovery. These are voices that urgently need to be heard, in all their variety.

Thirty years ago Jonathan Meades published a hefty collection of reportorial journalism, essays, criticism, squibs, fictions called Peter Knows What Dick Likes. It quickly acquired cult status. The critic James Woods was moved to write: ‘When journalism is like this, journalism and literature become one.’

This new collection is every bit as rich and every bit as catholic. Hence its title: Pedro and Ricky Come Again. Thirty years older, so no longer boys, but no wiser, and still impervious to good taste and good manners.

From the inexcusability of nationalism and the ubiquitous abuse of the word ‘iconic’, to John Lennon’s shopping lists and the wine they call ‘Black Tower’, the work assembled here demonstrates Meades's unparalleled range and erudition, with pieces on cities, artists, sex, England, concrete, politics and much, much more.

He had been waiting all his life, hoping to hear the hare’s song. . .

The boy and his family are special. While others hunt the hares, his family search for leverets orphaned by the hunt and keep them safe. When the hares begin to move across the land, the boy and his sister know that their greatest challenge has begun. They must follow and watch and wait until the time comes for the old queen to leave and her child to reign in her place.

But others are searching for the golden queen of the hares, a hunter with two hounds, one silver, one black. Can two children, on their own, keep the golden queen safe from the man and his hounds?