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The journey to the centre of the earth is a voyage like no other we can imagine.

Over 3,000 km below the earth’s surface an extraordinary inner world the size of Mars awaits us.

Dive through the molten iron of the outer core and eventually you will reach a solid sphere – an iron-clad world held within a metal sea and unattached to anything above.

At the earth’s core is the history of our planet written in temperature and pressure, crystals and minerals . . .

Our planet appears tranquil from outer space. And yet the arcs of volcanoes, the earthquake zones and the auroral glow rippling above our heads are testimony to something remarkable happening inside . . .

For thousands of years these phenomena were explained in legend and myth. Only in recent times has the brave new science of seismology emerged. One hundred and fifty years after the extraordinary, imaginative feat of Jules Verne’s JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, David Whitehouse embarks on a voyage of scientific discovery into the heart of our world.

Widely celebrated as the author of the worldwide bestselling novels A SUITABLE BOY and AN EQUAL MUSIC, Vikram Seth is also a highly acclaimed poet with a substantial body of work. Here, for the first time in one volume, readers can appreciate the beauty and scope of his poetic vision.

Including MAPPINGS, THE HUMBLE ADMINISTRATOR’S GARDEN, ALL YOU WHO SLEEP TONIGHT, THREE CHINESE POETS, BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE, ARION AND THE DOLPHIN, THE RIVERED EARTH and SUMMER REQUIEM, this collection displays the richness of Vikram Seth’s imagination and the brilliant diversity of his craft.

Widely celebrated as the author of the worldwide bestselling novels A SUITABLE BOY and AN EQUAL MUSIC, Vikram Seth is also a highly acclaimed poet with a substantial body of work. Here, for the first time in one volume, readers can appreciate the beauty and scope of his poetic vision.

Including MAPPINGS, THE HUMBLE ADMINISTRATOR’S GARDEN, ALL YOU WHO SLEEP TONIGHT, THREE CHINESE POETS, BEASTLY TALES FROM HERE AND THERE, ARION AND THE DOLPHIN, THE RIVERED EARTH and SUMMER REQUIEM, this collection displays the richness of Vikram Seth’s imagination and the brilliant diversity of his craft.

The Rivered Earth contains four libretti written by Vikram Seth to be set to music by Alec Roth – together with an account of the pleasures and pains of working with a composer.

Entitled ‘Songs in Time of War’, ‘Shared Ground’, ‘The Traveller’ and ‘Seven Elements’, they take us all over the world – from Chinese and Indian poetry to the beauty and quietness of the Salisbury house where the poet George Herbert lived and died.

Spanning centuries of creativity and humanity, these poems pulse with life, energy and inspired brilliance.

They are accompanied by four pieces of calligraphy by the author.

‘I have so carefully mapped the corners of my mind
That I am forever waking in a lost country…’

SUMMER REQUIEM traces the immutable shifting of the seasons, the relentless rhythms of a great world that both ‘gifts and harms’. Luminous, resonant and profound, these poems trace the dying days of summer, ‘the hour of rust’, when memory is haunted by loss and decay. But in the silence that follows, as the soul is cast adrift, there is also reconciliation with the transience of all things; the knowledge that there is a place, ‘changeable, that will not betray’.

‘Robert Twigger is not so much a travel writer as a thrill-seeking philosopher’ Esquire

The Himalayas beckon and we go … Some to make real journeys and others to make imaginary ones. These mountains, home to Buddhists, Bonpos, Jains, Muslims, Hindus, shamans and animists, to name only a few, are a place of pilgrimage and dreams, revelation and war, massacre and invasion, but also peace and unutterable calm.

In an exploration of the region’s seismic history, Robert Twigger unravels some of these real and invented journeys and the unexpected links between them. Following a meandering path across the Himalayas to its physical end in Nagaland on the Indian-Burmese border, Twigger encounters incredible stories from a unique cast of mountaineers and mystics, pundits and prophets. The result is a sweeping, enthralling and surprising journey through the history of the world’s greatest mountain range.

‘Idiosyncratic, humorous, enlightening and written by one of the finest conductors alive … This is the book to buy if you are going to see Wagner or listen to him at home’ LITERARY REVIEW

Over a distinguished career conducting some of the world’s finest orchestras, Christian Thielemann has earned a reputation as the leading modern interpreter of Richard Wagner. MY LIFE WITH WAGNER chronicles his ardent personal and professional engagement with the composer whose work has shaped his thinking and feeling from early childhood.

Thielemann retraces his journey with Wagner – from Berlin to Bayreuth via Venice, Hamburg and Chicago. Next he takes each opera in turn, his appraisal illuminated by a deep affinity for the music, an intimate knowledge of the scores and the inside perspective of an outstanding practitioner. And yet for all the adulation Wagner’s art inspires in him, Thielemann does not shy away from unpalatable truths about the man himself, explaining why today he is venerated and reviled in equal measure. The result is a richly rewarding read for admirers of a composer who continues to fascinate long after his death.

History does not run in straight lines. Instead of inevitable progress, what we get is more often false starts, blind alleys, random events, good intentions that go wrong. Robert Cooper’s incisive and elegant book is therefore not a continuous diplomatic history. Richelieu and Mazarin inhabited a 16th-century world we can hardly imagine today, but it is from their time that we can begin to see the outline of today’s Europe.


The Ambassadors includes a brilliant analysis of the people who built the Western side of the Cold War. Henry Kissinger is a pivotal figure in the post-war world, and his story is in some ways typical: he failed in his most important aims and succeeded in ways he never expected. Robert Cooper’s pieces together history and considers the illuminating fragments it leaves behind.

History does not run in straight lines. It is made by men and women and by accident. The path of events and ideas does not stretch smoothly from Thucydides, through Machiavelli and thence to perpetual peace. Instead of inevitable progress, what we get is more often false starts, blind alleys, random events, good intentions that go wrong. This is therefore not a continuous diplomatic history. Richelieu and Mazarin inhabited a world we can hardly imagine today; but it is from their time that we can begin to see the outline of today’s Europe. Talleyrand and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 take us closer to the present day. Talleyrand was a man of the ancien regime; but he was the first European statesman to see America. It is at this Congress that, for the first time, a humanitarian question – the slave trade – was discussed. Humanitarian issues have formed part of the diplomatic agenda ever since.

Robert Cooper’s incisive and elegantly written book includes a brilliant analysis of the people who built the Western side of the Cold War. The high point of the drama was the Cuban Missile Crisis, with its contrast between the open debate that John F. Kennedy used to help him make decisions and the closed system in Moscow. Henry Kissinger is a pivotal figure in the post-war world, as well as one of the great writers on diplomacy. His story is in some ways typical: he failed in his most important aims, and succeeded in ways he never expected. Meanwhile a notable and neglected success story is that of German diplomacy in the last half-century.

Robert Cooper’s masterly The Ambassadors pieces together history and considers the fragments it leaves behind. It is these fragments that prove so illuminating.

‘FASCINATING’ Daily Mail
‘FULL OF AMAZING FACTS’ The QI Elves

Each of the United Kingdom’s 124 postcode areas has a story to tell, an unexpected nugget to dust off and treasure.

Mark Mason has embarked on a tour of the country, immersing himself in Britain’s history on a roundabout journey from AB to ZE. On the lookout for interesting place names and unusual monuments, along the way he discovers what the Queen keeps in her handbag, why the Jack Russell has a white coat and how Jimi Hendrix got confused by the M1.

At the same time Mason paints an affectionate portrait of Britain in the 21st century, from aggressive seagulls in Blackpool to ‘seasoned’ drinkers in Surrey. And his travels offer the perfect opportunity to delve into the history of the Royal Mail, complete with pillar boxes, posties and Penny Reds – plus Oscar Wilde’s unconventional method of posting a letter.

A playful mix of fact, anecdote and overheard conversation, MAIL OBSESSION pays homage to Britain’s wonderful past and its curious present.

SOON TO BE THE MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES, TOTENFRAU

KILL BILL meets DEXTER via THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, WOMAN OF THE DEAD is a wild ride of a thriller where the first stage of grief is revenge. And revenge is a dish best served bloody.

How far would you go to avenge the one you love?

Blum has a secret buried deep in her past.
She thought she’d left the past behind.
But then Mark, the man she loves, dies.

His death looks like a hit-and-run. It isn’t a hit-and-run. Mark has been killed by the men he was investigating. And then, suddenly, Blum rediscovers what she’s capable of…

‘An ironclad guarantee of sleepless nights’ Barry Forshaw, Independent

‘Fast, edgy and gripping … full of quirks, with a conflicted heroine as killer at its heart. Do not miss it’ Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

A Tatler Sizzling Summer Read
Spectator Best Books of 2015
Shortlisted for the Guardian‘s Not the Booker Prize
‘Intense, impressive… Told with force and bracing directness… It’s a book that smashes into you’ Guardian
‘Both disturbing and ultimately uplifting . . . the images she conjures up are so subversively creepy they haunt you for days’ Spectator
‘Deserves major attention’ New York Times

Pilgrim Jones doesn’t belong here.
She belongs in the cities of Europe, by her handsome husband’s side.
But here she is, in a village on the edge of Africa.
No one knows why she is here and what she is hiding from. And she is not going to tell them – about her husband’s betrayal, or the children she killed in a crash.
But two men from Pilgrim’s past are coming to find her – two men with very different motives.

For those needing to grasp the fundamentals of sound bidding and play, Ron Klinger’s BASIC BRIDGE is the answer. GUIDE TO BETTER ACOL BRIDGE is intended for the large majority who are ready to advance beyond the basics.

While GUIDE TO BETTER ACOL BRIDGE emphasises better bidding, each chapter contains examples of play, which highlight areas of winning declarer technique and defence. At the end of each section, a revision test enables the reader to measure the rate of progress.

The book can be used by teachers conducting courses, or as a self-teacher.

In little more than a century of cinema – Birth of a Nation was one hundred years old in 2015 – our sense of what a film director is, or should be, has shifted in fascinating ways. A director was once a functionary; then an important but not decisive part of an industrial process; then accepted as the person who was and should be in charge, because he was an artist and a hero. But the world has changed. In a nutshell, the change takes the form of a question: Who directed The Sopranos or Homeland? Hardly anyone knows, because we don’t tend to read TV credits and the director has returned to a more subservient and anonymous role. Directors now try to be efficient, the deliverers of profitable films, and are often involved as producers, like Steven Spielberg.

David Thomson’s brilliant A Light in the Dark personalises each chapter through an individual: Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Jane Campion, Stephen Frears and Quentin Tarantino. Through these characters (and other directors not mentioned here), David Thomson relates an imaginative new history of a medium that has changed the world.

In little more than a century of cinema – Birth of a Nation was one hundred years old in 2015 – our sense of what a film director is, or should be, has shifted in fascinating ways. A director was once a functionary; then an important but not decisive part of an industrial process; then accepted as the person who was and should be in charge, because he was an artist and a hero. But the world has changed. In a nutshell, the change takes the form of a question: Who directed The Sopranos or Homeland? Hardly anyone knows, because we don’t tend to read TV credits and the director has returned to a more subservient and anonymous role. Directors now try to be efficient, the deliverers of profitable films, and are often involved as producers, like Steven Spielberg.

David Thomson’s brilliant A Light in the Dark personalises each chapter through an individual: Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Jane Campion, Stephen Frears and Quentin Tarantino. Through these characters (and other directors not mentioned here), David Thomson relates an imaginative new history of a medium that has changed the world.

‘These journals are a revelation, a road map and a gift to us all’ TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage

From the acclaimed author Alice Walker – winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize – comes an unprecedented compilation of four decades’ worth of journals that draw an intimate portrait of her development as an artist, intellectual and human rights activist.

In Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, Walker offers a passionate, intimate record of her intellectual, artistic and political development. She also intimately explores – in real time – her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world.

In an unvarnished and singular voice, she writes about an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., or ‘the King’ as she called him; her marriage to a Jewish lawyer, partly to defy laws that barred interracial marriage in the 1960s South; an early miscarriage; the birth of her daughter; writing her first novel; the trials and triumphs of the women’s movement; erotic encounters and enduring relationships; the ‘ancestral visits’ that led her to write The Color Purple; winning the Pulitzer Prize; being admired and maligned, in sometimes equal measure, for her work and her activism; burying her mother; and her estrangement from her own daughter. The personal and the political are layered and intertwined in the revealing narrative that emerges from Walker’s journals.

‘These journals are a revelation, a road map and a gift to us all’ TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage

From the acclaimed author Alice Walker – winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize – comes an unprecedented compilation of four decades’ worth of journals that draw an intimate portrait of her development as an artist, intellectual and human rights activist.

In Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, Walker offers a passionate, intimate record of her intellectual, artistic and political development. She also intimately explores – in real time – her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world.

In an unvarnished and singular voice, she writes about an astonishing array of events: marching in Mississippi with other foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., or ‘the King’ as she called him; her marriage to a Jewish lawyer, partly to defy laws that barred interracial marriage in the 1960s South; an early miscarriage; the birth of her daughter; writing her first novel; the trials and triumphs of the women’s movement; erotic encounters and enduring relationships; the ‘ancestral visits’ that led her to write The Color Purple; winning the Pulitzer Prize; being admired and maligned, in sometimes equal measure, for her work and her activism; burying her mother; and her estrangement from her own daughter. The personal and the political are layered and intertwined in the revealing narrative that emerges from Walker’s journals.

Wean your baby and nourish your toddler with 100 nutritious recipes free from all 14 major allergens.

‘Introducing your baby to food is one of the many great joys of parenthood. When it comes to weaning children with food allergies, we are two mums who have been there, done that and got the baby food-spattered T-shirts.’

With over 100 delicious, wholesome recipes covering your baby’s very first tastes up to mini meals, The Allergy-Free Baby & Toddler Cookbook works with whichever weaning method you use. Offering meal plans and a host of practical advice and nutritional expertise this book will help lay the foundations for life-long healthy eating. Using ingredients that can be readily found in supermarkets, each recipe is free from 14 major food allergens: dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soya, gluten, sesame, fish, molluscs, crustaceans, celery, mustard, lupin and sulphites.

Wean your baby and nourish your toddler with 100 nutritious recipes free from all 14 major allergens.

‘Introducing your baby to food is one of the many great joys of parenthood. When it comes to weaning children with food allergies, we are two mums who have been there, done that and got the baby food-spattered T-shirts.’

With over 100 delicious, wholesome recipes covering your baby’s very first tastes up to mini meals, The Allergy-Free Baby & Toddler Cookbook works with whichever weaning method you use. Offering meal plans and a host of practical advice and nutritional expertise this book will help lay the foundations for life-long healthy eating. Using ingredients that can be readily found in supermarkets, each recipe is free from 14 major food allergens: dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soya, gluten, sesame, fish, molluscs, crustaceans, celery, mustard, lupin and sulphites.

‘Vivid, cinematic and exciting’ Red
‘Conjures a great picture of Soho’s early-Sixties jazz-and-caffeine buzz’ Emerald Street
‘Thought-provoking’ Independent on Sunday

A TALE OF LOVE AND MORALITY SET IN THE DARK SIDE OF THE SWINGING SIXTIES

SUMMER, 1962.

Twenty-year-old Vivien Epstein, a Jewish hairdresser from Manchester, arrives in London following the death of her father. She has travelled to the city to make a new start, and quickly finds herself swept up in a city buzzing with life. Landing a job at Oscar’s salon, she thrives amid the vibrant café culture of Soho and the warm camaraderie of the other hairdressers.

But beneath the surface, Vivien is desperate to find Jack Fox, a man she had a brief but intense romance with some months before. Her search leads to confront the dark resurgence of fascism, countered by the Jewish community in street battles around Ridley Road in the East End of London.

Amid the growing tensions, can her love survive?

AN EXPLOSIVE, HEART-BREAKING NOVEL FOR FANS OF MAGGIE O’FARRELL AND ZOE HELLER

Readers LOVE Ridley Road:
‘Enthralling and captivating’ Mrs T.

‘I read it in one sitting’ Rebecca

‘Did not want to put it down’ Eva

‘Fantastic!‘ Mrs S

‘I am no saint, no martyr, no terrorist, no madman and no murderer…
I am a father. That’s my story.’

Dr David Evans, a top neurosurgeon at a hospital in Washington, faces the ultimate dilemma: if his next patient leaves the operating theatre alive, his daughter will die at the hands of a psychopath. He has 55 hours to save her.

But Evans’ patient is no ordinary man; he’s the most important person in the US and what happens on the operating table may well change the course of history.

REMEMBER ME WHEN THE COMET COMES…
On the day the comet came, a girl named Heloise was born. She would live a fine life, and inherit a fortune, but would meet a cruel, untimely death.

Years later, strange dreams plague Katya Nemcová, a teenager burdened with a rare and curious gift. Memories come to Katya in her dreams – images and stories from a past that isn’t her own. Are these ghosts real? And what of the memory she seems to have of Heloise’s treasures, two centuries old?

A novel that spans the history of Europe – from revolutionary France to the world wars, the Prague Spring, post Brexit Britain, and beyond – this is the irresistible, adventurous and affectionate story of a quite extraordinary woman, her exceptionally talented ancestors, and the curious memories they share.

REMEMBER ME WHEN THE COMET COMES…
On the day the comet came, a girl named Heloise was born. She would live a fine life, and inherit a fortune, but would meet a cruel, untimely death.

Years later, strange dreams plague Katya Nemcová, a teenager burdened with a rare and curious gift. Memories come to Katya in her dreams – images and stories from a past that isn’t her own. Are these ghosts real? And what of the memory she seems to have of Heloise’s treasures, two centuries old?

A novel that spans the history of Europe – from revolutionary France to the world wars, the Prague Spring, post Brexit Britain, and beyond – this is the irresistible, adventurous and affectionate story of a quite extraordinary woman, her exceptionally talented ancestors and the curious memories they share.

Previously published as NOT FORGETTING THE WHALE

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

‘A gentle and uplifting tale of warding off apocalypse in a remote corner of Cornwall . . . charming’ Financial Times

For fans of ELEANOR OLIPHANT, THE ROSIE PROJECT & THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY.

It all began with the whale.

When a young man washes up on the sands of St Piran in Cornwall, it is clear to the villagers that this is not a regular day. What has brought him here? And what is the crisis only he understands, that threatens not only their community but all of civilisation?

With a global pandemic on the horizon, and a whale lurking in the bay, the villagers of St Piran must band together to survive. Intimate, funny and heart-warming, John Ironmonger tells a compelling story about the important things that hold us together, and how hope can be found, even at the end of the world.

‘Fun, uplifting, charming’ Financial Times

‘A warm-hearted book crammed with ideas . . . very, very good’ Emerald Street

‘A tremendously enjoyable book’ Independent on Sunday