Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Brian Aldiss The first published novel of England's greatest living SF writer

Margery Allingham

Stephen E. Ambrose

Lawrence Archer, Fiona Bawdon In January 2003, the British media splashed the news that anti-terror police had disrupted an Al-Qaeda cell, poised to unleash the deadly poison ricin on the capital. Police had reportedly found traces of ricin, as well as a panoply of bomb and poison-making equipment in the cell’s "factory of death" — a shabby flat in north London. "This danger is present and real, and with us now," announced prime minister Tony Blair. But, when the "ricin plot" came to trial at the Old Bailey, a very different story emerged: there was no ricin and no sophisticated plot. Rarely has a legal case been so shamelessly distorted by government, media and security forces to push their own tough on terror agendas. In this meticulously researched and compellingly written book, Lawrence Archer (the jury foreman at the trial) and journalist Fiona Bawdon give the definitive true story of the ricin plot trial and its aftermath.

John Arlott

Madeline Ashby Amy Peterson is a self-replicating humanoid robot known as a VonNeumann. For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother's past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive. Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she's learning impossible things about her clade's history - like the fact that she alone can kill humans without failsafing...

Madeline Ashby

Mike Ashley Many readers are attracted to science fiction for that singular moment when a story expands your imagination, enabling you to see something in a new light. This book collects some of the finest examples of mind-expanding and awe-inspiring science fiction.

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

Margaret Atwood

Philippe Auclair

Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith

J G Ballard

Iain M Banks Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back. 'Banks is a phenomenon ...wildly successful, fearlessly creative' William Gibson 'Thrilling, affecting and comic ...probably the finest science fiction he has written to date' New Scientist 'Banks has rewritten the libretto for the whole space-opera genre' The Times

Iain M. Banks

Adrian Barnes

Neil Barofsky

Shrabani Basu This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Born into an illustrious Indian family in 1914 and brought up in the non-violent Sufi religion, Noor seemed an unlikely secret agent. Yet she became the first female radio operator to be landed in enemy-occupied France, and refused to abandon her post in Paris in 1943, continuing her work under extremely dangerous circumstances. Shrabani Basu tells the moving story of Noor's life from her birth in Moscow - where her father was a Sufi preacher - to her capture by the Germans. Noor was one of only three women SOE awarded the George Cross and, under torture, revealed nothing but her name - but not her real name, nor her code name, just the name she used to register at SOE: Nora Baker. Kept in solitary confinement, chained between hand and feet and unable to walk upright, Noor existed on bowls of soup made from potato peelings. Ten months after she was captured, she was taken to Dachau and, on 13 September 1944, she was shot. Her last word was 'Liberte'.

Jason Beaird

Greg Bear

Greg Bear HULL ZERO THREE is an edge of your seat thrill-ride through the darkest reaches of space, from one of the genre's biggest names. Perfect for fans of Arthur C. Clarke's RAMA or the film EVENT HORIZON. A starship hurtles through the emptiness of space. Its destination - unknown. Its purpose? A mystery. Its history? Lost. Now, one man wakes up. Ripped from a dream of a new home, a new planet and the woman he was meant to love in his arms, he finds himself wet, naked, and freezing to death. The dark halls are full of monsters but trusting other survivors he meets might be the greater danger. All he has are questions: Who is he? Where are they going? What happened to the dream of a new life? What happened to the woman he loved? What happened to Hull 03? All will be answered, if he can survive. Uncover the mystery. Fix the ship. Find a way home.

Ned Beauman

Chris Beckett You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees, hunting woollybuck and harvesting tree candy. Beyond the forest lie the treeless mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among you recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross between worlds. One day, the Oldest say, they will come back for you. You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of two marooned explorers. You huddle, slowly starving, beneath the light and warmth of geothermal trees, confined to one barely habitable valley of a startlingly alien, sunless world. After 163 years and six generations of incestuous inbreeding, the Family is riddled with deformity and feeblemindedness. Your culture is a infantile stew of half-remembered fact and devolved ritual that stifles innovation and punishes independent thought. You are John Redlantern. You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to abandon hope, the first to abandon the old ways, the first to kill another, the first to venture in to the Dark, and the first to discover the truth about Eden.

Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor

Gregory Benford

Dennis Bergkamp

Lauren Beukes ZINZI DECEMBER FINDS PEOPLE. Even if they don't want to be found - like missing pop starlet Songweza. Trouble is, when you go turning over stones and digging up secrets it isn't long before the real truth comes to light. A truth the local crime lord, dark magician and beast master, will kill to keep hidden. In Lauren Beukes' shattered city, magic is horribly real and the criminal classes sport symbiotically linked animals. A stunningly original urban fantasy.

Marcus Binney

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Giles Brandreth

Alan Sokal Jean Bricmont

David Brin

Jacob Bronowski

Charlie Brooker

Max Brooks

Max Brooks

Bill Bryson Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate: "I had recently read that 3.7 million Americans according to a Gallup poll, believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me." That comic tone enlivens this account of Bryson's farewell walking tour of the countryside of "the green and kindly island that had for two decades been my home."

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

William Buckland

Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita With his disorderly band of accomplices including a demonic, gun-toting tomcat, the devil begins to create havoc. Disappearances, destruction and death spread through the city like wildfire and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the chaos. Making a bargain with the devil, she decides to try black magic to save the man she loves. Full description

Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen's Union

G.K. Chesterton

Adam Christopher It was the last great science hero fight, but the energy blast ripped a hole in reality, and birthed the Empire State - a young, twisted parallel prohibition-era New York. When the rift starts to close, both worlds are threatened, and both must fight for the right to exist. File Under: Science Fiction [Pocket Universe | Heroes or Villains | Speak Easy | Loyalties Divided].

John Christopher

Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy

Arthur C. Clarke

Matthew Collin

Douglas Coupland This collection of stories cuts through the hype of modern living, travelling inward to the elusive terrain of dreams and nightmares.

Jerry A. Coyne

Romeo Dallaire

Charles Darwin

Nick Davies Exposes the national stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry, and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a machinery of international propaganda. This book shows the impact of this on a world where consumers believe a mass of stories which are as false as the idea that the Earth is flat.

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins Offers an accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. This book demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Keith R.A. DeCandido

Alan Deutschman

Eric Brown Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

David Diefendorf Edison invented the lightbulb - and motion pictures. Camels store water in their humps. Captain Kidd was a notorious pirate. What do these so-called facts have in common? Theyre all false! Every one is a myth that, through time, has achieved the status of reality. Finally, someone is here to set the record straight, once and for all. In this fully illustrated colour collection of popular misconceptions, freelance writer and journalist David Diefendorf uncovers hundreds of widely accepted truths in various categories: famous firsts, health and the body, history, misquotations and misusages, people, religion, science and technology, and more. Its fun and informative, and a great gift for any brainiac, trivia buff, or know-it-all. James Randi, the internationally-known debunker of pseudoscience and a brilliant magician, provides the entertaining foreword.

Gardner Dozois Drawing on the annual series 'Best New SF', this title features 13 of the finest science fiction novels. The tales include: 'Sailing to Byzantium', 'Griffin's Egg', 'Turqouise Days', 'Mr Boy', 'Forgiveness Day', and, 'Oceanic'.

Umberto Eco

Albert Einstein

Harlan Ellison

Matthew Engel

Simon Singh Edzard Ernst

Jane Espenson

Martin Evening

Sean Ferrell Say you're a time traveler and you've already toured the entirety of human history. After a while, the outside world might lose a little of its luster. That's why this time traveler celebrates his birthday partying with himself. Every year, he travels to an abandoned hotel in New York City in 2071, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and drinks twelve-year-old Scotch (lots of it) with all the other versions of who he has been and who he will be. Sure, the party is the same year after year, but at least it's one party where he can really, well, be himself.

The year he turns 39, though, the party takes a stressful turn for the worse. Before he even makes it into the grand ballroom for a drink he encounters the body of his forty-year-old self, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. As the older versions of himself at the party point out, the onus is on him to figure out what went wrong—he has one year to stop himself from being murdered, or they're all goners. As he follows clues that he may or may not have willingly left for himself, he discovers rampant paranoia and suspicion among his younger selves, and a frightening conspiracy among the Elders. Most complicated of all is a haunting woman possibly named Lily who turns up at the party this year, the first person besides himself he's ever seen at the party. For the first time, he has something to lose. Here's hoping he can save some version of his own life.

Richard P Feynman

Richard P Feynman

Richard P. Feynman

Richard P. Feynman

Nathaniel Fick The most eloquent and personal story of a young man at war since Geoffrey Wellum's FIRST LIGHT

Cordelia Fine A vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes.

M.R.D. Foot SOE The Special Operations Executive 1940- 1946 reads just as well now as it did when it was first published by the BBC in 1984 to coincide with a television series—not least because its author, M.R.D Foot, was appointed the official historian to the SOE just after World War Two and has had access to its entire archive. The SOE was hastily cobbled together in 1940 to wage subversive campaigns behind enemy lines, and by and large it made up the rules as it went along. It recruited where and when it could. As might be expected, the senior ranks generally came from the echelons of the public schools, the City, the business world and the armed services; but its agents were a bizarre mix of eccentrics and mavericks from all over the world—including North American newspaper editors, South American businessmen, Spanish smugglers, Abyssinian tribesmen, Norwegian mountaineers, schoolchildren, Dutch printers, Greek outlaws, Slovene peasants, Malayan rubber workers, Siamese noblemen, Naga hillmen, Polish and Czech railway guards and Chinese tycoons. All in all, however, SOE's total strength never totalled more than 10,000 men and 3,200 women. Often the training was crude and the operations were ill-thought out and as a result many failed. But that only serves to make those that succeeded against such long odds all the more impressive. Occasionally, such as its attack on the Norsk Hydro plant at Rjukan, SOE's operations were critical to the outcome of the war, but for the most part its successes owed more to the longevity of attrition rather than any immediate outcome.

The SOE spent much time engaged in diversionary activity. It was said that each day Hitler spent at least half an hour considering Abwehr reports on SOE activities and that he was never entirely sure of their place in the overall framework of Allied plans. But perhaps the greatest success of the SOE was the way it managed to foster a mentality of resistance in all areas of Nazi occupation. Populations that might otherwise have settled for an easy life were galvanised into a permanent state of mini-rebellion, thereby ensuring that the occupying forces could never relax for a moment. Foot is the ideal guide to walk you through this outfit of which much has been spoken but little is known, sorting out the fact from the fiction but he still finding ample room for storytelling. Your perspective on World War Two will never be quite the same again after reading this. — John Crace

Richard Fortey

Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson Amazon Exclusive: Seth Godin Reviews Rework

Seth Godin is the author of Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, and Permission Marketing, as well as other international bestsellers. He is consistently one of the 25 most widely read bloggers in the English language. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Rework:

This book will make you uncomfortable.

Depending on what you do all day, it might make you extremely uncomfortable.

That's a very good thing, because you deserve it. We all do.

Jason and David have broken all the rules and won. Again and again they've demonstrated that the regular way isn't necessarily the right way. They just don't say it, they do it. And they do it better than just about anyone has any right to expect.

This book is short, fast, sharp and ready to make a difference. It takes no prisoners, spares no quarter, and gives you no place to hide, all at the same time.

There, my review is almost as long as the first chapter of the book. I can't imagine what possible excuse you can dream up for not buying this book for every single person you work with, right now.

Stop reading the review. Buy the book.—Seth Godin

Neil Gaiman

Paul Gannon

Simon Garfield

Simon Garfield A totally unexpected book about fonts and type. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world, why you pick the font you do, what it says about you, who created it and the incredibly interesting stories behind it all.. An enormous surprise of a book, once you start you may not stop. (his)

Bamber Gascoigne

Neal Stephenson Frederick George

Karl Pilkington Stephen Merchant Ricky Gervais

William Gibson Case was the best interface cowboy who ever ran in Earth's computer matrix. Then he double- crossed the wrong people.… Winner of the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards.

Clive Gifford Which of the Simpson family has webbed feet? ...occasionally drinks from the dog dish? ...discovered Blinky the three-eyed fish? ...went into space as a NASA astronaut? This quiz book includes 100 questions based on the series of 'The Simpsons', in addition to the original 1000 questions about life with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

Jonathan Glancey

Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre 'Bad Science' hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess. Doctors and patients need good scientific evidence to make informed decisions. But instead, companies run bad trials on their own drugs, which distort and exaggerate the benefits by design. When these trials produce unflattering results, the data is simply buried. All of this is perfectly legal. In fact, even government regulators withhold vitally important data from the people who need it most. Doctors and patient groups have stood by too, and failed to protect us. Instead, they take money and favours, in a world so fractured that medics and nurses are now educated by the drugs industry. Patients are harmed in huge numbers. Ben Goldacre is Britain's finest writer on the science behind medicine, and 'Bad Pharma' is a clear and witty attack, showing exactly how the science has been distorted, how our systems have been broken, and how easy it would be to fix them.

William Golding Lord of the Flies , William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island, is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition. —Jennifer Hubert

William Goldman

Kristin Gore

SJ Gould

Stephen Jay Gould

Paul Graham

Mira Grant

Tom Clancy Martin Harry Greenberg

Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Ursula Le Guin ARMCHAIR TRAVEL FOR THE MIND: It was Sita Dulip who discovered, whilst stuck in an airport, unable to get anywhere, how to change planes - literally. With a kind of a twist and a slipping bend, easier to do than describe, she could go anywhere - be anywhere - because she was already between planes ...and on the way back from her sister's wedding, she missed her plane in Chicago and found herself in Choom. The author, armed with this knowledge and Rornan's invaluable Handy Planetary Guide - although not the Encyclopedia Planeria, as that runs to forty-four volumes - has spent many happy years exploring places as diverse as Islac and the Veksian plane. CHANGING PLANES is an intriguing, enticing mixture of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS and THE HITCH HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY; a cross between Douglas Adams and Alain de Botton: a mix of satire, cynicism and humour by one of the world's best writers.

Gideon Haigh

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton Remember those fact-filled appendices in Frank Herbert's Dune and JRR. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings? Here's the equivalent—though separately packaged—for Peter Hamilton's enormous and popular Night's Dawn SF trilogy, comprising The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God, plus related stories collected in A Second Chance at Eden.

As a "non-fiction" companion volume, The Confederation Handbook maps out this future galaxy's joyous complications. Technologies: the affinity gene allowing telepathic man/machine communication; neural-nanonics implants which link your brain to the net; intelligent voidhawk and blackhawk spacecraft; forbidden antimatter weapons; and space drives. People: human Adamists who reject the affinity gene; Edenists whose affinity links offer a "real" afterlife that replaces religion, struggling colonists everywhere; and three very different alien species—the Tyrathca, Kiint and Jiciro. Places: crowded old Earth with its O'Neill halo of orbital installations; communist Mars; utopian Edenist habitats mining helium-3 fusion fuel from gas-giant planets; quirkily various colony worlds; and the mysterious alien wreckage of the Ruin Ring.

The Handbook carefully, almost too carefully, avoids spoiler revelations about the apocalyptic action of Night's Dawn. As in those books, its Timeline stops before the main story begins, and—besides names of "Possessors" in a cast list slightly updated from The Naked God's—the superpowered returned dead who threaten the entire Federation aren't mentioned at all. Readers nervous of SF terminology may find this a useful guide to the trilogy's huge, exhilarating blend of roller-coaster action and ghost-train chills. —David Langford

Peter F. Hamilton The acclaimed Peter Hamilton's standalone SF adventure Fallen Dragon sees him taking a breather after the immense, galaxy-spanning Night's Dawn trilogy, with a tauter story of future skirmishing in a mere few solar systems.

Centuries hence, despite faster-than-light travel, human interstellar exploration is stagnating. There's not enough money in it for the vast controlling companies such as Zantiu-Braun, now reduced to extracting profits via "asset realisation"—plundering established colonies that can't withstand Earth's superior weapons tech.

Lawrence Newton's childhood dreams were all about space exploration. Now he's just another Z-B squaddie, trained to use the feared, half-alive "Skin" combat biosuits, which offer super-muscles, armour and massive firepower, all queasily hooked into the wearer's bloodstream and nervous system. Commanding a platoon in Z-B's raid on planet Thallspring, Lawrence has secret plans to make off with a rumoured alien treasure.

But Thallspring resistance is unexpectedly tough, thanks to locals such as Denise Ebourn who have mysterious access to neuro-electronic subversion gear far subtler and perhaps more dangerous than Skin. Meanwhile, how fictional are the stories Denise tells her school pupils, about a fabled Empire that ruled our galaxy for a million years before becoming... something else?

Hamilton excels at violent action, but not with the dreadful simplicity of space opera. Despite his role in the explosive Thallspring situation, Lawrence genuinely hopes to avoid bloodshed—while Denise's lofty idealism results in chilling atrocities, and even Z-B may be less cruel and monolithic than it seems.

A breakneck interstellar chase leads to a satisfying finale and an unexpected romantic twist. This is solid, meaty SF entertainment. —David Langford

Peter F. Hamilton Peter Hamilton is famed for SF blockbusters of far-future interstellar adventure. By contrast Misspent Youth is a social comedy set in the year 2040 in England. When gene therapy rewinds Jeff Baker's age back to his early 20s he finds that wisdom and experience are no match for hormones...

The rejuvenation treatment, developed by federal Europe to impress laggard America, is so complex and expensive that only one person every 18 months can receive it. Jeff is the first because he's a celebrity inventor, father of the "datasphere" which superseded the Internet.

Family upheavals follow. An "arrangement" with his much younger, still beautiful wife Sue lets her enjoy lovers while the aged Jeff turns a blind eye: now things are different. Meanwhile their 18-year-old son Tim is struggling ineptly with teenage sexual pangs and the impossibility of understanding girls. All part of growing up, but Jeff's renewed youth brings farcical complications.

It's not just that Jeff now fancies Sue again. He can't resist even younger women. An early one-night stand is publicised all over the datasphere. Embarrassment escalates when he's seduced by the granddaughter of a long-time pub companion. Worse, several of Tim's ravishing female schoolmates are interested in Jeff the celebrity stud. The dishiest of all is Tim's latest, most hopelessly adoring girlfriend.

Can it be coincidence that the action mostly happens in Rutland?

This comedy of embarrassments and revelations has a darker background: Europe is plagued by separatist movements whose terrorist habits make the old IRA look like pussycats. The turning point in Jeff's tangled relationships comes when he attends a London conference surrounded by protest that breeds riot—with Tim among the protesters.

A foreshadowed twist leads to a finale that mixes cynicism with sentiment. En route Misspent Youth is a lot of fun. —David Langford

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton The term "space opera" has evolved over the decades. Originally it meant "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn" (Wilson Tucker), but since then it has come to be (slightly) less pejorative, encompassing any sci-fi action story on an interplanetary or interstellar scale. The Reality Dysfunction rests firmly in the space- opera camp with its intense starship combat, roguish space captains and raw frontier planets, but Peter Hamilton keeps the formula fresh and up-to-date with an infusion of "modern" science fiction technology. His universe is digitally and nanotechnologically savvy, which opens up plenty of possibilities for new perils and plot twists.

It is the late 26th century and humanity's thriving culture spans 200 planets. The usual squabbles and disagreements continue, but generally everyone gets along and lives well as humanity's outward expansion continues apace. On newly colonized Lalonde, though, a strange force emerges from the jungle, lobotomizing people and turning them into super-powered soldiers. At the same time, the story of Joshua Calvert emerges. He's the young captain of a trading ship, who innocently travels to Lalonde and becomes embroiled in the mysteries there. Both threads have plenty of action and exotic scenery. Peter Hamilton's descriptive prose, particularly in action sequences, is breathtaking (and scientifically accurate), creating a dramatic backdrop for a story where the stakes keep getting higher, the villains keep growing more evil and the heroes keep surviving—but only just. Space-opera fans will enjoy this deftly written and engaging novel. Those who feel they don't like the genre might give this example a try to see just how unhacky, ungrinding, sweet-smelling, and robust it can be. —Brooks Peck

Peter F. Hamilton Peter F. Hamilton's flair for huge, star-spanning SF adventures continues with Judas Unchained. This concludes the single long novel—over 1,800 pages in all—whose first half is Pandora's Star.

Humanity's interstellar Commonwealth is in serious trouble. Thirteen of its hundreds of worlds (linked by wormholes and high-speed trains) were lost to a first mass attack by the insanely hostile alien Primes. The controlling Prime intelligence, MorningLightMountain, can imagine no way of dealing with first contact but genocide—and has the resources to do it.

Amid political and personal chaos, it's becoming clear that the war was arranged by a third party. For centuries, only the fanatical, outlawed Guardians cult believed in this mysterious influence called the Starflyer. New evidence emerges, only to vanish again. Key figures are destroyed by near-invincible assassins crammed with inbuilt "wetwired" weaponry. One determined detective is on the track, but she faces massive political opposition.

The multi-stranded action follows many criss-crossing human stories, with fights, pursuits, quests, deaths, resurrections, exotic landscapes and armaments, good sex, and several interesting aliens. Betrayals are frequent, thanks to brainwashed Starflyer agents in positions of trust. Only the Guardians have a scheme to deal with the Starflyer itself—a grandiose strategy known as "the planet's revenge"—but no one trusts those crazy cultists…

In space, the arms race becomes dizzying, with Prime doomsday weapons used against suns while frantic human research leads to "quantumbusters" so appalling that there's serious moral debate about their use. Can we face the guilt of total genocide, even against a horror like MorningLightMountain? Or is there some way to force this psychopathic genie back into the bottle?

The action climaxes in a long, exhilarating chase sequence spiced with ultra-violent skirmishing as the Starflyer comes into the open at last. Stormgliding, an extreme sport introduced in book one, becomes vital to the race against time. Meanwhile, rival starships with different plans chase one another to the Prime system. Hamilton delivers the expected multiple payoffs with suitable pyrotechnics and a satisfying scatter of happy endings. A long, colourful, suspenseful example of modern British space opera. —David Langford

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton Julia Evans, billionairess owner of Event Horizon, has for fifteen years been the power behind England's economic renaissance — but now she's in trouble. With her husband missing, and rival companies suddenly claiming to have acquired a technology impossibly superior to anything on Earth, she has no time to take notice of a single flower delivered anonymously. But this flower possesses genes millions of years in advance of any terrestrial DNA. Is it a cryptic alien message, or a poignant farewell token from her husband? One man might discover its origin — but Greg Mandel will not be alone in his desperate search. And, as they both now discover, simply being first in the race isn't nearly good enough when the Nano Flower begins to bloom ...

Peter F. Hamilton Dr Edward Kitchener, a brilliant researcher into quantum cosmology for the Event Horizon conglomerate ...but no good to anybody now, lying dead with his lungs spread out on either side of his open chest. The security system at Launde Abbey was premier-grade, yet a mercenary could still have got through, and plenty of people anxious to stop Kitchener's work would pay the killer's fee. But why would a professional waste time in ritually slaughtering the target? Event Horizon needs to know fast, so Greg Mandel, psi-boosted ex-private eye, is enticed out of retirement to launch himself on a convoluted trail involving confrontation with a past which — according to Kitchener's theories — might never have happened.

Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton MINDSTAR RISING (B) (NEC)

Peter F. Hamilton

Ed Hawkins

Phil Tufnell Peter Hayter

Seamus Heaney

Bobby Henderson

Andy Hertzfeld

Des Hickey, Gus Smith

Tom Hickman

Peter Higgins A thousand miles east of Mirgorod, the great capital city of the Vlast, deep in the ancient forest, lies the most recent fallen angel, its vast stone form half-buried and fused into the rock by the violence of impact. As its dark energy leeches into the crash site, so a circle of death expands around it, slowly - inexorably - killing everything it touches. Alone in the wilderness, it reaches out with its mind. The endless forest and its antique folklore are no concern to Inspector Vissarion Lom, summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist - and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown terrorism with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head at the children's home. Lom's investigation reveals a conspiracy that extends to the top echelons of the party. When he exposes who - or rather what - is the controlling intelligence behind this, it is time for the detective to change sides. Pursued by rogue police agents and their man-crushing mudjhik, Lom must protect Kantor's step-daughter Maroussia, who has discovered what is hidden beneath police headquarters: a secret so ancient that only the forest remembers. As they try to escape the capital and flee down river, elemental forces are gathering. The earth itself is on the move.

Christopher Hill

Will Self Russell Hoban

E.J. Hobsbawm

E.J. Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm

Douglas R. Hofstadter 'What is a self, and how can a self come out of inaminate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. Linking together the music of J.S. Bach, the graphic art of Escher and the mathematical theorems of Godel, as well as ideas drawn from logic, biology, psychology, physics and linguistics, Douglas Hofstadter illuminates one of the greatest mysteries of modern science: the nature of human thought processes. 'Every few decades an unknown author brings outa book of such depth, clarity, range, wit, beauty and originality that it is recognized at once as a major literary event. This is such a work' - Martin Gardner.

Matthew Hoggard

Dave Shea Molly E. Holzschlag

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Elspeth Huxley

Gary Imlach Yellow Jersey Press.

Simon Ings

Walter Isaacson

C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel James In 1791, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, the slaves of San Domingo rose in revolt. Despite invasion by a series of British, Spanish and Napoleonic armies, their twelve-year struggle led to the creation of Haiti, the first independent black republic outside Africa. Only three years later, the British and Americans ended the Atlantic slave trade. In this example of vivid, committed and empathetic historical analysis, C.L.R. James illuminates these epoch-making events. He explores the appalling economic realities of the Caribbean economy, the roots of the world's only successful slave revolt and the utterly extraordinary former slave - Toussaint L'Overture -who led them. Explicitly written as part of the fight to end colonialism in Africa, "The Black Jacobins" puts the slaves themselves centre stage, boldly forging their own destiny against nearly impossible odds. It remains one of the essential texts for understanding the Caribbean - and the region's inextricable links with Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Cyril Lionel Robert James

Mike Jay

Fake Steve Jobs

Owen Jones In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs.

In this acclaimed investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, he portrays a far more complex reality. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems and to justify widening inequality. Based on a wealth of original research, Chavs is a damning indictment of the media and political establishment and an illuminating, disturbing portrait of inequality and class hatred in modern Britain. This updated edition includes a new chapter exploring the causes and consequences of the UK riots in the summer of 2011.

Stephen King The Stand Hodder are boosting Stephen King's backlist with new covers, new author brand lettering and a marketing campaign which directs readers to the right King title for them. Full description

Dick Winters Cole C. Kingseed

Chris Kluwe Hi. In your hands, right now, you hold the culmination of thousands of years of human intelligence, ingenuity, and brilliance. Now put your goddamn phone down and pay attention to my book.

What is in my book, you ask? (I'm really glad you asked, by the way, because now I get to tell you.)

Time travel. Gay marriage. Sportsballing. Futuristic goggles that DO NOTHING.

Tiny brags from my publisher, stuff like: "This is an uproarious, uncensored take on empathy, personal responsibility, and what it means to be human."

Excessive brags about myself: "An extraordinarily clever, punishingly funny, sharp-tongued blogosphere star, NFL player, husband and father, one-time violin prodigy, voracious lifetime reader, obsessive gamer, and fearless champion of personal freedom."

Oh, and also an essay on the Pope's Twitter account. Honestly, if that doesn't draw you in, there's no hope left for humanity. I also give my own funeral eulogy, in case you were hoping I'd go away and die now!

So please, join me in the glorious art of windmill tilting by reading this "collection of rousing, uncensored personal essays, letters, and stories" (I have no idea why that's in quotes).

Join the herd of Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies.

(You know you want to.)

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler

Steve Krug

D. Leavitt

Chang-Rae Lee

Harper Lee

Richard P. Feynman Ralph Leighton

Ariel Levy Lively polemic on contemporary sexual politics that examines the post-feminist phenomenon of 'raunch culture' .

O. Linzmayer

David Liss

John Lloyd "QI" is the smartest comedy show on British television, but few people know that we're also a major legal hit in Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Africa and an illegal one on BitTorrent. We also write books and newspaper columns; run a thriving website, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed; and produce an iPhone App and a sister Radio 4 programme. At the core of what we do is the astonishing fact - painstakingly researched and distilled to a brilliant and shocking clarity. In Einstein's words: 'Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.' Did you know that: cows moo in regional accents; the entire internet weighs less than a grain of sand; the dialling code from Britain to Russia is 007; potatoes have more chromosomes than human beings; the London Underground has made more money from its famous map than it has from running trains; Tintin is called Tantan in Japanese because TinTin is pronounced 'Chin chin' and means penis; the water in the mouth of a blue whale weighs more than its body; Scotland has twice as many pandas as Conservative MPs; Saddam's bunker was designed by the grandson of the woman who built Hitler's bunker; Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, it is explicitly illegal in Britain to use a machinegun to kill a hedgehog. "1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off" will make you look at the universe (and your socks) in an alarming new way.

Jack London

H.P. Lovecraft

J Lukacs

Charles Mackay A complete repackaging of the classic work about grand-scale madness, major schemes, and bamboozlement—and the universal human susceptibility to all three. This informative, funny collection encompasses a broad range of manias and deceptions, from witch burnings to the Great Crusades to the prophecies of Nostradamus.

Ken MacLeod Softcover Book

Adam Makos, Larry Alexander A Higher Call This instant New York Times bestseller tells the story of two fighter pilots, an American and a German, whose remarkable encounter during World War II became the stuff of legend Full description

Michel S. Malone

Marks

Bruce Marshall The White Rabbit’ was the code name of Wing Commander F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas when he parachuted into France in 1942 as a member of the Special Operations Executive with the Resistance. For the next eighteen months he was responsible for organising all the separate factions of the French Resistance into one combined ‘secret army’. On three separate missions into occupied France he met with the heads of Resistance movements all over the country, and he spoke personally with Winston Churchill in order to ensure they were properly supplied. His capture by the Gestapo in March 1944 was therefore a terrible blow for the Resistance movement. For months he was submitted to the most horrific torture in an attempt to get him to spill his unparalleled knowledge of the Resistance, but he refused to crack. Finally he was sentenced to death, and sent to Buchenwald, one of the most infamous German concentration camps. The story of his endurance, and survival, is an inspiring study in the triumph of the human spirit over the most terrible adversity

Andrew Martin

George R R Martin First volume of a brilliant new fantasy trilogy: the most powerful, original and absorbing new epic since Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The first volume of George R R Martin's glorious high fantasy tells the tragic story of treachery, greed and war that threatens the unity of the Seven Kingdoms south of the Wall. Martin unfolds with astonishing skill a tale of truly epic dimensions, thronged with memorable characters, a story of treachery and ambition, love and magic. Set in a fabulous world scarred by battle and catastrophe over 8000 years of recorded history, it tells of the deeds of men and women locked in the deadliest of conflicts and the terrible legacy they will leave their children. In the game of thrones, you win or you die. And in the bitter-cold, unliving lands beyond the Wall, a terrible winter gathers and the others — the undead, the neverborn, wildlings to whom the threat of the sword is nothing — make ready to descend on the realms of men. A Game of Thrones begins the most imaginative, ambitious and compelling fantasy epic since The Lord of the Rings. Thronged with memorable characters, it unfolds with astonishing skill a tale of truly epic dimensions. There have been many pretenders to the throne of Tolkien: now at last he has a true heir.

George R. R. Martin Brand New Item, Fast Dispatch

George R. R. Martin Brand New Item, Fast Dispatch

George R.R. Martin 1st Gollancz trade edition paperback new In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Richard Matheson It seems strange to find a 1954 vampire novel in Millennium's "SF Masterworks" classic reprints series. I Am Legend, though, was a trailblazing and later much imitated story that reinvented the vampire myth as SF. Without losing the horror, it presents vampirism as a disease whose secrets can be unlocked by scientific tools. The hero Robert Neville, perhaps the last uninfected man on Earth, finds himself in a paranoid nightmare. By night, the bloodthirsty undead of small-town America besiege his barricaded house: their repeated cry "Come out, Neville!" is a famous SF catchphrase. By day, when they hide in shadow and become comatose, Neville gets out his wooden stakes for an orgy of slaughter. He also discovers pseudoscientific explanations, some rather strained, for vampires' fear of light, vulnerability to stakes though not bullets, loathing of garlic, and so on. What gives the story its uneasy power is the gradual perspective shift which shows that by fighting monsters Neville is himself becoming monstrous—not a vampire but something to terrify vampires and haunt their dreams as a dreadful legend from the bad old days. I Am Legend was altered out of recognition when filmed as The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston. Avoid the movie; read the book. —David Langford

Richard Matheson

Philipp Meyer

China Mieville

China Mieville China Miéville's novel Iron Council is the tumultuous story of the "Perpetual Train". Born from monopolists' greed and dispatched to tame the western lands beyond New Crobuzon, the train is itself the beginnings of an Iron Council formed in the fire of frontier revolt against the railroad's masters. From the wilderness, the legend of Iron Council becomes the spark uniting the oppressed and brings barricades to the streets of faraway New Crobuzon. The sprawling tale is told through the past-and-present eyes of three characters. The first is Cutter, a heartsick subversive who follows his lover, the messianic Judah Low, on a quest to return to the Iron Council hidden in the western wilds. The second is Judah himself, an erstwhile railroad scout who has become the iconic golem-wielding hero of Iron Council's uprising at the end of the tracks. And the third is Ori, a young revolutionary on the streets of New Crobuzon, whose anger leads him into a militant wing of the underground, plotting anarchy and mayhem.

Miéville (The Scar, Perdido Street Station) weaves his epic out of familiar and heavily political themes—imperialism, fascism, conquest and Marxism—all seen through a darkly cast funhouse mirror wherein even language is distorted and made beautifully grotesque. Improbably evoking Jack London and Victor Hugo, Iron Council is a twisted frontier fable cleverly combined with a powerful parable of Marxist revolution that continues Miéville's macabre remaking of the fantasy genre. —Jeremy Pugh, Amazon.com

China Mieville A dark urban fantasy thriller from one of the all-time masters of the genre

China Miéville

China Miville A colossal fantasy of incredible diversity and spellbinding imagination. A human cargo bound for servitude in exile ...A pirate city hauled across the oceans ...A hidden miracle about be revealed ...These are the ingredients of an astonishing story. It is the story of a prisoner's journey. Of the search for the island of a forgotten people, for the most astonishing beast in the seas, and ultimately for a fabled place - a massive wound in reality, a source of unthinkable power and danger.

Cameron Moll

Gavin Mooney

Tim Moreman From their establishment in June 1940, the Commando units conducted a succession of daring hit-and-run raids from the sea into North-West Europe, Scandinavia, Italy and the Middle East. Among the highly publicised Commando operations were the raids on Vaagso, Dieppe, and St Nazaire. The Commandos also spawned a range of other Special Forces, including the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and the Parachute Regiment. This Battle Orders title provides a detailed examination of the Army (and later Royal Marine) Commandos raised in the United Kingdom, from their inception in 1940 through to 1946, when the Army Commandos were disbanded and the role was assigned exclusively to the Royal Marines.

Samuel Eliot Morison SICILY-SALERNO-ANZIO, june 1943 - June 1944 is volume 9 in the series. This volume takes up the story of American naval activities in the Mediterranean with three major amphibious operations: the invasion of Sicily, the capture of the Salerno beachhead, and the long Anzio beachhead struggle. In describing these joint operations, Morison discusses individual exploits and strategies. Never reluctant to tackle controversial subjects, he calls the Sicilian Operation ill conceived, the evacuation of three German divisions from Sicily preventable, the Italian armistice woefully bungled, and the hard-fought Anzio Operation a mistake. The introduction this volume is by Douglas Porch.

Jan Morris

Jan Morris

Jan Morris

Jan Morris

Peter Moskos

Sir Isaac Newton

John O'Farrell

John O'Farrell A cantankerous history of Britain by one of our most popular humorists

Joseph O'Neill `Netherland, once read, will not be readily forgotten.'

Peter Oborne

Koushun Takami Yuji Oniki

George Orwell

George Orwell

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine, Moncure Daniel

Robert Latham Samuel Pepys

Tom Clancy Steve Pieczenik

Tom Clancy Steve Pieczenik

Tom Clancy Steve Pieczenik

Tom Clancy Steve Pieczenik

Tom Clancy Steve Pieczenik

Karl Pilkington

Karl Pilkington

Sir Terry Pratchett Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job. After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death's apprentice.

Paul Preston

Christopher Priest 'One of two or three of the most impressive pure-SFnovels produced in the UK since World War Two' ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION.

Philip Pullman

Hannu Rajaniemi Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . . The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future - a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut

Alastair Reynolds

Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain ...The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. A year later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation.

Adam Roberts Golden Age SF meets Golden Age Crime in this British Science Fiction Award winner for best novel, from the author of Swiftly, New Model Army, and Yellow Blue Tibia

 

Jack Glass is the murderer—we know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel unfolds, readers will be astonished to discover how he committed the murders and by the end of the book, their sympathies for the killer will be fully engaged. Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, this is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain. Filled with wonderfully gruesome moments and liberal doses of sly humor, this novel is built around three gripping HowDunnits that challenge notions of crime, punishment, power, and freedom.

Jane Rogers Jane Rogers creates an extraordinary character in Jessie Lamb, determined to make her life count in a self-destructing world as the certainties of her life are ripped apart.

Jon Ronson

Philip Roth

Tom Clancy Steve Pieczenik Jeff Rovin

Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

J.D. Salinger

Bruce Schneier

V. E. Schwab

Mark Seaman

Will Self

Alan Sepinwall A mob boss in therapy. An experimental, violent prison unit. The death of an American city, as seen through a complex police investigation. A lawless frontier town trying to talk its way into the United States. A corrupt cop who rules his precinct like a warlord. The survivors of a plane crash trying to make sense of their disturbing new island home. A high school girl by day, monster fighter by night. A spy who never sleeps. A space odyssey inspired by 9/11. An embattled high school football coach. A polished ad exec with a secret. A chemistry teacher turned drug lord.

These are the subjects of 12 shows that started a revolution in TV drama: The Sopranos. Oz. The Wire. Deadwood. The Shield. Lost. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 24. Battlestar Galactica. Friday Night Lights. Mad Men. Breaking Bad.

These 12 shows, and the many more they made possible, ushered in a new golden age of television — one that made people take the medium more seriously than ever before. Alan Sepinwall became a TV critic right before this creative revolution began, was there to chronicle this incredible moment in pop culture history, and along the way “changed the nature of television criticism,” according to Slate. The Revolution Was Televised is the story of these 12 shows, as told by Sepinwall and the people who made them, including David Chase, David Simon, David Milch, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Vince Gilligan and more.

Desmond Seward

Nicholas Shaxson Dirty money, tax havens and the offshore system describe the ugliest and most secretive chapter in the history of global economic affairs. Tax havens have been instrumental in nearly every major economic event, in every big financial scandal. This title shows how this happens.

Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons

David Simon, Edward Burns

Cordwainer Smith

E.T. Smith

Ed Smith

Ed Smith

Carolyn A. Snyder

Richard Spence

Eric Spitznagel

Mark Steel 'An irreverent romp through the Gallic uprising...illuminating and funny'

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the "book" has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change.

Neal Stephenson You may well ask what light cyberpunk maestro Neal Stephenson can shed on the subject of operating systems and interface design. He's better known for his novels: Snow Crash, a dystopian not-too-distant future of avatars, linguistic software viruses and rent-a-nukes; The Diamond Age in which Victorian values come a cropper of nanotechnology; and Cryptonomicon, his 900 page opus spanning the development of hacking from before Bletchley Park to a contemporary data haven in Southeast Asia, complete with an (imaginary, obviously) gay love scene in the woods outside New Haven involving cryptography pioneer Alan Turing.

No one could read a Stephenson novel and not recognise his frighteningly powerful grasp of social and political history, and of technology that underpins all his stories. Read the liner notes on Snow Crash and you'll realise this is a man who probably considers Apple's Human Interface Guidelines to be soothing bedtime reading.

In the Beginning...Was the Command Line gives Stephenson an opportunity to flex his own non-fictional muscles. Part memoir, part developer's history of operating systems, it trawls through CLIs (command line interfaces) such as MS-DOS to GUIs (graphical user interfaces), the then-as now—revolutionary Macintosh OS, and everything since: Windows 98 (note: purist Stephenson doesn't even consider this an OS), Unix and Linux.

By the end of his enlightening, exhaustive elucidation of these and other TLAs, you too may suffer the subject of one of the book's final chapters: "geek fatigue". Not to worry—if there's one thing of which you can be certain it's that Stephenson never takes himself, or his subject, too seriously, and anything that cites Dilbert cartoons and H. G. Wells as source material has got to be a giant step forward. —Liz Bailey

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson Quicksilver is a massive, exuberant and wildly ambitious historical novel that's also Neal Stephenson's eagerly awaited prequel to Cryptonomicon—his pyrotechnic reworking of the 20th century, from World War II codebreaking and disinformation to the latest issues of Internet data privacy.

Quicksilver, "Volume One of the Baroque Cycle", backtracks to another time of high intellectual ferment: the late 17th century, with the natural philosophers of England's newly formed Royal Society questioning the universe and dissecting everything that moves. One founding member, the Rev John Wilkins, really did write science fiction and a book on cryptography—but this isn't history as we know it, for here his code book is called not Mercury but Cryptonomicon. And although the key political schemers of Charles II's government still have initials spelling the word CABAL, their names are all different...

While towering geniuses like Newton and Leibniz decode nature itself, bizarre adventures (merely beginning with the Great Plague and Great Fire) happen to the fictional Royal Society member Daniel Waterhouse, who knows everyone but isn't quite bright enough for cutting-edge science. Two generations of Daniel's family appear in Cryptonomicon, as does a descendant of the Shaftoes who here are soldiers and vagabonds. Other links include the island realm of Qwghlm with its impossible language and the mysterious, seemingly ageless alchemist Enoch Root.

As the reign of Charles II gives way to that of James II and then William of Orange, Stephenson traces the complex lines of finance and power that form the 17th-century Internet. Gold and silver, lead and (repeatedly) mercury or quicksilver flow in glittering patterns between centres of marketing and intrigue in England, Germany, France and Holland. Paper flows as well: stocks, shares, scams and letters holding layers of concealed code messages. Binary code? Yes, even that had already been invented and described by Francis Bacon.

Quicksilver is crammed with unexpected incidents, fascinating digressions and deep-laid plots. Who'd believe that Eliza, a Qwghlmian slave girl liberated from a Turkish harem by mad Jack Shaftoe (King of the Vagabonds) could become a major player in European finance and politics? Still less believable, but all too historically authentic, are the appalling medical procedures of the time—about which we learn a lot. There are frequent passages of high comedy, like the lengthy description of a foppish earl's costume which memorably explains that someone seemed to have been painted in glue before "shaking and rolling him in a bin containing thousands of black silk doilies".

This is a huge, exhausting read, full of rewards and quirky insights that no other author could have created. Fantastic or farcical episodes sometimes clash strangely with the deep cruelty and suffering of 17th-century realism. Recommended, though not to the faint-hearted. —David Langford

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, E.D. deBirmingham, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo

Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo This riveting second installment in Stephenson and company’s epic tale focuses on the aftermath of the world-shattering Mongolian invasion of 1241 and the difficult paths undertaken by its most resilient survivors.

The Shield Brethren, an order of warrior monks, search for a way to overthrow the horde, even as the invaders take its members hostage. Forced to fight in the Mongols’ Circus of Swords, Haakon must prove his mettle or lose his life in the ring. His bravery may impress the enemy, but freedom remains a distant dream.

Father Rodrigo receives a prophecy from God and believes it’s his mission to deliver the message to Rome. Though a peaceful man, he resigns himself to take up arms in the name of his Lord. Joining his fight to save Christendom are the hunter Ferenc, orphan Ocyrhoe, healer Raphael, and alchemist Yasper, each searching for his place in history.

Deftly blending fact and fantasy, The Mongoliad: Book Two captures the indomitable will to survive against immense odds.

A note on this edition: The Mongoliad began as a social media experiment, combining serial story-telling with a unique level of interaction between authors and audience during the creative process. Since its original iteration, The Mongoliad has been restructured, edited, and rewritten under the supervision of its authors to create a more cohesive reading experience and will be published as a trilogy of novels. This edition is the definitive edition and is the authors' preferred text.

Neal Stephenson, Frederick George

Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky

Rosemary Sutcliff

John Swartzwelder Humor/mystery novel by the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder Comedy western novel by John Swartzwelder, the author of "The Time Machine Did It", and 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder A comedy science fiction novel, featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the author of "The Time Machine Did It", "Double Wonderful", and 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the author of "The Time Machine Did It", "Double Wonderful", "How I Conquered Your Planet", and 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy/science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy/science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder One of a series of comedy/science fiction novels featuring slow-witted detective Frank Burly. By John Swartzwelder, the writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons.

Matt Taibbi A brilliantly illuminating and darkly comic tale of the ongoing financial and political crisis in America
 
The financial crisis that exploded in 2008 isn’t past but prologue. The grifter class—made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding—has been growing in power, and the crisis was only one terrifying manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s political and economic life.

Matt Taibbi has combined deep sources, trailblazing reportage, and provocative analysis to create the most lucid, emotionally galvanizing account yet written of this ongoing American crisis. He offers fresh reporting on the backroom deals of the bailout; tells the story of Goldman Sachs, the “vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”; and uncovers the hidden commodities bubble that transferred billions of dollars to Wall Street while creating food shortages around the world.

This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the labyrinthine inner workings of this country, and the profound consequences for us all.

J R R Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien Classic hardback edition of the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, featuring Tolkien's original unused dust-jacket design. Includes special packaging and the definitive edition of the text with fold-out map and colour plate section.

J. R. R. Tolkien HardCover. Pub Date :2005-10-17 Pages: 352 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins Classic hardback edition of the second volume of The Lord of the Rings. featuring Tolkien's original unused dust-jacket design. Includes special packaging and the definitive edition of the text. with fold-out map. Frodo and the Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard. Gandalf. in the battle with an evil spirit in the Mines of Moria; and at the Falls of Rauros. Boromir. seduced by the power of the Ring. tried to seize it by force. While Frodo and Sam made their escape the rest of the company were attacked by Orcs. Now they continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin - alone. that is. save for the mysterious creeping...

J. R. R. Tolkien Classic hardback edition of the third volume of The Lord of the Rings, now featuring Tolkien's original unused dust-jacket design. Includes special packaging and the definitive edition of the text, with fold-out maps.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Chris Turney "A fabulous, entertainingly written account of the amazing science behind calendars, dates and dating objects. Essential reading…"

Chris Turney `Chris Turney's 'Ice, Mud and Blood' is lively, well-researched, and up-to-date. A summary of key discoveries by scientists about past climate change, it ranges widely across time and all over the planet. Turney begins many of these stories with delightful anecdotes about people who centuries ago stumbled on confusing observations that in time came to be understood as the result of climate change.'

Shaun Udal

Jules Verne

Mark Wagh

David Foster Wallace

Jo Walton

Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon

Francis Wheen

Andrew Williams On September 15, 2003 Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, was killed by British Army troops in Iraq. He had been arrested the previous day in Basra and was taken to a military base for questioning. For forty-eight hours he and nine other innocent civilians had their heads encased in sandbags and their wrists bound by plastic handcuffs and had been kicked and punched with sustained cruelty. A succession of guards and casual army visitors took pleasure in beating the Iraqis, humiliating them, forcing them into stress positions in temperatures up to 50 degrees Centigrade, and watching them suffer in the dirty concrete building where they were held. Other soldiers, officers, medics, the padre, did not take part in the violence but they saw what was happening and did nothing to stop it. Some knew it was wrong. Some weren't sure. Some were too scared to intervene. But none said anything or enough until it was far too late and Baha Mousa had been beaten to death.

This book tells the inside story of these crimes and their aftermath. It examines the institutional brutality, the bureaucratic apathy, the flawed military police inquiry and the farcical court martial that attempted to hold people criminally responsible. Even though a full public inquiry reported its findings into the crimes in September 2011, its mandate restricted what it could say. The full story, told with the power of a true-crime exposé, shows how this was not simply about a few bad men or 'rotten apples'. It shines a light on all those involved in the crime and its investigation, from the lowest squaddie to the elite of the army and politicians in Cabinet. What it reveals is devastating.

Daniel H. Wilson

John Winton

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe A supernatural horror novel. Set a hundred years in the future, it is the story of an actress who becomes the lover of both a mysterious private detective and an even more mysterious and rich man, a man who has been to the human colony on an alien planet and learned strange things there. Her loyalties are divided - perhaps she loves them both.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Evan Wright

John Wyndham

John Wyndham

John Wyndham

John Wyndham

Peter Wynne-Thomas

Clarence Brown Evgenii Zamiatin

Marc Scott Zicree

Markus Zusak The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak was the best-selling debut literary novel of the year 2007, selling over 400,000 copies. The author is a prize-winning writer of children's books, and this, his first novel for adults, proved to be a triumphant success. The book is extraordinary on many levels: moving, yet restrained, angry yet balanced — and written with the kind of elegance found all too rarely in fiction these days. The book's narrator is nothing less than Death itself, regaling us with a remarkable tale of book burnings, treachery and theft. The book never forgets the primary purpose of compelling the reader's attention, yet which nevertheless is able to impart a cogent message about the importance of words, particularly in those societies which regard the word as dangerous (the book is set during the Nazi regime, but this message is all too relevant in many places in the world today).

Nine-year-old Liesel lives with her foster family on Himmel Street during the dark days of the Third Reich. Her Communist parents have been transported to a concentration camp, and during the funeral for her brother, she manages to steal a macabre book: it is, in fact, a gravediggers’ instruction manual. This is the first of many books which will pass through her hands as the carnage of the Second World War begins to hungrily claim lives. Both Liesel and her fellow inhabitants of Himmel Street will find themselves changed by both words on the printed page and the horrendous events happening around them.

Despite its grim narrator, The Book Thief is, in fact, a life-affirming book, celebrating the power of words and their ability to provide sustenance to the soul. Interestingly, the Second World War setting of the novel does not limit its relevance: in the 20th century, totalitarian censorship throughout the world is as keen as ever at suppressing books (notably in countries where the suppression of human beings is also par for the course) and that other assault on words represented by the increasing dumbing-down of Western society as cheap celebrity replaces the appeal of books for many people, ensures that the message of Marcus Zusak’s book could not be more timely. It is, in fact, required reading — or should be in any civilised country. —Barry Forshaw