Guinness World Records 2013
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
The Dirk Gently Omnibus
Non-Stop
The Tiger in the Smoke
Band of Brothers
Ricin!: The Inside Story of the Terror Plot That Never Was
Basingstoke Boy: The Autobiography
vN
iD
The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF
The Complete Robot (Robot Series)
Foundation (The Foundation Series)
Foundation and Empire (The Foundation Series)
Second Foundation (The Foundation Series)
Forward the Foundation
Foundation and Earth
Foundation's Edge
Prelude to Foundation (The Foundation Series)
The Handmaid's Tale (Contemporary Classics)
Thierry Henry
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance-now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
The Drowned World
Excession
The Algebraist
NOD
Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street
Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Foundation and Chaos (Second Foundation Trilogy S.)
Hull Zero Three
The Teleportation Accident
Dark Eden
Stalingrad
Berlin: The Downfall, 1945
Foundation's Fear (Second Foundation Trilogy S.)
Stillness and Speed: My Story
Zoo City
Secret War Heroes: The Men of Special Operations Executive
Fahrenheit 451 (Flamingo Modern Classics)
The Illustrated Man (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Fantasy Masterworks)
Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations
Intellectual Impostures
Foundation's Triumph (Second Foundation Trilogy S.)
The Ascent Of Man
Dawn of the Dumb: Dispatches from the Idiotic Frontline
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
World War Z
Notes From a Small Island
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
Notes from a Big Country
A Short History of Nearly Everything
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Pommies: England Cricket Through an Australian Lens
The Master And Margarita
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Twentieth Century Classics)
Empire State
Modern Classics The Death Of Grass
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
Red Rabbit
The City and the Stars (Millennium SF Masterworks S)
This Is Serbia Calling: Rock 'n' Roll Radio and Belgrade's Underground Resistance (Five Star Fiction S.)
Life After God
Why Evolution is True
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
The Origin of Species
Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
Climbing Mount Improbable
Greatest Show on Earth
A Devil's Chaplain: Selected Writings
The Selfish Gene
The Blind Watchmaker
The God Delusion
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
Serenity: Based on the Screenplay by Joss Whedon ("Serenity" S.)
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs
The Man in the High Castle (Penguin Modern Classics)
Ubik
Amazing...but False!: Hundreds of Facts You Thought Were True, But Aren't
The Mammoth Book of the Best Short SF Novels
In The Name Of The Rose
Ideas and Opinions
Deathbird Stories
Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain
Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial
Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly
Adobe PhotoShop CS for Photographers: Professional Image Editor's Guide to the Creative Use of Photoshop for the Mac and PC
Man in the Empty Suit
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. Don't You Have Time to Think?
What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character
Six Easy Pieces: Fundamentals of Physics Explained (Penguin Press Science)
Six Not-so-easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-time (Penguin Press Science S.)
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences
SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive
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 Life
ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever
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 American Gods: The Author's Preferred Text
Colossus: Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret
On the Map: Why the World Looks the Way it Does
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts
The Dynasties of China
Cobweb
The World of Karl Pilkington
Neuromancer
So You Think You Know the "Simpsons"?
Spitfire: The Illustrated Biography
Bad Science
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. by Ben Goldacre
Lord of the Flies
The Princess Bride
Sammy's Hill
The Mismeasure of Man
Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
Hackers and Painters: Essays on the Art of Programming
Parasite
Politika (Tom Clancy's Power Plays S.)
Stamping Butterflies (Gollancz SF S.)
Changing Planes: Armchair Travel for the Mind
On Warne Pa
The Neutronium Alchemist (Night's Dawn Trilogy)
The Confederation Handbook
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 Fallen Dragon
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 Misspent Youth
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 Pandora's Star
The Naked God (Night's Dawn Trilogy)
The Reality Dysfunction (Night's Dawn Trilogy)
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 Judas Unchained
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 The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy 1) (Void Trilogy 1)
The Temporal Void
The Evolutionary Void
Nano Flower
Quantum Murder
Manhattan in Reverse
Mindstar Rising
Great North Road
Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: A Journey to the Heart of Cricket's Underworld
Phil Tufnell: What Now? - The Autobiography
Beowulf
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Revolution In The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made
Operation Avalanche: The Salerno Landings 1943
Churchill's Bodyguard
Wolfhound Century
God's Englishman
Riddley Walker
The Age of Capital, 1848-75
The Age of Empire, 1875-1914
The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789-1848
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, 20th Anniversary Edition
Hoggy: Welcome to My World: The Peculiar World of Matthew Hoggard
The ZEN of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
High Fidelity
Fever Pitch
About A Boy
How to Be Good
Polysyllabic Spree
A Long Way Down
Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt: Fourteen Months of Massively Witty Adventures in Reading Chronicled by the National Book Critics Circle Finalist for C
Shakespeare Wrote for Money
Juliet, Naked
: Notes from the Reading Life of a Celebrated Author Locked in Battle with Football, Family, and Time Itself
Stuff I've Been Reading
Brief Candles.
The Perennial Philosophy
Antic Hay (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Brave New World (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Eyeless in Gaza (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Brave New World Revisited (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Island (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Point Counter Point (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Crome Yellow (Vintage Classic)
Ape and Essence
The Devils of Loudon
Those Barren Leaves
Red Strangers (Penguin Modern Classics)
My Father And Other Working Class Football Heroes
Wolves
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
Beyond A Boundary
Influencing Machine, The
Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
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. The Stand
Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities
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.) Scum of the Earth
Darkness at Noon (Vintage Classics)
Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer
On Such A Full Sea
To Kill a Mockingbird
Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Woman and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc.
Conspiracy of Paper
1,227 Qi Facts to Blow Your Socks Off
The Iron Heel
The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Weird Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)
Five Days in London: May 1940 (Yale Nota Bene)
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds
Intrusion
A Higher Call: The Incredible True Story of Heroism and Chivalry During the Second World War
Infinite Loop: How the World's Most Insanely Great Computer Company Went Insane
Between Silk and Cyanide
The White Rabbit: The Secret Agent the Gestapo Could Not Crack
Underground, Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube
Game of Thrones
A Dance With Dragons: Part 1 Dreams and Dust
A Dance With Dragons: Part 2 After the Feast
Fevre Dream
I Am Legend
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories
American Rust
Embassytown
Iron Council
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 Kraken
City & the City
Scar
Mobile Web Design
The Health of Nations: Towards a New Political Economy
British Commandos 1940-46
Sicily-Salerno-Anzio, January 1943-1944
Heaven's Command
Pax Britannica
Farewell The Trumpets
The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage
Cop in the Hood My Year Policing Baltimores Eastern District: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District
The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
May Contain Nuts
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain:
Netherland
Basil D'Oliveira: Cricket and Controversy
Battle Royale
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
Nineteen Eighty-four (Essential.penguin S.)
Common Sense
The Rights of Man
The Age of Reason
The Diaries of Samuel Pepys - A Selection (Penguin Classics)
Tom Clancy's Net Force
Hidden Agendas (Tom Clancy's Net Force S.)
Night Moves (Tom Clancy's Net Force S.)
Breaking Point (Tom Clancy's Net Force S.)
Tom Clancy's Net Force 5: Point of Impact
Happyslapped by a Jellyfish: The Words of Karl Pilkington
Karlology
Mort: Discworld Novel 4: A Discworld Novel
The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution & Revenge
Inverted World
His Dark Materials Gift Set: "Northern Lights", "The Subtle Knife", "The Amber Spyglass" (His Dark Materials S.)
The Quantum Thief
Century Rain
Yellow Blue Tibia: A Novel
By Light Alone
Jack Glass
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. The Testament of Jessie Lamb
The Psychopath Test
Plot Against America
Divide and Conquer (Tom Clancy's Op-centre S.)
Don Quixote (Wordsworth Classics)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
The Catcher in the Rye
Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive
Vicious
Bravest of the Brave: True Story of Wing Commander Tommy Yeo-Thomas - SOE Secret Agent Codename, the White Rabbit
The Book of Dave: A Revelation of the Recent Past and the Distant Future
The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever
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. The Wars of the Roses
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World
The Hyperion Omnibus: "Hyperion", "The Fall of Hyperion" (Gollancz SF S.)
The Terror
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-city Neighbourhood
The Rediscovery of Man (S.F.Masterworks S.)
Playing Hard Ball: County Cricket and Big League Baseball
What Sport Tells Us About Life
Luck: What it Means and Why it Matters
Paper Prototyping: Fast and Simple Techniques for Designing and Refining the User Interface
Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult
The Junk Food Companion: The Complete Guide to Eating Badly
Vive La Revolution
Snow Crash
The Diamond Age
In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
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 Cryptonomicon
The Big U
Quicksilver
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 The Confusion
The System of the World
Anathem
Reamde
The Mongoliad: Book One
The Mongoliad: Book Two
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. Interface
Roadside Picnic
The Eagle of the Ninth
The Time Machine Did It
Double Wonderful
How I Conquered Your Planet
The Exploding Detective
Dead Men Scare Me Stupid
Earth Vs. Everybody
The Last Detective Alive
The Fifty Foot Detective
The Million Dollar Policeman
Detective Made Easy
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
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. The Hobbit
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
The Silmarillion
"Bones, Rocks and Stars": The Science of When Things Happened
Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past
Shaun Udal - My Turn to Spin: The Incredible Story of a Cult Cricketer
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas
Pavilion to Crease... and Back
Infinite Jest
What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Fantasy and SF
Serenity: The Official Visual Companion
Serenity
How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions
A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa
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. How to Survive a Robot Uprising
Death of the Scharnhorst
The Fifth Head Of Cerberus (Millennium SF Masterworks S)
Severian Of The Guild: The Book Of The New Sun: With Shadow of the Torturer AND Claw of the Conciliator AND Sword of the Lictor AND Citadel of the Autarch
An Evil Guest
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Generation Kill
The Chrysalids
The Midwich Cuckoos
The Kraken Wakes
The Day of the Triffids
The History of Hampshire County Cricket Club
We (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics S.)
The Twilight Zone Companion
The Book Thief
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 |