Margery Allingham

J G Ballard

Giles Brandreth

Jacob Bronowski

Richard Dawkins

Albert Einstein

Richard Fortey

Bamber Gascoigne

Seamus Heaney

Christopher Hill

Jan Morris

Desmond Seward

Rosemary Sutcliff

Jules Verne

Koushun Takami Yuji Oniki

Douglas Adams

Greg Bear

Gregory Benford

David Brin

Will Self Russell Hoban

E.J. Hobsbawm

E.J. Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley

Harper Lee

Carolyn A. Snyder

Margaret Atwood

Francis Wheen

Iain M. Banks

Matthew Collin

Jon Courtenay Grimwood

William Goldman

Robert Latham Samuel Pepys

Aldous Huxley

H.P. Lovecraft

Keith R.A. DeCandido

Joss Whedon

Sir Isaac Newton

Joss Whedon

Dan Simmons

Dick Winters Cole C. Kingseed

Romeo Dallaire

Aldous Huxley

Neal Stephenson Frederick George

Richard P. Feynman

David Foster Wallace

Richard P. Feynman

Stephen Jay Gould

Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Kristin Gore

Ray Bradbury

Will Self

Charles Darwin

Elspeth Huxley

Alan Sokal Jean Bricmont

John Arlott

Peter Moskos

Richard Dawkins

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

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'.

Gene Wolfe

Des Hickey, Gus Smith

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.

Marcus Binney

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

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine, Moncure Daniel

Aldous Huxley

Neal Stephenson, Frederick George

Mary Wollstonecraft

Neal Stephenson

David Liss

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

John Winton

Aldous Huxley

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

Jack London

Richard Dawkins

Mark Wagh

Jonathan Glancey

David Simon, Edward Burns

Alastair Reynolds

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.

Bill Bryson

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

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.

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.

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

China Miéville

Neil Gaiman

China Mieville

Richard Matheson

Harlan Ellison

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.

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.

Boris Strugatsky, Arkady Strugatsky

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.

Paul Preston

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].

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.

Philip K. Dick

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.

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

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

Bruce Schneier

Cyril Lionel Robert James

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.

Gavin Mooney

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'.

Mark Seaman

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

Ned Beauman

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

Neil Barofsky

Richard Spence

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

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.

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.

Philippe Auclair

Adrian Barnes

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.)

Gary Imlach Yellow Jersey Press.

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

Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Madeline Ashby

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.

Dennis Bergkamp

Simon Garfield

Ken MacLeod Softcover Book

Nick Hornby

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.

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.

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.

J.R.R. Tolkien

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.

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.

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?

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.

Umberto Eco

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)

Mira Grant

Chang-Rae Lee

V. E. Schwab

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

Simon Ings

Jo Walton

Philipp Meyer

Jan Morris

Jan Morris

Jan Morris