The Anti-Catastrophe League
£22.00A superbly written work of narrative non-fiction by an exciting new talent, The Anti-Catastrophe League is a brilliant study of the people and their teams who are trying to save the world.
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Apocalypse
£20.00A groundbreaking new perspective on catastrophes throughout human history, with vital lessons for our future
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The assassin
£9.99How far will he go to save a future he may never see? Having been made High Commissioner in Nairobi, Ed Barnes is keeping his head down and staying out of trouble. But when his daughter, Sophie, is kidnapped following a security crisis for which he is blamed, his attempts at normality fall apart once again. He finds himself at the heart of a complex negotiation with a dangerous Somali terrorist group, in an effort to avert a regional security crisis and free his daughter. Meanwhile, across the globe a series of political assassinations have been shaking the world of business and government. Tensions boil over when a Chinese envoy is murdered in Jordan, only days before a crucial climate change conference, sparking a diplomatic crisis and the threat of US/China confrontation.
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Chernobyl roulette
£25.00On 24th February 2022, the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, armoured vehicles approached the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine. It was the most direct way for them to reach the capital – and an extraordinarily reckless plan after the disaster that had taken place there three decades earlier. Russian occupation of the plant had begun. It would last thirty-five days.Closely reported and narrated from multiple perspectives, this is the story of the Ukrainians who were held hostage and worked shifts for weeks instead of days to spare the world a new nuclear accident. We meet Valentyn Heiko, the foreman who had also been there for the clean-up of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and turned sixty during the occupation; plant workers who found a way to celebrate International Women’s Day despite all odds; and many others.
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Zero stars, do not recommend
£9.99Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a break. Sure, his life has been average at best and, yes, he has never has quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Bud Lites in paradise with his girlfriend Mara, things are starting to look up. Then the sun explodes. With the island suddenly plunged in darkness, the ultra-rich guests hijack the remaining supplies and declare themselves as the new ruling class. Led by a fitness influencer turned ruthless dictator, martial law is declared and the hoi polloi are press-ganged into service. And it’s just Dan’s luck that he could land an even worse job while on holiday. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, Dan might have found a way for himself and Mara to escape the island. But sneaking away would also mean abandoning the burgeoning revolution that he might-have-kind-of-sort-of single-handedly started.
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If I survive you
£9.99SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE
‘Dazzling’ GUARDIAN
‘Blistering’ THE TIMES
‘A delight’ DIANA EVANS
‘Fiction written at the highest level’ ANN PATCHETT
‘Hilarious, revelatory’ MARLON JAMES
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Survival of the richest
£10.99The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive ‘The Event’: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of ‘The Mindset’, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making – as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In this book, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, and the Metaverse.
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Atoms and ashes
£12.99In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now considered one of the costliest nuclear disasters ever. But Fukushima was not the first, and it was not the worst. In ‘Atoms and Ashes’, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy tells the tale of the six nuclear disasters that shook the world – Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
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When the dust settles
£10.99Lucy Easthope lives with disaster every day. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, she’s the one they call. As one of the world’s leading experts on disaster she has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades – advising on everything from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 7/7 bombings, the Salisbury poisonings, the Grenfell fire and the Covid-19 pandemic. She has travelled across the world in this unusual role, seeing the very worst that people have to face, and finding that even the most extreme of situations, we find the very best of humanity. In her moving memoir she reveals what happens in the aftermath. She takes us behind the police tape to scenes of destruction and chaos, introducing us to victims and their families, but also to the government briefing rooms and bunkers, where confusion and stale biscuits can reign supreme.
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If I survive you
£14.99LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
‘Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory’ MARLON JAMES
‘An absolute delight to read’ DIANA EVANS
‘Superb ? A strong, much needed new voice in our literature’ PERCIVAL EVERETT
‘A compelling hurricane of a book’ ANN PATCHETT
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Life Without Children
£9.99Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these ten, beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times.