Showing 17–26 of 26 resultsSorted by latest
-
£22.00
My job, when you think about it, isn’t so different from a lot of people’s. The more old-fashioned crowd do still get hung up on the ‘killing people’ part of it, I guess, but that’s a them problem: it’s been perfectly legal to take out lifers for ages. Besides, once ultrawealthy morons realised they had a way to live forever – limited resources be damned – there was only ever going to be one genuinely practical deterrent. So, sure, I have to deal with a tonne of boring planning. Inconvenient hours. Some pretty awkward face-to-face interactions. And like most of us, I’m really only clocking in to try and crawl out from beneath my debts. But someone’s got to do it. Luckily, my genetic compatibilities make me really, really good at doing it. Still. This next job – I don’t know. It’s something I haven’t had to deal with in years. Kind of the opposite of my regular duties.
-
£25.00
When English mathematician Matthew Watkins went to San Francisco to study an early version of ChatGPT, he expected dry technical work. Instead, he uncovered a series of ‘rare tokens’ that made the system go haywire. Some produced gibberish. Others turned hostile. One trigger word – petertodd – sent the system into what looked like full-blown paranoia. Was it a simple bug? A trail of breadcrumbs left by whistleblowers? Or a glimpse into how AI really thinks? Watkins’s search for answers pulls him into the secretive world of AI safety research. In this rapidly expanding domain, the line between science and belief blurs: billionaires play god while rogue chatbots win fortunes and groupies. What starts as a computer mystery becomes something much bigger: both a window into the eerie inner worlds of LLMs and a cryptic clue to what might be history’s greatest power grab. The system has since been patched.
-
£22.00
Anna was once the life and soul of the party – until a terrible night unravelled everything – a night she can’t remember, but can’t forget either. Moving with her family back to where Grandma grew up, Anna becomes obsessed with two murders that took place in the town – three years apart, with the third anniversary looming. The town of Harper’s Creek suffers through a drought – people talk, people pray, and people wait. As Anna’s trauma deepens, and Grandma’s Alzheimer’s worsens – they share a bond made of missing memories. They say both are, in their own ways, mad. But when Grandma speaks, Anna listens, and she understands – but above all she fears that the girls are in there, and they’re trying to tell her something.
-
£20.00
In her first memoir, novelist Louise Doughty tells the story of losing her parents and the unexpected discovery she made whilst clearing out the family home. Inside a black suitcase, the last item left in their bungalow before the sale of the house was completed, she stumbled upon a treasure trove of letters that revealed the origins of her parents’ love affair. These letters offered a fascinating glimpse into the daily lives of working-class people in the 1950s and the tight social conventions that almost prevented her parents from staying together and building a life. ‘On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love’ is a portrait of grief and loss and family, but most of all, it’s a love story. With peerless clarity, tenderness and wit, Louise Doughty introduces us to two ardent, eloquent, hopeful young people full of spirit and determination, and brings to light the hidden depths of the people she had simply known as mum and dad.
-
£25.00
The Middle East has forever been the source of religions, prize of empires, spark-wheel of conflicts, well of radicalism and epicentre of our tumultuous world. No other region has such a hold on our imagination nor such a propensity to unleash mayhem. Yet few know its real history; fewer still understand its variety and cosmopolitanism, its complexity and interconnectedness. In ‘The Cauldron’, Simon Sebag Montefiore delivers a fresh and unique history of the entire region in all its diversity, from 1900 up to the present day. Taking the reader on a spectacular journey from the Ottoman sultanate to the Trump presidency, from Morocco to Iran, this is a dazzling panorama of faith and fanaticism, creativity and tolerance, dictatorship and democracy brought to life by an extraordinary cast of kings, warriors, poets, terrorists and peacemakers.
-
£22.00
Avelyn Brocken is a Jesuit at the Vatican. Originally from the salt mining town of Hreodwater in East Anglia, his only ambition is never to go back. But when rumours of miracles being performed there are followed by a bizarre video showing that someone trying to leave then enclave has been turn to salt, the Vatican foreign ministry summons him. The isolated Hreodwater salt mine has its own culture, its own language, and its own faith – the worship of the Salt King, the sleeping god of the mine. Any investigation into their miracles requires someone who understands all three. Avelyn must go. Returning to Hreodwater, with its unique salt light, and ability to destroy anything electronic within minutes, is personally challenging for Avelyn, who escaped the cult – and the Salt King – as a child. But eruptions of salt are happening all over the world. People are being turned into salt statues without warning, and their frequency is increasin
-
£22.00
In 2024, Nina’s small aircraft crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Lost, freezing and alone on the shore, Nina stumbles upon Sunrise – an abandoned frontier town that is strangely well-maintained. In 2003, Sunrise’s golden boy Coll is about to start rehearsals for the town’s annual historical re-enactment when he is linked with a scandalous incident at a local bar. And when an author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise’s most beloved figures, Coll is forced to reassess everything he thought he knew about the city – and himself. In 1902, town founder, gunslinger and adventure-novel hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and helps the search for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy’s disappearance? And why has he returned after so many years away? These three are strangers, separated by time. But Sunrise has secrets which lie in waiting like gunpowder: quiet, until they encounter a
-
£10.99
In a near-future London where technology affects everything from our bodies to our politics, journalist Pels Badmus wants to make a real difference. She’s desperate to solve a spate of disappearances of young Black kids – including her friend’s brother. But her boss doesn’t want to hear it. Instead, he assigns her to cover the ‘unreasonable’ protests thousands of miles away in Benin, against culturally oblivious tourists travelling to partake in sacred Spirit Vine rituals. But when Pels takes the Spirit Vine herself, she experiences something mind-boggling – something that points to an unfulfilled destiny that could change the course of her life.
-
£10.99
Hannah looks more like a kindergarten teacher than someone who could kill you with her bare hands. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka. bodyguard) and she’s just been hired to protect superstar Jack Stapleton. Jack’s an impossibly handsome actor who looks like he has everything. Including a creepy, corgi-breeding stalker. When Jack’s mom gets sick, he heads home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. Only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah – against her better judgment – finds herself pulling on her cowboy boots and pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover. It’s easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.
-
£10.99
In this entertaining and accessible exploration of love, Oxford anthropologist Dr Anna Machin dives into the science behind the myriad types of love that exist in the world, including romantic love, parental love, friendships, love for pets, football teams, religious love and even love for our smartphones. Through original research brought to life by interviews and case studies, and encompassing such fascinating areas as polyamorous relationships, parasocial (love for a celebrity) and sacred loves, this book argues that it is time to stop putting romantic love on a pedestal.
