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£25.00
We often read history as the biographies of ‘great men’ who shaped the world. But are leaders, whichever field they are in, really that influential? Should CEOs be given large bonuses when a company performs well? Why, when a political leader is assassinated, is their successor as likely to improve as damage a country? When do we know if firing a coach has changed the fortunes of the team? Historian and bestselling author Jared Diamond argues that leaders are neither heroic exceptions nor products of circumstance. Looking at four difference spheres: history, business, sport and religion, Diamond asks under which conditions is a leader most likely to make a difference and why. Drawing on the life and career of iconic leaders, Diamond shows us how leadership effectiveness is determined by a range of complex interrelated factors, from resources to geography, culture to technology.
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£25.00
Tom Overton got to know John Berger around 2010, after he gave his archive to the British Library: a kind of homecoming to the city of his birth, after a life lived mostly in self-imposed exile in Switzerland and France. Curious about the origin of a piece of writing or art, Tom would scan something in and email it. Then there’d come a call, very early, very late. ‘Hello? Is that Tom? This is John. John Berger. Can I tell you a story?’ Tom realised he was bringing this archive back into John’s life, peering together through holes in time, remembering things he couldn’t himself. And then, at the beginning of 2017, John died. In this book, Overton explores the life and work of one of the great cultural figures of the last century, who came of age in a world threatened by nuclear apocalypse, and grew old in a world dominated by the idea that human life should be ordered with the logic of profit, always looking forward, never back.
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£9.99
In 1939, when she was just nineteen years old, Hermine Braunsteiner applied for a job in a new prison which had opened near her home. She had heard that the pay was better than working on the factory line. The prison was called Ravensbrück. A few months later, the Second World War would break like a wave across Europe. By the time it was over, she had become one of the most notoriously cruel and violent guards in the Nazi death camps. The prisoners nicknamed her the Mare – she was known for kicking her victims to death. After the war, Hermine disappeared back into civilian life. A few years later she met a US war veteran who was holidaying in Europe. He had no idea who she was. He fell in love with her, married her and brought her back to America, where she lived for years as a well-liked suburban housewife, until one day a tip-off from a Holocaust survivor sent a New York Times journalist to their door, and the questions started.
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£22.00
It has been a decade since the ill-fated quiz night at Pirriwee High, where a man died and accusations of murder ran wild. For mothers and best friends Madeline, Celeste and Jane, the fallout still feels fresh. Their children are now moody teenagers, and life remains as demanding as ever. Madeline is busy planning her 50th birthday, unaware she’s about to be upstaged. Jane is content in her marriage to Tom – perhaps too content to notice its cracks. Celeste, still haunted by her husband’s death, fears what her formidable mother-in-law might do next. When the school receives an anonymous package containing a severed finger, amid reports of a suspicious man near students, suspicion spreads quickly. Is it a prank, a threat, or something far darker? As secrets surface, the truth proves as dangerous as ever.
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£12.99
In the twenty years following Hu AnYan’s high school graduation, he has held nineteen different jobs. He’s been a convenience store clerk, a bicycle salesman, a security guard and a delivery driver (among many other things). He moves from city to city in China, slipping away any time the work gets too punishing or the bosses too bossy, carrying with him nothing but his copies of Chekhov and Carver. ‘I Deliver Parcels in Beijing’ is Hu’s account of his life as a low-wage labourer working to live, not living to work.
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£25.00
We live in the age of data. Over the past century, rapidly evolving technologies have transformed every aspect of our society, in troubling and seemingly unstoppable ways. Political campaigns have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, multinational corporations control public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to an end, replaced by the rule of artificial intelligence. Today, power is maintained through mystification: machines, we are told, know what humans cannot. Yet nothing about any of this was, or is, inevitable. In this account of how technology has corroded democracy around the world, prizewinning historian Jill Lepore traces the rise and fall of what she calls the ‘Artificial State’.
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£16.99
Munich, 1937. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor have arrived in Germany for a historic meeting at Hitler’s mountain retreat. But recent attacks by ruthless Communist band, Red Freedom, has brought fear and bloodshed to the area. As brutal as the Nazis, their next targets are Edward, Wallis and the Fuhrer himself. Detective Sebastian Wolff is charged with their protection, but the conflict between his job and his politics becomes even more complicated when Wolff realises who is behind Red Freedom – Ulrike, his first love and the mother of his son.
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£9.99
Rome, 1599. Beatrice yearns to escape the clutches of her abusive father and determined to find a way back to Rome, enlists the help of Olimpio, the castle’s keeper. Soon the love that grows between them will transform Beatrice’s fortunes, for better and for worse. History has sold her short. She is no doe-eyed victim of her father’s brutality, nor the cunning murderer who plotted her father’s demise. No, this Beatrice – a woman pregnant by her lover, incarcerated in a remote castle by her father, and brim-full of white-hot rage – is both innocent and guilty, saint and sinner. And she will stand tall in the face of the violence of men, no matter the cost.
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£22.00
Two friends meet in an art gallery after decades of silence. The idealism that once bound them together fissured and fractured under the weight of collective and personal griefs. Through their memories of youthful certainty, the antagonism of their conversation and the embers of their enduring kinship, they navigate the wreckage of our world today – the hope, the anger and the exhaustion. In her most personal and emotionally resonant writing yet, Claudia Rankine blends narrative, memory and criticism in a poignant exploration of the beautiful but complicated friendships that we rely on to unsettle us, to make us better – exposing the fiction in the facts of our lives and demanding action in our time of relentless loss.
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£12.99
A contemporary Shaolin Master shares the wisdom and philosophy of the ancient tradition that has captured the imagination of millions worldwide.
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£16.99
A glimmer often feels like a little moment of magic, but it’s actually a physical response that is rooted in your body’s nervous system, with the power to improve your mood, mental health and overall well-being. Glimmers are a beautiful invitation to the present moment, inviting us to be more aware of ourselves, our environment and the connections we share with those around us. They offer cues of safety and ease to the nervous system, which help us build resilience to better navigate life’s ups and downs. In this book, sisters Nadia and Katia, authors of the international bestseller ‘Self-Care for the Real World’, bring together practices inspired by their training and experiences of nervous system healing. Their gentle guidance will help you tune into the glimmers that are all around you, every day.
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£9.99
Frantz Fanon’s seminal text was immediately acclaimed as a classic of black liberationalist writing. Fanon’s descriptions of the feelings of inadequacy and dependence experienced by people of colour in a white world, ‘the crippled colonial mentalities of the oppressed’, are as salient and as compelling as ever.
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£9.99
Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction.
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£8.99
Nat, a 47 year-old veteran of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie. Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all.
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£9.99
‘Girl, Woman, Other’ follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends, and lovers, across the country and through the years.
Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings 
