Lucy is the founder of The Hope-Filled Family, a ministry encouraging Christian parents, carers and all those investing in the younger generation. She is the author of several books for adults and children, including Busy Family Devotional and the Mighty Girl, Mighty God series. She is mum to four children ages 11 to 16, who arrived by birth and adoption, and is married to Al, a church leader in York, England.

	 Lucy Rycroft

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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

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A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
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Serhii Plokhy

On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: 'Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.'While the threat of mutually assured destruction kept a lid on a simmering and tense geopolitical landscape, events like the Chernobyl disaster and near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that total destruction was only ever one malfunction, mistake, or miscommunication away. Now, as governments re-arm their nuclear arsenals, treaties designed to limit the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons fall away, and nuclear weapons come increasingly within reach of non-state actors, we are on the brink of a renaissance of the nuclear industry.In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever. 
 
As he examines the motivations of key players, Plokhy confronts the crucial question of our age: what can we learn from the first nuclear arms race that can help us to stop the new one?

The Nuclear Age

An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival

Mark Urban

'Punchy. Trenchant. Heavyweight. Mark Urban’s Tank blows the doors off, just as you’d expect from such an accomplished author. Take cover!’ Damien Lewis, author of SAS Great Escapes 
 
An authoritative history of the tank and the remarkable individuals who designed them and fought in them, from a former officer and best-selling historian 
 
Tanks are the ultimate embodiment of industrial age warfare. In the popular imagination, they represent both a terrifying beast of destruction and a potent symbol of liberation. 
 
The technology behind these war machines has evolved relentlessly, and yet the coming of the information age has led many to predict that drones, missiles, and Artificial Intelligence have made the tank obsolete. Time and again, however, tanks have continued to shape – and be shaped by -- battles around the world, from their introduction in 1916, through the Second World War and tank-on-tank fights in 1990s Iraq, to the current conflict in Ukraine. 
 
In TANK, best-selling historian and former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment Mark Urban draws on wide-ranging accounts from soldiers, designers, and politicians, from Winston Churchill to Volodymyr Zelensky, to tell the remarkable story of one of the most important developments in military history. Through the ten most important vehicles ever made, Urban chronicles the incredible advances in tank technology – starting with the Mark IV, the first British tank to be used in large numbers in WW1, and following the story through the T-34 and Tiger to the M1 Abrams, a product of huge American Cold War investment that is still used to this day. 
 
Officially supported by The Tank Museum and using never-before-seen archival sources, interviews and declassified documents, this is a fascinating history of the vehicle that changed conflict forever. 
 
‘An illuminating and exciting drive through the mud and blood of twentieth-century warfare' Dr Robert Lyman, author of Operation Suicide

Tank

The 10 War Machines That Changed the World and the Remarkable Men Behind Them

Scott Galloway

‘You need this book.' Steven Bartlett, author of The Diary of a CEO 
New York Times bestseller 
 
The world is changing. It's time for a new financial playbook. 
 
In this must-have guide to optimizing your life for wealth, success and happiness, you'll learn: 
 
• how to find and follow your talent 
• what small steps you can take now that pay big returns later 
• how to develop better financial habits 
 
Bursting with practical, game-changing advice from one of the world's most popular business school professors, The Algebra of Wealth is the practical guidebook you need to win today's wealth game. 
 
Today's workers have more opportunities and mobility than any previous generation. They also face unprecedented challenges, including inflation, labour and housing shortages, and climate volatility. 
 
Even the notion of 'retirement' is undergoing a profound rethink, as our lifespans extend and our relationship with work evolves. In this environment, the tried-and-true financial advice our parents followed no longer applies. 
 
In The Algebra of Wealth, Galloway lays bare the rules of financial success in today's economy. In characteristic unvarnished, no-BS style, he explains you what you need to know in order to improve your chances of achieving economic security no matter what.

The Algebra of Wealth

A Simple Formula for Success

Karen Hao

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2025 
Longlisted for the 2025 Financial Times &amp; Schroders Business Book of the Year 
Shortlisted for Foyles Non Fiction Book of the Year 2025 
A New York Times Bestseller 
 
An eye-opening account of the tech arms race shaping out planet, from an award-winning journalist and AI insider to the world of Sam Altman and OpenAI 
 
When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. 
But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace, as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase it down. 
In exhilarating prose and with unparalleled access to those closest to Sam Altman, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.

Empire of AI

Inside the reckless race for total domination

Tony Fadell

Build

An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

Christopher Summerfield

‘Engaging, insightful, panoramic’ Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind 
 
Stunning advances in digital technology have introduced a new wave of human-like AI systems. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are already reshaping economies, challenge democracies, and reshaping society in unpredictable ways. And soon, these AI systems could make autonomous decisions on their users' behalf, transforming everything we do. Understanding how they work is crucial. 
 
Can AI systems think, know, and understand?Could they manipulate or deceive you, and if so, what might they make you do?Whose interests do they represent?When will they be able to move beyond words and take action in the real world? 
 
Neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores these questions, charting AI's evolution from early ideas in the seventeenth century to today's deep neural networks. His book is the most accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative exploration of this radical technology. With an understanding of AI's inner workings, we can address the existential question of our age: can we look forward to a technological utopia, or are we writing ourselves out of history?

These Strange New Minds

How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

Rob Dix

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'A masterpiece' Rory Sutherland, author of Alchemy 
 
What if everything you’ve been told about money is wrong? 
 
Here, a leading investor reveals what the wealthiest people know about money – but most of us don't. From why cutting down your spending will never make you rich, to why buying your own home might not be such a good idea after all, Rob Dix cuts through the bullshit to identify an alternative path to lasting wealth.

Seven Myths About Money

And the Truth About Finding Financial Freedom

Alex James

There is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many years, all our lives did, and actually, I’d suddenly realised, they did still. 
 
One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. 
 
This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex describes how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond. Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ somehow organised an entire festival of his own, and tried to perfect the recipe for a giant Frazzle. 
 
Over the Rainbow is a heartfelt and hilarious account of what it feels like to be catapulted back into the limelight with one of the world’s biggest bands. It is a love letter to Blur, to friendship and to music. And it shows us all that, however old – or hungover – we might feel, nothing’s ever truly over: it’s always just the start of the next thing.

Over the Rainbow

Tales from an Unexpected Year

Jerry Brotton

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. 
 
In Four Points of the Compass, Jerry Brotton takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery. He reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. Throughout, Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning, literally and metaphorically, depending on where you stand.

Four Points of the Compass

The Unexpected History of Direction

Anil Ananthaswamy

Machine-learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumour is cancerous, or deciding whether someone gets bail. They now influence discoveries in chemistry, biology and physics - the study of genomes, extra-solar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. 
 
We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. This major shift is based on simple mathematics, some of which goes back centuries: linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of eighteenth-century mathematics. Indeed by the mid-1850s, a lot of the groundwork was all done. It took the development of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see all around us today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggests that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules. 
 
As Ananthaswamy resonantly concludes, to make the most of our most wondrous technologies we need to understand their profound limitations - the clues lie in the maths that makes AI possible.

Why Machines Learn

The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI

Bola Sol

We need to talk about money. Women have been overlooked and underestimated when it comes to finance; we typically earn less, are encouraged to spend more, and have fewer opportunities to build funds. But if we talk about money and share our knowledge, we will grow in confidence and wealth. This is the secret to securing your future and paying for all the things that matter. 
 
Whether you want to have children, get married, pay for a mortgage, start your own business or pay for nice holidays, all these goals cost money. But by building solid money habits you can plan for all life’s major milestones and dream bigger. Bola Sol offers the essential tools needed to get started and make your bank balance healthier. Once you’ve done that, she demonstrates how you can grow your ambition and become wealthier. Finally, she reveals how you can use this money smartly to pay for things you want and become happier. 
 
Money isn’t everything, but Bola shows how you can build your financial knowledge to enhance your wellbeing, open up new possibilities, and achieve your life goals.

Your Money Life

How to Afford the Future You Want

Geoff White

There's an old saying: 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. It's normally couched in positive terms; that overall economic improvement will benefit everyone. In the case of hi-tech money laundering, however, it offers a dark vision of the future. The better these launderers become at their work, the more crime of all types will be enabled. It's time to understand where the water is rising, before it washes over us all. 
 
Money laundering has been around for centuries. For as long as people have been willing to steal money, there's been an industry ready to wash it. But recent tech innovations have created vastly complex new systems for laundering that threaten to overwhelm authorities, destabilise economies and disrupt societies. 
 
Rinsed is a relevatory investigation into the new army of innovative criminals using tech to launder money, and the consequences for all of us.

Rinsed

From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks

Annie Jacobsen

Up to now, no one outside of official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilisation as we know it. Frantic calls over secure lines work to confirm the worst as armoured helicopters are scrambled to evacuate the chosen few to secure bunkers. One nuclear missile will provoke two dozen in return. Decisions over hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes, based on partial information, knowing that once launched, nothing is capable of halting the destruction. 
 
Based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts, Nuclear War is at once a compulsive non-fiction thriller and a powerful argument that we must rid ourselves of these world-ending weapons for ever.

Nuclear War

A Scenario

James Rebanks

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. 
 
Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. 
 
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold. 
 
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge, forgiveness and how to make lasting change.

The Place of Tides

Kelly Clancy

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. They're also a lot of fun. But what happens when we mistake games for reality? 
 
Playing With Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behaviour and brought us to the brink of annihilation - yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics and technology. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy. 
 
Lucid, thought-provoking, and masterfully told, Playing With Reality makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature.

Playing with Reality

How Games Shape Our World

Webb Keane

We have always lived with ethically significant others, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in or the machines we are endowing with life. How should we treat them as our world changes? 
 
In Animals, Robots, Gods, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane provides a new vision of ethics, defined less by our minds, religion or society, and more by our interactions with those around us. Drawing on ground-breaking research by fieldworkers around the world, he explores the underpinnings of our moral universe. Along the way we investigate the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, Japanese robot fanciers - even macho cowboys. We meet a hunter in the Yukon who explains his prey generously gives itself up to him; a cancer sufferer in Thailand who sees his tumour as a reincarnated ox; a computer that gets you to confess your anxieties as if you were on the psychiatrist's couch. 
 
With charm, wit and insight, Keane offers us a better understanding of our doubts and certainties, showing how centuries of conversations between us and non-humans inform our conceptions of morality, and will continue to guide us in the age of AI and beyond.

Animals, Robots, Gods

Adventures in the Moral Imagination

Neil D. Lawrence

A vital perspective is missing from the discussions we're having about Artificial Intelligence: what does it mean for our identity? 
 
Our fascination with AI stems from the perceived uniqueness of human intelligence. We believe it's what differentiates us. Fears of AI not only concern how it invades our digital lives, but also the implied threat of an intelligence that displaces us from our position at the centre of the world. 
 
Neil D. Lawrence's visionary book shows why these fears may be misplaced. Atomism, proposed by Democritus, suggested it was impossible to continue dividing matter down into ever smaller components: eventually we reach a point where a cut cannot be made (the Greek for uncuttable is 'atom'). In the same way, by slicing away at the facets of human intelligence that can be replaced by machines, AI uncovers what is left: an indivisible core that is the essence of humanity. 
 
By contrasting our own (evolved, locked-in, embodied) intelligence with the capabilities of machine intelligence through history, The Atomic Human reveals the technical origins, capabilities and limitations of AI systems, and how they should be wielded. Not just by the experts, but ordinary people. Either AI is a tool for us, or we become a tool of AI. Understanding this will enable readers to choose the future we want.

The Atomic Human

Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI

Jeremy Clarkson

Welcome back to Clarkson’s Farm. 
The spring crop failed. Farming sheep, pigs and cows was hardly more lucrative (better off breeding ostriches…) 
 
But in the face of uncooperative weather, bureaucracy, and the world’s persistent refusal to recognise his genius, our hero’s not beaten yet. Not while the farm shop’s still doing a roaring trade in smelly candles, he isn’t. 
 
Misery loves company and in girlfriend Lisa, Farm Manager Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald his Head of Security Jeremy’s got the best. And it’s hard to feel too gloomy with a JCB telehandler, a crop-spraying hovercraft and a digger in the barn.

Diddly Squat: Home to Roost

Salman Khan

The generative AI revolution has come to education. Salman Khan, the visionary behind Khan Academy with more than 150 million users, explores how artificial intelligence and GPT technology is already beginning to transform learning, offering a future roadmap for teachers, parents, and students to navigate this exciting (and sometimes intimidating) new world. 
 
The leading pioneer in the world of education technology, Khan explains the ins and outs of these cutting-edge tools and how they will forever change the way we learn and teach. How learning can be transformed for good. Rather than approaching the ChatGPT revolution with white-knuckled fear, Khan wants parents and teachers to embrace AI and adapt to it (while acknowledging its imperfections and limitations). He emphasizes that embracing AI in education is not about replacing human interaction but enhancing it, so that every student can complement the work they're already doing in profoundly new and creative ways, to personalize learning, adapt assessments, and support success in the classroom, preparing students for an increasingly digital future. 
 
But Brave New Words is not just about technology – it’s about what this technology means for our society, and the practical implications for administrators, guidance counsellors, and hiring managers who can harness the power of AI in education and the workplace. Khan also delves into the ethical and social implications of generative AI, offering thoughtful insights into how we can use these tools to build a more accessible education system for students around the world.

Brave New Words

How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

Scott Bateman

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER 
 
Read the legendary story of the Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft, seen through the eyes of former RAF captain Scott Bateman 
'An engaging and revealing read' JOHN NICHOL‘An action-packed insider’s account of what it’s like to fly this legendary flying machine in peace and war’ KeyAero.com 
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Take wing with an unsung hero . . . 
Hercules is the hero of the skies we never talk about. First to land in any combat zone and last out, the Hercules always unflashily gets the job done – whether that’s a risky air drop or hauling out troops in an emergency evac. 
Also working as an aerial tanker, gunship, spyplane, air-sea rescuer and even a precision bomber, its versatility has time and again seen the Hercules give the RAF their edge – from Antarctica to Iraq, Afghanistan to the Falklands. 
Captain Scott Bateman drags us into the cockpit and buckles us in for an extraordinary pilot’s seat view of this aircraft’s 50-year history. 
Anytime. Anywhere. Anyhow.

Hercules

Hampton Sides

In July 1776, Captain James Cook began his third voyage in HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, in Hawaii, Cook was killed – stabbed by the indigenous population. 
 
What brought Cook to this end, so far from his reputation? Cook was renowned for humane leadership, dedication to science and respect for indigenous societies. 
 
Cook’s new voyage carried secret orders, and the Captain grew strange, delivering savage punishments and leading his ships into danger. The mission revealed the sharp edge of a colonial sword, leaving catastrophe in its wake. And, on the shores of Hawaii, Cook’s expedition finally tore itself apart…

The Wide Wide Sea

Mark Miodownik

Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some power our engines while others make drinks fizzy? In It's a Gas, Mark Miodownik masterfully reveals an invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling. 
 
Taking us back to that exhilarating – and often dangerous – moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what they had discovered, Miodownik shows that gases are the formative substances of our modern world, each with its own weird and wonderful personality. 
We see how seventeenth-century laughing gas parties led to the first use of anaesthetics in surgery, how the invention of the air valve in musical instruments gave us bicycles, cars and trainers, and how gases made us masters of the sea (by huge steamships) and skies (via extremely flammable balloons). This delight of a book reveals the immense importance of gases to modern civilisation.

It's a Gas

The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World

Chris Dixon

‘A compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.’ Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI 
 
The promise of the internet has been stolen. 
 
Over the last decade, a handful of giant companies like Facebook and Google have seized control of the web – sapping its dynamism and taking its profits for themselves. 
 
But there is a way to take it back. 
 
Here, a leading Silicon Valley investor argues that blockchains – the radically free and democratic new type of software design that underpins ‘web3’ – could return financial and decision-making power to the internet’s users. For the first time, we won’t just read and write on the internet – we will own it, too. 
 
‘A must for anyone who wants to better understand the real potential of blockchains and web3.’ Bob Iger, CEO, Disney 
 
‘The most elegant and sophisticated argument for blockchain to date . . . Shines as a history of computing and the internet.’ Fortune

Read Write Own

Building the Next Era of the Internet

Nigel Toon

We are used to thinking of computers as being a step up from calculators - very good at storing information, and maybe even at playing a logical game like chess. But up to now they haven't been able to think in ways that are intuitive, or respond to questions as a human might. All that has changed, dramatically, in the past few years. 
 
Our search engines are becoming answer engines. Artificial intelligence is already revolutionising sectors from education to healthcare to the creative arts. But how does an AI understand sentiment or context? How does it play and win games that have an almost infinite number of moves? And how can we work with AI to produce insights and innovations that are beyond human capacity, from writing code in an instant to unfolding the elaborate 3D puzzles of proteins? 
 
We stand at the brink of a historic change that will disrupt society and at the same time create enormous opportunities for those who understand how AI thinks. Nigel Toon shows how we train AI to train itself, so that it can paint images that have never existed before or converse in any language. In doing so he reveals the strange and fascinating ways that humans think, too, as we learn how to live in a world shared by machine intelligences of our own creation.

How AI Thinks

How we built it, how it can help us, and how we can control it

Deb Chachra

Infrastructure enables lives of astounding ease and freedom that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. These technological systems - the most complex and vast ever created by humans - have allowed us to work collectively for the public good. But these systems are now beginning to fail us. Engineering professor Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, and just how much they shape our lives - but also the price they extract, who pays it and in what ways, as well as the threats to our infrastructure in a changing world. 
 
From Snowdonia's Electric Mountain to a solar plant in southern India, Chachra shows how we can rebuild our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. We need to learn how to see these systems and to transform them, together, because the cost of not being able to rely on them is unthinkably high.

How Infrastructure Works

Transforming our shared systems for a changing world

Paul Beaver

Small in stature but immense in reputation and talent, there was more to Eric 'Winkle' Brown than met the eye.From shooting down Luftwaffe bombers in the Battle of the Atlantic and narrowly escaping from a torpedoed ship, to a never-to-be-repeated litany of world records as a test pilot, his unparalleled flying career saw him take the controls of over four hundred different kinds of aircraft-more than any other pilot in history. 
 
A legend in his own lifetime, and by his death, a national treasure, there have always been mysteries at the heart of his story…

Winkle

The Extraordinary Life of Britain’s Greatest Pilot

Chris Lintott

Our view of the Universe is changing. The timeless heavens, turning ceaselessly above us, have been revealed to be dynamic and ever-changing, requiring a new kind of astronomy. On mountaintops and in deserts around the world, new telescopes are being built to show us this changing sky. But amongst all this technological development, the major astronomical events of the past century have largely come about by accident - found not by careful experiment but as surprises when we were looking for something else entirely. 
 
- The most promising habitat for life beyond Earth turns out to be Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus, whose oceans were revealed as NASA's Cassini probe happened to swing by. 
 
- Pulsars, the remnants of long-dead massive stars, were originally just 'scruff' in the data of radio astronomers looking at distant galaxies. 
 
- Telescopes around the world sprung into action to follow the visit of our first, unexpected, interstellar visitor, an asteroid from another system. 
 
- And we get the most from the Hubble Space Telescope by pointing it at nothing ... 
 
Chris Lintott takes us on an astonishing tour of accidents and human error in pursuit of asteroids, pulsars, radio waves, new stars and alien life. On the threshold of opening a new window on the cosmos through new surveys and instruments, his book is an urgent argument for how keeping an open mind can benefit us all - whatever might still be out there for us to find. 
 
....................... 
Praise for Chris Lintott 
'Superbly written insights.' - Professor Brian Cox 
'Chris Lintott is a modest genius. He has quietly revolutionized modern astronomy.' Brian May 
'Lintott deftly interweaves personal experience and more philosophical ruminations.' Michael West, Nature

Our Accidental Universe

Stories of Discovery from Asteroids to Aliens

Robert Skidelsky

A sweeping history of and meditation on humanity's relationship with machines, showing how we got here and what happens next 
 
Faith in technological fixes for our problems is waning. Automation, which promised relief from toil, has reactivated the long-standing fear of job redundancy. Information technology, meant to liberate us from traditional authority, is placing unprecedented powers of surveillance and control in the hands of a purely secular Big Brother. And for the first time, artificial intelligence threatens anthropogenic disaster – disaster caused by our own activities. Scientists join imaginative writers in warning us of the fate of Icarus, whose wings melted because he flew too close to the sun. 
 
This book tells the story of our fractured relationship with machines from humanity’s first tools down to the present and into the future. It raises the crucial question of why some parts of the world developed a ‘machine civilisation’ and not others, and traces the interactions between capitalism and technology, and between science and religion, in the making of the modern world. 
 
Taking in the peaks of philosophy and triumphs of science, the foundation of economics and speculations of fiction, Robert Skidelsky embarks on a bold intellectual journey through the evolution of our understanding of technology and what this means for our lives and politics. ‘Unless we understand technology as a system of ideas rather than as a necessity,’ he writes, ‘we will be powerless to choose which technology is best suited to our needs and purposes.’

The Machine Age

An Idea, a History, a Warning

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith

Zach Weinersmith

Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away - no climate change, no war, no Twitter - beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of original research, and interviews with leading space scientists, engineers and legal experts, they aren't so sure it's a good idea. Space tech and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the deep knowledge needed to have space-kids, build space-farms and create space nations in a way that doesn't spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won't create a nightmare, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. 
 
With deep expertise, a winning sense of humour and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself - whether and how to become multiplanetary.

A City on Mars

Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?

Jeff Horwitz

Facebook had a problem. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world, extolling its products for connecting people. But as a succession of scandals rocked Facebook from 2016, some began to question whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms. 
 
As Facebook employees searched for answers, what they uncovered was worse than they could've imagined. The problems ran far deeper than politics. Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians and allowing VIP users to break the platform's supposedly inviolable rules. 
 
It turned out to be eminently possible to isolate many of Facebook's worst problems, but whenever employees offered solutions their work was consistently delayed, watered down or stifled by a company that valued user engagement above all else. The only option left was to blow the whistle. 
 
In Broken Code, award-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz tells the riveting inside story of these employees and their explosive discoveries, uncovering the shocking cost of Facebook's blind ambition in the process.

Broken Code

Inside Facebook and the fight to expose its toxic secrets

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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