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FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE FROZEN RIVER

‘Told with masterful intensity and moments of true human compassion’ Helen Simonson, New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Before the War

‘Inspired by history, and infused with imagination and intrigue, this novel satisfies with every twist and turn’ Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Mrs. Lewis

‘A gorgeous, haunting puzzle of a book that will grip you until the final page’ Abbott Kahler, New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City 

In an enthralling new feat of historical suspense, Ariel Lawhon unravels the extraordinary twists and turns in Anna Anderson’s 50 year battle to be recognized as Anastasia Romanov. Is she the Russian Grand Duchess, a beloved daughter and revered icon, or is she an imposter, the thief of another woman’s legacy?

Countless others have rendered their verdict. Now it is your turn.

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia, where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.

Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water or even acknowledge her rescuers, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious young woman claims to be the Russian grand duchess.

As rumours begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre at Ekaterinburg, old enemies and new threats are awakened. The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling saga is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.

FIVE STAR RAVE READER REVIEWS

Meet the woman behind the politician

‘Offers a remarkable new view of a remarkable and still under-appreciated leader’ Simon Jenkins

Since stepping down in 1990, Margaret Thatcher has become a cardboard cut-out hate figure or an iconic defender of freedom, depending on your politics. In The Incidental Feminist: Friend, foe, femme fatale: The truth about Thatcher, Tina Gaudoin investigates the complexities of the woman behind the tropes.

Drawing upon explosive new material from the archives and interviews with her contemporaries, Gaudoin reveals how Thatcher triumphed over rampant misogyny and class prejudice to normalise female power and manipulated her femininity, sexuality, and intellect to become the most powerful woman in the world.

Publishing to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s birth

SHORTLISTED IN THE CHARLES TYRWHITT SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR

Is it football any more?

‘Fascinating and persuasive’ The Herald

‘Everyone involved in the VAR controversy should read this short, beautifully-written book and think again’ Sir Michael Barber

In 2019, the English Premier League introduced the Video Assistant Referee (VAR), a way of using technology to review and correct the on-field referee’s decisions. It’s been a disaster: players hate it, managers hate it, pundits line up to pour scorn on its decisions, and fans have coined the chant ‘it’s not football any more’ to describe its effect on the game.

Almost every other sport in the world has managed to integrate technology into its decision-making process. Why is football failing so badly? Is it a special case, or have the game’s authorities got something wrong? And what does the controversy about VAR tell us about the nature of authority, rationality and technology in the 21st century?

‘A moving, courageous voice … Muslims and others alike need to listen to him’ Observer

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed is an imam and Koranic scholar. He is also gay.

In this memoir, he explains the journey he has taken to be both the founder of a mosque in Paris and to be openly gay, after a troubled childhood in Algeria in poverty and living with an aggressive and often violent father. Having found it impossible in that society to be both religious and true to himself, and being abandoned by a fellow school pupil with whom he was in love, he lost his faith.

Trained as an imam, though, he became an accomplished Koranic scholar. He concluded that there was nothing in the Koran that condemned same-sex attraction or committed same-sex relationships. Finally, during a pilgrimage to Mecca, he understood that he could be fully himself and practise his religion with sincerity and commitment. 

The Koran and the Flesh tackles these subjects with originality and is a book of real bravery, that shows how it is possible to reconcile homosexuality and religion.

‘Compelling’ Guardian
‘Eloquent and comprehensive’ Financial Times
‘Excellent’ The Telegraph
‘Astonishing’ The Times
‘An eye-opener’ Gavin Esler

Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success. But recent events – from Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to its car industry’s delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view.

In Kaput, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany’s economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The close connections between the country’s industrial and political elite have left Germany technologically behind, over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China, and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the twenty-first century. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of Europe’s most important economy.

Do you want to write a poem? This book will show you ‘how to grow your own poem’…

Kate Clanchy has been teaching people to write poetry for more than twenty years. Some were old, some were young; some were fluent English speakers, some were not. None of them were confident to start with, but a surprising number went to win prizes and every one finished up with a poem they were proud of, a poem that only they could have written – their own poem.

Kate’s big secret is a simple one: to share other poems. She believes poetry is like singing or dancing and the best way to learn is to follow someone else. In this book, Kate shares the poems she has found provoke the richest responses, the exercises that help to shape those responses into new poems, and the advice that most often helps new writers build their own writing practice.

If you have never written a poem before, this book will get you started. If you have written poems before, this book will help you to write more fluently and confidently, more as yourself. This book not like other creative writing books. It doesn’t ask you to set out on your own, but to join in. Your invitation is inside.

The House Next to the Factory shows a changing India over three decades through the lens of one family and the house that they live in.

Life in the house is humdrum and confining, but on a rare evening out, Kavya sets off in search of a nun; a beloved teacher is caught in the aftermath of the anti-Sikh riots; a loyal servant worries over his relationship with a low caste woman; while in England, an aunt reads William Trevor and pines for all that she has left behind. Over the years, the family’s steel utensil business blossoms, and amid the clanging of metal and the churning of machines, the household transitions from bourgeois to elite. Yet at thirty, Kavya finds herself in Paris, hoping to get past the sorrows of her young life…

Delicate and finely textured, Sonal Kohli’s extraordinary debut lays bare the complexities of class and culture and the difficulties as well as excitements of change, even as it evokes loves and triumphs, the pull of incongruous desires and the tragedies of everyday life.

‘A powerful, important, unforgettable book’ Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

In this riveting and immersive novel, bestselling author Thrity Umrigar tells the story of two couples and the sometimes dangerous and heartbreaking challenges of love across a cultural divide.

Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena – a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man – Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her.

In this tender and evocative novel about love, hope, familial devotion, betrayal and sacrifice, Thrity Umrigar shows us two courageous women trying to navigate how to be true to their homelands and themselves at the same time.

‘Every parent needs to read this’ Helen Joyce

Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria – severe discomfort in one’s biological sex – was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively.

But today whole groups of female friends in colleges and schools across the world are coming out as ‘transgender’. These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans ‘influencers’.

Unsuspecting parents now find their daughters in thrall to YouTube stars and ‘gender-affirming’ educators and therapists, who push life-changing interventions on young girls – including medically unnecessary double mastectomies, and hormone treatments that can cause permanent infertility.

Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has talked to the girls, their agonised parents, and the therapists and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to ‘detransitioners’ – young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves. Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, Shrier finds, but once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back.

A bold, provocative exploration of the tension between our evolutionary history and our modern woes – and what we can do about it

We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet we are listless, divided and miserable. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, but our political landscape is unmoored, and rates of suicide, loneliness and chronic illness continue to skyrocket. How do we explain the gap between these truths? And how should we respond?

For evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, the cause of our woes is clear: the modern world is out of sync with our ancient brains and bodies. We evolved to live in clans, but today many people don’t even know their neighbours’ names. Survival in our earliest societies depended on living in harmony with nature, but today the food we eat, the work we do – even the light we absorb – is radically different from what our minds and bodies evolved to expect.

In this book, Heying and Weinstein draw on decades of their work teaching in college classrooms and exploring earth’s most biodiverse ecosystems to confront today’s pressing social ills – from widespread sleep deprivation and dangerous diets to damaging parenting styles and backward education practices. A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century outlines a science-based worldview that will empower you to live a better, wiser life.