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‘A sublime gem of a novel’ Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites

Fifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities. Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers. Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. Eloise, now a professor who studies the psychology of happiness, is troubled by her younger wife’s radical politics. And Jomo, founder of a luxury jewellery company, has been carrying an engagement ring around for months, unsure whether his girlfriend is the one.

The soul searching begins in earnest at their much-anticipated college reunion weekend on the Harvard campus, when the most infamous member of their class, Frederick – senior advisor and son of the recently elected and loathed US President – turns up dead.

Old friends often think they know everything about one another, but time has a way of making us strangers to those we love – and to ourselves…

What do you do when your car breaks down during a pandemic, nobody will fix it, and you end up buying a carpenter’s van with no windows, no experience, and absolutely no idea what you’re doing?

If you’re Andy, you convert it into a campervan. You install a diesel heater, carpet the walls, put a coffee machine on the worktop, and drive to Lake Como.

If you are Claire, you make a lot of tea.

It Started with a Van is the true story of how a faulty Mercedes, a bolt that took two weeks and angle grinder to remove, and a YouTube channel that started with five views led two people from Barnsley on the adventure they never planned and couldn’t stop having. It is a book about a van, a marriage, a dog called Pablo, and the difference between vision and reality.

Told in two voices, with no agreement on the timeline and considerable disagreement about most of the details.

1904: Naive bookseller’s assistant Henry Canning arrives at Hareswood Lodge to catalogue the library of its late owner. But he’s unprepared for the horrors that lurk within Matthew Hobbe’s collection – and something even more terrible that still lingers in the room itself.

The present day, and a young council officer is tasked with finding the story behind an unassuming brick building that is all that stands in the way of a vast new housing development. But to the concern of his colleagues, Ben finds himself growing more and more obsessed with the secret of Hobbe’s Folly. Why does it have no doors or windows? Is it to keep people out – to keep something too awful to imagine trapped inside?

Adam Macqueen’s Haunted Tales were a collection of short stories whose chills lingered long in the imagination. Now, in his first full-length ghost story, he channels the masters of the genre both old and new in two intertwined narratives that build into a horrifying whole – and will ensure readers never look at the view beyond their windows in quite the same way ever again.

THE TELEGRAPH, BLOOMBERG AND TIME ‘BOOK OF THE YEAR’

‘A taut, immersive chronicle of endurance’ Time Magazine

‘One of the most compelling and unflinching books you will ever read’ Daily Telegraph

On 7 October, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Be’eri, shattering the peaceful life Eli Sharabi had built with his British wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel. Dragged barefoot out of his front door while his family watched in horror, Sharabi was plunged deep into the suffocating darkness of Gaza’s tunnels. As war raged above him, he endured a gruelling 491 days in captivity – all the while holding onto the hope that he would one day be reunited with his loved ones.

In the first memoir by a released Israeli hostage, and the fastest-selling book in Israel’s history, Sharabi offers a searing firsthand account of survival under unimaginable conditions – starvation, isolation, physical beatings, and psychological abuse at the hands of his captors.

Eli Sharabi’s story is one of hunger and heartache, of physical pain, longing, loneliness and a helplessness that threatens to destroy the soul. But it is also a story of strength, of resilience, and of the human spirit’s refusal to surrender. It is about the camaraderie forged in captivity, the quiet power of faith, and one man’s unrelenting decision to choose life, time and time again.

Reminiscent of Elie Wiesel’s Night, Hostage is a profound witness to history, so that it shall be neither forgotten nor erased.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE FROZEN RIVER

Russian Grand Duchess or Impostor?

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.

‘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 

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?

Now a major movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor

‘Triumphant’ The Times
‘Stellar’ Daily Mail
‘Exceptionally accomplished’ The Scotsman
‘Sublime’ Observer
‘Exquisite’ Sunday Post

In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck’s ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.

The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artefacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.

Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.

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.