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.
Inspired by our native landscapes, saturated by the shadows beneath trees and behind doors, listening to the run of water and half-heard voices, Tom Cox s first collection of short stories is a series of evocative and unsettling trips into worlds previously visited by the likes of M. R. James and E. F. Benson.
Railway tunnels, the lanes and hills of the Peak District, family homes, old stones, shreds fluttering on barbed wire, night drawing in, something that might be an animal shifting on the other side of a hedge: Tom has drawn on his life-long love of weird fiction, folklore and nature s unregarded corners to write a collection of stories that will delight fans old and new, and leave them very uneasy about turning the reading lamp off.
June 1948. Late one night Magdalen don and author Jack Lewis hears an urgent sound like an animal scratching at the door of his college rooms. Outside is Casper Carstairs, whom the don recognises as the nervy-looking student playing Hamlet in an open-air undergraduate production that afternoon. Claiming his stepmother is out to murder him, the youth begs Lewis – one of the more approachable dons – to help him.
Plagued by writer’s block as he tries to create a sequel to his first Narnian novel, Lewis semi-reluctantly succumbs to the distraction of detective work…
Look past what you’re being TOLD
And see what you’re being SOLD
‘Anyone who cares about the girls and young women in their lives should read GIRLS®’ JONATHAN HAIDT
‘Freya India is one of our sharpest, smartest young writers’ HELEN LEWIS
GIRLS®: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything is a passionate, provocative and deeply personal journey into the pressures shaping young lives today. Freya India shows that age-old anxieties of girlhood are now being amplified by modern life and exploited like never before. While previous generations of women were relentlessly sold products and procedures, we have become the product. We display our lives on Instagram, advertise ourselves on dating apps and package ourselves into personal brands, making anxiety feel overwhelming and unmanageable. We have transformed from girls into GIRLS®, from people into products.
Each chapter of GIRLS® focuses on a common anxiety in adolescent girls’ lives, from insecurities about our faces and bodies, to our reputation and social status, to our friendships and romantic relationships. Along the way, India traces how rapidly culture and technology have evolved over the past decade.
This isn’t just a book for girls. For young women, it offers a nostalgic, if unsettling, reflection on the world they’ve grown up in and reassurance that they’re not alone in their struggles. For younger girls, it provides context for where these challenges began and warns where they might be headed. And, for parents, teachers and older generations, it serves as a reminder that these issues have never been so intense.
GIRLS® concludes with a message of hope, reminding readers how to reclaim their privacy, defend their dignity, and, above all, return to being people instead of products.
THE UNMISSABLE BESTSELLER INSPIRED BY THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY OF MIDWIFE MARTHA BALLARD
Brimming with courage, mystery, and heart, The Frozen River is the perfect curl-up-and-dive-in read for anyone who loves unforgettable heroines and atmospheric winter drama.
‘Thrilling’ Irish Times
‘Lawhon works storytelling magic with a real-life heroine’ People Magazine
‘The narrator of Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River is another stalwart heroine’ The New York Times
‘Historical fiction at its best!’ 5 Star Reader Review
‘These markings of ink and paper will one day be the only proof that I have existed in this world. That I lived and breathed’
Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.
Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.
Inspired by the life of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into history.
For fans of OUTLANDER and WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING
Readers love Ariel Lawhon
‘The HYPE IS REAL … I was absolutely drawn into Martha’s world, the harshness of the life, the struggle of women to have a voice, the mystery created. I loved this book so much! It’s in my books of the year’
‘I give this book ALL THE STARS … One of the BEST HISTORICAL FICTION THRILLER BOOKS that I’ve read’
‘Extremely ABSORBING and enjoyable read’
‘RIVETING … I would thoroughly recommend it to any historical fiction lovers, or those who enjoy stories based around strong women’
‘This story is so POWERFUL, and it’s astonishing how relevant Martha’s FIGHT FOR JUSTICE still feels today … If you’re looking for a rich, layered story about justice, resilience, and a woman who refused to be silenced, The Frozen River is A MUST-READ‘
‘Highly recommended for fans of historical fiction with STRONG FEMALE LEADS, intricate plotting, and a BEATING HEART OF JUSTICE. A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, quietly fierce book that will stay with you long after the final page’
‘Its SECRETS kept me UTTERLY HOOKED‘
A Telegraph Book of the Year 2025
‘Allows us to understand the profound, and often profoundly beneficial, impact of Christianity’ Anthony Seldon
‘Superb … Lively and erudite’ The Telegraph
‘Tremendous … The arguments are truly profound’ The Spectator
‘A finely judged and beautifully written account’ Peter Frankopan
Christianity in England is in decline. Congregations are dwindling and ever fewer young people believe. Should we merely shrug our shoulders and accept this as inevitable and even healthy, or is something important being lost?
Bijan Omrani argues that this decline is the most momentous change to occur in English history. He shows how a religion that has been part of our national story for over 1700 years was instrumental in the creation and development of the English nation, its codes of law and morality, and its structures of government and kingship. He demonstrates its profound cultural impact, in areas ranging from architecture and literature to our very landscape and the structure of our everyday life and language. Its influence, he contends, has been enormous, largely benign, and shouldn’t be lightly abandoned.
Ending with a rousing call to retain Christianity, rightly understood, as a way of dealing with both the eternal questions of the human condition, as well as the malaises of modernity, this is an erudite and tender tribute to our Christian history and heritage.
THE TIMES BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025
‘Stephen May has a nose for fascinating historical events’ The Times
‘Very fine and fun novel’ The Spectator
‘Skilfully orchestrates a large cast of both historical and fictional characters’ Financial Times
‘The spry, sardonic voice of the new historical fiction’ Hilary Mantel
‘Vivid and wholly credible recreation of post-Great War London’ Robert Edric
‘Intrigue, betrayal, redemption’ Rachel Seiffert
David Lloyd George is at Chequers for the weekend with his mistress Frances Stevenson, fretting about the fact that his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed by one Victor Grayson. Victor is a bisexual hedonist and former firebrand socialist MP turned secret-service informant. Intent on rebuilding his profile as the leader of the revolutionary Left, he doesn’t know exactly how much of a hornet’s nest he’s stirred up. Doesn’t know that this is, in fact, his last day.
No one really knows what happened to Victor Grayson – he vanished one night in late September 1920, having threatened to reveal all he knew about the prime minister’s involvement in selling honours. Was he murdered by the British government? By enemies in the socialist movement (who he had betrayed in the war)? Did he fall in the Thames drunk? Did he vanish to save his own life, and become an antiques dealer in Kent?
Whatever the truth, Green Ink imagines what might have been with brio, humour and humanity; and is a reminder that the past was once as alive as we are today.
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.
‘A brilliantly eclectic mix of dark, unsettling tales’ Joanne Burn, author of The Bone Hunters
‘Guaranteed to give you goosebumps’ Best Magazine
‘Atmospheric collection of spooky stories’ Observer
‘A lovely present’ The Spectator
‘Inspired by all the great ghost story writers’ BBC Open Book Editor’s Pick
‘Tis the season to be haunting
An unexpected and unwelcome voice on the world’s first radio broadcast in 1908. A son who won’t stop messaging his family on Facebook, although he’s been dead for quite some time now. A frozen forest in a far north land where the sinister elf-kin lurk in the snow.
A Scottish island where the locals make very sure their old folk don’t go hungry through the long winter.
Over the past two decades Adam Macqueen has sent a Haunted Tale to his family in place of a Christmas card. A collection in the grand tradition of ghost stories – to be read by the fire in the depths of winter – it proves that terror lurks in many places, and the dead take on infinite guises . . .
READER REVIEWS
‘Spine-chilling’
‘Dark and twisty’
‘Pleasing terrors indeed’
‘An awesome collection … I loved how each story had its unique twist’
‘An amazingly spooky collection … Excellent’
‘What a wonderfully weird and unsettling collection of short stories this is!’
‘Fabulous … I can’t recommend this book enough’
‘The finest prose stylist in the House of Commons since Roy Jenkins’ Mark Lawson
WINNER OF A WESTMINSTER BOOK AWARD
Harold Wilson was one of the most successful politicians of the twentieth century. Prime Minister from 1964-70, and again from 1974-76, he won four elections as well as a referendum on UK membership of the European Community. The achievements of the Wilson Era – from legalising homosexuality to protecting ethnic minorities, from women’s rights to the Open University – radically improved ordinary people’s lives for the better.
In Harold Wilson, former Labour cabinet minister and bestselling author Alan Johnson presents a portrait of a truly twentieth-century man, whose ‘white heat’ speech proclaimed a scientific and technological revolution – and who was as much a part of the sixties as the Beatles and the Profumo scandal.