‘One of our very best authors … Very funny, very moving novel’ The New World
‘Charming portrait of friendship and loneliness’ Daily Mail
‘Deeply comforting’ Guardian
‘Funny, inventive and beautifully heart-breaking’ Irish Times
Have you ever been curious about how people live when nobody is watching? Have you wondered whether there’s more going on than meets the eye?
Eric and Carl live in Dorset in a small white cottage under the shadow of a big cliff. Eric sells old records and antiques. Carl cooks, cleans and crochets. Nearing seventy, Eric is a lifelong accumulator of obscure objects whose easygoing, chaotic approach to life masks some of the unaddressed sadness of his past. The significantly younger Carl is an old soul who has a sophisticated emotional intelligence and likes swimming, mid-century female novelists, fibre arts and Dolly Parton. If you passed them on a walk, you may not pay them much attention. Most likely you would see Carl’s long floppy ears, tail and fur and mistake him for a dog.
The story of Eric and Carl’s friendship spans twenty-one years: a constant anchor in a changing world. During that time they adopt an eccentric, unlikely gang of fellow travellers. Their wanderings through South West England unfold against a backdrop of lived, local folklore and hints at future apocalypse. All the while, Carl’s true nature remains a closely guarded secret.
Tom Cox’s third novel is a rare gem, centred around the importance of friendship, the power of landscape and the joy of accepting the unusual. Everything Will Swallow You will make you think deeply about the place you occupy in the grand scheme of things and give fresh perspectives on how to live and love in the present moment.
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
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
‘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.
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
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.
‘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.
Shortlisted for the National Book Award
A story of forbidden love and fugitive faith in the nineteenth century Arctic Circle
‘Transports readers deep into an unfamiliar world, yet with familiar conflicts and desires. I was absorbed and changed. Absolutely beautiful’ Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring
In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse’s daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something that ultimately crosses borders―of cultures, of beliefs, and of political divides―as Willa follows the herders on their arduous annual migration north to the sea.
Gorgeously written and sweeping in scope, Hanna Pylväinen’s The End of Drum-Time immerses readers in a world lit by the northern lights, steeped in age-old rituals, and guided by passions that transcend place and time.
‘So useful … extremely well-researched’ – The Times
A search for ‘parenting’ returns over a billion unique hits on Google. How can parents know which approaches actually work to support their children to be happy, healthy and fulfilled while maintaining their own sanity?
Evidence-Based Parenting draws directly on more than one thousand studies, and indirectly on thousands more, to create a single evidence base and reference manual for parents. This vast knowledge base has been condensed, for the first time, into straightforward ideas to support children’s relationships, physical health, learning and play, behaviour, and happiness and well-being.
‘Boisterous and uncompromising … An important argument’ The Times
‘Witty, wicked and wise’ Julie Burchill
Homophobia is making a major comeback under the guise of the ideology of ‘gender identity’. The enforcers of this new creed insist that attraction to people of the same sex is ‘hateful’. They argue that effeminate men and butch women can’t just be gay, but must ‘really’ be trans.
How and why was the older gay-rights activism, which gifted such progress to homosexual people, hijacked? In this passionate, witty polemic, Gareth Roberts answers these questions and argues that we need a new gay-liberation movement.