‘Exceptionally vivid and intense’ Sunday Times

‘A marvellously dark yarn’ The Spectator

‘A swaggering debut’ Daily Mail

Everyone expects at least a little bit of deception…

Alex is a motherless stockboy in 1830s Montreal, waiting desperately for his father to return from France. Serge, a drunken fur trader, promises food and safety in return for friendship, but an expedition into the forest quickly goes awry…

The Voyageur is a brilliantly realised novel set on the margins of British North America, where kindness is costly and the real wilderness may not be in the landscape but in the desperate hearts of men.

‘Essential reading for all parents and professionals supporting young people struggling with the issue of gender identity’ Louise Perry

Being the parent of a gender-questioning child is confusing. There is a lot of advice out there, but much of it goes against what many parents feel instinctively is the right approach. And the stakes are very high if you get it wrong.

There have been many books written for parents who are facilitating a child’s gender transition, but almost none for parents who decide that social or medical transition is not the best option for their child.

Written by three professionals working in the field – Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marchiano and Stella O’Malley – When Kids Say They’re Trans is explicitly a resource for parents who want their children to flourish, but do not believe that hasty medicalisation is the best way to ensure long-term health and well-being.

Parents who have successfully helped their children navigate gender distress without resorting to surgery and hormones have done so by actively taking the reins, not waiting until they found the right therapist or doctor. When Kids Say They’re Trans will tell you all you need to know, and will give you the confidence to trust your own instincts.

Leading psychotherapist Stella O’Malley has walked many miles on ‘Planet Teen’. She understands difficult teenagers – she was one herself, and as a psychotherapist she has spent many hours working alongside unhappy adolescents.

Stella takes parents inside the teenage brain and provides practical advice for each of the key milestones teenagers need to tackle during adolescence to become happy, healthy adults.

You will learn how to navigate many issues, including anxiety, obsession with technology, body confidence and the sexual self. Rather than always looking to ‘fix’ the situation, you will instead be empowered to know when and how to intervene and when to allow your teen to work it out for themselves.

Ultimately, you will understand your teen better and learn to rekindle joy in your relationship.

The New York Times Bestseller

The triumphant story of three courageous women who become the first female doctors.

‘These women changed the world’ – Nina Sankovitch, bestselling author of American Rebels

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and painful, and women faced damaging social stigma from illness.

Despite countless obstacles, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman’s place in the male-dominated medical field. The three pioneers earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same, then built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges – creating for the first time medical care for women by women.

People of good will on both the left and the right are secretly asking themselves the same question: how has the conversation on race gone so crazy?

Bestselling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting black communities and weakening the social fabric.

We’re told to read books and listen to music by people of colour but that wearing certain clothes is ‘appropriation.’ We hear that being white automatically gives you privilege and that being black makes you a victim. We want to speak up but fear we’ll be seen as unwoke, or worse, labelled a racist. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become, not a progressive ideology, but a religion – and one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally neoracist.

In Woke Racism, McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, from the original sin of ‘white privilege’ and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervour of the ‘woke mob.’ He shows how this religion that claims to ‘dismantle racist structures’ is actually harming his fellow black Americans by infantilizing black people, setting black students up for failure, and passing policies that disproportionately damage black communities. The new religion might be called ‘antiracism,’ but it features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.

Fortunately, for all of us, it’s not too late to push back against woke racism. McWhorter shares scripts and encouragement with those trying to deprogramme friends and family. And most importantly, he offers a roadmap to justice that actually will help, not hurt, black people.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Fascinating. It blew my mind!’ Malcolm Gladwell

Wonderworks reveals that literature is among the mightiest technologies that humans have ever invented, precision-honed to give us what our brains most want and need.

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere – from Homer to Shakespeare, Austen to Ferrante – each made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. But literature’s great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all.

Based on Angus Fletcher’s own research, Wonderworks tells the story of the greatest literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day America. It draws on cutting-edge neuroscience to demonstrate that the inventions really work: they enrich our lives with joy, hope, courage and energy, and they help our brains heal from grief, loneliness and even trauma.

From ancient Chinese lyrics to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, from slave narratives to contemporary TV shows, Wonderworks walks us through the evolution of literature’s crucial blueprints, and offers us a new understanding of its power.

A groundbreaking exploration of why we want what we want, and a toolkit for freeing ourselves from chasing unfulfilling desires.

Humans don’t desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic – we imitate what other people want. This affects the way we choose partners, friends, careers, clothes and travel destinations. Mimetic desire is responsible for the formation of our very identities. It explains the enduring relevancy of Shakespeare’s plays, why Peter Thiel decided to be the first investor in Facebook, and why our world is growing more divided as it becomes more connected.

Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, teacher and student of classical philosophy, Luke Burgis shares tactics that help turn blind wanting into intentional wanting – to be more in control of the things we want, and to find more meaning in our work and lives.

Villages are full of tales: some are forgotten while others become a part of local folklore. But the fortunes of one West Country village are watched over and irreversibly etched into history as an omniscient, somewhat crabby, presence keeps track of village life.

In the late sixties a Californian musician blows through Underhill and writes a set of haunting folk songs that will earn him a cult following. Two decades later, some teenagers disturb a body on the local golf course. In 2019, a pair of lodgers discover a one-eyed rag doll hidden in the walls of their crumbling home. Connections are forged and broken across generations, but only the landscape itself can link them together. A landscape threatened by property development and speckled by the pylons whose feet have been buried across the moor.

Tom Cox’s masterful debut novel synthesises his passion for music, nature and folklore into a psychedelic and enthralling exploration of village life and the countryside that sustains it.

‘One of the shrewdest political commentators we have’ Andrew Marr

‘Tony Blair was a giant amongst prime ministers and leaders of the Labour party: Steve Richards is a giant amongst political commentators. This riveting and persuasive book describes what happens when they meet head on’ Anthony Seldon

Was Tony Blair a visionary, impatiently looking ahead, or a leader trapped by his past – Labour’s vote-losing 1980s and the dominance of Margaret Thatcher? Was the party’s move to the right under Blair necessary in order for them to win, or could they, after 18 years of Tory rule, have afforded to be more daring and more left wing than their leader wished to recognise?

In Steve Richards’s short, provocative and highly engaging new biography, he argues that Blair was often the opposite of what we remember him being: perceived as a ‘moderniser’, he sought to strengthen the traditional institutions that partly define the UK, from the monarchy to the military; while to Margaret Thatcher’s public appreciation he cemented her economic legacy rather than moved on from it. And, while he was viewed as messianic over Iraq, he was, in fact, being characteristically expedient, clinging to the orthodoxy in which the UK stands shoulder to shoulder with the US in war.

But the UK in 2007 was undoubtedly a different country to the one it had been in 1997: from devolution, which played its part in establishing peace in Northern Ireland, to civil partnerships and a revived NHS, Blair left Britain in a much better place. While his legacy has been overshadowed by the Iraq war, Tony Blair re-establishes a more rounded view of his time in office, and shows that the challenges facing Blair were the ones that still face Labour today.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘A riveting read that will challenge you to rethink your core beliefs’ Adam Grant
‘Absolutely spot-on, timely message’ Chip Heath
‘A vision for collective change’ Arianna Huffington

Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon.

Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways. First, the peer instinct to conform to what most people do. Second, the hero instinct to give to the group and emulate the most respected. And third, the ancestor instinct to follow the ways of prior generations. These tribal instincts enable us to share knowledge and goals and work as a team to transmit the accumulated pool of cultural knowledge onward to the next generation.

Countries, churches, political parties, and companies are tribes, and tribal instincts explain our loyalties to them and the hidden ways that they affect our thoughts, actions, and identities. Rather than deriding tribal impulses for their irrationality, we can recognize them as powerful levers that elevate performance, heal rifts, and set off shockwaves of cultural change.

Weaving together deep research, current and historical events, and stories from business and politics, Morris cuts across conventional wisdom to completely reframe how we think about our tribes. Bracing and hopeful, Tribal unlocks the deepest secrets of our psychology and gives us the tools to manage our misunderstood superpower.