MENU

In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires battled for primacy in Central Asia, in a multi-decade struggle that became known as ‘The Great Game’. The territorial lines drawn across Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and India over this time defined the geopolitics and economics of the next century. Today, there is a new Great Game being played not in Central Asia, or even in modern hot zones like Ukraine, Gaza, or the South China Seas, but rather in the frigid waters of the Arctic. Dominance in this region will be crucial to control of the entire Western hemisphere.

America, which has always been an Arctic nation, but only peripherally so, must now face the fact that Russia and China together are challenging its territorial primacy in the Western Hemisphere. Can America wrest back enough maritime capacity and control to counter Beijing? What will happen if it can’t? These are two of the many crucial questions Sea Change strives to answer.

Vladimir Putin came to power by destroying the Russian oligarchs, the entrepreneurs who grew rich during Russia’s chaotic transition from communism and exercised unseemly influence over the government of Boris Yeltsin. Putin confiscated their companies and used the profits to build the Kremlin’s war chest for the invasion of Ukraine. He and his cronies siphoned off billions for themselves.

Drawing on exclusive interviews and explosive new material, in Suing the Kremlin Martin Sixsmith tells the astonishing story of what happened to the men Putin dispossessed. Some were sent to labour camps, forced into exile or murdered. Some attempted to fight back, but with no success.

Yet for the past twenty years, a small, determined team of legal experts based in London has been pursuing Putin and his rogue state through courts across the globe. Acting on behalf of Group Menatep – the holding company founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s wealthiest oligarch – they have set out to reclaim this vast stolen fortune and to prove that even the most powerful men in the world are not beyond the reach of international law.

‘A deeply satisfying novel. Incisive, inventive, frequently very funny’ Guardian

‘Historical facts furnish May with a cast of legends to bring to life, and he does it with verve and humour’ The Times

‘Original, adept and confident … I wish I had written it myself’ Hilary Mantel

When it’s time to hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope.

May 1907. Young Stalin – poet, bank-robber, spy – is in London for the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party. As he builds his power base in the party, Stalin manipulates alliances with Lenin, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg under the eyes of the Czar’s secret police. Meanwhile, he is drawn to the fiery Finnish activist Elli Vuokko – and risks everything in a relationship as complicated as it is dangerous.

‘Gripping, endearing, dark, and funny … Highly recommended’ Harlan Coben

‘Hancock writes with a razor-sharp pen, wittily and with originality. I simply adore her books’ KATRINE ENGBERG, bestselling author of The Tenant

A pulse-pounding Scandinavian noir about secrets, buried truths, and what happens when we go digging into the past

When Jan Frischof gives a shocking deathbed confession, journalist Heloise Kaldan suspects a hidden truth. Despite Jan’s warning of danger, Heloise delves deeper, uncovering links to decades-old disappearances that many want left in the past. With everyone lying to her, Heloise enlists the help of her friend Detective Inspector Erik Schäfer to unravel the mysteries of the past.

Rave Reader Reviews

‘Thrilling and suspenseful’

‘Well-paced and full of surprises. The final twist was a shocker’

‘This was tense, atmospheric, and a twisty end that I was not expecting’

‘Dark and addictive’

‘Many twists and turns in this one!’

‘Deceptions and twists that reveal a sinister plot in an idyllic Scandinavian setting’

‘That ending just blew my mind’

‘A mindblowing twist … great Scandi Noir read’

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

THE TIMES BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025

‘A rare combination of experience and talent’ Mick Herron

‘His best yet … Superb, addictively suspenseful, its politics and tradecraft coolly accurate, scary, intricate and complex … The new maestro of espionage thrillers’ Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘The Seventh Floor is a truly creative, riveting page turner that will cement McCloskey’s reputation as the best contemporary spy novelist’ General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA

‘This enthralling read cements McCloskey’s place in the first division of spy writers’ Financial Times

THE THIRD NOVEL FROM FORMER CIA OFFICER, THE REST IS CLASSIFIED PODCAST CO-HOST AND THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ***THE TIMES THRILLER OF THE YEAR***DAMASCUS STATION (‘One of the best spy thrillers in years’ THE TIMES) AND ***SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*** MOSCOW X

FOURTH NOVEL THE PERSIAN AVAILABLE NOW TO PRE-ORDER

ALL YOUR LIFE YOU’RE CIA.
THEN YOU’RE NOT.

A Russian arrives in Singapore with a secret to sell. When the Russian is killed and Sam Joseph, the CIA officer dispatched for the meet, goes missing, Artemis Procter is made a scapegoat and run out of the service. Traded back in a spy swap, Sam appears at Procter’s central Florida doorstep months later with an explosive secret: there is a Russian mole hidden deep within the upper reaches of CIA.

As Procter and Sam investigate, they arrive at a shortlist of suspects made up of both Procter’s closest friends and fiercest enemies. The hunt soon requires Procter to dredge up her own checkered past in service of CIA, placing her and Sam into the sights of a savvy Russian spymaster who will protect Moscow’s mole in Langley at all costs, even if it means wreaking bloody havoc across the United States.

Bouncing between the corridors of Langley and the Kremlin, the thrilling new novel by David McCloskey explores the nature of friendship in a faithless business, and what it means to love a place that does not love you back.

‘A beautiful love story with an incredible sense of place’ – The Times

‘Compact and engrossing . . . a pleasure of a novel’ – Daily Mail

Britain, AD 72. Quintus, a slave long exiled from his people, has travelled to far-flung places under the command of a powerful Roman. Though a citizen of nowhere, he is a man of reason, fluent in many languages. Olwen, a volatile warrior, is rooted in her native land.

Given away by her father as part of a peace treaty, Olwen flees during the night, taking Quintus with her. Hunted by an army, the two make their way across the country, living off the land, heading for the western shore . . .

‘Pears is a master at making you see again landscapes that have long vanished . . . He has an unusual gift for creating characters you want to spend time with – Guardian

‘The Wicker Man meets Rebecca, with darkly beautiful surroundings and mysterious, brooding locals – this is the perfect summer holiday read’ Fiona Leitch, bestselling author of the Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker cozy crime series

‘Intriguing contemporary whodunnit … profoundly unsettling’ Crime Fiction Lover

‘The Gothic environment, at times evocative of some of the tales of Daphne du Maurier, is powerfully etched’ Crime Time

IN THE HEART OF CORNWALL, A MURDEROUS MIDSUMMER BEGINS …

At midsummer the Cornish villagers of Trevennick dance around bonfires and make offerings to the river. It’s not the sort of thing that appeals to Audrey Delaney, who is very much a city mouse. But when her (sort of) boyfriend Noah whisks her away on a surprise trip to the West Country, she’s determined to do the best she can to enjoy herself, if that’s what it takes to remove the question mark from their relationship.

Then their first night ends in tragedy, and Audrey finds herself embroiled in a police enquiry and unsure who to trust. She’ll have to untangle the mysteries of this insular community quickly, though, because people are dying fast. 

THE RIVER WILL HAVE ITS DUE …

READERS WHO JOINED THE DANCE

‘An intelligent, gripping and stylish love story set against a beautifully drawn contemporary Japan’ Observer Books of the Year

Social psychologist Ben Monroe has returned to Tokyo after a failed marriage, determined to seek out his former lover Kozue. His estranged teenage daughter Mazzy reluctantly flies from California to join him. On the flight she meets a young Japanese man, Koji, a cult survivor, who tells her the story of the luminous night princess Kaguya, a powerful tale of beauty and obsession. As Ben delves deeper into the underworld in search of Kozue, Mazzy and Koji are compelled to follow, and their four lives dangerously intersect as past and present collide.

We did not stay in our houses. Not in the way our grandmothers had, or our mothers. We went out a little more and veiled ourselves a little less. Some of us longed for more learning and dreamed about leaving home to get it. The elders shook their heads and cautioned: too much education could ruin a girl’s future.

To be a Muslim girl in the Sri Lanka of the 50s and 60s was to have to stay inside once you hit puberty; where even a glimpse of flesh was forbidden; and where things were done the way they’d always been done.

But Yasmin Azad’s family is full of love, humour and larger-than-life characters, despite the strictures half of them were under. And almost despite himself, Yasmin’s father allows her an education – an education that would open the whole world to her, even as it risked closing her off from those she was closest to.

An extraordinary portrait of a time and a community in the midst of profound change, Stay, Daughter vividly evokes a now-vanished world, but its central clash – that of tradition and modernity – is one that will always be with us.

With a new afterword.

‘The best book on teachers and children and writing that I’ve ever read. No-one has said better so much of what so badly needs saying’ – Philip Pullman

Kate Clanchy wants to change the world and thinks school is an excellent place to do it. She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career.

Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school ‘Inclusion Unit’, trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance.

While Clanchy doesn’t deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldn’t be.

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2020