The official The Kitchen Cabinet compendium is here at last, with over 100 hours of dinner table talk distilled into this handy almanac, a year in the life of our kitchens to aid you in yours.

Open up to find food tips and tricks, stories, recipes, anecdotes and seasonal fun, all held together with our trademark titbits of history, science and often rather lively debate. Join us as we travel across the country, ready to respond to all your culinary conundrums - as well as sharing lots of things you never even thought to ask.

by Linda Yueh
Penguin Randomhouse

Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have grappled with a series of familiar problems - but often their ideas are hard to digest, even before we try to apply them to today's issues. Linda Yueh is renowned for her combination of erudition, as an accomplished economist herself, and accessibility, as a leading writer and broadcaster in this field.

by Jo Lloyd

Swiftpress

Whether seeking knowledge, riches, or a better life, the characters in these stories are united by a quest for lasting value, as they ask how we should treat our world, our work, our selves, and each other. A vainglorious mine owner dreams of harnessing all of nature to the machinery of commerce. Two ladies of a certain age hunt rare butterflies in a pre-First World War Europe already experiencing the first bites of biodiversity loss. A climate campaigner must choose between personal happiness and political action. A rural Welsh community is fascinated and angered by glimpses of its invisible, wealthy neighbours.

On a spring morning in 1840, on an ultra-respectable Mayfair street, a household of servants awoke to discover that their unobtrusive master, Lord William Russell, was lying in bed with his throat cut so deeply that the head was almost severed.

The whole of London, from monarch to maidservants, was scandalized by the unfolding drama of such a shocking murder, but behind it was another story, a work of fiction. For when the culprit eventually confessed, he claimed his actions were the direct result of reading the best-selling crime-novel of the day.

A work of unrivalled scale and ambition, Northerners is the defining biography of northern England.

This authoritative new history of place and people lays out the dramatic events that created the north – waves of migration, invasions and battles, and transformative changes wrought on European culture and the global economy. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from the earliest times to the present day, the book shows that the people of the north have shaped Britain and the world in unexpected ways.

One winter, in the dark days of King Richard II, a tailor was riding home on the road from Gilling to Ampleforth. It was dank, wet and gloomy; he couldn't wait to get home and sit in front of a blazing fire.

Then, out of nowhere, the tailor is knocked off his horse by a raven, who then transforms into a hideous dog, his mouth writhing with its own innards. The dog issues the tailor with a warning: he must go to a priest and ask for absolution and return to the road, or else there will be consequences...

Every cheese tells a story. Whether it's a fresh young goat's cheese or a big, beefy eighteen-month-old Cheddar, each variety holds the history of the people who first made it, from the builders of Stonehenge to medieval monks, from the Stilton-makers of the eighteenth-century to the factory cheesemakers of the Second World War.

It’s the 2030s in Ramsgate and four people who don’t look quite human are found sitting, naked, in the early spring sunlight on the quay of the quiet south coast resort. The locals are puzzled – the newcomers are larger and heavier than they are and say they are fleeing the heat. Soon more arrive. Their tall red-haired leader, The Professor, talks to the universe. The locals talk among themselves.

BEFORE
Luce is on the road. Success is finally within grasp: her songs are getting airtime; the venues she's playing are getting larger. But mass shootings, bombings and now a strange contagion are closing America down around her...

AFTER
Rosemary is too young to remember the Before. She's grown up in a world where proximity to others is not only unusual, it is also illegal. Life as she knows it is entirely online, virtual. But now she's on the road, in the real world, searching for something that, until a few weeks ago, she never knew existed.

by Edward marston

Alison & Busby

Ralph Delchard, a soldier who fought at the Battle of Hastings, and Gervase Bret, a talented lawyer, have been commissioned by William the Conqueror to look into irregularities brought to light during the compilation of the Domesday Book, the great survey of England. Their investigations take them throughout the kingdom, but the pair often find themselves embroiled in more sinister mysteries in the towns they visit. The King’s work is a dangerous business.

by George Orwell

Alma Books

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.

In London Parks, Hunter Davies illustrates their wonders by spending a year walking round his favourite parks. From his local haunt on Hampstead Heath to the capital’s latest wonder, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, each one is chosen for its unique appeal. Informative and entertaining, he details their history, describes their layout and reveals hidden delights and new attractions that might otherwise be missed, such as the statue of a small brown dog in Battersea Park, a garden full of exotic plants and palm trees in south London’s Burgess Park or, for something completely unique, Ian Dury’s musical memorial bench in Richmond Park.

by Niklas Karlsson
Carlton Books

Whittling is more than just a way of busying idle hands - it is a pastime for those who love the texture of wood and a way of life for those who feel a special connection between people and trees. This beautiful and practical guide to the art of whittling offers the perfect antidote to the stresses of modern life and a means of getting back to basics and creating unique items from scratch. 

This collection by pre-eminent Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was recently discovered among his old papers. Found with a slip of paper titled ‘for publishing 1994’, they are published here for the first time. Resplendent with Mahfouz’s delicate and poignant observations of everyday happenings, these lively stories take the reader deep into the beating heart of Cairo.

by Peter Kimani
Telegram Books

Kimani reimagines the rise and fall of colonialism in Africa by telling the story of the birth of Kenya's railroad. Set in the shadow of Kenya's independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the rise and fall of colonialism and the special circumstances that brought black, brown, and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation.

by Meg & Chris Clothier

Profile Books

Can you interpret the shipping forecast? Do you know your flotsam from your jetsam? Or who owns the foreshore? Can you tie a half-hitch - or would you rather splice the mainbrace?

Full of charming illustrations and surprising facts, Sea Fever provides the answers to all these and more. Mixing advice on everything from seasickness to righting a capsized boat with arcane marine lore, recipes, history, dramatic stories of daring-do and guides to the wildlife we share our shores with, even the most experienced ocean-dweller will find something in these pages to surprise and delight.

There is a thirst for good beer on these islands, a thirst for beer that satisfies the soul, quenches the thirst and leaves the drinker glowing with satisfaction. You might be in the mood for a muscular Best Bitter, or a brooding, midnight-black Imperial Stout as you cosy up with a loved one on a cold winter’s night, or a crisp lager.

Frustrated by a dead end job, fed up with renting and the loathsome daily commute and, to cap it all, failing to make it as a stand-up comedian, Tommy Barnes was at breaking point. But he didn t break - instead he made himself redundant and took off to France with girlfriend Rose to pursue his dream of brewing beer. Settled in a dilapidated house in the Loire they are beset by calamities (mainly of Tommy s making), mad neighbours and an unexpected pregnancy.

Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the 'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence.

Kingdom of Iolkos, Thessaly. 1230 BC. King Pelias has grown paranoid. Twenty years after deposing his half-brother Aeson, his murderous past comes back to torment him with dreams, headaches and a prophecy: a one-sandaled man who would someday destroy him.

When a stranger descends from the mountains to compete in the games, Pelias is horrified by his resemblance to Aeson. The baby whose death he ordered has become a man. And Jason wants his revenge. But Pelias is as cunning as he is powerful. He gives Jason an impossible challenge: to claim the throne he must first steal the Golden Fleece from the distant kingdom of Colchis.

by Margaret Mitchell

Alma Books

Tomorrow is another day … Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Civil War, Margaret Mitchell’s magnificent historical epic is an unforgettable tale of love and loss, of a nation mortally divided and a people forever changed. Above all, it is the story of beautiful, ruthless Scarlett O’Hara and the dashing soldier of fortune, Rhett Butler. Since its first publication in 1936, Gone With The Wind has endured as a story for all our times.

by Julie Sakkissian
Hodder & Stoughton

Julie Sarkissian's enchanting and enthralling debut novel introduces an unforgettable new heroine of contemporary fiction whose original voice, exuberance and bravery linger long after the final page.

'The Dark Queens brings the Merovingian empire to thrilling, bewildering, horrifying life. This is the story – told with a sharp eye, at heart-pounding pace – of two extraordinary women who held power in a brutal world that believed their sex couldn't rule. Many scholars 'still don't know what to do' with Brunhild and Fredegund. Shelley Puhak does' Helen Castor

'Bright, smart, and playful, The Dark Queens is a marvelous trip into the murky early Middle Ages. Shelley Puhak presents a believable and vividly drawn portrait of the Frankish world, and in doing so restores two half-forgotten and much-mythologized queens, Brunhild and Fredegund, to their proper place in medieval history' Dan Jones

This is our planet repainted as a masterly dystopia where self-professed Saviours rule much of the world. The Saviours manipulate their fear-stricken peoples with Big Lies, mass surveillance and brutal suppression of all dissent. Off stage the Superpowers, western liberal democracies, do nothing to stop them.

The two main characters (a young couple, a man and a woman called Oric and Belkis) are from a tribe called Dolphineros, who are semi-immortal, and strive to free people all around the world who are subjugated by unfair rulers. They can also defy the laws of travel/time. Swimming and the ocean is referenced throughout the book.

It is the summer of 1962 and sixteen-year-old Evie Epworth stands on the cusp of womanhood. But what kind of a woman will she be?

Up until now, Evie’s life has been nothing special: a patchwork of school, Guides, cows, lost mothers, lacrosse and village fetes. But, inspired by her idols (Charlotte Brontë, Shirley MacLaine, the Queen), she dreams of a world far away from rural East Yorkshire, a world of glamour lived under the bright lights of London (or Leeds). Standing in the way of these dreams, though, is Christine, Evie’s soon-to-be stepmother, a manipulative and money-grubbing schemer who is lining Evie up for a life of shampoo-and-set drudgery at the stinky local salon.

by Lavie Tidhar

Head of Zeus

A retelling of Arthurian myth from World Fantasy Award-winner Lavie Tidhar, By Force Alone. Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. A savage and cutting epic fantasy, equally poetic and profane, By Force Alone is a magical adventure and a subversive masterwork.

by Matilda Woods
Penguin Randomhouse

Alberto lives alone in the town of Allora, where fish fly out of the sea and the houses shine like jewels. He is a coffin maker, spending his quiet, solitary days creating the final resting places of Allora's people. Until the day a mysterious boy and his magical bird arrive.

An atmospheric literary thriller set in North Norfolk in the shadow of the Cold War, in which a love triangle turns murderous.

Summer, 1952. Verity Frost, stranded on her family farm on the Norfolk coast, is caught between two worlds: the devotion of her childhood friend Arthur, just returned from National Service, and a strange new desire to escape it all. Arthur longs to escape too, but only with Verity by his side.

Into their world steps Jack, a charismatic American pilot flying secret reconnaissance missions off the North Sea coast. But where Verity sees adventure and glamour, Arthur sees only deception. As the water levels rise to breaking point, this tangled web of secrets, lies and passion will bring about a crime that will change all their lives.

Taking the epic real-life North Sea flood as its focus, The Night of the Flood is at once a passionate love story, an atmospheric thriller and a portrait of a distinctive place in a time of radical social change.

Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over 500 million years of evolutionary history. It has manifested itself in wings, sails, horns, armor, and an even greater array of appendages since the time of its origin. In dinosaur fossils, skeletons are biological time capsules that tell us of lives we ll never see in the flesh. Inherited from a common fishy ancestor, it is the stuff that binds all of us vertebrates together into one great family. Swim, slither, stomp, fly, dig, run - all are expressions of what bones make possible. But that s hardly all.

The Optickal Illusion is based on a real-life scandal in 17.97, this novel is concerned with Ann-Jemima Provis and her father, who want to present and sell an artistic revelation in Venice revealing secrets of Titian’s success with colour and technique.

A collection of tips and advice for budding writers from literary lioness, Fay Weldon.

As the author of over thirty novels, stories and screenplays, as well as a tutor on the prestigious creative writing course at Bath Spa, Fay Weldon has a lifetime of wisdom to impart on the art of writing.

In the course of thirty accessible essays, Weldon attempts to answer the title's question why will no-one publish your novel? and steers the reader on the way to becoming a writer.

by the Unforgotten
Freight Books

Summer, 1956. Fifteen-year-old Betty Broadbent has never left the Cornish fishing village of St Steele or ventured far beyond the walls of the boarding house run by her erratic mother. But when the London press pack descends on her village to report on a series of gruesome murders, Betty's world changes

by Barbara Tuchman
Penguin Randomhouse

Barbara W. Tuchman—the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic The Guns of August—once again marshals her gift for character, history, and sparkling prose to compose an astonishing portrait of medieval Europe.

Whoever said that Christians had to be meek and mild hadn't met Félix Kir - parish priest, French resistance hero and inventor of the Kir Royale. And they probably weren't thinking of Archbishop Damaskinos who, when threatened with the firing squad by the Nazis, replied, 'Please respect our traditions - in Greece we hang our archbishops.'

Whether pushing down country roads atop a tank or taking a bullet for an innocent schoolgirl, these fifteen extraordinary people were willing to give their lives to fight for the world they believed in.

Wedding bells are set to ring as Dandy Gilver, family in tow, arrives in windswept Wester Ross on Valentine's Day. They've come to celebrate Lady Lavinia's fiftieth birthday and to meet her daughter Mallory, a less-than-suitable bride-to-be for Dandy's son Donald.

But soon love is the last thing on Dandy's mind when the news breaks that Lady Lavinia has been found dead, brutally murdered in the middle of her famous knot garden. Strange superstitions and folklore abound among the Gaelic-speaking locals. But , Dandy suspects that the tangled boughs and branches around Applecross House hide something much more earthly at work . . .

October, 1916. Clara is sent to stay with her formidable aunt and uncle in the grounds of a country estate. Clara soon discovers that her new surroundings hold secrets: a locked room and a hidden key, and a mysterious boy who only appears in the gardens at night… But can Clara face up to her own secrets, and a war she's desperate to forget?

Mimi is a 'waste girl', a member of the lowest caste on Silicon Isle. Located off China's southeastern coast, Silicon Isle is the global capital for electronic waste recycling, where thousands of people like Mimi toil day and night, hoping that one day they too will get to enjoy the wealth they've created for their employers, the three scrap families who have ruled the isle for generations.

Instantly recognizable, endlessly imitated, beloved by tourists and Londoners alike: London's buses are iconic. Not merely a vital component of the city's infrastructure, they are equally embedded in its culture; written about, sung about, joked about, filmed, painted (and painted on), advertised, and celebrated in myriad ways. And for the many thousands of people who have depended on them for a livelihood - drivers, conductors, cleaners, mechanics, inspectors - they have created their own world, complete with a distinct language, with uniforms, with places, and with men and women of every imaginable culture and ethnicity.

by The Curious Explorers
AA Publishing

Londonist is about London and everything that happens in it - and now it's mapped. The city at your fingertips, brought to life by an eclectic group of illustrators. Whether you're looking for something new to do around Brick Lane, or wondering about London's bridges and how they got their names, Londonist's team of contributors know the city and its history inside out

by George Myerson
Head of Zeus

From the bliss of lingering in a warm bed on a winter morning, to a bracing springtime walk by the seaside, A Private History of Happiness offers the reader a wealth of delightfully fresh perceptions of where and how happiness may be found.

No crumbling ruins are included here - only only relatively complete castles with enough features intact to explore and enjoy are listed, although all are delightfully diminutive. From Henry VIII's beautifully preserved St Mawes Castle in Cornwall to Scalloway Castle in Shetland, where it is said the blood and hair of the cruel Earl Patrick's tenants were used in the mortar., many of these tiny fortresses occupy a unique place in history.

Louis Thorn and Haruto ‘Harry’ Yamada – the Eagle and the Crane – are the star attractions of a daredevil aerial stunt team that traverses Depression-era California. The young men have a complicated relationship, thanks to the Thorn family’s belief that the Yamadas – Japanese immigrants – stole land from the Thorn family. This tension is inflamed when Louis and Harry both drawn to the same woman, Ava. After the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor there are changes and harsh realities to face.

An informative and practical guide to tree planting: including guidance on which trees to plant and where; how to plant, propagate and care for your trees; advice on the suitability and virtues of particular native trees (from oak to alder and from beech to blackthorn); amplified by details of how trees grow in nature and the stories of some famous tree planters. A glossary of websites, nurseries, conservation and other organisations completes the volume.

1930. A chilling encounter on London's Necropolis Railway leads to murder. At the Old Bailey, a man accused of a ‘blazing car’ killing escapes the gallows after a surprise witness gives sensational evidence. And journalistJacob Flint finds himself framed for murder.

To save himself, Jacob needs to discover what links these strange events to a remote estate on a northern coast, Mortmain Hall.

by Sabrina Mahouz
Saqi Books

Hear from users of Islamic Tinder, a disenchanted Maulana working as a TV chat show host and a plastic surgeon blackmailed by MI6. Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride.

The end of slavery is no guarantee of freedom. When Clayton McGhee journeys north with his parents and grandparents in search of a new life, they must build a homestead with their own labour and defend their right to own land from powerful vested interests and deep rooted prejudice. Thirty years later, Clayton is still forced to defend his livelihood and his family's safety from racism and greed. But life is more complex now, as the men of influence in this increasingly mixed community find to their cost.

by John Lister Kaye
Cannongate Books

From his home deep in a Scottish glen, John Lister-Kaye has watched and come to understand intimately the movements and habits of the animals, and in particular the birds, that inhabit the wild and magnificent Highlands. Drawing on a lifetime of observation, Gods of the Morning is his wise and affectionate celebration of the British countryside.

by Tim Marshall
Elliot Thompson

For thousands of years flags have represented our hopes and dreams. We wave them. Burn them. March under their colours. And still, in the 21st century, we die for them. Flags fly at the UN, on the Arab street, from front porches in Texas. 

What do the Greek myths mean to us today?

It’s now a golden age for these tales - they crop up in novels, films and popular culture. But what’s the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for children? And what’s to be seen now at the places where heroes fought and gods once quarrelled?

Peter Fiennes travels to the sites of some of the most famous Greek myths, on the trail of hope, beauty and a new way of seeing what we have done to our world. Fiennes walks through landscapes - stunning and spoiled - on the trail of dancing activists and Arcadian shepherds, finds the ‘most beautiful beach in Greece’, consults the Oracle and loses himself in the cities, remote villages and ruins of this storied land.

by Ronald Kidd
Albert Whitman Books

Thirteen-year-old Billie Simms doesn't think her hometown of Anniston, Alabama, should be segregated, but few of the town's residents share her opinion. So when Billie learns that the Freedom Riders, a group of peace activists riding interstate buses to protest segregation, will be traveling through Anniston on their way to Montgomery, she thinks that maybe change is finally coming and her quiet little town will shed itself of its antiquated views. 

by Red Széll
Sandstone Press

'From the moment I watched a documentary of Chris Bonington and Tom Patey climb the perpendicular flanks of the Old Man of Hoy I knew that my life would not be complete until I had followed in their footholds. That was in 1983 when I was thirteen. Within months I was tackling my first crags and dreaming of standing atop Europe's tallest sea stack with the Atlantic pounding 450 feet below. Those dreams went dark at nineteen when I learned I was going blind.'

by Jane Struthers
Ebury Press

From spotting Britain's five kinds of owl to gardening by the phases of the moon, from curing a cold to brewing your own ale, Red Sky at Night is packed with instructions and lists, ancient customs and old wives tales, making it an indispensable guide to countryside lore.

by Essie Fox
Orion Books

A beguiling and sensual Victorian novel of theft and obsession. Uprooted from her home in India, Alice is raised by her aunt, a spiritualist medium in Windsor. When the mysterious Mr Tilsbury enters their lives, Alice is drawn into a plot to steal the priceless Koh-i-Noor diamond.

From a beautiful antique that gives its owner a show he'd rather forget, to 'ghost detective' whose exorcism goes horribly wrong and a sinister masked ball which seems to have one too many guests, these ghost stories of supernatural terror are guaranteed to make you shiver, thrill and look under the bed tonight.

by Simon Goddard
Ebury Press

When Ziggy the glam alien messiah fell to Earth, he transformed Bowie from a prodigy to a superstar who changed the face of music forever. But who was Ziggy Stardust? And where did he really come from?

by John Steinbeck
Barrington Stoke

Streetwise George and his big, childlike friend Lennie are drifters, searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back, and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the American dream. But dreams come at a price. 

by Menna van Praag
Allison & Busby

In a forgotten nook of Cambridge a little shop stands where thousands of sheets of beautiful paper and hundreds of exquisite pens wait for the next person who, with Clara Cohen’s help, will express the love, despair and desire they feel to correspondents alive, estranged or dead. 

by Dixe Wills
AA Publishing

A reflection on our relationship with the hours of darkness and why it is sometimes a fearful, yet always a magical place. Discover the dark secrets of Devon, Skomer, Snowdonia, Cumbria, Scotland, London and much more. 

by Helen Czerski
Transworld Publishers

Our world is full of patterns. If you pour milk into your tea and give it a stir, you’ll see a swirl, a spiral of two fluids, before the two liquids mix completely. The same pattern is found elsewhere too. Look down on the Earth from space, and you’ll find similar swirls in the clouds, made where warm air and cold air waltz. 

by Mark Denny
Revolution Books

Revolutions in Science traces the nuances that differentiate both scientific revolutions and human perceptions of them, weaving threads of detail from physics, mathematics, behaviorism, Freud, atomic physics, and even plate tectonics and molecular biology, into the larger fabric of intellectual history.

by Jane Hood
Icon Books

Description: From chariot-racing hooligans to debauched dinner parties - a miscellany that shakes the dust off the ancient world. Who first thought of atoms? How much can you learn about archaeology from an oil lamp? Who came up with the theory of the ‘wandering womb’?

by L.C. Tyler
Allison & Busby

His latest novel is going nowhere, a mid-life crisis is looming and he's burdened by the literary agent he probably deserves: Elsie Thirkettle, a diminutive but determined individual who claims to enjoy neither the company of writers nor literature of any sort. But however bad things look, they can always get worse, as Ethelred discovers when his ex-wife, Geraldine, vanishes close to his Sussex home.

by Emily Howard
Allison & Busby

Maddy fled the idyllic market town of Havenbury Magna three years ago, the scene of a traumatic incident she revisits most clearly in her dreams. Even so, when she is called back to help at the Havenbury Arms when her godfather Patrick suffers a heart attack, she is unprepared for the welter of emotions her return provokes.

by Henry Miller
4th Estate

Design concepts for a rebrand of the Henry Miller backlist for 4th Estate.

by The Detection Club
Harper Collins

‘The Admiral’ is a pub in the Suffolk seaside village of Crabwell, The Admiral Byng. ‘The Admiral’ is also the nickname of its landlord, Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, as well as the name of the landlord’s dinghy. None of them are as buoyant as they should be, for the pub is threatened with closure due to falling takings.

by Paul Dowswell
Barrington Stoke

Brothers Eddie and Charlie find a photo of the great-great-uncles they were named after and discover an amazing story of WWI, at the Front and back at home. Assured that the Germans have been destroyed by bombardment, the earlier Eddie and Charlie are sent into No Man's Land in the 'First Wave' of the Somme.

by Sabrina Mahouz
Saqi Books

Hear from users of Islamic Tinder, a disenchanted Maulana working as a TV chat show host and a plastic surgeon blackmailed by MI6. Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride.

by Gemma Fowler
Chickenhouse Books

A miracle energy source, Lumite, has been discovered on the moon. The dark days of future Earth - torn apart by war and energy crisis - finally appear to be over. Aggie is the violet-eyed poster girl for the mining company, Lunar Inc, persuaded to campaign for a hopeful new future. But a chance meeting with one of the prisoner-miners, the darkly attractive Danny, changes her mind about everything she knows about her world ...

by Mrs Beeton
Orion Books

Published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mrs Beeton's first publication.The complete guide to British cooking by our most famous cook - fully updated for the 21st century kitchen.

by Essie Fox
Orion Books

'Some secrets are better left buried...' When seventeen-year-old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels, who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women.

by Tobias Jones
Quercus Books

Seeking an answer from the only honest perspective, Tobias Jones and his wife opened up their family home and ten acre woodland to those going through crises in their lives, or suffering from depression, addiction and loneliness.

by Humphrey Hauxley
Pan Macmillan

For many years Western governments have insisted that the only way to achieve long-term prosperity and political stability is through a combination of free-market economics and democratic government.  Yet, all evidence now indicates that this argument is both flawed and can also be the direct cause of war, disease and poverty.

by Dorothy M. Wheeler
Bloomsbury

Original artwork from 1916 illustrates nursery favourites including Little Jack Horner, Jack and Jill and Humpty Dumpty.

by H R F Keating
Penguin

Inspector Ghote: Bombay CID's most dutiful officer, and one of the greatest, most engaging creations in all detective fiction.

by Jachym Topol
Portobello Books

Czechoslovakia, 1968. The Soviet troops have just invaded and, for the young orphan Ilya, life is suddenly turned on its head. The orphans are given military training and, with his first-hand knowledge of the local terrain, Ilya becomes guide to a Soviet tank battalion.

Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization's F section sent more than four hundred agents into France, thirty-nine of whom were women. But while some are widely known - Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan - others have had their stories largely overlooked.

Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all thirty-nine female agents. Tracing their journeys from early recruitment to work undertaken in the field, to evasion from, or capture by, the Gestapo, Vigurs shows just how greatly missions varied. Some agents were more adept at parachuting. Some agents' missions lasted for years, others' less than a few hours. Some survived, others were murdered. By placing the women in the context of their work with the SOE and the wider war, this history reveals the true extent of the differences in their abilities and attitudes while underlining how they nonetheless shared a common mission and, ultimately, deserve recognition both collectively and individually.

A brilliant full-length Sherlock Holmes mystery novel, in the original style of Conan Doyle and brought to the world by the master of mystery and suspense: Anthony Horowitz.

by Patrick Hennessey
Penguin

Patrick Hennessey is a graduate in his 20s. He reads Graham Greene, listens to early-90s house on his iPod and watches Vietnam movies. He tells the story of how a modern soldier is made, from the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst to the nightmare of Iraq and Afghanistan, The Junior Officers' Reading Club is already being hailed as a modern classic.

by Elizabeth Garner
4th Estate

In nineteenth-century Oxford, an extraordinary child is born - Edgar Jones, a porter's son with a magical talent. Though his father cannot see beyond his academic slowness, his abilities as a metalworker and designer are quickly noticed, and become a source of tension within the family.

by Jim Riordan
4th Estate

The true and remarkable story of the English double agent who ended up playing for Spartak Moscow.

by Polly Bloom
Michael O'Mara Books

A combination of folklore and time-honoured advice, this book illuminates the history behind female wisdom from yesteryear.

by Eduardo Galeano
Serpent's Tail

Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation.

by Susannah Carson
Penguin

This book brings together 33 writers, past and present, on just what it is about Jane Austen that continues to delight, amuse, console and provoke us.

by David Hendy
Profile Books

Based on a major BBC Radio 4 series, David Hendy explores the roles of sound and listening - in 100,000 years of human history.

by Dixie Wills
A A Books

Although Britain boasts hundreds of tiny islands, Dixe Wills has selected just the very best of them for this book. Found around the coast, in lakes, in lochs and on rivers, these little worlds are waiting for you to discover them.

Steven Patrick Morrissey is one of the most original and controversial voices in the history of popular music. With The Smiths, he led the most influential British guitar group of the 1980s, his enigmatic wit and style defining a generation. As a solo artist, he has continued to broach subjects no other singer would dare.

by Harper Collins
Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie’s ingenious mystery thrillers, reissued with striking covers designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers. Part of the wholesale repackage of the entire Christie backlist.

by V S Ramachandran
Random House

Our brains are the most enchanting and complex things in the known universe - but what happens when they go wrong? Dr V. S. Ramachandran, 'the Sherlock Holmes of brain science' and one of the world's leading neuroscientists, has spent a lifetime working with patients who suffer from rare and baffling brain conditions.

by P.G. Wodehouse
Random House

A comtemporary repackage for the great comic writer of the 20th century P.G. Wodehouse .

by Callum Williams

Economist Books

Opinions vary about who really counts as a classical economist: Marx thought it was everyone up to Ricardo. Keynes thought it was everyone up to Keynes. But there's a general agreement about who belongs to the heroic early phase of the discipline. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Marx: scarcely a day goes by without their names being publicly invoked to celebrate or criticise the state of the world or the actions of governments.

As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring—and popular—weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict?