'Witty, original and clever, this tale of Jacobean power and lust is a blast' THE TIMES, Best Historical Fiction of the Year
Francis Bacon, philosopher, politician, writer, is an outsider at the court of King James I. He is clever but not aristocratic, has ambition but no money. So when his political enemies form a deadly alliance against him, centred around the King's poisonous lover Robert Carr, Bacon has no choice but to fight for his survival.
Together with the neglected Queen, Bacon resolves to find a beguiling young man who can supplant Carr in the King's bed. But as Bacon soon discovers, desire is not something that can be controlled.
Bold, irreverent and utterly original, The Dangerous Kingdom of Love is a darkly witty satire about power, and a moving queer love story that resonates through time.
'An entertaining and very funny read with something to say about both the love of power and the power of love' SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant ... Like Wolf Hall meets Succession ... Scandalous, politically perceptive and unexpectedly heartfelt' APPLE
To write about Hell, it helps if you have been there.
In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. What followed became legend.
Throughout the long, dark Antarctic winter, Shackleton fights for his life and the lives of his men - enduring freezing temperatures, a perilous lifeboat journey through the ice-strewn sea, and a punishing march across the South Georgia glaciers to seek the one slim chance they have of rescue. Their situation is disastrous.
Their survival would become history's most enthralling adventure. Yet Shackleton's critics have argued that the expedition was always doomed to fail. And that had Endurance not been destroyed by ice, his men would have suffered a slow and horrible death before completing their journey.
No previous biographer has experienced even a tiny taste of the polar hell on earth endured by Shackleton and his men. That cannot be said of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who has been described as 'our greatest living explorer'. From Shackleton's pursuit of adventure as a young merchant seaman, through his rivalry with Captain Scott, culminating in the two remarkable expeditions to Antarctica that revealed his unrivalled leadership and personal courage under the most extreme of circumstances, Fiennes brings the story vividly and viscerally to life, his own near-death on the ice, fifty years after his subject's death, providing the necessary proof to silence Shackleton's critics once and for all.
From being told she couldn't have dance lessons as a kid in Great Yarmouth to having to conform to the stereotypes of the gay scene in London's East End, people have always been trying to put Bimini Bon Boulash in a box. It was only through discovering the art of drag that she began to fight back against those preconceptions, and understand that she had the power to define herself.
In A Drag Queen's Guide to Life, Bimini tells the story of how drag took her from the brink of self-destruction to become a gag-inducing, death-dropping, plant-based superstar. Drawing on her own experience as a nonbinary person in a binary world, as well as inspirational stories from history, politics, pop culture and fashion, she uses all her wit, charm and kindness to show us how to lead the lives we wish we could lead, through the life-changing magic of dragging up.
Born in war-torn Afghanistan, Waheed Arian's earliest memories are of bombs. Fleeing the conflict with his family, he spent much of his childhood in refugee camps in Pakistan, living sometimes ten to a room without basic sanitation or access to education. After he contracted tuberculosis, his first-hand experience of the power of medicine inspired Waheed to dedicate his life to healing others. But how does a boy with nothing hope to become a doctor? Waheed largely taught himself, from textbooks bought from street-sellers, and learned English from the BBC World Service. Smuggled to the UK at fifteen with just $100 in his pocket, he was advised to set his sights on becoming a taxi driver. But he had bigger ambitions. He studied all hours and was accepted to read medicine at Cambridge University, and went on to become a doctor in the NHS. In 2015 he founded Arian Teleheal, a pioneering global charity that connects doctors in war zones and low-resource countries with their counterparts in the US, UK, Europe and Australia. Together, learning from each other, they save and change lives - the lives of millions of people just like Waheed. Dr Arian has been working A&E on the Covid frontline for over a year.
When ex-marine Sarah French joins a luxury superyacht as on-board security, she's excited to get her life - and career - back on track.
Surrounded by crystal waters, it seems like the perfect place to start over.
As they head into open water, though, tensions between the crew quickly build. And when someone goes missing, Sarah has a terrifying realisation.
One of them is a killer. All of them are suspects.
To protect the other passengers, Sarah needs to uncover the killer's identity, and return the boat safely to shore.
But there's a storm on the horizon - and not all of them will make it out alive...
Two sisters have always stood together. Now, they're the only ones left.
In the shadow of Mount Hood in the US Pacific Northwest, sixteen-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister Sophie.
The girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams.
From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the noise only gets worse…
Demetri wants to study criminology at university to understand why people around him carry knives. Jhemar is determined to advocate for his community following the murder of a loved one. Carl's exclusion leaves him vulnerable to the sinister school-to-prison pipeline, but he is resolute to defy expectations. And Tony, the tireless manager of a community centre, is fighting not only for the lives of local young people, but to keep the centre's doors open.
Drawing on the latest research and interviews with experts, this refreshingly-nuanced and beautifully-written book interweaves the stories of a cast of characters at the sharp end of the UK's serious youth violence epidemic, with chapters on subjects such as social media, gentrification and criminal justice. Showing how we are all connected to this tragedy, Cut Short is a gripping, urgent, sympathetic and often painful portrait of a society fracturing along lines of race, class and postcodes. It is a blueprint for positive change, and a book we desperately need.
Across the planet, the futures of young people hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the environmental crisis.
This urgent book chronicles the lives of the diverse young people on the frontlines of the environmental crisis around the world, amplifying the stories of those living at the heart of the crisis.
Advocating for the protection of both people and the planet, Bella restores the beating heart to global environmental issues, from air pollution, to deforestation and overconsumption by telling the stories of those most directly affected. Transporting us from the humming bounty of Ecuador's Choco Rainforest and the graceful arcs of the Himalayan Mountains, to the windswept plains and vibrant vistas of life in Altiplano, Bella speaks to young activists from around the world including Dara McAnulty, Afroz Shah and Artemisa Xakriabá and vividly brings the crisis to life.
Bella's manifestos for change will inspire you to rediscover the wonders and wilds of nature, listen to different perspectives and, ultimately, change the way you think about our planet in crisis. This is your chance to hear the urgent stories of an endangered species too often overlooked: the children of the Anthropocene.
In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime...
Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto's masterpiece - and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written.
Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos.
In a unique blend of history, science, memoir and reportage, Pollan shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively. In doing so, he proves that there is much more to say about these plants than simply debating their regulation, for when we take them into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways we can. This ground-breaking and singular book holds up a mirror to our fundamental human needs and aspirations, the operations of our minds and our entanglement with the natural world.
The Delaney family love one another dearly - it's just that sometimes they want to murder each other ... Joy Delaney and husband Stan have done well. Four wonderful grown-up children. A family business to envy. The golden years of retirement ahead of them. So when Joy Delaney vanishes - no note, no calls, her bike missing - it's natural that tongues will wag. How did Stan scratch his face? And who was the stranger who entered and suddenly left their lives? What are they all hiding? But for the Delaney children there is a much more terrifying question: did they ever know their parents at all?
Koffi, gifted with powerful magic, has saved the boy she loves - at a terrible price. Now Koffi is a servant to the god of death, and must choose between the life she once had, or the life she could have if she truly embraced her power.
Ekon is on the run from the ancient brotherhood he betrayed, and desperate to find Koffi: the girl who saved his life. But as he treks into the greater wilds of Eshoza in search of her, he must also contend with secrets his ancestors never wanted him to know.
Separated by land, sea, and gods, Koffi and Ekon will have to risk everything. But the longer they're kept apart, the harder their loyalties are tested.
An extraordinary adventure inspired by Pan-African mythology, from New York Times bestselling author Ayana Gray.
In these newly collected essays, interviews and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.
Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyses today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.
Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that 'Freedom is a constant struggle.'
A rich history of Antwerp from the author of the acclaimed bestseller The Edge of the World
Even before Amsterdam there was a dazzling North Sea port at the hub of the known world: the city of Antwerp.
Antwerp was sensational like nineteenth-century Paris or twentieth-century New York, somewhere anything could happen or at least be believed: killer bankers, easy kisses, a market in secrets and every kind of heresy. For half the sixteenth century, it was the place for breaking rules - religious, sexual, intellectual.
In Antwerp, things changed. One man cornered all the money in the city and reinvented ideas of what money meant. Another gave Antwerp a new shape purely out of his own ambition. Jews fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition needed Antwerp for their escape, thanks to the remarkable woman at the head of the grandest banking family in Europe.
Thomas More opened Utopia there, Erasmus puzzled over money and exchanges, William Tyndale sheltered there and smuggled out his Bible in English until he was killed. Pieter Bruegel painted the town as The Tower of Babel.
But when Antwerp rebelled with the Dutch against the Spanish and lost, all that glory was buried and its true history rewritten. The city that unsettled so many now became conformist. Mutinous troops burned the city records. Michael Pye sets out to rediscover the city that was lost and bring its wilder days to life using every kind of clue: novels, paintings, songs, schoolbooks, letters and the archives of Venice, London and the Medici. He builds a picture of a city haunted by fire, plague and violence, but learning how to be a power in its own right in the world after feudalism.
This is the Antwerp which was the proud 'exception' to all of Europe.
Diagnosed at the age of five as severely dyslexic, Guy Hands managed to overcome the challenges of school to start his own private equity company, and in The Dealmaker he shares the ups and downs of a tumultuous career as a serial entrepreneur. He gives blow-by-blow descriptions of the huge deals that he has done over the years, first at Nomura and then as head of his own company, Terra Firma. He explains how he approaches each opportunity, whether that involves cinema chains, pubs, aircraft leasing or green energy. And he offers a brutally honest appraisal of the deal that almost bankrupted him - the acquisition of multinational music recording and publishing company EMI in 2007, just as a global financial crash loomed on the horizon. Above all, he gives the reader a real sense of what it's like inside the secretive world of private equity, describing in frank detail the pressures and rewards involved.
Insightful and page-turning, The Dealmaker will prove inspirational and essential reading for all those who want to understand how huge business negotiations are done, and what makes one of private equity's biggest players tick.
Wry, compassionate, and glittering with wit, Penelope Lively's stories get beneath the everyday to the beating heart of human experience. In intimate stories of growing up and growing old, chance encounters and life-long relationships, Lively explores with keen insight the ways that individuals can become tangled in history, and small acts ripple through the generations. From new and never-before-published stories to forgotten treasures, Metamorphosis showcases the very best from a literary master.
Street kid turned undercover cop.
'This time he wasn't getting up. Neither were the two young women he'd just murdered. The two unarmed young police officers he cut down in a hail of 32 bullets and the fragments of a grenade, ending their promising lives so savagely, so senselessly. I felt empty. Cold. How had it come to this?'
Shay Doyle grew up on a tough Manchester council estate where drugs and gangs were rife. A life of crime would have been an easy path to take. So it went against everything that was expected of him when he joined the police.
It wasn't long before Shay's prodigious talent caught the attention of the top and he was called upon to join the secret Level 1 undercover unit, Omega. He was given a new identity and his DNA and fingerprints were removed from the national database.
In a distinguished covert career spanning 17 years, Shay led covert operations tackling high-profile murder cases and came face to face with some of Britain's most dangerous gangsters, often risking his own life. But there would be a heavy price to pay for a life in the shadows, where any mistake could have lethal consequences…
'A spiritual polymath, the first and possibly greatest' Deepak Chopra
The spiritual is not to be separated from the material, nor the wonderful from the ordinary
This remarkable collection of essays from pioneering Zen scholar Alan Watts offer a challenging and comprehensive insight into 'cosmic consciousness'. From the paradoxes of self-consciousness to psychedelics and the connection of spirit and matter, this is a mind-opening exploration into the relationship between spirituality and ordinary life.
Clare Kendry, elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she reunites with childhood friend Irene, who has not hidden her origins, both women are forced to confront the secret fears they have buried within themselves. A taut exploration of race and gender, Passing is one of the Harlem Renaissance's greatest works.
Step into the unsettling world of Shirley Jackson with a collection of her finest, creepiest short stories, revealing the queen of American gothic at her mesmerising best. This selection includes 'The Lottery', Jackson's masterpiece and one of the most terrifying and iconic stories of the twentieth century.
Ten produkt jest zapowiedzią. Realizacja Twojego zamówienia ulegnie przez to wydłużeniu do czasu premiery tej pozycji. Czy chcesz dodać ten produkt do koszyka?
