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Air | By Christian Kracht | Translated By Daniel Bowles
Two men venture through strange landscapes towards unknowable destinations. Paul, a feted designer, wanders the echoing corridors of a server farm in Norway - before, in a sudden blackout, he seems to vanish.
In another time and space, a wounded stranger wakes in a forest, watched over by a young girl who helps him flee to an icebound settlement where perhaps he will find safety. Inventive, enigmatic and chromatically resonant, Air is the seductively disorienting new novel from one of the most significant European writers working today.
Heir to the ingenious fictions of Ursula K. Le Guin or Jorge Luis Borges, resistant to single interpretation, it unfolds as a haunting journey through a layered universe that may be a dream, the afterlife or reality's inverted twin.
The First House | By Avni Doshi
A woman’s husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart.
As she sifts through the ruins of their shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into the forest of her own mind, where marital memories intermingle with myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses, messages hidden in the constellations, glimpses of a natural world seething and alive with portents. Over the course of a single summer, as the cicadas that have been buried in the ground for seventeen years prepare to emerge and fill the air with a plague of ecstatic transformation, the woman too is splitting, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light.
This is a novel about unhappy families – about poison seeping through the domestic space, the bloody battlefield of the home, the enduring threat posed by those closest to us. Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, it is a gripping psychodrama of unravelling and rebirth.
White Rabbits/Down Below | By Leonora Carrington
In 1940, Leonora Carrington - a twenty-two-year-old British-born Surrealist artist - was persuaded to flee France and the advancing German army for Spain. Already suffering from a psychotic break occasioned by the arrest of her lover by the Nazi authorities, she was soon confined to a mental institution, where she was subjected to sadistic treatment under the guise of medical care. In her memoir, Down Below, she describes her experiences with an anthropologist's precision and an artist's sense of the fantastic.
This volume also includes a selection of Carrington's best stories from across her lifetime, functioning as companion pieces to her surrealist-inflected non-fiction. They include 'The Debutante', in which a young woman, wishing to avoid a ball in her honour, swaps places with a hyena; 'White Rabbits', which sees a friendly neighbour come by to ask for spare decomposing meat; and 'My Flannel Knickers', in which a woman has sainthood forced upon her.
Murder in the Midday Sun: Classic Crime for the Holidays | By Various | Edited by Cecily Gayford
As dusk falls on an English summer, a detective interviews a stranger with a sinister story to tell. Among the sands of an Egyptian desert, a tourist buys a souvenir which is not quite as it seems. On the sparkling waters of the Scilly Isles, a boating trip turns deadly.
It might be the height of summer, but in the midday sun - it's murder. These ten tales of murder, mystery and mayhem make for perfect beach reading - in the latest addition to a series that has sold over 250,000 copies.
The Book of Guilt | By Catherine Chidgey
England, 1979. Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a secluded New Forest home, part of the government's Sycamore Scheme. Every day, the triplets do their chores, play their games and take their medicine, under the watchful eyes of three mothers: Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night.
Their nightmares are recorded in The Book of Dreams. Their lessons are taken from The Book of Knowledge. And their sins are reported in The Book of Guilt.
All the boys want is to be sent to the Big House in Margate, where they imagine a life of sun, sea and fairground rides. But, as the government looks to shut down the Sycamore Homes, the triplets begin to question everything they have been told. Gradually surrendering its dark secrets, The Book of Guilt is a profoundly unnerving exploration of belonging in a world where some lives are valued less than others.
Cursed Daughters | By Oyinkan Braithwaite
No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...
So goes the family curse, handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts as it goes. And now it's calm, rational Eniiyi's turn - who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, and her family's insistence that she must be a reincarnation, has long been used to some strange familial beliefs. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family's history.
Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?
Long Wave | By Daisy Johnson
Close to the shore is the island: uninhabited, wild, with only a storm-beaten lighthouse for shelter. Ori was found there as a small child with a handful of stones, no memories and no mother.
When she has a baby of her own, the job of motherhood feels immense and sleepless nights begin to shatter her grip on reality. Her head fills with the sound of stones knocking against each other and the mystery of her past begins to unravel, opening up a path to the mother she lost, and the mother she could become. Years earlier, on a sweltering summer day, ten-year-old Ruth sees a woman and her baby walk into the river and disappear.
But she is the only witness, and the water yields no trace. Ruth’s mother, Edith, locks her daughter away – first to restrain these wild imaginings, and later, when she falls pregnant, to hide the shame. Ruth longs to escape and dreams of the nearby island, where she and her baby can finally be free.
The End of Everything | By M. John Harrison
Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline, collecting artefacts that wash up from the Channel. It's been years since the crisis changed everything, but its exact nature remains obscure. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end.
Now Phillip has fished out of the water an object he can't keep. A creature that keeps changing. An artefact he must take inland, before it destroys everything he thinks he knows.
The End of Everything is a slyly satirical and unsettling post-apocalyptic adventure into the limits of human understanding from the peerless master of contemporary fiction.
A Real Piece of Work | By Freya Bromley
What does it mean for a stranger to think you’re brave? Readers called me ‘raw’ because I wrote about crying into takeaway containers and drunk texting my dead sister’s number. People wanted to believe it was fearless of me to broadcast my breakdown, but the truth was that I’d curated that messiness until it was just the right kind of chaos.
Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie.
The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her.
It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants. But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake.
Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame. As her parents and three remaining siblings prepare to spend the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death together on the isolated island of Lundy, Nola knows this is the perfect opportunity to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage – but first, she must discover who made it.
A Real Piece of Work is a sparkling and spiky story of complicated families and even more complicated sisters, exploring who owns grief and who gets to tell the story of those who are gone and those left behind with tenderness, nuance and wit.
Universality | By Natasha Brown
On a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar.
A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers.
Universality is a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power. Through a voyeuristic lens, it focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.
The follow-up novel to Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a compellingly nasty celebration of the spectacular force of language. It dares you to look away.
The Silver Book | By Olivia Laing
‘It is dangerous to want someone this much. He has always known it, from the very first night.’
It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice.
One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova.
A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs. He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.
But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend. The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noirish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema.
It’s a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.
People in Love | By Claire Daverley
One bright blue day, on a bench by the river, Nora’s partner Robin proposes.
It is unexpected; they’d always agreed that they didn’t need a wedding. But after a decade of in-jokes, dancing in the low-lit kitchen and sharing morning toast in bed, Nora says yes. Why wouldn’t she? The answer lands on the night of their engagement party, when Bren turns up on her doorstep.
Growing up, Bren and Nora were the sort of best friends who everyone swore would end up together. But when a sudden heartbreak turned their lives upside down, Bren left, Nora stayed, and the silent longing between them remained unspoken. Now, he’s back, and their tentative yet undeniable spark reignites, forcing Nora to ask herself: How can you know your heart, if it feels like it’s split in two? Tender and compelling, People in Love is a story about what-ifs and maybes, and the moments of misunderstanding that can shape our lives.
It’s a book about living one life while musing on another, exploring how our choices shape our relationships and inform our regrets, and revealing, in the end, that the real love story is not always the one you'd expect.
A Mask the Colour of the Sky | By Bassem Khandaqji | Translated by Addie Leak
A bold, psychologically rich novel of identity, exile, and resistance from one of Palestine’s most vital literary voices—written entirely from behind bars.
Nur, a Palestinian refugee from a camp near Ramallah, is often mistaken for an Ashkenazi Jew. Fluent in Hebrew and with a degree in archaeology, he dreams of freedom beyond the fence, and of writing a novel about Mary Magdalene based on the Gnostic Gospels.
When he discovers an Israeli ID card in the pocket of a secondhand coat, he assumes a false identity and is hired for an archaeological dig near Megiddo. Passing as an Israeli, he moves through a world previously off-limits and gains insight into the lives of those he’s been taught to perceive as enemies. As Nur’s borrowed identity deepens, so does the rift within.
Through an exploration of this internal conflict, Bassem Khandaqji’s Arabic Booker-winning novel offers a meditation on the personal toll of occupation and the elusive desire to belong—fully, honestly, and without fear.
Heart the Lover | By Lily King
'You knew I'd write a book about you someday'
Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games.
Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love.
This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh | By Colwill Brown
Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punch line of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.
But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. They share everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs to trips to the Family Planning clinic when they are late. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin charting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace — their friendship is as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and leads you through Doncaster’s schoolyards, alleyways and nightclubs, laying bare the intimate treacheries of adolescence and the ways we betray ourselves when we don’t trust our friends. Like The Glorious Heresies and Shuggie Bain it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked place into the very centre of the world.
TonyInterruptor | By Nicola Barker
'Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?'
You couldn't really call the man soon to be christened TonyInterruptor a heckler, but he seems to feel an unquenchable urge to disrupt and interrupt live cultural events. Who is he? What does he want? Why does he indulge in behaviour that violates the social contract?
After just such a public interruption goes viral, a small group of characters determine to find out the answers to these question, and end up learning more than they might possibly like about music, culture, relationships, Art, integrity, each other and their own endlessly disrupted and disruptable selves. As profound as it is exuberant, TonyInterruptor is a comic masterpiece that traces the aftermath of a single event as it reverberates through the online world and its characters' lives, upending everything in its wake and posing fundamental questions about authenticity, the internet, love and, yes, truth.
My Only Boy | By Rosa Rankin-Gee
It is Elle’s job to manage disasters. But lately things have started to spin out of control. At work, the latest catastrophe has been live-streamed to the nation. A shock election sees an extreme-right coalition storm to power.
Then, on a night so hot it feels like London’s pavements are melting, she meets Ed. Elle and Ed are not meant to be drawn to each other. Elle has only ever been attracted to women, and Ed, billed as ‘the great gay novelist of our times’, is about to release his first book. But something inexplicable sparks between them. Can the unexpected attraction they feel last when it presents such a profound challenge to their identity? And as the country fractures and the heat rises, how will they choose between the people they’ve known themselves to be – and the people they are willing to become.
Both an unforgettable love story and a state-of-the-nation thriller, My Only Boy asks universal questions about desire, complicity, and what happens when your sense of self collapses along with the world around you.
The Expansion Project | By Ben Pester
Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing - its mission is to become the greatest business park in the region. Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at 'bring your daughter to work day'. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her.
Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still cannot reconcile that she is really at home. Refusing to accept that she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors and impossible multi-dimensional spaces that make up his place of work...
Because Capmeadow is expanding in unexpected ways, a Liaison Officer becomes the central focus for complaints about how the expansion is impacting the lives of the employees - unexpected buildings, years-long business days, cursed farmers' markets, and corridors of the mind are draining the life from Tom and everyone he works with. Years pass, and Tom remains at the company, convinced he is in the presence of his now adult daughter. But has he judged it correctly? And can anything go back to the way it was?
Shy Trans Banshee | By Tony Santorella
Brian, Nik and Darby – three friends practiced in fighting supernatural crime (when Brian’s not committing it as a werewolf once a month) – have been sent to London to try to track down a missing colleague.
Prowling around the city, they stumble across a clairvoyancy smuggling ring. Who’s kidnapping all the fortune tellers in Soho and why? And is it coincidence, fate or something more sinister that Maeve, a timid trans woman taking time out of her job to track down her birth mother, turns up on the gang’s doorstep… and has the uncanny ability to know just what’s going to happen next?
The Benefactors | By Wendy Erskine
Meet Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh: three very different women from Belfast, but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. Gorgeous Frankie, now married to a wealthy, older man, grew up in care.
Miriam has recently lost her beloved husband Kahlil in ambiguous circumstances. Bronagh, the CEO of a children's services charity, loves celebrity and prestige. When their sons are accused of sexually assaulting a friend, Misty Johnston, they'll come together to protect their children, leveraging all the powers they possess.
But on her side, Misty has the formidable matriarch, Nan D, and her father, taxi-driver Boogie: an alliance not so easily dismissed. Brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.
UNMASKED: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD, Autism and Neurodivergence | By Ellie Middleton
Whether you are neurodivergent, suspect you might be, or want to be a better ally, UNMASKED will help you make sense of it all, and put the power in your hands.
Ellie was 24 when she learned she wasn't broken. She wasn't a bad person, she was neurodivergent. Her late diagnosis of ADHD and autism was like a lightbulb being switched on and she could finally start to heal from the trauma of being un-diagnosed and mis-understood for so long. Since getting her diagnosis, Ellie has made it her mission to change the way we think about autism, ADHD and neurodivergence and in UNMASKED she shares what she has learned along her journey.
Written in a bite-sized style for whizzy brains like hers, Ellie shares chapters on mental health, pretty privilege, how to navigate the workplace and the importance of self-diagnosis so that we can all better understand and celebrate neurodivergence, and ultimately make the world a more inclusive place.
The Land and its People | By David Sedaris
In The Land and Its People, David Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveller, a brother, a lifelong friend.
Trying on the role of carer after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, he both succeeds and fails. He covers ground with his friend Dawn and challenges her to eat a truck tire. An ambivalent Duolingo bot becomes his unlikely confidante as he attempts to describe his family in a foreign language.
Ever adding to his list of 'Countries I Have Been To,' he rides a horse named Tequila in Guatemala, buys a bespoke priest's cassock in Vatican City, and goes on safari in Kenya without taking a single photo. Time takes its toll: Scrolling through his address book, he counts those he couldn't bear to outline and realizes how many are already gone. He is bitten by a dog and insulted by a wee train passenger.
A woman on the street late at night either sexually harasses him or doesn't. It's easy to agree with the lady waving a sign that reads, 'Enough is Enough.' And yet, life holds much to delight in: the massive testicles of a ram, a trip abroad with his sisters, a really excellent reptile video, a pair of well-made cotton underpants. Throughout these essays - at once acerbic and tender, playful and profound - Sedaris shows how much there is to marvel at when you keep your head up and your eyes open, observing with warmth and curiosity our fascinating human species and the lands we inhabit.
Sun Country: Writing My Way Home | By Howard Cunnell
In Sun Country, Howard Cunnell returns to the southern England beachlands of his boyhood after the death of his mother.
A love letter to the changing coast and sea, Sun Country is a book alive with light and shadow, where the white spaces between words are as charged with tension and power as the words themselves. It is a reckoning with the things we inherit – silence and absence, stories told and untold – and the transgression involved in turning a life into art. At the heart of the book is Gillian, his devoted single mother, and the small yet unforgettable details of her life that are woven into a powerful meditation on impermanence, grief, class and solitude.
At once intimate and expansive, this luminous memoir traces one man's journey from loss back towards life. Through stories about the writers and painters with whom he feels a kinship – including the English Romantics, W. H. Hudson and Agnes Martin – and the history of his own Sussex working-class family, Cunnell writes his way home to a place, to a culture and to himself as an artist.
Cunnell's descriptive power, so widely praised in his first memoir, reaches a new breathtaking level, with the simplicity that only comes from the finest craft and poetry.
Saltwater Mansions | By David Whitehouse
Margate is in the grip of a heatwave when David Whitehouse stumbles across the mysterious story of a local woman who lived on the ground floor of Saltwater Mansions, a block of flats not far from the sea. On paper, Caroline Lane was unremarkable.
She paid her mortgage every month. She always paid her bills. But nobody had seen or heard from her for 13 years, and no one had ever come looking.
She had disappeared completely. David quickly becomes as fascinated by this missing woman as the residents of Saltwater Mansions, all of whom have their own theories to share, and their own unique stories to tell. As his obsession grows, David unearths vital clues that private detectives and amateur investigators alike have failed to spot.
But the closer he gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that this mystery was never meant to be solved, and that some stories don't want to be told. What if this one was never about Caroline Lane at all?
From acclaimed and award-winning author David Whitehouse, Saltwater Mansions is an astonishing work of creative non-fiction blending reportage and memoir to explore the extraordinary hidden lives of ordinary people, the impact of grief, and the dangerous allure of taking true crime stories into our own hands.
Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History | By Emma Warren
'Youth clubs have always existed. They always will, because there will always be young people. How we care for our youth, and what we owe them, is a question for all of us.'
In Up the Youth Club, Emma Warren maps the shifting story of youth clubs in the UK and Northern Ireland, from factory workers in Victorian Boys' and Girls' clubs to renegade self-emancipatory spaces in the 1970s and the music-generating youth clubs of more recent decades. With a mixed lineage in church evangelism, the patronage of the upper classes, grassroots' DIY, and erratic state funding, the youth club has had a huge, yet almost invisible, effect on music, sport, culture and society.
Arguing that we cannot advocate for what we do not understand, Warren positions youth clubs as a kind of engine room - from the famous success stories to come out of their doors, such as The Specials or Stormzy, to the untold stories of young people finding shelter, sustenance and stimulation for over a century - and why their dwindling numbers, largely due to austerity and funding cuts, is of serious concern for us all.
With this impassioned history, Warren invites us to pick up the torch and play an active part in protecting and re-igniting this vital part of UK society.
Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef | By Slutty Cheff
Slutty Cheff is an anonymous London chef who knows what it's really like to work in the capital's hectic restaurant scene.
From working sixty-hour weeks in windowless kitchens and being the only woman in the changing room to the pure thrill of a busy service, falling in love with other chefs and cycling home through a city bubbling over with potential, Slutty Cheff's misadventures in food and sex are about experiencing and embracing life to the fullest. The pleasure and the chaos included…
Into the Dream Lab: The New Science of Dreams and Nightmares | By Dr Michelle Carr
Everybody sleeps — but are we unlocking the full potential of our dreaming minds? Sleep is essential. It allows our brains and bodies to repair, rejuvenate and perform critical functions. It also allows us to dream — and dreaming, it turns out, is just as essential.
Shining a light onto the deepest corners of our minds, sleep scientist Michelle Carr uncovers the hidden links between dreaming and wellbeing. She reveals how to problem solve in your sleep, why micro-dreaming is essential for creativity and what nightmares are really telling us - along with how to master them. Drawing back the covers on how the nocturnal brain works, this is the essential guide to revolutionise both your sleeping and waking health.
Gravity | By Ada d'Adamo
Ada d’Adamo is mother to Daria. Their days are absorbed by caregiving and routine. Daria’s profound needs remained undetected in pregnancy, and with her birth, Ada’s world is remade.
As a dancer she must use her physicality in new ways, to keep her daughter safe. As a writer she must find a language to communicate beyond words. And when, on the cusp of her fifties, Ada herself becomes gravely ill, she takes the most courageous decision of all: to leave Daria their story.
This is Gravity, a journey of isolation, anger and sometimes despair, through moments of joy and exquisite tenderness, towards a love stronger than life.
The Lost Folk: From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk | By Lally MacBeth
A fresh and engaging celebration of the customs, places, objects and peoples that make up what we know as 'folk' in Britain. By its nature, folk is ephemeral: tricky to define, hard to preserve and even more difficult to resurrect. But folk culture is all around us; sitting in our churches, swinging from our pubs and dancing through our streets, patiently waiting to be discovered, appreciated, saved and cherished.
In The Lost Folk, Lally MacBeth is on a mission to breathe new life into these rapidly disappearing customs. She reminds us that folk is for everyone, and does not belong to an imagined, halcyon past, but is constantly being drawn from everyday lives and communities. As well as looking at what folk customs have meant in Britain's past, she shines a light on what they can and should mean as we move into the future - encouraging us to use the book as an inspiration, and become collectors and creators of our very own folk traditions.
Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination | By Karen Hao
When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces. But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything.
We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace, as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase it down. In exhilarating prose and with unparalleled access to those closest to Sam Altman, Hao recounts the meteoric rise of OpenAI and shows us the sinister impact that this industry is having on society.
Opening Night | By Sara Baume
'I met Mollie's paintings before I met Mollie'.
Shortly after the imposed isolation of the pandemic, Sara Baume came across a painting at a pop-up exhibition in a renovated shed in rural West Cork. It so intrigued her that she was inspired to make contact with the artist. Mollie Douthit, a North Dakotan exile, was living and working alone in a log cabin down a ravaged laneway surrounded by rugged coastline.
Sara and Mollie discovered they had much in common - a dysfunctional attitude towards companionship, a devotion to the daily rituals of their respective art practices, an affinity with nature. They started to meet every month for soup and punishing swims in the Atlantic. Sara fell under the spell of Mollie's paintings, pictures that welded memory and reality, and gradually started to write about them, curious as to whether any particular insight might be provided by the intimacy of friendship with the artist, and whether it might be possible to craft a book in the style of the paintings.
The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness | By Cal Flynn
The Savage Landscape takes us into the wild – deep into dark forests, to the top of mountains and into the heart of deserts. It addresses our deep yearnings to be awed and inspired by landscapes that remain beyond our reach and examines what nature gets up to in the absence of humans.
It is a book full of ideas, beauty and adventure, and one that asks provocative questions about the nature of wilderness and how wild places might be appreciated or preserved. As with her earlier book Islands of Abandonment, Flyn focuses each chapter on eleven locations chosen for their physical beauty, their perceived isolation and the moral or emotional complexity of the human stories that can be found there. In her search for wilderness, we meet ascetics in search of theophany in the desert; lonely shepherds seeing off wolves under the stars; missionaries preaching from shacks deep in the jungle; wise lamas meditating under lofty mountain peaks; hunters in the African bush; volcanophiles creeping dangerously close to molten lava; and ocean vessels plunging through the immense waters of the Southern Ocean to Antarctica.
The Savage Landscape will change any reader’s understanding of our place in the world, and how we relate to the other residents of this planet – human and animal. It is a profound and beautiful book about spirituality, environmentalism and the sublime by one of the most gifted writers at work today.
Global Sex: What Sex Workers Know About Love and Capitalism | By Sine Plambech
‘Where there is money, there will be sex.’
Anthropologist Sine Plambech has dedicated her life to pursuing the trail of sex and money across continents. In Global Sex, she draws back the curtain on a hidden world, sharing intimate conversations with sex workers from Nigeria and Thailand living in Europe. And when she retraces the treacherous routes that led them from their families, she finds lives transformed by the money that absent mothers, daughters, wives and sisters send home.
Plambech is unsparing in her analysis of the international sex trade, yet compassionate in her treatment of the women who work in it. It is these women who take centre stage, reminding us that behind every statistic, there is a human story.
Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places | By Fiona Robertson
Journeying across Britain, from West Penwith and Avebury to the Lake District and Orkney, Stone Lands uncovers the magic and rich history of our incredible prehistoric standing stones. It conveys the delight that lies in tracking them down, as well as the solace these ancient places offer in times of darkness. A few months after discovering that her beloved husband, Stephen, had incurable cancer, Fiona Robertson began to write this book.
A long-time megalith enthusiast, she found the ancient stones resonated with her more profoundly than ever as she faced the prospect of losing him. Set upright thousands of years ago, the megaliths are symbols of endurance and survival, standing in contrast to our ephemeral human lives. Infused with folklore, legend and mystery, they enchant the landscape and bring magic to our modern world.
This enthralling memoir is woven delicately around great grief but is ultimately about embracing life, joy and ancient wonder - a luminous reminder of what it means to exist on this earth. Stone Lands is beautifully illustrated inside with stunning black and white line drawings by the illustrator and printmaker Philip Harris.
Mother Mary Comes to Me | By Arundhati Roy
‘Heart-smashed’ by the death of the mother she ran from at age eighteen and shaken by the intensity of her response, Arundhati Roy began this remarkable memoir – a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is: shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother, Mary, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
The Butterfly Season: On Beginnings, Endings, and the Life in Between | By Lea Korsgaard
The phenomenal Danish bestseller: a transporting, inspirational story of home, of endings, rebirth and new beginnings.
In the darkness of winter on the first day of the year, a woman in Denmark is making a list. She plans to set out and see all of the country's butterfly species in a single summer. She knows nothing about butterflies. She doesn’t even know why she wants to see them. She just knows that something is calling her. The pull is irresistible.
The Butterfly Season tells the story of what happened next. We follow Lea Korsgaard as her list takes her to landscapes she never knew existed, shaped by the wind and by the sea. She discovers secret places and meets strangers who help along the way.
And she is led into the past: into the lives of her ancestors and the worlds of philosophy and myth. Because ever since ancient times, the butterfly has symbolized humanity’s hope of rebirth — and confronted us with the biggest questions of existence: why do we live? And what are we living for?
The Queer Bookshelf: A Reader’s Guide | By Layla McCay
We are in the middle of a vibrant renaissance of queer writing. But LGBTQ+ writers, characters and readers have been here since the beginning — quietly, defiantly, and persistently telling their stories — if you know where to look. The Queer Bookshelf is your guide to this essential queer history, and to its contemporary flourishing.
Drawing on the author’s own journey as a queer reader and book club host, and packed with recommendations from authors, booksellers, and book lovers around the world, The Queer Bookshelf is a celebration of the books that have helped generations of LGBTQ+ people find themselves on the page. From literary fiction to memoir, to crime, fantasy, and young adult, and even cowboy romance, The Queer Bookshelf is a warm, entertaining companion for anyone beginning or deepening their own queer reading adventure.
The Book of Mysteries: Wild Time and the Ritual Year | By Rebecca Tamas
At festive gatherings celebrating summer's peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time might exist.
As she suffered from grief and burnout, Tamás sought a deeper connection to the movement of the seasons through an immersion in old folkways. She set out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions.
From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstow's May Day, she found in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world.
Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.
The Make-Believe: A memoir of magic and madness | By Hannah Murray
In 2017, Hannah Murray was a successful actor whose career had taken her to Hollywood and given her the opportunity to act with A list stars and Oscar-winning directors. But as the daily costs of acting grew, from the degradations of auditions to repeating violent scenes over and over, Hannah found herself searching for something to make her feel better. One day, a reiki healer promises her a new kind of treatment, a kind of magic, and all of a sudden Hannah’s life is changed.
Back in London, she becomes increasingly involved with the organisation behind the magic, an organisation whose charismatic leader, promises of secret knowledge, and increasingly complex rituals, are seductive, cult-like – and ultimately destructive, as Hannah finds herself on a week-long course from her friends and family - and her sanity falls apart. Detained in hospital, she struggles to understand the difference between what’s real, and what’s imagined. The result is a propulsive, shockingly honest, and extraordinarily intimate portrayal of a mind taken over the edge.
From the outer edges of fame, through Hollywood film sets and London parties, Hannah’s life has slowly moved from that of a successful starlet to that of a young woman seduced by the magical thinking of an organisation that promises health and happiness beyond her wildest dreams, but her reality becomes far more disturbing than she could ever have imagined. Shocking, intimate and compulsive, The Make-Believe is an ultimately uplifting and inspiring story of empathy, resilience and the power of belief.
Tehran Diaries: Dispatches from Iran under Siege | By Raha Nik-Andish
Over Iran, the sky is falling in. The US-Israeli bombardment has begun: there are bodies beneath the rubble. The Ayatollah is dead.
The guards have abandoned the prisons. The rain is black with fuel; it burns the skin and the streets. In this searing and contemplative work, writer, academic and Tehran resident Raha Nik-Andish documents life in the Islamic Republic in the days and months leading up to "Operation Epic Fury." In a rarely-seen portrait of a regime in freefall, this is Tehran on the brink; the crushed protests over the collapse of the currency; the taxicabs circling the city for work; the burned out garbage cans and the taped-up windows.
What does it mean to exist under siege? Or repression, blackout and total fear? How do you get the message out? Piercing, poignant and delicately observed, this is the vital story of a city at the end of the world - and an act of witness against darkness.
Second Skin: Inside the Worlds of Fetish, Kink and Deviant Desire | By Anastasiia Fedorova
The smell of leather. The flash of a harness. The snap of a latex glove.
Welcome to the radical, vibrant world of sexual fetishists. In 21st century commodity culture, we are all intimately involved with objects: we covet a Birkin bag; we keep trainers box-fresh. We are, in a sense, all fetishists.
But occasionally this desire spills into something more subversive. Second Skin offers a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics commonly fetishised, unpacking their histories, their expressive potential, and the communities they give rise to. Drawing from her encounters with fellow fetishists and kinksters, it is also the story of Anastasiia Fedorova's own journey: of what it means to come to terms with one's sexuality.
Brave and searching, Second Skin reveals how what we deem 'taboo' is never static, while asking: do we have the courage to look at these desires directly, and express them unapologetically?
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The Future of Truth | By Werner Herzog
What if a lie could be true?
At the heart of this fascinating and iconoclastic book lies Werner Herzog’s concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ – a truth that is often hidden behind the facts and our conceptions of reality but can be gleaned through the poetic imagination, in art, literature and cinema, when we open ourselves up to an aesthetic experience.
Written in Herzog’s inimitable style, these stories, anecdotes and reflections take us from present-day deep fakes and the opportunities and perils of AI to ancient Egypt and Rome, where rulers resorted to lies and propaganda in the same way as governments do today; from Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole to alien abduction claims and the making of Herzog’s own films.
With its singular vision and unique voice, The Future of Truth is a compelling meditation on the relationship between fact and fiction – evidence and imagination – by one of today’s most fascinating and idiosyncratic thinkers.
Too Little, Too Hard | By Various | Edited By Lucy Mercer and Livia Franchini
In recent years, countless arguments have been made for and against the enduring value of literature: reading improves mental health and offers refuge from the news cycle; the novel is dead, poetry obsolete, writers AI-replaceable. Too Little, Too Hard adds nuance to these discussions by asking professional writers what they actually think about literary value, and their underexplored working conditions.
What does it mean to write under a neoliberal economy? What can writers afford to work on – and what are they not supposed to approach? What side work sustains them, and what does it cost? What does the publishing industry want, and what does it quietly refuse? And what has happened to literary criticism, to the university, and to the conditions that once made writing possible?
In this wide-ranging collection of essays, fifteen of our most important writers reflect on their experiences of writing under – and against – capitalism. At once critical and hopeful, Too Little, Too Hard seeks to reckon with the material crises in the present state of literature, while proposing collective action as a way to secure a future in which a writing life becomes viable. With contributions from Rachael Allen, Sanah Ahsan, Anthony Anaxagorou, Julia Bell, Emily Berry, Sarah Brouillette, Helen Charman, Claudia Durastanti, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Will Harris, Amber Husain, Dizz Tate, Lara Williams, Holly Pester, Andy Perluzzo, Omar Robert Hamilton.
Wild Grace: The Untamed Women of Modern Dance | By Sara Veale
The untold history of the extraordinary women who drove the modern dance movement and changed cultural narratives about sex, power and women's rights.
The story of modern dance is a story of subversion - of forms challenged and hierarchies toppled in the pursuit of blazing artistic integrity. In Wild Grace, Sara Veale profiles nine of the pioneering women at the heart of this movement, from Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller's fearless rejection of nineteenth-century paternalism to Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus's battles to recentre marginalised histories in the wake of the Second World War.
Each of these dancers redefined the meaning of grace in their art and their lifestyle, conveying vital truths about what it means to walk the world as a woman. Veale brings to life the stories and artistry of these remarkable individuals and reveals how, in their refusal to conform, we can find urgent lessons for today.
How to Enter the Art World...: AFTER a late start / a first career / raising children / caring for parents / recovering from illness / a crisis of confidence / leaving it in disgust. | By Hettie Judah
A guide for anyone whose trajectory through the art world isn't a smooth upward curve, based on years of research with art professionals.
The commercial art world is powered by a convenient fiction: that artists' careers proceed along an established route, onwards and upwards, with always the same goal in sight. It is also notoriously hard to re-enter after time away. Based on years spent talking with artists and arts professionals, How to Enter the Art World is a compendium of guidelines, pointers and tips to help readers chart their own route as an artist. Frank, funny and occasionally forthright, this book illuminates the many different ways to be an artist, regardless of life's obstacles and interruptions.
Flyboy in the Buttermilk | By Greg Tate | Introductions by Questlove and Hanif Abdurraqib
These pieces orbit social, pop cultural, political, and economic subjects — from the rise of hip-hop, the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the music of Miles Davis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, and many others, to the crisis of the Black intellectual and the irony of the GOP recruiting Black Americans. With unrivalled flair, Tate writes in a voice that is at once angry, joyous, self-critiquing, and dazzlingly witty.
Tate teaches us ‘it is not too late to say too much, to be so dissatisfied with the world as it is that we throw far too many words toward the sky, and see what the heavens throw back’ - Hanif Abdurraqib.
A Creative Compass: Finding Your Way to a Creative Life | By Emma Gannon
An empowering guide for artists, makers, writers and anyone seeking to live more creatively, with confidence, calm and joy. We all possess creativity, whether it's in the clothes we wear, the way we arrange flowers, or the patterns we choose for our bedroom walls.
However, in today's fast-paced, AI-driven world, many of us have lost touch with our innate creative abilities. By chasing trends, productivity hacks and protocols, we forget to trust ourselves, instead relying on algorithms to dictate what we like, what we make, and crucially, how we feel.
Award-winning author Emma Gannon understands just how essential creativity is for survival. Through necessity, she has forged her own creative compass to rekindle her spark when it’s running low.
Now, she invites us to set our own inner compass, with mindsets, rituals and actions to help us: overcome burnout and mental blocks by blocking external noise, reignite our creative inspiration and flow through making 'bad' art, and reconnect with intuition and self-trust by finding the values that guide us. Break free from the need for outside approval and create a vibrant, fulfilling life from the inside-out.
The Polyester Book of (Bad) Taste | By Various | Edited By Ione Gamble
A deep dive into the joy and power of personal pleasures, quirks, obsessions and bad taste, from zine royalty, Ione Gamble. Most of us consider taste to be a primal instinct. We like the things we like and everything we choose to consume, covet or loathe in our day-to-day lives is dictated by this unknowable force…
But at some point, we learn to not fully trust our own taste. We accept that there are people who have better taste than us, so we stop following the flutter of our hearts and attempt to finetune our brain to fall in line with what others consider to be 'good'.
The Polyester Book of (Bad) Taste is an antidote to this ever-creeping homogeneity and bland tastefulness. Edited and introduced by Polyester editor-in-chief, Ione Gamble, this book gathers influential writers from the pages of Polyester to take on the monumental task of defining taste for a generation battling algorithmic content suggestions and ever shortening trend cycles.
It is a bible on how to navigate our own likes, dislikes, apathies and adorations. In a world constantly vying for our attention, having faith in your own (bad) taste is more than a small subversion – it's a rallying cry to live our lives unapologetically.
CONTRIBUTERS: Ione Gamble, Rene Matic, Lauren O’Neill, Catherine Cohen, Seth Bogart, Zarina Muhammad, Tavi Gevinson, Gina Tonic, Misha MN, Katy Cutbirth, Yomi Adegoke, Angela Hui, Sabrina Brier, Kieran Yates, Annie Lord, Nicola Dinan and Ramisha Sattar.
Fancy Work: Unpicking Past Lives | By Alice Hattrick
What can a scrap of embroidery tell us about how to live? How can the past help us imagine unconstrained lives when not all traces remain? To explore these questions, Alice Hattrick turns to the embroidery designer May Morris and her circle, including her father William Morris; her mother Jane, an artist’s model and embroiderer herself; and MF, May’s gender non-conforming partner of twenty years. Through this queer encounter with the Arts and Crafts movement, Hattrick shifts attention from dominant narratives of design towards intimacy, labour and domestic life.
Looking to May – alongside others who have found in textiles a means of resistance – Hattrick traces connections between these histories and their own queer identity, family ties and precarious working conditions within an ableist society.
Expansive in thought, form and time, Fancy Work stitches together archival fragments, domestic spaces and ongoing sites of struggle, insisting on the political force of often overlooked acts of defiance.
My Cantopop Nights: A Memoir in Songs | By Emma-Lee Moss
For 11-year-old Emma-Lee, the sound of Hong Kong in the summer of 1995 is Cantopop. The Cantopop stars she idolises are everywhere - their images are on every billboard and their music spills from shop speakers onto the streets. When she and her family move to England later that year, Emma-Lee’s love of Cantopop will be pushed underground – the sound and symbol of her secret childhood identity.
My Cantopop Nights is the story of how Emma-Lee found herself in a Hong Kong bar twenty years later, listening to a Cantopop song and realising that this music was her inheritance. It’s about suffering an identity crisis just as the city’s post-colonial tensions erupt into protests. It’s a story of uncanny coincidences, magical thinking and a quest to reconcile the different sides of her heritage: Hong Konger and British, Cantopop and indie. It’s a story of falling in love with a city, its people and its music, while trying to find your own place to belong.
Last Rites: Never-before-told stories of a legendary life from the much-missed icon | By Ozzy Osbourne
Husband. Father. Grandfather. Icon.
1948 – 2025
At the age of sixty-nine, Ozzy Osbourne was on a triumphant farewell tour, playing to sold-out arenas and rave reviews all around the world.
Then: disaster.
In a matter of just a few weeks, he went from being hospitalised with a finger infection to having to abandon his tour – and all public life – as he faced near-total paralysis from the neck down.
Last Rites is the shocking, bitterly hilarious, never-before-told story of Ozzy’s descent into hell. Along the way are reflections on an extraordinary life and career, including his marriage to wife Sharon, and what it took for him to return to the stage for the triumphant Back to the Beginning concert, streamed around the world, where Ozzy reunited with his Black Sabbath bandmates for the final time.
Unflinching, brutally honest, but surprisingly life-affirming, Last Rites demonstrates once again why Ozzy transcended his status as ‘The Godfather of Metal’ and ‘The Prince of Darkness’ to become a modern-day folk hero and national treasure.
Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art | By Daisy Dixon
What makes an artwork immoral? Why do these troubling creations have such a hold on us? And how should we deal with them?
We live in a moment when the dangers of art seem more prevalent than ever: artists are 'cancelled' for their misdeeds, public statues are toppled, images of violence and obscenity await us at the touch of a button. But as this provocative new history demonstrates, we humans have always used art to make sense of the less innocent aspects of ourselves and the world around us.
In Depraved, philosopher of art Daisy Dixon takes the reader on a journey through some of the most volatile and contentious works ever produced - from prehistoric sculpture to extreme metal music, Renaissance paintings to videogames.
She reveals how beautiful art can sometimes be the most insidious, and why the greatest threat might lie in our own judgements about the art we censor or condemn. Above all, Dixon builds a powerful case for returning the terrible gaze of our disturbing creations, showing how we can confront them head-on and tame their toxic effects.
Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys through Ancient Literature | By Emily Wilson
How do we give old words new voices? What must a translator lose - and what might she gain - when she moves between languages, bringing ancient stories to modern life?
Emily Wilson has spent a lifetime wrestling with these questions: here, she invites us to consider the meaning and messages of translators from antiquity to today - and gives a wholly fresh insight into her own work on Homer.
From shifting depictions of Helen of Troy to Cardi B and Athenian comedy, Han Kang's novels and Rome's love of Greek culture, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is a playful and fascinating voyage into the promise, possibility and constant renewal of classical literature.
It Used to be Witches: A Journey Through Queer Cinema | By Ryan Gilbey
Playfully blending personal memoir, criticism and candid new interviews with filmmakers from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum, Ryan Gilbey's engaging and dynamic It Used to be Witches is a non-chronological treasure-hunt through queer cinema past and present.
Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman), Isabel Sandoval (Lingua Franca) and Bruce LaBruce (No Skin Off My Ass) are among the directors who reveal how queer artists use film to express their most personal truths-and to challenge, defy and outrage a world that would rather they didn't exist. That world might look rainbow-coloured from some angles, with the likes of Brokeback Mountain, Call Me By Your Name, Moonlight and Portrait of a Lady on Fire winning awards and acclaim.
But as queer and trans people find themselves increasingly under attack, It Used to Be Witches asks whether cinema can be an effective weapon of resistance and change, and celebrates an outlaw spirit which refuses to die.
No Time to Spare | By Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Le Guin took readers to imaginary worlds for decades. In her last great frontier of life, old age, she explored a new literary territory: the blog, a forum where she shone. The collected best of Le Guin's blog, No Time to Spare, presents perfectly crystallised dispatches on what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world and her wonder at it.
She brings her signature wit and wisdom to topics as diverse as ageing, imaginative literature, capitalism, her beloved rescue cat, classism, cultural perceptions of fantasy and the courage and resolution involved in eating an egg from the shell. This is essential reading for Le Guin's myriad admirers, revealing new sides to a trailblazing and beloved author who influenced literary greats across genres and generations.
It's Only Forever: Labyrinth | By Jes Battis
In the 40 years since Labyrinth’s release, Jim Henson’s cult classic starring a menagerie of goblin puppets, the conversation about it has only grown louder. Fans are still holding viewing parties and masquerade balls, and creating memes inspired by David Bowie’s sardonic and sexy goblin king, numerous Etsy crafts, and even a Japanese video game. But what makes the film so enduring, beyond its technical mastery and clever script, is how it presents childhood as something dangerous, heroic, and even queer.
It’s Only Forever explores Labyrinth as an ’80s time capsule that both reflects and challenges its era, offering its young audience an alternative to conservatism and soulless economics, at a time when U.S. president Ronald Reagan ignored the HIV/AIDS crisis, pushing queerness further into the shadows. As Sarah, played by a teenaged Jennifer Connelly, faces down the king and his destructive whims, she exclaims, “You have no power over me,” and in that moment she is everyone who has ever felt marginalized, who has instead turned to the goblins over social and political toxicity every single time.
From the costuming to the twisting plot, this classic example of 1980s fantasy shows us that the magic and comfort of childhood never need to be discarded as we are forced to enter a world that may very well seek to destroy us. Instead, Labyrinth reveals a universal and beautiful truth: that our strength comes from what we have always known ourselves to be — beastly, loving, and wildly joyful.
Ramsholt | By Johnnie Shand Kydd
Here, a handful of buildings on the River Deben become a stage on which centuries unfold: church and quay, graveyard and marsh, the traces of smuggling, slavery, war and work lingering in the air. As Shand Kydd walks the familiar fifty-minute circuit with his lurcher, he encounters a landscape alive with memory – Suffolk Punches and Black Poplars, otters, barn owls and vanished nightingales – and haunted by the stories of his own family.
Ramsholt is both love letter and lament, a powerful meditation on memory, nature, and the importance of home.
The Power of Music: How Music Connects Us All | By Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Music is what makes us alive, mindful and connected to each other. Music is what makes us human. This is the power of music.
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason knows and feels the transformative power of music as much as any musician alive. From winning the prestigious BBC Young Musician Award to performing at Harry and Meghan’s wedding; from Bach’s solo suites to Bob Marley’s reggae; his ferocious passion shines through in every single performance, whether in a packed-out concert hall or on record.
But how was it that someone like him – a person of colour, from a state school in Nottingham – rose to the upper echelons of the classical music world? What were the obstacles that he had to overcome, what did he learn along the way, and how could a young person follow in his footsteps today?
In The Power of Music, Sheku explores the experiences and values that led him here, from a childhood of football practice and family music sessions, to his work today in the world’s finest concert halls and in the less privileged communities that surround them. As his star continues to rise, he shows us the darker side of an industry ruled by exclusivity and stubborn adherence to tradition.
With its power to transform our mental and physical health, to effect social change, and to make a house a home, Sheku shows us that classical music is for everyone, not just an elite few. The Power of Music is a celebration of music of all sorts and those who make it, and a rallying call to change.
One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem | By Neil Tennant
Over a career that spans four decades and fourteen studio albums with Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant has consistently proved himself to be one of the most elegant and stylish of contemporary lyricists.
Arranged alphabetically, One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem presents an overview of his considerable achievement as a chronicler of modern life: the romance, the break-ups, the aspirations, the changing attitudes, the history, the politics, the pain. The landscape of Tennant's lyrics is recognisably British in character - restrained and preoccupied with the mundane, occasionally satirical, yet also yearning for escape and theatrical release.
Often surprisingly revealing, this volume is contextualised by a personal commentary on each lyric and an introduction by the author which gives a fascinating insight into the process and genesis of writing. Flamboyant, understated, celebratory and elegiac, Neil Tennant's lyrics are a document of our times.
No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene | By Adele Bertei
In 1975 a young queer singer from Cleveland meets photographer Nan Goldin - an encounter that will lead them to New York's bombed-out downtown, where something unprecedented is brewing. At Max's Kansas City and CBGBs, in derelict lofts and underground clubs, a generation of visionary women artists is rewriting the rules of creativity, sexuality, and power. Adele Bertei didn't just witness the No Wave explosion-she ignited it.
As acetone organist for the Contortions and Brian Eno's assistant, she was at the epicenter when punk collided with post-punk, birthing a counterculture that fused music, art, cinema, fashion and outlaw literature into an uncompromising explosion of creativity. While mainstream culture wallowed in sexism and homophobia, these artists and more created something fluid, fierce, and transgressive. Raw, gripping, and illustrated with rare photographs from personal collections, No New York is the definitive insider's account of the women who obliterated every barrier in their path, taking you deep into the artistic and sexual experimentation of an era when true expression mattered more than money or fame.
Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir | By Melissa Auf der Maur
Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a P.O. box, Melissa Auf der Maur's first band scored an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins in her bohemian home town, Montreal. Sensing Melissa's talent, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love.
Whisked from her local scene, Melissa joined Hole just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with the just-widowed Courtney Love at the centre of it all. That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock, a trip she undertook alongside 90s luminaries including Rufus Wainwright, Michael Stipe and her former boyfriend, Dave Grohl. Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a vivid dispatch from the last analogue decade, capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.
Light and Thread | By Han Kang
What is love? It is the gold thread connecting between our hearts. In this light-filled and multi-faceted book, her first since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang draws together the threads of her work and life, tracing the connections between her interior and exterior worlds through a sequence of essays, poems, photographs and diaries. A book of reflections, of words and light, it has at its heart the tiny, north-facing courtyard garden at her home, cultivated solely through the reflected sunlight of the mirrors which she must move throughout the day, as the earth turns on its axis.
In a poem written at eight years old, Han Kang imagined a ‘gold thread’ of connection – an idea which she explores here with luminous attention, beginning with her Nobel Lecture. She writes of the wonder of following the thread we call language into the depths of other hearts, and her profound sense of an electric current which joins writer and reader. Both intimate and illuminating, Light and Thread is a book for all readers of Han Kang’s unique body of work.
The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, An Unlikely Quest, and The Transformative Power of Cold Water | By Chris Ballard
Lifelong athlete and Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard worried his days of exercise were numbered. Then he received a fateful text message about a trend taking hold around the world: submerging in freezing cold water. It wasn’t only thrill seekers or wellness gurus extolling its power.
Swimmers have long known that when paired with cold, their sport delivers extraordinary rewards; now, modern research has shown that just a few minutes in cold water can deliver remarkable benefits: heightened energy and focus, reduced inflammation, and relief from depression and anxiety. In The Plunge, Ballard travels to laboratories and swims in waters around the world, from Portsmouth to the Pacific, tracing the roots of cold water swimming in ancient practices largely lost in the modern world. He immerses himself in the growing tribe of cold-water junkies of all ages, shapes and nationalities, from pioneers like Lynne Cox to visionaries like Ram Barkai, whose audacious dream of getting ice swimming into the Olympics edges closer to reality.
And, from cold plunging to open water swimming to ice swimming, he tests his limits in this extreme sport, eventually becoming a US national champion, his body and mind transformed along the way. Blending history, cutting-edge science, colourful characters, and propulsive narrative storytelling, it’s a rollicking, eye-opening adventure that reveals how a single act — stepping into cold water — can unlock resilience, connection, meaning and joy.
A Brief History of the Coast in 100 Objects | By Sally Coulthard
An immersive history of our coasts and the people who have shaped them. The coast means something different to everyone. It’s a place of pleasure and reckless pursuits, of fishing, fearless endeavours and a crashing, rugged beauty. The coast is, and always has been, our first line of defence and our springboard to other cultures.
Through the lens of 100 carefully selected objects, this treasure chest of a book delves into the myriad ways our coastlines have shaped, and been shaped by, our history, culture, and identity. From Roman lighthouses to rosary beads, knitted jumpers to Viking slave shackles, each object serves as a portal to a unique story. Sally Coulthard’s engaging narrative goes far beyond the traditional seaside holiday to illuminate the coast’s role as a first line of defence, a site of trade, and a catalyst for cultural exchange.
Readers will discover how the coast has influenced our beliefs, economy, and even our domestic lives. And, looking out to sea, this book will show how Britain’s story is anchored to those of our European neighbours and of faraway lands. From one of Britain’s finest historians of material culture, this book vividly captures the enduring magic and significance of our shores.
Whether it’s smugglers’ underpants or sailor’s hoaxes, whale vomit or pickled puffin – it all washes up on the British coast…
To the Sea by Train: The Golden Age of Railway Travel | By Andrew Martin
Throughout the twentieth century, the seaside service posters of Britain's railways promised fresh air and frivolity to millions of urban dwellers with the phrase: 'To the sea by train'.
A staple of modern British life, the seaside getaway was intertwined with the train, in whose compartments holidaymakers were shunted from smog-choked cities to sandy coves. With his signature wit and anecdotal style, Andrew Martin captures an era defined by its railways: from the development of Brighton and Scarborough into pleasure resorts, and the introduction of bank holidays and two-day weekends, to the advent of cheap flights and the British coast's subsequent decline.
Humorous and evocative, To the Sea by Train takes a charming tour through Britain's most beloved pastime.
Lido Land: How Britain Learned to Make a Splash | By Tom Fort
Tom Fort takes us on a fun-packed journey around the UK’s lidos past and present, proving that lidos can tell us more about social trends, progress and political ideology than you might think.
Along the way he takes us to the only surviving Lido in Wales, built in 1927 to help miners wash off their daily dirt, to the Portobello Pool in Edinburgh where Sean Connery was once a lifeguard, and around the iconic seaside towns of Blackpool and Weston-super-Mare where the loosening of Victorian moral standards could be measured by the shrinking of swimming costumes. Along the way, we meet the beauty queens competing for the Miss New Brighton crown at the Merseyside lido in 1966, a mayor who finished Guildford lido’s opening ceremony by stripping off his robes and gold chain and diving headfirst into the water, and we spend time with the colourful characters involved in designing, creating and keeping lidos afloat through the years.
His journey shows us, time and time again, the personal significance of the lidos’ communal spaces — the unmistakable cold of the water rising above your shoulders, the sounds and smells of poolside sunbathing, the sun-baked tiles underfoot and the warm towel after a freezing dip. Fort, with his characteristic wryness and nostalgia, gathers memories and observations from the swimmers he meets along the way, interspersing these with historical fragments and moments from his own history. He laments the lidos we have lost, celebrates those saved by persistent community organising, and takes a frank look into their future.
All the Devils are Here | By David Seabrook
Twenty years ago, in a series of mysterious, incandescent writings, David Seabrook told of the places he knew best: the declining resort towns of the Kent coast. The pieces were no advert for the local tourist board. Here, the ghosts of murderers and mad artists crawl the streets. Septuagenarian rent boys recall the good old days and Carry On stars go to seed. Clandestine fascist networks emerge. And all the time, there is Seabrook himself - desperate perhaps, and in danger. Dark, strange and immediate, this is a classic work of sui generis British literature. There are devils here, and the reader will remember them.
David Seabrook was born in 1960 and spent most of his life in Kent, where he studied Proust at the University of Canterbury. A marked outsider, he drew inspiration from artists who operated outside prevailing literary fashion, those who persisted when nobody was listening. His writings ranged from tributes to unheralded authors to studies of tabloid crimes, were all committed to longhand, seldom found any publishing outlet, and are now considered lost. At the turn of the century, the longhand pages of All the Devils Are Here came to Granta’s attention and the book was published in 2002. In 2009, Seabrook’s body was discovered in his Canterbury flat. He had published only one further work, the novel Jack of Jumps.
Sailing Alone: A History | By Richard J. King
Sailing on a boat by yourself out at sea and out of sight of land can be exhilarating or terrifying, compelling or tedious - sometimes it can be all of these things just in one morning. It is an adventure at odds with our normal, sociable lives, carried out floating on a medium wholly inimical to our existence. But the deep ocean is also a remarkable place on which to think.
Richard King's enormously engaging and curious new book is about the debt we owe to solo sailors: women and men, young and old, who have set out alone. Spending weeks and months alone, slowly, quietly and close to the ocean surface is to create the world's largest laboratory: an endlessly changing, capricious and startling place in which to observe oneself, the weather, the stars and myriad sea creatures, from the tiniest to the most massive and threatening.
This is a book for anyone who is fascinated by sailing, solitude and the vast seas that cover so much of our planet.
Time & Tide: Recipes and Stories from My Coastal Kitchen | By Emily Scott
In Time & Tide, Emily Scott weaves together all the strands that influence and inspire her cooking; from the salt-scented air to the ever-changing shades of the water and the shapes and textures of the wild fennel and tamarisk plants that crowd in on the Cornish coastal path. These elements make for incredible dishes infused with creativity and a sense of place. Emily's recipes reflect the ebb and flow of daily life during the year; from breakfasts of overnight oats and buttery crumpets to lunches of sea-herb focaccia, and from suppers of Cornish bouillabaisse to desserts of treacle tart and bramble and peach crumble.
Each dish evokes something inherently special to Emily and the culinary delights of Cornwall. Be welcomed into her coastal world with more than 80 recipes alongside stunning photography to help you discover this most-magical of places.
The Tidal Year: A Memoir on Grief, Swimming and Sisterhood | By Freya Bromley
Freya is still searching. For four years, she's been looking for a way to fill the empty space her brother's death left behind. Ready for another distraction, Freya decides to swim every tidal pool in Britain in a year with her friend Miri. The adventure takes them from a pool hidden in the cliffs of fishing-village Polperro to the quarry lagoon of Abereiddi via Trinkie Wick where locals meet each year to give the pool wall a fresh lick of paint.
As Freya travels further from London, she finds herself closer to memories of her brother. With every swim, and every stranger they meet in the water, the challenge becomes more than just a way to explore the coast, but a journey of self-discovery. The Tidal Year is a true story about the healing power of wild swimming and the space it creates for reflection, rewilding, and hope.
An exploration of grief in the modern age, it's also a tale of loss, love, female rage and sisterhood.
The Shell Spotter’s Guide | By Helen Scales
Supported by the National Trust, who look after over 780 miles of Britain’s coastline. Turns any beach into a treasure hunt. A simple, nostalgic pleasure and a connection with the wonders of nature.
Beautifully illustrated and packed with surprising and delightful facts. Looking for seashells and learning their names is the perfect way to explore Britain’s coastline at leisure. It’s a nostalgic simple pleasure, and a way to discover some of nature’s most exquisite wonders.
From the common cockle to the blue-rayed limpet, The Shell Spotter’s Guide covers the beautiful and surprising range of mussels, oysters, periwinkles, scallops, cowries and whelks found on our beaches. This beautifully illustrated book written by marine biologist Helen Scales is the perfect companion for all aspiring shell spotters.
Lost to the Sea: A Journey Round the Edges of Britain and Ireland | By Lisa Woollett
Medieval kingdoms. Notorious pirate towns. Drowned churches. Crocodile-infested swamps.
On a series of coastal walks, Lisa Woollett takes us on an illuminating journey, bringing to life the places where mythology and reality meet at the very edges of Britain and Ireland. From Bronze Age settlements on the Isles of Scilly and submerged prehistoric forests in Wales, to a Victorian amusement park on the Isle of Wight and castles in the air off County Clare, Lisa draws together archaeology, meetings with locals and tales from folklore to reveal how the sea has forged, shaped and often overwhelmed these landscapes and communities.
Lost to the Sea is an exhilarating voyage around the ever-shifting shores of the British Isles, and a haunting ode to our profound relationship with the sea.
Sea Bean: A Beachcomber’s Search for a Magical Charm | By Sally Huband
When a seed falls from a vine in the tropics and is carried by ocean currents across the Atlantic to the shores of Western Europe - it is known as a sea bean.
It is still considered lucky to find a sea bean on the shore, they have been used as magical charms for more than a thousand years. Sally's search for a sea bean begins not long after she moves to the windswept archipelago of Shetland. When pregnancy triggers a chronic illness and forces her to slow down, Sally takes to the beaches.
There she discovers treasure freighted with story and curiosities that connect her to the world. The wild shores of Shetland offer glimpses of orcas swimming through the ocean at dusk, the chance to release a tiny storm petrel into the dark of the night and a path of hope. This beachcombing path takes her from the Faroese archipelago to the Orkney islands, and the Dutch island of Texel.
It opens a world of ancient myths, fragile ecology, and deep human history. It brings her to herself again. Sea Bean is a message in a bottle.
An interconnection of our oceans, communities and ourselves, and an invitation to feel belonging when we are adrift.
What to Look For by the Shore | By Becky Brown | Illustrated by Laura Martin
Ever wondered which fossils you may find in the sand at the beach or why they have flags at the beach?
This book takes a closer look at sights you can see along and under the shores such as lighthouses, sandcastles, sea sports and the creatures found in rock pools.
An Opinionated Guide to Margate | By Emmy Watts | From Hoxton Mini Press
Margate's tide has turned. Once seen as a faded seaside town, it is now a vibrant harbour of creativity. Whether you're into modern art, indie boutiques, natural wine or just want to stuff your face with fish and chips and flog into the sea, it's time to explore this revitalised dreamland.
Swim & Sun: A Monocle Guide
The Monocle team dips its toe into the world of swimming, revealing 100 beautiful and inspiring places to take the plunge. Swimming is excellent exercise of course, but it's so much more than that: it can be a transcendental experience, offering us space to reflect and to escape. It's an antidote to screens and all-encompassing technology.
Perhaps it's the shedding of inhibitions that come with a dip, or could it be that getting somewhere under our own steam is an act that's health-giving, refreshing and life-affirming? Whatever it means to you, swimming - alone or with others, badly or brilliantly - is about being in the moment. This new book celebrates bathing in glorious full-colour photography, revealing the editors' chosen spots from inner-city architectural wonders to lakes, beach clubs and bagni. So whether you're looking to do laps in Italy, tread water in Australia, sink into the icy depths in Iceland - or perhaps just sit on the side and let others do the hard work - this guide includes a setting for everyone.
Dive right in.
Sea Pools: 66 saltwater sanctuaries from around the world | By Chris Romer-Lee
An ode to sea swimming - looking at the architecture, history and social significance of sea pools.
The sea can be challenging and changeable. Protected from the dangers of currents, crashing waves and extreme cold, sea pools (also known as tidal or ocean pools) are manmade pools that provide a safe space for swimmers to enjoy the benefits of the sea at all states of the tide and weather.
Sea Pools begins with an introduction to sea pools within the history of outdoor swimming, their unique designs and architectural significance and commentary on the resurgent appreciation for sea swimming in the 21st century. Chris Romer-Lee selects 70 of the most beautiful and culturally significant sea pools from around the world, including the 25-metre cliffside Avalon Rock Pool in new South Wales, Australia, the sublime Pozo de las Calcosas in Spain that is shrouded in volcanic rock, and Ireland's historic Vico Baths to name but a few. Sea Pools also includes four insightful essays: Nicola Larkin looks to the next generation of ocean pools in her exploration of how we can conserve, protect and regenerate the coastline; Therese Spruhan testifies to the healing and transformative benefits of ocean swimming; Freya Bromley discusses her odyssey to swim in every sea pool in Britain; and Kevin Fellingham on the importance of sea pools in South Africa.
The book is illustrated throughout with beautiful colour photography, as well as fascinating archive material to give an insight into the provenance of these vital sanctuaries.
Illustrated Tales of Kent | By Naomi Dickins
From the wooded depths of the Wealden forest to the fortified cliffs of the Channel coast, and from the high hills of the North Downs to the wide flats of the Romney Marsh, Kent is a county of contrast and variety. Little wonder, then, that it is a place rich with folklore and stories, steeped in legend and superstition. The inhabitants of Kent present a vibrant cast of heroes and villains, while the county's natural landscape, quiet villages, bustling towns, stately homes and royal residences provide the tales' unique and colourful settings.
In this book, local author Naomi Dickins brings together a collection of fascinating and entertaining tales from across the county, in which you might discover more about the origins of Kent place names and the Kentish customs of hoodening and yowling; hunt down a gang of smugglers or take a stand with the county's defenders; bid farewell to an exiled king or discover where a native American princess is buried; meet with ancient ancestors, witches and ghosts, or just catch sight of a phantom ship. Illustrated throughout, this book will appeal to residents, visitors and all those with connections to Kent.
The Draw of the Sea | By Wyl Menmuir
Wyl Menmuir's The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the Cornish Coast and the people who make their livings there, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination.
Since the earliest stages of human development, the sea has fascinated and entranced us. It feeds us, sustaining communities and providing livelihoods, but it also holds immense destructive power which can take all those away in an instant.
It connects us to far away places, offering the promise of new lands and voyages of discovery, but also shapes our borders, carving divisions between landmasses and eroding the very ground beneath our feet. In this beautifully-written meditation on what it is that draws us to the waters' edge, author Wyl Menmuir tells the stories of the people whose lives revolve around the sea in the Cornish community where he lives.
In twelve interlinked chapters, Menmuir explores the lives of local fishermen steeped in the rich traditions of a fishing community, the beachcombers who wander the shores in search of the varied objects which wash ashore and the stories they tell, and all number of others who have made their lives on the beautiful Cornwall coast.
In the specifics of these livelihoods and their rich histories and traditions, Wyl Menmuir captures the universal human connection to the sea. Into this seductive tapestry, Wyl weaves the story of how the sea has beckoned, consoled and restored him.
This book is a meaningful and moving work into how we interact with the environment around us, and how it comes to shape the course of our lives. As unmissable as it is compelling, as profound as it is personal, this must-read book will delight anyone familiar with the intimate and powerful pull which the sea holds over us.
The Seaweed Collector's Handbook: From Purple Laver to Peacock's Tail | By Miek Zwamborn | Translated by Michele Hutchison
Seaweed is so familiar and yet its names - pepper dulse, sea lettuce, bladderwrack - are largely unknown to us. In this short, exquisitely illustrated portrait, the Dutch poet and artist Miek Zwamborn shares her discoveries of its history, culture and use, from the Neolithic people of the Orkney Islands to sushi artisans in modern Japan. Seaweed troubled Columbus on his voyages across the Atlantic, intrigued von Humboldt in the Sargasso Sea and inspired artists from Hokusai to Matisse.
Covering seaweed's collection by Victorians, its adoption into fashion and dance and its potential for combating climate change, and with a fabulous series of recipes based around the 'truffles of the sea', this is a wonderful gift for every nature lover's home.
Why We Swim | By Bonnie Tsui
Take a dive into the deep with writer and swimmer Bonnie Tsui and discover what it is about water that seduces us, heals us, and brings us together. Our evolutionary ancestors swam for survival.
Now we swim in freezing Arctic waters, wide channels, and piranha-infested rivers just because they are there. Swimming is an introspective and quiet sport in a chaotic age. It is therapeutic for those who are injured and it is one route to that elusive, ecstatic state of Flow.
Propelled by stories of polar swim champions, a Baghdad swim club, Olympian athletes, modern-day samurai swimmers, and even an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survived a six-hour swim in the wintry Atlantic, Why We Swim takes us around the globe in a remarkable, all-encompassing account of the world of swimming.
Shell Life on the Seashore | By Philip Street
“Armed with this intrepid survey, we can see a brave new world down there on the beach ... Exquisite revelation, of the most wonderful, watery kind.” - Philip Hoare
For many, the highlights of seaside holidays are rockpooling and gathering the glorious array of shells left strewn on the beach after the receding tide. Attracted by the infinite variety of shapes and colours, visitors can never resist making a souvenir collection of their own - but little do they suspect the fascinating lives of the animals who once occupied them.
What if each shell had a story of its own to tell us, if only we knew the language? Mr Street’s delightful, informative guide uncovers the secret history of each common shell, revealing not only which marine creature once inhabited it but the unique challenges of its watery habitat it had to solve.
From barnacles to oysters, cockles to sea slugs, winkles to carnivorous snails, molluscs and lesser-known members of the octopus family, Shell Life on the Seashore is the essential primer for recognising and collecting both these curious specimens and the 'empties' they leave behind - and will greatly increase the old-fashioned pleasures of a coastal holiday for all the family.
DK Eyewitness England's South Coast | By DK Eyewitness
Windswept cliffs, breathtaking beaches, and vibrant cities: welcome to the stunning south of England. Whether you want to relax on the sandy shores of Cornwall, wander around London's famous museums or browse vintage shops in Brighton, your DK Eyewitness travel guide makes sure you experience all that this region has to offer. England's South Coast is awash with natural beauty, from the purple moors of Exmoor to the white cliffs of Dover.
Dotted around this picturesque landscape are a vibrant array of cities, too, including historic Canterbury, quirky Bristol, and the arty paradise of St Ives. Our newly updated guide brings England's South Coast to life, transporting you there like no other travel guide does with expert-led insights and advice, detailed breakdowns of all the must-see sights, photographs on practically every page, and our hand-drawn illustrations which place you inside the region's iconic buildings and neighbourhoods. Our updated 2023 travel guide brings England's South Coast to life.
DK Eyewitness England's South Coast is your ticket to the trip of a lifetime. Inside DK Eyewitness England's South Coast you will find:
- A fully-illustrated top experiences guide: our expert pick of England's South Coast's must-sees and hidden gems.
- Accessible itineraries to make the most out of each and every day.
- Expert advice: honest recommendations for getting around safely, when to visit each sight, what to do before you visit, and how to save time and money.
- Colour-coded chapters to every part of England's South Coast, from London to Kent, Dorset to Cornwall.
- Practical tips: the best places to eat, drink, shop and stay.
- Detailed maps and walks to help you navigate the region country easily and confidently. - Covers: London, Kent and Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset, Devon, Cornwall.
Seaside-themed highlights
Free Books for Schools
Free Books for Schools
Thanks to our customers The Margate Bookshop has raised over £5000 to buy books for local primary schools!
What We Can Know | By Ian McEwan
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately. What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.