Dads are notoriously difficult to buy for aren’t they? Well why not treat yours to the gift of a book this Father’s Day? We have books on every genre, topic and interest so we are sure to have something for your father figure even if you think he already has everything he could possibly need by having you!
Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan
From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel – the story of one man’s epic fall from grace.
Campbell Flynn – art historian and celebrity pundit – is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for controversy and novelty, he doesn’t take people half as seriously as they take themselves.
Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.
The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world. He has experiences and ideas that excite his teacher. He also has a plan.
Over the course of an incendiary year a web of secrets and crimes will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves.
But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.
Empire World by Sathnam Sanghera
2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies.
The empire’s influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries, to nearly 1 in 3 driving on the left side of the road, to the origins of international law. Yet Britain’s idea of its imperial history and the world’s experience of it are two very different things.
With an inimitable combination of wit, political insight and personal honesty, the award-winning author and journalist explores the international legacies of British empire – from the creation of tea plantations across the globe, to environmental destruction, conservation, and the imperial connotations of Royal tours.
His journey takes him from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond. In doing so, Sanghera demonstrates just how deeply British imperialism is baked into our world.
And why it’s time Britain was finally honest with itself about empire.
Weird Walk: Wanderings and Wonderings through the British Ritual Year
In this book is a radical idea.
By walking the ancient landscape of Britain and following the wheel of the year, we can reconnect to our shared folklore, to the seasons and to nature.
Let this hauntological gazetteer guide you through our enchanted places and strange seasonal rituals.
SPRING: Watch the equinox sunrise light up the floating capstone of Pentre Ifan and connect with the Cailleach at the shrine of Tigh nam Bodach in the remote Highlands.
SUMMER: Feel the resonance of ancient raves and rituals in the stone circles of southwest England’s Stanton Drew, Avebury and the Hurlers.
AUTUMN: Bring in the harvest with the old gods at Coldrum Long Barrow, and brave the ghosts on misty Blakeney Point.
WINTER: Make merry at the Chepstow wassail, and listen out for the sunken church bells of the lost medieval city of Dunwich.
Only 656 people in human history have left Earth. In Space: The Human Story, astronaut Tim Peake traces the lives of these remarkable men and women who have forged the way, from Yuri Gagarin to Neil Armstrong, from Valentina Tereshkova to Peggy Whitson.
Full of exclusive new stories, and astonishing detail only an astronaut would know, the book conveys what space exploration is really like: the wondrous view of Earth, the surreal weightlessness, the extraordinary danger, the surprising humdrum, the unexpected humour, the newfound perspective, the years of training, the psychological pressures, the gruelling physical toll, the thrill of launch and the trepidation of re-entry. The book also examines the surprising, shocking and often poignant stories of astronauts back on Earth, whose lives are forever changed as they readjust to terra firma.
Publication of the book comes on the eve of NASA’s plans to return to the moon, fifty years after an astronaut last walked on the lunar surface. In 2024 the Artemis II mission will send four astronauts to orbit the moon. In 2025 Artemis III will send the first woman and the first person of colour to step on the lunar surface. What will separate these upcoming moonwalkers from the legendary Apollo crews? Does it still take a daring-do attitude, super-human fitness, intelligence, plus the ‘Right-stuff’ – a fabled grace under pressure? And how will astronauts travel even further – to Mars and beyond? Space: The Human Story reveals all.
A searing, deeply personal account of enduring a brutal attempt on his life, thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him – from internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie
On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey towards physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.
Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.
When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn’t. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity – all we have to meet the world – so unstable?
To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting ‘the children’). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.
This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It’s for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper.
It’s 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times.
Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on – a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed.
Among them, peace holds. Just about.
But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city’s secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.
The multiple-award-winning Francis Spufford returns, with a lovingly created, richly pleasure-giving, epically scaled tale set in the golden age of wicked entertainments.
The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks
A CHILD WILL BE BORN WHO WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING
When a young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman’s child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences.
Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it.
Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.
The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. It asks the question: just because you can do something, does it mean you should? Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power.
Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart
A searing insider’s account of ten extraordinary years in Parliament from Rory Stewart, former Cabinet minister and co-presenter of breakout hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.
Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister – before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.
Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow our democracy and government had become. Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant.
Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age.
How can you fight something if you don’t know it exists?
We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives: our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; the planet we inhabit – the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law.
But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. Our task is to bring it into the light—and to build a new system that is worth fighting for.
Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?