Biography

My mother had died, but still I heard her voice... Growing up in an affluent neighbourhood in 1930s Shanghai, Loo Shu-hsin is told that it is 'no good for a...

Richard Holloway has been the archetypal 'turbulent priest'. Having risen to be the Primus (Head) of the Scottish Episcopal Church, he abandoned religion and ecclesiastical office to fight for the...

Everyone knows who you find in bookshops: people who want to buy books. But, as Shaun Bythell, author of the bestselling Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller,...

It's Okay Not to Get Along with Everyone explores the necessity of maintaining a healthy distance in relationships and surrounding yourself with people you are comfortable with. It delves into...

'Outrageously good . . . An unforgettable book' - OLIVIA LAING 'Reverie and road-trip, Aqua succeeds in turning the Cadillac Desert and Land of Little Rain into something lush and...

'B eautifully written and deeply moving' CLARE BALDING 'An important voice' CATHY RENTZENBRINK 'I devoured it in a day . . . An open-hearted book' CLOVER STROUD The Corner is...

When the celebrated Swedish writer Johanna Ekstrom found out that she was dying from an eye melanoma she asked her closest friend, Sigrid Rausing, to finish her last book. Rausing...

An illuminating, witty and highly moving story of making and listening to music and its role and impact on grief When her father dies, music historian and trombonist Dr Emily...

In this fascinating collection, Jenny Erpenbeck meditates on the disappearance and impermanence of things. Whether recalling the demolition of familiar places, the loss of a friendship, or a change in...

'I was so thirsty for the prize of academia, so thrilled to defy the fates, that I suffocated my own history and culture, my Burmese heritage and my mother's language....

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...

Potent and propulsive, a lyrical meditation on loss and what comes after - TARA WESTOVER For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as...

'Wish I Was Here is a masterpiece' Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk 'It will surprise you, sometimes astound you, and leave you profoundly changed' Jonathan Coe, author...

From the only author ever to have won both the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize (Britain's leading prize for non-fiction) comes a dazzling collection of writing, essays, articles...

Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza asking each one of them about their experience of October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like...

From her childhood in Romania, in a village 'as small as a thimble on the edge of the world', through to life in exile in Germany, Herta Muller's story unspools...

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 Essential lessons on the world we live in, from one of our greatest young thinkers - a guide to what...

An exhilarating, life-affirming travelogue and a provocative, rallying invocation to the search for spiritual truth 'Gurdjieff asks us why we are here, what we wish for, what forces we obey....

A riveting, deeply researched, blood-on-the-spurs biography of Belle Starr, the most legendary female outlaw of the American West. On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday,...

Why We Travel asks why humans yearn to travel, what motivates us and what we can gain from venturing out into the world. INDEPENDENT BEST TRAVEL BOOK OF 2024 Good...

'Thoughtful, beautiful, incredibly necessary. People need to read this book, especially if they feel a resistance to. I wish everyone would.' Sofie Hagen 'Uncompromising, anguished, combative: culture wars have victims,...

When Hunter S. Thompson turned his gonzo lens on the Reagan-era political circus, the result was Generation of Swine — a scorched-earth collection of columns originally published in the San...

At the heart of the most vibrant and dangerous city in the world, Shakespeare's London pulsed with ambition, vice, creativity, and violence — and Globe: Life in Shakespeare's London by...

Gerald Durrell's beloved account of his childhood in Corfu, now in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time 'Another tiger-golden day lay ahead of us. It was as though England...

From the critically acclaimed author of Dead Girls ("stylish and inspired"- New York Times Book Review ), a sharp, engrossing collection of essays that explore the strange career of popular...

"An engaging romp." - New York Times Book Review "A haunting, quietly devastating excavation of a story we should all know but don't: how a surfing legend became the target...

The disturbing true story of the notorious Cecil Hotel in downtown LA, by its general manager for a decade and star of the controversial Netflix documentary series Crime Scene: The...

From the acclaimed film critic and New York Times bestselling biographer of Paul Newman, the definitive biography of Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood, the most prolific and versatile actor-director in the...

*** Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay**** ****Semi-Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor**** ****Finalist for the New England Book Award**** ****Longlisted for the...

New York Times bestseller A down-to-earth, hilarious collection of stories and musings on marriage, motherhood, and country life from the #1 New York Times bestselling author and star of the...

'You think you've married a journalist, then, horrors, he becomes a politician.' 'Sarah Vine is the Bridget Jones of politics.' Plum Sykes 'Everyone in Westminster is talking about it.' The...

' I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration ' PHILIP PULLMAN 'Entrancing ... a creative manifesto' TELEGRAPH 'Mesmerising ... vibrating with life and curiosity' OBSERVER In this...

Witty, tender and daring essays from the British David Sedaris 'A lovely writer: supple, stylish and almost effortlessly witty.' Daily Mail 'Made me laugh out loud and then properly cry.'...

'A fresh, unexpected, and revealing portrait of Russia' ANNE APPLEBAUM , Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Red Famine 'A century of Russian history told through the women who lived...

Mark Agnew was part of the first team to ever kayak the north-west passage - spending 103 days in the Arctic. The infamous route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans...

Michael Calvey's story starts with a dawn raid on his Moscow apartment by armed FSB agents, following accusations of embezzlement relating to a commercial deal turned sour. In truth, no...

'The Leibniz biography for our time. It is difficult to even begin to do justice to his rich spirit, but Kempe succeeds' Daniel Kehlmann, author of Measuring the World Gottfried...

Writer and performer Hannah Silva interrogates her life with the input of two unreliable narrators - an algorithm and a toddler. Her living exploration of undoing and redoing love and...

When Brian Dillon was sixteen his mother died and he simply gave up all schoolwork. While he courted exam failure, his real education was going on elsewhere: with books, music,...

'A beautiful, heartfelt love letter to the sea, and a cherished industry. Ash is a force of nature, she's a testament to working hard and dreaming big' Dermot O'Leary 'A...

An utterly riveting, moving and poignant memoir of grief and loss that will speak to anyone who's ever lost someone they love. 'P rofoundly moving, both a tender love letter...

"I am a work in progress. There are times when I feel in control and like I know what I'm doing...and there are times (quite a few)(actually lots) when I've...

Australia's most sex-positive influencer reveals the reality of being a globally-famous full-service sex worker in this unflinchingly honest, hilarious and wryly intelligent memoir. 'Putting down a book this honest is...

THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A powerful polemic' Sunday Times 'A compelling, eye-opening read' Daily Express - Did an illegal immigrant avoid deportation because he had a cat? -...

The revelatory story of an intellectual giant who made foundational contributions to science and mathematics and persevered in the face of discrimination against women in science. Emmy Noether is one...

'One woman's gloriously lyrical account of life and love as a shepherdess' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Janet White's unfailingly enjoyable book . . . taps into a widespread feeling that we...

The million-copy international bestseller from Korean sensation Taewoan Ha 'Never give up Your every moment is meaningful' In Every Moment Was You , Taewoan Ha reflects on the little things...

In the wake of his retirement from professional basketball, Kobe "The Black Mamba" Bryant has decided to share his vast knowledge and understanding of the game to take readers on...