New Releases

A moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France’s leading nonfiction writer.

How did Boris Johnson supersede Theresa May to become Britain's Prime Minister? How did he pursue his promise to Get Brexit Done amidst multiple Brexit secretaries, repeated coup attempts and reshuffles, and an extraordinarily terse relationship with Brussels? What really happened in Downing Street – from the political choices to the party place settings – as the pandemic took the world in its grip? Out follows from May's resignation through to the tussles over the final Brexit deal, the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our shortest serving PM ever.

As King James I’s favorite, Buckingham was also his confidant, gatekeeper, advisor and lover. When Charles I succeeded his father, he was similarly enthralled and made Buckingham his best friend and mentor. A dazzling figure on horseback and a skilful player of the political game, Buckingham rapidly transformed the influence his beauty gave him into immense wealth and power. He became one of the most flamboyant and enigmatic Englishmen at the heart of seventeenth-century royal and political life.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. And yet, to Ukrainians, this attack was painfully familiar, the latest episode in a centuries-long Russian campaign to divide and oppress Ukraine. In Intent to Destroy, political scientist Eugene Finkel uncovers these deep roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine is a key borderland between Russia and the West, and, following the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, dominating Ukraine became the cornerstone of Russian policy

On 13 November 2015, nine attackers wearing suicide bombs killed 130 people and left hundreds wounded at sites in and around Paris in the deadliest attack on French soil since the Second World War. V13 was the code name for the much-awaited trial of these attacks. In V13, Emmanuel Carrère follows this landmark trial from its first day to its last, taking us behind the scenes to the lawyers, survivors, family members and the defendants. He assembles, in painstaking and subtle detail, a human portrait of the crime – a study of good and evil, and the philosophical journey through the borderlands.

For the Children is a narrative memoir that tells the true story of the author's family's escape from Hungary and immigration to Canada in 1956, told from the viewpoint of the seven year old child he was at the time. After numerous attempts to flee from revolution torn Stalinist Hungary ending in capture and disappointment, the author's parents' pursuit to give their children a better life finally bears success as they walk to freedom across a well guarded and mine strewn border.

In The Making of Modern Britain, Andrew Marr paints a fascinating portrait of life in Britain during the first half of the 20th century as the country recovered from the grand wreckage of the British Empire. Between the death of Queen Victoria and the end of the Second World War, the nation was shaken by war and peace. The two wars were the worst we had ever known and the episodes of peace among the most turbulent and surprising.

Do you want to dive into the gripping story of a royal family that changed a whole country? The Plantagenets ruled England with strength and cunning, and their story is filled with drama, battles, and family fights.

A genuinely new Second World War story, The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram is a riveting account of the wartime exploits of Alastair Cram, brilliantly told by the American author David Guss. Cram was taken prisoner in North Africa in November 1941, which began a long odyssey through 10 different POW camps and three Gestapo prisons. He became a serial escapee - fleeing his captors no fewer than 21 times, including his final, and finally successful, escape from a POW column in April 1945.

In The Darkening Age, Catherine Nixey tells the little-known - and deeply shocking - story of how a militant religion deliberately tried to extinguish the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in unquestioning adherence to the 'one true faith'. The Roman Empire had been generous in embracing and absorbing new creeds. But with the coming of Christianity, everything changed. This new faith, despite preaching peace, was violent, ruthless and intolerant. And once it became the religion of empire, its zealous adherents set about the destruction of the old gods.

The Skripal Files is the definitive account of how Skripal’s story fits into the wider context of the new spy war between Russia and the West. The Skripal Files explores the time Skripal spent as a spy in the Russian Military Intelligence, how he was turned to work as an agent by MI6, his imprisonment in Russia and his eventual release as part of a spy swap that would bring him to Salisbury, where on that fateful day he and his daughter found themselves fighting for their lives.

The rise of George Villiers from minor gentry to royal power seemed to defy gravity. Becoming gentleman of the royal bedchamber in 1615, the young gallant enraptured James, Britain’s first Stuart king, royal adoration reaching such an intensity that the king declared he wanted the courtier to become his ‘wife’. For a decade, Villiers was at the king’s side - at court, on state occasions and in bed, right up to James’ death in March 1625.

“Faced with the political disaster, I had to become France.” This was how Charles de Gaulle answered the call of history. One of the few French battlefield leaders to have distinguished himself in May 1940, he had become the undersecretary of state for national defense. But when the government rejected his calls to fight on and prepared to capitulate to Hitler, he escaped to London. There he instigated a resistance calling on “all the French who want to remain free to listen to me and follow me” in the legendary radio address of June 22.

In her memoirs, Wallis Simpson described her time in China as her ‘Lotus Year’, referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. That year, however, was also used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment. Determined to ‘save’ the monarchy, the British government’s ‘China Dossier’ of Wallis’s rumoured amorous and immoral activities in the Far East portrayed her as debauched, influenced by foreign agents, and unfit to marry a king. But little was known about how she spent that mysterious period in her life – until now.

By the acclaimed royal biographer and commentator Robert Hardman, Charles III is a brilliant and intimate portrait of the new monarch that draws on unrivalled access to the Royal Family, their close friends and staff, plus previously unseen papers from the Royal Archives.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought large-scale warfare to Europe, reshaped relations between key global players, and redefined existing alliances and international organizations, such as NATO and the European Union. It has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, revived the threat of a nuclear war between Russia and the West and might unleash a global famine. Political scientist and historian of genocide Eugene Finkel zooms in on the intersection of one of the most important geopolitical events in recent decades and the most odious type of violence.

Shakespearean is a rich, brilliant and superbly drawn portrait of an extraordinary artist, one of the greatest writers who ever lived. Through an enthralling narrative, ranging widely in time and space, McCrum seeks to understand Shakespeare within his historical context while also exploring the secrets of literary inspiration and examining the nature of creativity itself.

Continuously inhabited for five millennia and at one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta. According to myth, the city was founded when Kadmos sowed dragon’s teeth into the ground and warriors sprang forth, ready not only to build the fledgling city but to defend it from all-comers. It was Hercules’ birthplace and the home of the Sphinx, whose riddle Oedipus solved, winning the Theban crown and the king’s widow in marriage, little knowing that the widow was his mother, Jocasta.

It is summer; the hay and silage have not yet been made on John Connell’s farm, so he has time to indulge his other great passion: running. John sets off on a marathon run of 42.2 kilometres through his native Longford, the scene of his award-winning The Cow Book. As he runs across woodlands, fields and tiny roads, he tells the story of his life and contemplates Ireland’s history, old and new. He also remembers other great runs he has done, from Australia to Canada, and tells the stories of some of his running heroes, such as Haile Gebrselassie.

The Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks, and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories. Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost 3,000 years ago.