Strange Blooms

RRP: £16.99

In seventeenth-century Britain, a new breed of ‘curious’ gardeners were pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and new plants were stealing into Europe from East and West. John Tradescant and his son w …

The Philosophy Steamer

RRP: £22.50

‘Compelling, laudably unsentimental and deeply significant.’ — Frances Stonar Saunders, GuardianIn 1922, Lenin personally drew up a list of some 220 ‘undesirable’ intellectuals to be deported in prep …

Murder in Amsterdam

RRP: £10.99

It was an emblematic crime: on a November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man shot and killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the anti-I …

Cobra II

RRP: £12.99

The definitive account of the war against Saddam: ‘By far the most authoritative and convincing account thus far of 2003’s military events… a shocking indictment.’ — Max Hastings, Sunday TelegraphT …

The Great Wall

RRP: £9.99

Legendarily 2,200 years old and 4,300 miles long, China’s Great Wall seems to be a confident physical statement made by an advanced civilization, anxious to draw a line between itself and the ‘barbari …

Colossus: Bletchley Park's Last Secret

RRP: £14.99

This is the last untold story of Bletchley Park. Using recently declassified information, Paul Gannon has written a gripping account of the invention of the world’s first true computer, Colossus.Uncov …

Keeping Mum

RRP: £7.99

‘The prefect antidote to the ‘misery memior’.’ — The Judges, Costa Book Award 2006 for BiographyMum and Dad – Squibs and Bert – were a complete mystery to Brian Thompson, as he grew up in Cambridge a …

Once in a Lifetime (film tie-in)

RRP: £8.99

In 1971, Warner Brothers bought a local football team, the New York Cosmos. In 1975 the club signed a three-year deal with Pele, the greatest player the game had ever known. More big name signings wou …

Vulnerable in Hearts

RRP: £8.99

Part memoir, part history, part entertainment, Vulnerable in Hearts is a meditation on how we communicate; why we play games; and the ways in which we love.Sandy Balfour’s father and the game of contr …

The Magic Spring

RRP: £8.99

City-dweller Richard Lewis has been having a problem with roots. His, he means. It would have been so much more romantic if he had been born in Dublin or Marseille. But what if you’re simply from Croy …

Betraying Hitler

RRP: £9.50

The extraordinary story of the German foreign ministry official who, at risk to his life, spied for the Allies in the Second World War.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

RRP: £12.99

‘I beseech you to read this account’ – Christopher HitchensA magnificent, harrowing testimony to the voiceless victims of North Korea.Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of a North Korean concentrati …

Humanity: An Emotional History

RRP: £8.99

In his history of Englandof 1757m the novelist Tobias Smollett records the case of a suicide pact between a London bookbinder named Smith and his wife who, having fallen into bankruptcy, killed their …

Motherland

RRP: £14.99

In this “lucid primer of Russian thought” (The Times Literary Supplement), Lesley Chamberlain finds that during the last two centuries Russian intellectuals have asked two fundamental questions, “what …

Voltaire in Exile

RRP: £20.00

In 1753, Voltaire – playwright, poet, philosopher, and one of the most feted figures in Europe – was forced into exile by King Louis XV, where he would remain for the last 25 years of his life. This p …

My Father's Rifle

My Father’s Rifle is a beautiful narrative about the life of boy named Azad and his coming-of-age in Iraq during the 1960s and 1970s. Azad is born into a vibrant village culture, to a family that is p …