Alice's second adventure takes her through the looking-glass to a place even curiouser than Wonderland. She finds herself caught up in the great looking-glass chess game and sets off to become a queen. It isn't as easy as she expects: at every step she is hindered by nonsense characters who crop up and insist on reciting poems. Some of these poems, such as 'The Walrus and The...

Illustrated with 150 photographs and artworks, Japanese Myths is an accessible, entertaining and highly informative exploration of everything from the kami holy spirits venerated in Shinto religion to the divine origins of the Japanese imperial family.

What is worse than Nero? What is better than Nero’s Baths?’ – so wrote the poet Martial in the first century AD, demonstrating the power that buildings have on public consciousness. In ancient Rome, who built a monument and why mattered as much as its physical structure. Over centuries and under many different emperors, a small village in Italy was transformed into the crowning glory of an...

\'There comes a moment in one\'s life or career when in order to evolve, you need to draw a line and acknowledge where you come from. This book is exactly this for me. In this book, you find the soul of Versace. I could not be any more proud to share it with the world\' Donatella Versace Founded by Gianni Versace in 1978, the family-run fashion house soon grew into a symbol of high...

Pastel Dreams The powerful architecture of North Korea Erased by bombing during the Korean War, North Korea’s trophy capital of Pyongyang was entirely rebuilt from scratch from 1953, in line with the vision of the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Designed as an imposing stage set, it is a place of grand axial boulevards linking gargantuan monuments, lined with stately piles of distinctly...

Embark upon a lavish visual journey through ancient Greece―its origins, its rise and fall, and its legacy that still permeates the Western world today. Spanning more than 3,000 years, Ancient Greece explores the tumultuous history of this glorious empire in vivid detail―from its Minoan and Mycenaean origins to the apogee of the warring city-states of Athens and Sparta, and...

Winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature Asle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In nearby Bjørgvin another Asle, also a painter, is lying in the hospital, consumed by alcoholism. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions. In this final...

In 1943, there was an urgent need for Animal Farm. The Soviet Union had become Britain’s ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and criticism of Stalin’s brutal regime was either censored or discouraged. In any case, many intellectuals on the left still celebrated the Soviet Union, claiming that the terrors of its show trials, summary executions and secret police were either exaggerated or...

Franny Glass and Lane Coutell are the perfect campus couple: beautiful, intelligent, their whole lives ahead of them. But one weekend when Franny is visiting, amid the excitement of the big Yale game, something goes wrong and tensions begin to surface. Are they really such a perfect match after all? Franny's older brother is Zooey. They come from a sophisticated yet highly eccentric family:...

The Meditations of the great Roman Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius are simple yet profound works of stoic philosophy that continue to offer guidance and consolation to many with their eloquence, wisdom and humility.

With an Introduction, explanatory notes, and annotated bibliography by Nicholas Seager. This collection brings together Jane Austen’s earliest experiments in the art of fiction and novels that she left incomplete at the time of her premature death in 1817. In Sanditon, Austen exercises her acute powers of social observation in the setting of a newly fashionable seaside resort. This edition...

Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise that is still revered today as the ultimate commentary on war and military strategy. Focussing on the principle that one can outsmart your foe mentally by thinking very carefully about strategy before resorting to physical battle, this philosophy continues to be applied to the corporate and business world....

From the creator of the hit podcast WHY DO I FEEL?'I cannot recommend it highly enough.' Caitlin Moran'Brims with compassion and wit.' Cathy Rentzenbrink'Absolutely blew me away.' Jo Brand'Brilliant . . . I love it.' Phillippa Perry'I have never read a more powerful book about mental health.' Joanna CannonA journey into the heartland of psychiatry. This book debunks myths, challenges...

‘Jazz blazes with an intensity more usually found in tragic poetry of the past.... Morrison's voice transcends colour and creed and she has become one of America's outstanding post-war writers’ Guardian Joe Trace – in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband – shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At...

The much-anticipated sequel to the million-copy selling cult international hit. In the ruins of the apocalypse mankind fights for survival in the Moscow Metro. The basis of two bestselling computer games Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light, the Metro books have put Dmitry Glukhovsky in the vanguard of Russian speculative fiction alongside the creator of Night Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko. A year...

When criminal justice lawyer Joanna Chylka is tasked with defending the son of Zelasny & McVay's biggest client, she is stumped for the first time. Assisted by average law graduate and the firm's newest mentee, Kordian Orynski, they find himself in a maze of tangled evidence. Piotr Langer Junior has been charged with Article 148: murder with exceptional brutality. He is alleged to have...

What if the greatest writer of all time isn’t who we think he is? What if he isn’t even a he? Step back four hundred years and discover the female author who hid behind the mask of the man we know as William Shakespeare . . . In Elizabethan London, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her education has endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but still she...

The future is no more, and eternity has begun. It's 1986 and a nuclear reactor has exploded in Chernobyl. Syvert Løyning returns home from military service to live with his mother and brother on the outskirts of a town in Southern Norway. One night, he dreams of his late father, and can't shake him from his mind. Searching through his father's belongings for clues and connections, he finds a...

'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.' Fifty-one years have passed since Fermina rebuffed Florentino and married Juvenal Urbino instead. Swearing his love to her, he lives for the day when he can court her again. When Fermina's husband is killed, Florentino seizes his chance to declare his enduring love. But can young love find...

Mount Fuji has been a source of inspiration and awe since ancient times, and artists have been reproducing its likeness since at least the 14th century, as it became a key motif in all aspects of Japanese culture. The 19th century Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of important artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige continued this reverence, creating series of beautiful images of landscape and society,...