***THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 5 BESTSELLER***`A wonderful writer, who will surely inspire a generation the way that Caitlin Moran did before her` Julie Burchill`I loved it so much, I wanted it to go on forever, Dolly Alderton is so gifted at making people care. A rare talent` Marian Keyes`I can say with absolute certainty that you have to add it to your 2018 book list` The Pool When it comes to the trials & triumphs of becoming a grown up, journalist & former Sunday Times dating columnist Dolly Alderton has seen & tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod-Stewart themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop is the only man you`ve ever been able to rely on, & finding that that your mates are always there at the end of every messy night out. It`s a book about bad dates, good friends &
- above all else
- about recognising that you & you alone are enough. Glittering with wit & insight, heart & humour, Dolly Alderton`s powerful debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, & other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age
- while making you laugh until you fall over. Everything I know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful uncertainty.A spot-on, wildly funny & sometimes heart-breaking book about growing up, growing older & navigating all kinds of love along the way Praise for Everything I Know About Love` With courageous honesty, Alderton documents her life up to now, the highs & the lows
- the sex, the drugs, the nightmare landlords, the heartaches & the humiliations. Deeply funny, sometimes shocking, & admirably open-hearted & optimistic. Only this writer, in this time, could have made such a mesmerising pattern from mess & colour. A brilliant debut.` Daily Telegraph` It`s so full of life & laughs
- I gobbled up this book. Alderton has built something beautiful & true out of many fragments of daftness` Amy Liptrot I loved its truth, its self awareness, humour & most of all, its heart-spilling generosity. Just when you think it`s going one (wonderful) way, it takes you somewhere infinitely more rugged, complicated & all the more affectingly tender. A joy. In short, it`s a stone cold classic` Sophie Dahl




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On 2 May 2008, an enormous tropical cyclone made landfall in Burma. The cyclone wreaked untold havoc, but the regime, in an unfathomable decision of near-genocidal proportions, blocked international aid from entering the country, & provided little relief themselves. Emma Larkin, who has been travelling to & secretly reporting on Burma for years, managed to arrange for a tourist visa in those frenzied days & arrived to chaos. Hundreds of thousands of Burmese citizens lacked food, drinking water & basic shelter. In Everything is Broken, Larkin not only exposes the extent of the damage, but provides a singular portrait of the generals responsible for compounding the tragedy, examining in revealing detail the historical, religious & superstitious setting that created Burma`s tenacious & brutal dictatorship. ...

Keri Smith`s Everything is Connected is not just a book of postcards. It`s a series of experiments designed to shake us out of our ruts. Through the ingenious use of the common postcard, Keri Smith encourages us to embark on a quest to reanimate everyday life. No matter how hard we try, everyday life always becomes predictable. From the toothpaste we use & the clothing we wear, to the way we talk & what we do in our free time, we follow the same habits, most likely because someone told us to, or we never really gave it much thought to begin with. But what if we could shape our lives into our own vision, informed with our own desires & passions? What if we had the power to create our own realities whenever we wished
- just by changing the way we perform simple tasks? Keri Smith is a bestselling author, illustrator, & thinker. Her books demonstrate a `learn by doing` approach, & are being used in school curriculums all over the world as a way of fostering non-traditional methods of creative exploration. She also teaches & conducts workshops based on her techniques throughout North America. Her works include Wreck this Journal, This is Not A Book, How to Be an Explorer of the World, Mess & Finish This Book, as well as Wreck This App & This is Not an App.
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Michael Jacobs was haunted by Velazquez`s enigmatic masterpiece Las Meninas from first encountering it in the Prado as a teenager. In Everything is Happening Jacobs searches for the ultimate significance of the painting by following the trails of associations from each individual character in the picture, as well as his own memories of & relationship to this extraordinary work. From Jacobs` first trip to Spain, to the complex politics of Golden Age Madrid, to his meeting with the man who saved Las Meninas during the Spanish Civil war, via Jacobs` experiences of the sunless world of the art history academy, Jacobs` dissolves the barriers between the past & the present, the real & the illusory. Cut short by Jacobs` death in 2014, & completed with an introduction & coda of great sensitivity & insight by his friend & fellow lover of art, the journalist Ed Vulliamy, this visionary, meditative & often very funny book is a passionate, personal manifesto for the liberation of how we look at painting. ...

Michael Jacobs was haunted by Velazquez`s enigmatic masterpiece Las Meninas from first encountering it in the Prado as a teenager. In Everything is Happening Jacobs searches for the ultimate significance of the painting by following the trails of associations from each individual character in the picture, as well as his own memories of & relationship to this extraordinary work. From Jacobs` first trip to Spain to the complex politics of Golden Age Madrid, to his meeting with the man who saved Las Meninas during the Spanish Civil war, via Jacobs` experiences of the sunless world of the art history academy, Jacobs` dissolves the barriers between the past & the present, the real & the illusory. Cut short by Jacobs` death in 2014, & completed with an introduction & coda of great sensitivity & insight by his friend & fellow lover of art, the journalist Ed Vulliamy, this visionary, meditative & often very funny book is a passionate, personal manifesto for the liberation of how we look at painting. ...

Just like it was taken for granted that houses could be abandoned & slowly decay, so it was taken for granted that people died in prisons, & that it was possible that no-one would really ever know the cause of death. This is the nature of totalitarianism. In 1993-94 Sigrid Rausing completed her anthropological fieldwork on the peninsula of Noarootsi, a former Soviet border protection zone in Estonia. Abandoned watch towers dotted the coast line, & the huge fields of the Lenin collective farm were lying fallow, waiting for claims from former owners, fleeing war & Soviet & Nazi occupation. Rausing`s conversations with the local people touched on many subjects: the economic privations of post-Soviet existence, the bewildering influx of western products, & the Swedish background of many of them. In Everything Is Wonderful Rausing reflects on history, political repression, & the story of the minority Swedes in the area. She lived & worked amongst the villagers, witnessing their transition from repression to freedom, & from Soviet neglect to post-Soviet austerity. ...

From 1993 to 1994, Sigrid Rausing completed her anthropological fieldwork on the penninsula of Noarootsi, a former Soviet border protection zone in Estonia. Abandoned watchtowers dotted the coastline, & the huge fields of the Lenin collective farm were laying fallow, waiting for claims from former owners who had fled war & Soviet & Nazi occupation. Rausing`s research focused on the loss of historical memory during the Soviet occupation, & the slow revival of an independent Estonian culture, including the recognition of the minority Swedes in Estonia. She lived & worked amongst the villagers, witnessing their transition from repression to independence, & from Soviet neglect to post-Soviet austerity. ...

Eleven year old Olly has a very special delivery
- a 3D printing machine, stamped with PROPERTY OF M.O.D & BRITISH SPACE AGENCY.
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**LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**` Daisy Johnson is a new goddamn swaggering monster of fiction.` Lauren Groff Words are important to Gretel, always have been. As a child, she lived on a canal boat with her mother, & together they invented a language that was just their own. She hasn`t seen her mother since the age of sixteen, though
- almost a lifetime ago
- & those memories have faded. Now Gretel works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries, which suits her solitary nature.A phone call from the hospital interrupts Gretel`s isolation & throws up questions from long ago. She begins to remember the private vocabulary of her childhood. She remembers other things, too: the wild years spent on the river; the strange, lonely boy who came to stay on the boat one winter; & the creature in the water
- a canal thief?
- swimming upstream, getting ever closer. In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but go back. Daisy Johnson`s debut novel turns classical myth on its head & takes readers to a modern-day England unfamiliar to most. As daring as it is moving, Everything Under is a story of family & identity, of fate, language, love & belonging that leaves you unsettled & unstrung.



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An incisive investigation of China`s ideological development as it becomes an ever more aggressive player in regional & global diplomacy. For many years after Deng Xiaoping initiated the economic reforms that began in 1978 & led to its overtaking the USA as the world`s economic powerhouse, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That diffidence has now been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian geopolitical dominance by building up its navy, fabricating new islands to support its territorial claims in areas like the South China Sea, & diplomatically bullying smaller players. Underlying this shift in attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China`s present-day actions in historical terms. China is now once more on the path to restoring the glories of its dynastic past. Howard W. French demonstrates that if we can understand how that historical identity informs current actions
- in ways ideological, philosophical, & even legal
- we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China intends to become
- & to interact wisely with the superpower.


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