FICTION & CRIME

JACKIE KAY is a Scottish poet and novelist, and she is the National Poet of Scotland. The recipient of numerous prizes, she was also twice shortlisted for the Scottish Book of the Year Award. She is currently Chancellor of the University of Salford, and divides her time between Glasgow and Manchester. @JackieKayPoet

18/02/2021 PB | 9780571362929 | 208pp | £9.99 Ebook | 9780571362936 World ex USA & Canada

Bessie Smith Jackie Kay

Scotland’s National Poet brings to life the tempestuous story of the greatest blues singer who ever lived. Bessie Smith – singer, icon, pioneer – was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by nine, she sang on street corners before becoming a big name in travelling shows. In 1923 she made her first record for a new start-up: Columbia Records. Launched into stardom, Smith’s life was notoriously difficult. She drank pints of ‘bathtub gin’, got in violent fights, spent huge sums of money and had passionate affairs with men and women. She once single-handedly fought off a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. As a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in Bessie someone to idolise and with whom she could identify. In this definitive book Kay mixes biography, fiction, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life.

‘[Jackie Kay] offers the most vivid evocation of Bessie Smith I have ever read.’ Ian Carr, BBC Music

We Own This City

A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City Justin Fenton

In his debut book, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter adds to the line of classic true crime writing with the true story of ‘one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation’ (New York Times). Baltimore, 2015. As riots threatened to erupt across the city, with people demanding justice for Freddie Gray, drug and violent crime were surging. For years, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers – the Gun Trace Task Force – had been the city’s lauded and decorated heroes. But all the while they were stealing drugs and money and gaming the system. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or even law-abiding citizens over the word of the city’s elite task force? Now, in light of their spectacular trial of late 2018, and in a work of astounding reportage and painstaking self-discovery, Justin Fenton has pieced together a shocking story of systemic corruption.

A crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, JUSTIN FENTON was part of the Pulitzer Prizenominated staff recognised for their coverage of the Baltimore riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray. This is his first book.

25/02/2021 PB | 9780571356614 | 352pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571356638 UK C/Wealth ex Can open EU

MOLLY McCULLY BROWN is the author of The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded (Persea Books, 2017), which won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. Her poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, Crazyhorse, The New York Times, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, and elsewhere.

Kristin Teston ©

Places I’ve Taken My Body

Molly McCully Brown

This metaphysical, intimate and visceral essay collection is stunning in its insight and suffused with optimism. Molly McCully Brown constellates the subjects that define her inside and out: a disabled and conspicuous body, a religious conversion, a missing twin, a life in poetry. As she does, she depicts vividly for us not only her own life but a striking array of sites and topics, among them Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the world’s oldest anatomical theatre, eugenics, and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Throughout, she offers us the gift of her exquisite sentences, woven together in consideration, always, of what it means to be human: flawed, potent, feeling. Molly McCully Brown is the Rebecca Solnit of the body.

04/03/2021 HB | 9780571361090 | 224pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571361113 UK C/Wealth ex Can open EU

Hello, Mum Polly Dunbar

Fantastically funny, wise and charming motherhood sketches from the award-winning illustrator. ‘Go away, I’m busy writing about the beauty of motherhood.’ Polly Dunbar records her experience of motherhood in sketches and shares them on her popular Instagram account. She captures like no one else how just a single day with children can be exasperating, soul-bending, mind-numbing, exhilarating and everything in between. Hello, Mum collects together her sketches from the shock and awe of the baby days and the delight and terror of the toddler years, to the arrival of a baby brother and all the sibling rivalry that entails. It is a book full of heart and humour and, ultimately, a celebration of parenthood and childhood imagination.

POLLY DUNBAR is one of the most well-known illustrators working in the UK today. Polly’s bestselling book, Penguin, won numerous awards including the BookTrust Early Years Award, the Nestlé Silver Children’s Book Prize and the Red House Children’s Book of the Year Award and it was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal.

‘Polly’s sketches capture beautifully those moments with your very young children . . . Tender, funny, sometimes heartbreaking snapshots of motherhood.’ Shappi Khorsandi 04/03/2021

MATTHEW WILLIAMS is Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University. He is the director of ‘HateLab’, a global hub that monitors and counters hate crime and online hate speech. He advises and has conducted research for the Home Office, the US Department of Justice, Facebook and Google. @MattLWilliams

04/03/2021 PB | 9780571357062 | 352pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571357086 World All Languages The Science of Hate How prejudice becomes hate and what we can do to stop it Matthew Williams

A world-leading criminologist explores the tipping point between prejudice and hate crime. As a Professor of Criminology with over twenty years of experience, Matthew Williams is uniquely qualified to address the pressing questions of our times: are our brains wired to hate? Do divisive political leaders polarise communities? Why has the COVID-19 pandemic increased hate against the Chinese, Jews, and Muslims? Why do police murders of black men, like George Floyd, make the hate crime problem worse? What part have social media giants played in modern genocide? Williams shows how evolution and biology predispose humans to favour the ‘in-group’ and how financial meltdowns, global pandemics, AI and sporting events can create the conditions for hateful behaviour. He talks to perpetrators and victims, brain scientists and psychologists and makes use of the most cuttingedge scientific tools to reveal the science behind hate.

John Lawrence © til ë Patrick Dou ©

The Devil You Know

Gwen Adshead with Eileen Horne

Indelible insights into the minds of violent offenders from one of Britain’s pioneering forensic psychiatrists. How can we understand evil? Dr Gwen Adshead has spent thirty years providing therapy inside secure hospitals and prisons. Whatever her patient’s crime, from serial homicide to stalking, arson to child abuse, her aim is to help them to change their minds. Case by case, she takes us into the room with people we would normally flinch from as ‘monsters’. Through recounting the therapeutic process and the life stories of her patients, Adshead sheds light on the possibility of recovery. She questions our notions of evil and passionately argues for the prioritisation of mental health services. The Devil You Know is about thinking the unthinkable and about putting words to the unspeakable. Above all, it is a vital and compassionate book about our shared humanity.

Dr. GWEN ADSHEAD is a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She has worked at Broadmoor for over twenty years and was honoured with the President’s Medal for services to psychiatry in 2013. To share what she has learned, in a joint exercise in empathy, she has collaborated with the author and dramatist Eileen Horne.

01/04/2021 HB | 9780571357604 | 320pp | £16.99 Ebook | 9780571357635 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

BOB STANLEY is the author of Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop, and has written for the Guardian, The Times, NME and The Face. He is a founding member of the group Saint Etienne.

TESSA NORTON is a writer and artist, and has written for various publications including Tribune and The Wire. Her work has been presented at galleries including Wysing Arts Centre, Liverpool Biennial and The Tetley.

01/04/2021 HB | 9780571358335 | 320pp | £25.00 Ebook | 9780571358359 World All Languages

Pam Vander © COVER IN PROGRESS

Excavate!

The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall Bob Stanley & Tessa Norton

The definitive book about the world of Mark E. Smith and The Fall, featuring unseen essays, artwork and material. Over the course of their prolific forty-year career The Fall were consistently one of Britain’s most influential and unique groups, with notoriously opaque frontman Mark E. Smith hailed as one of its sharpest lyricists. Following his death in 2018, there was an outpouring of tributes from a surprising spectrum of admirers. With contributions from the likes of Adelle Stripe and Ian Penman, alongside never-seen artwork, photographs and handwritten material, Bob Stanley and Tessa Norton unpack the strangely fascinating landscape of The Fall. Illuminating their reference points, lyrical concerns and influences – from horror fiction to contemporary dance – Excavate cements their worldview as a vital contribution to British culture.

‘Mark E. Smith provided me with an alternative education, looping me into Camus, and Arthur Machen, and William Blake, and Can, and dub and old garage punk and rock’n’roll.’ Stewart Lee

Geoff Pugh ©

Finding the Raga

An Improvisation on Indian Music Amit Chaudhuri

A revelatory and very personal exploration of Indian classical music. By turns essay, memoir and cultural study, Finding the Raga is Amit Chaudhuri’s singular account of his discovery of, and enduring passion for, North Indian music: an ancient, evolving tradition whose principles and practices will alter the reader’s notion of what music might – and can – be. Tracing the music’s development, Finding the Raga dwells on its most distinctive and mysterious characteristics: its extraordinary approach to time, language and silence; its embrace of confoundment; and its ethos of evocation over representation. The result is a strange gift of a book, for musicians and music lovers, and for any creative mind in search of diverse and transforming inspiration.

‘Chaudhuri’s languorous, elliptical, beautiful prose is impressively impossible to put in any category at all.’ Salman Rushdie AMIT CHAUDHURI is the award-winning author of seven novels, including Friend of My Youth, as well as three books of essays, two of poems and a collection of short stories. He is a recorded performer in the Indian classical vocal tradition and a composer of experimental works, and he was previously a guitarist and songwriter in the American folk music style.

LAURA LIPPMAN’s novels have won many crime fiction prizes, including the Edgar, Anthony and Agatha Awards. Sunburn (2018), her second consecutive novel to win the eDunnit Award at Crimefest, was also nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. Her most recent novel, Lady in the Lake (2019), featured in numerous Best of the Year Lists.

01/04/2021 HB | 9780571360956 | 288pp | £14.99 Ebook | 9780571360963 UK C/Wealth ex Can open EU

My Life as a Villainess

Essays Laura Lippman

I had been creating villains on the page for about seven years when I finally became one. Laura Lippman’s first job in journalism was as a rookie reporter in Waco, Texas. Two decades later she left her first husband, quit the newspaper business, and became a full-time novelist. Her fiction has always centred on complicated women, paying unique attention to the intricacies of their flaws, their vulnerability, and their empowerment. Now, finally, Lippman has turned her gimlet eye on a new subject: herself. In this, her first collection of essays, Lippman gives us a brilliant, candid portrait of an unapologetically flawed life. Childhood, friendships, influences, becoming a mother in later life – Lippman’s inspiring life stories are at once specific and universal.

‘An unflinching chronicler of life in America right now.’ Gillian Flynn

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This Rare Spirit The Life of Charlotte Mew Julia Copus

The first comprehensive biography of this highly original poet and short-story writer, following the 150th anniversary of her birth. Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) was regarded as one of the ‘boldest and most compassionate’ (TLS) writers of her age by her contemporaries. She has since been largely neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave. Growing up in Bloomsbury, Mew was an intriguing blend of New Woman and stalwart Victorian. Her poems speak to us strongly today, in these strangely mixed times of exposure and seclusion: they reveal the agony of an isolated being, forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while simultaneously being propelled by her work into the public arena. Julia Copus sensitively reveals how Mew transfigured that very private suffering into an art of universal resonance.

‘The greatest living poetess.’ Virginia Woolf ‘She just knows humanity – one of the rarest things in the world.’ Walter de la Mare CHARLOTTE MEW was an English short-story writer and poet. The Farmer’s Bride (1916) was her only book to be published in her lifetime; on the strength of it, she was awarded a Civil List pension. JULIA COPUS’s fourth poetry collection, Girlhood, and her selection of Charlotte Mew’s poetry and prose were both published in 2019 by Faber.

15/04/2021 HB | 9780571313532 | 576pp | £25.00 Ebook | 9780571313556 UK C/Wealth + Can, EU

RICHARD THOMPSON is a musician best known for his work in the folk rock group Fairport Convention. Rolling Stone named him as one of the Top 20 Guitarists of All Time, he has received several Lifetime Achievement Awards and he was awarded an OBE in 2011.

15/04/2021 HB | 9780571348169 | 320pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571348183 UK C/Wealth ex Can open EU

COVER IN PROGRESS Getty Images ©

Beeswing

Fairport, Folk Rock and Finding My Voice, 1967–75 Richard Thompson

The autobiography of the legendary co-founder of Fairport Convention. Richard Thompson came of age at an extraordinary moment in British culture. It was 1967 and popular music was reflecting a wide range of influences. In the midst of this musical awakening, eighteen-year-old Thompson co-founded the legendary and seminal folk rock group Fairport Convention. Going back to his childhood and reflecting on this heady period of personal creative intensity, Thompson details life on the road, his relationship with bandmate Sandy Denny, playing alongside Jimi Hendrix and Nick Drake, a devastating car crash, his partnership with his ex-wife Linda and his personal spiritual journey. Beeswing is the intimate memoir of a British musical legend.

‘Thompson could be said to be an English Dylan – only in some ways he’s even better than that.’ Guardian

Jeff Cottenden ©

Teenage

The Creation of Youth 1875-1945 Jon Savage

A reissue of Jon Savage’s landmark cultural history of youth, with a new introduction from the author. One of David Bowie’s Top 100 Must Read books and the inspiration behind the film Teenage, directed by Matt Wolf and narrated by Ben Whishaw, this is the acclaimed history of the century and a half of ferment, folly and angst that resulted in the arrival of ‘the teenager’ in 1945. Ringing with music, from Ragtime to Swing, Teenage roams London, New York, Paris and Berlin with hooligans and Apaches; explores free love and eternal youth; and meets flappers and zootsuiters, the unemployed and the Lost Generation. Meanwhile the stories come fast and furious, comic, poignant, painfully moving. This new edition will be published alongside reissues of Savage classics England’s Dreaming and 1966.

‘The definitive history of youth in revolt.’ Rolling Stone JON SAVAGE is a bestselling author, broadcaster and journalist. His books include England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded and the top ten bestseller This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division: The Oral History.

06/05/2021 PB | 9780571366774 | 576pp | £12.99 Ebook | 9780571366781 UK C/Wealth ex Can

ANIL SETH is a leading British researcher in the field of consciousness science. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Conciousness Science at the University of Sussex, and his writing has appeared in New Scientist, the Guardian, and BBC magazine. @anilkseth

06/05/2021 HB | 9780571337705 | 320pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571337736 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

Mark Ware ©

Being You The Inside Story of Your Inner Universe Anil Seth

This radical theory of consciousness challenges our understanding of humanity itself. Consciousness is the great unsolved mystery in our scientific understanding of the brain. Somewhere, somehow, inscribed in the brain is everything that makes you you. But how do we grasp what happens in the brain to turn mere electrical impulses into the vast range of perceptions, thoughts and emotions we feel? Anil Seth charts the developments in our understanding of consciousness, revealing radical breakthroughs that transform the way we think about the self. Drawing on original research and interdisciplinary collaborations, Being You puts forward a revolutionary framework of how we experience the world and our place within it.

‘Anil Seth thinks clearly and sharply on one of the hardest problems of science and philosophy, cutting through the weeds with a scientist’s mind and a storyteller’s skill.’ Adam Rutherford

A Stinging Delight A Memoir David Storey

A powerful memoir by an extraordinary literary figure: rugby player, artist, acclaimed playwright and Booker Prize winning novelist. The third son of a coalminer, David Storey takes us from his tough upbringing in Wakefield, to being ‘sold’ to Leeds Rugby League Club, to his escape to the Slade School of Art and his life in post-war London, where he taught in seventeen deprived East End schools. He documents the childhood death of his eldest brother, addressing much of the memoir to him and exploring how this relates to his own sometimes paralysing depression. And yet, a prolific and celebrated writer, he recalls heady spells in New York, close relationships in the theatre with Jocelyn Herbert, Ralph Richardson and Lindsay Anderson, early success with This Sporting Life, and winning the Booker Prize for his novel Saville.

‘A Chekhov of the North.’ Guardian

‘The leading novelist of his generation.’ Daily Telegraph ‘David Storey is our best, most original and satisfying playwright.’ Lindsay Anderson DAVID STOREY was born in Wakefield in 1933. He studied at the Slade School of Art. He wrote fifteen plays and eleven novels. His many prizes include the Macmillan Fiction Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Faber Memorial Prize and, in 1976, the Booker Prize for Saville. He died in 2017.

03/06/2021 HB | 9780571360314 | 352pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571360338 World English Language

Dr JENNIFER OTTERBICKERDIKE is a cultural historian and author. She has appeared on BBC Radio 6, BBC 4, Channel 4 and ITV, and has written for the Guardian. She is the author of several books, including the bestselling Why Vinyl Matters. Originally from Santa Cruz, California, she now lives in London.

03/06/2021 HB | 9780571350018 | 320pp | £20.00 Ebook | 9780571350032 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

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You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone

The Biography of Nico Jennifer Otter-Bickerdike

A myth-shattering biography of one of rock’s most underestimated creative forces. Over the course of her life, Nico was an ever-evolving myth, an enigma that escaped definition. Though she is remembered for contributions to The Velvet Underground & Nico, she is often overlooked, while fellow Velvets Lou Reed and John Cale are hailed as icons. Defying the sexist casting of Nico’s life as the tragedy of a beautiful woman losing her youth and fame, You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone cements her legacy as one of the most vital artists of her time, inspiring a generation of luminaries including Björk, Morrissey and Iggy Pop. Containing over a hundred new interviews and rare archival material, this is the Nico biography we have been waiting for.

‘You know, it influenced us all, to have such a bold delivery of bold songs by a female.’ Patti Smith, on Nico ‘What I have in common with Nico is the understanding of her furious frustration at not being recognised.’ Marianne Faithfull

NEW COVER TO COME

The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema

Updated Edition Jason Wood

Nearly two decades ago, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro ripped through cinemas across the world, announcing the arrival of Mexican cinema. Recently, these film-makers have taken awards ceremonies by storm with films such as Gravity, Roma, The Shape of Water, Birdman and The Revenant. Featuring extensive interviews with key figures, Jason Wood traces these successes back to the key historical films of the Mexican film canon, charting the sociopolitical, individual and creative forces that helped give birth to it. This revised edition of The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema brings this astounding story up to date and profiles the next generation waiting in the wings.

‘It’s the breadth of access which makes this book so vital and so engaging, with pleasingly cine-literate ramblings from del Toro, Cuarón and Carlos Reygadas, to name but a few.’ Time Out JASON WOOD has over twenty years’ experience in the film industry. He is currently the Creative Director of Film & Culture at HOME and was formerly the Director of Programming at Curzon Cinemas and Programming Manager at Picturehouse. He is the author of ten published works on cinema.

03/06/2021 PB | 9780571353774 | 400pp | £16.99 Ebook | 9780571353781 World All Languages

GEORGIA PRITCHETT is a multi-award-winning comedy and drama writer. Her writing and production credits include Veep, Have I Got News for You, Smack the Pony, Not Going Out, The Thick of It, and many more. She is currently a writer and co-executive producer on HBO’s critically acclaimed show Succession, now in its third season.

My Mess Is a Bit of a Life

Georgia Pritchett

This memoir, from the multi-award-winning comedy writer, is an utterly joyful reflection on living – and sometimes thriving (sometimes not) – with anxiety. From worrying about the monsters under her bed as a child (Were they comfy enough?) to embracing womanhood (One way of knowing you have crossed from girlhood to womanhood is that men stop furtively masturbating at you from bushes and start shouting things at you from cars), to becoming a mother (Birth is a beautiful thing. If your idea of beauty is a tractor pulling a combine harvester out of your vagina), Georgia Pritchett’s memoir takes us through a life lived anxiously. Filled with warmth and humour, insight and honesty, it is a brilliant meditation on how to live with worry.

17/06/2021 HB | 9780571365883 | 208pp | £16.99 Ebook | 9780571365913 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

NEW COVER TO COME

Where the Wild Dads Went

Katie Blackburn

A charming and hilarious tribute to the children’s classic, revised and republished in time for Father’s Day. In this touching nod to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, a tired and emotional dad finds himself drifting off to the place where the Wild Dads went. In a riot of headbanging, air guitar and dad-dancing he finds himself at the centre of a great escape, but soon he begins to miss the place he left behind . . . In this tropical reissue, the Wild Dads travel much further afield to a beautiful island paradise with brand new illustrations by Sholto Walker. This little book is the perfect gift for new dads – or any parent who’s ever wanted to run away from it all. Reissued in time for Father’s Day.

‘A brilliantly funny tribute to a true children’s classic and a perfect gift.’ The Book People, on Where the Wild Mums Are KATIE BLACKBURN is the author of Where the Wild Mums Are, which sold over 100,000 copies. The first edition of Where the Wild Dads Went sold over 25,000 copies.

SHOLTO WALKER has been an artist and illustrator for 25 years. His award-winning work has gained him an international reputation.

non-fiction paperbacks spring 2021

07/01/2021 PB | 9780571330669 | 352pp | £10.99 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

Square Haunting

Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars Francesca Wade

A spellbinding biography of five exceptional, trailblazing women who each found themselves in Mecklenburgh Square, on the radical fringes of interwar Bloomsbury: modernist poet H.B., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and writer and publisher Virginia Woolf.

‘A beautiful and deeply moving book.’ Sally Rooney ‘Outstanding. I’ll be recommending this all year.’ Sarah Bakewell

‘Elegant, erudite and absorbing . . . a startling original debut.’ Frances Wilson

04/03/2021 PB | 9780571337576 | 512pp | £10.99 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can

The Double X Economy

The Epic Potential of Empowering Women Professor Linda Scott

Professor Linda Scott describes both the shocking gender inequalities built into the global economy and the collective power of women that could be harnessed to turn these around and combat humankind’s most pressing social, financial and environmental problems – for everyone. Provocative, accessible and game-changing, The Double X Economy is at once an expert analysis and an urgent call to action.

‘A compelling and actionable case for unleashing women’s economic power.’ Melinda Gates ‘In a world where so many of us stick safely to criticising the status quo, it’s heartening to read someone willing to offer viable solutions.’ Caroline Criado-Perez, Observer

‘A rallying cry for global female equality . . . curiously exhilarating . . . brisk, no-nonsense.’ Gabby Hinsliff, Guardian, Book of the Day

06/05/2021 PB | 9780571363513 | 224pp | £9.99 World English Language

The Stubborn Light of Things

A Nature Diary Melissa Harrison

As much at home exploring the city as rural Suffolk, this diary – compiled from Melissa Harrison’s beloved ‘Nature Notebook’ column in The Times – maps her joyful engagement with the natural world and demonstrates how we must first learn to see, and then act to preserve, the beauty we have on our doorsteps – no matter where we live.

‘A writer of great gifts.’ Robert Macfarlane ‘A nature writer if ever there was one.’ Ali Smith

‘Looking through Melissa Harrison’s eyes provides a new way of seeing.’ Literary Review

03/06/2021 PB | 9780571342617 | 288pp | £9.99 World All Languages

Who Am I, Again?

Lenny Henry

You might think you know Lenny Henry. Think again.

‘Moving, powerful and very funny.’ Mail on Sunday ‘A raw, touching memoir.’ Guardian ‘Witty, charming and engagingly self-aware.’ i newspaper, Books of the Year

The Universe Speaks in Numbers

How Modern Maths Reveals Nature’s Deepest Secrets Graham Farmelo

A groundbreaking exploration of how the interplay of physics and mathematics has enriched our understanding of the universe. Moving from the Enlightenment to the breakthroughs of Einstein and Dirac, to the work of contemporary scientists shedding light on each other’s disciplines, Graham Farmelo shows how this relationship has redefined reality as we know it.

‘I am overcome with admiration for its range and profundity . . . an amazing achievement.’ Michael Frayn ‘A wonderful book.’ Tom Stoppard ‘Fascinating and elegantly written.’ Manjit Kumar, Guardian

Shakespeare in a Divided America James Shapiro

Shakespeare’s position as England’s national poet is unquestionable. But Shakespeare has long held an essential place in American culture too. Why, though, would a proudly independent republic embrace England’s greatest writer? Especially when his works enact so many of America’s darkest nightmares: interracial marriage, crossdressing, same-sex love and assassination? Shapiro leads us to fascinating answers and startling stories.

‘One of the greatest living scholars of the Bard.’ The Times ‘Best Books of 2020’

‘Right on the money . . . timely and resonant.’ Robert McCrum, Observer

Fried & Justified

Hits, Myths, Break-Ups and Breakdowns in the Record Business 1978-98 Mick Houghton

The three acts that illustrious music publicist Mick Houghton is most closely identified with are Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope, and the KLF. As confidant and co-conspirator, he navigated the minefield of rivalries and contrasting fortunes which make Fried & Justified such a candid, amusing and insightful picture of an exciting and inspirational period for music.

‘As parallel histories of the UK alternative scene go, this one leaves them all behind.’ Uncut

‘An engaging, even epochal, book.’ Mojo ‘Entertaining . . . recalls twenty heady years at the centre of the British music business.’ FT

07/01/2021 PB | 9780571321827 | 336pp | £10.99 World ex USA 04/02/2021 PB | 9780571338894 | 320pp | £10.99 UK C/Wealth ex Can open EU 04/02/2021 PB | 9780571336838 | 320pp | £10.99 World All Languages

Folk Song in England

Steve Roud

Folk Song in England is a landmark celebration of English folk music and its lasting legacy. Acclaimed folklorist Steve Roud draws on an unprecedented range of sources to present an intricate social history through the ages. Highly absorbing and impeccably researched, this book gives a sonorous voice to England’s musical past.

‘[A] monumental history of the English folk story.’ Kathryn Hughes, Guardian ‘A fascinating tour d’horizon of folk song.’ The Economist ‘There won’t be a better or more important book about English folk song in any of our lifetimes.’ Stephen Hunt, fRoots

The Accidental Countryside

Hidden Havens for Britain’s Wildlife Stephen Moss

The fascinating and remarkably uplifting story of how Britain’s wildlife has co-opted our manmade landscape – from Iron Age earthworks to glimmering skyscrapers – to create teeming havens of (un)natural beauty.

‘Energetic and uplifting.’ Jonathan Drummond, TLS

‘Delightful.’ Caspar Henderson, Spectator ‘An intriguing natural history story.’ BBC Wildlife

Thinking Again

Jan Morris

The author of classics such as Venice and Trieste casts her eye over modern life – from her daily thousand paces to the wonders of the natural world, and from the vagaries of old age to the beauty of youth, she once again displays her determined belief in embracing life and creativity – all kindness and marmalade.

‘Morris’ writing is just as elegant and erudite, and her mind just as supple, playful, curious, rigorous, humorous and surprising as ever.’ New York Times

‘Both a deep dive into the charming and erudite mind of Morris, now 93, and also a moving meditation on just what it means to be old.’ Spectator

04/03/2021 PB | 9780571309726 | 784pp | £16.99 World All Languages 04/03/2021 PB | 9781783351657 | 272pp | £9.99 UK C/Wealth + Can, EU 04/03/2021 PB | 9780571357666 | 336pp | £8.99 UK C/Wealth + EU ex Can