Often hilarious and certainly astonishing, this is the novelist's memoir of growing up in Sheffield in the 1950s. His father, an insecure bully, adopted a toupée, which functioned as an ins... read more
Elizabeth Zott is a gifted chemist who reluctantly becomes America's favourite television chef. Imagine Julia Child in the form of Grace Kelly, wearing a lab coat and goggles... This feel-go... read more
In the early 20th century an easily overlooked square in Bloomsbury was the home, at one time or another, of the modernist poet H.D., Dorothy L Sayers, the classicist Jane Harrison, the hist... read more
Blaise Pascal famously said that "all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".
In 1790 a young French aristocrat living in Turin was confined to a ... read more
How and why does it work on us? This masterful study explores the mystery through the psychology, philosophy, mathematics, neurology and history that underlie as surrund it, in all its remar... read more
It's 1939 and Josef Kavalier has just arrived in New York, smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Prague in the body of a Golem. In Brooklyn he meets his cousin Sammy Clayman and the two dive headlon... read more
Had Mrs Gaskell lived in Japan and a century later, she might have written this intimate portrait of four sisters of good family living in Osaka in somewhat straitened circumstances. Their e... read more
A first collection by an Afghan poet, born in Kabul in 1990 and now a don at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Highly literate yet drawing on the story-telling traditions of her youth, Fayyaz tells of ... read more
Amongst the plethora of recent books on the threats facing liberal democracy, this one stands out for the author's talent for making complex subjects comprehensible. He sees the danger comin... read more
With considerable humility, this book is subtitled In Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading and Life. Actually it's the brilliant Saunders' own work, distilled from deca... read more
An incisive post-mortem on the state of the Victorian union, told (with a gossipy thrill) through the lives of five couples - Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, John Ruskin and Effie Gray, Charl... read more
A brilliant historical novel whose subtitle 'A Romance' is deliciously deceptive. Sontag follows Sir William Hamilton (rechristened as 'The Cavalier' for the entire book), whose expat exploi... read more