Its second subtitle is "an adventurous history of botany". JG is a scientist and an historian of exploration (his "The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea" was excellent).
Dorothy Parker kept a pair of alligators in her bath tub; Mozart's starling inspired a concerto; Einstein told his parrot bad jokes to cheer it up. Funny, eccentric non-fiction about scienti... read more
A whistle-stop tour, from Ivan to Putin, by one of the world's foremost Russia-watchers.
NB Publication of this book has been delayed until February 2021. Publishing schedules have been... read more
The contents of a shoebox in America led the author to discover her grandmmother's family, from Picasso in Paris, Dior and Chagall to a farmhouse in the Auvergne, Auschwitz and Long Island. ... read more
Four generations, from Ukrainian shtetls via the Holocaust to influence in Washington DC. The author is the mother of Jonathan S F, whose first novel 'Everything Is Illuminated' (2002) also ... read more
Edvard Behrends is a senior diplomat, spending time in a hotel in the Tyrol while slowly pushing on with delicate negotiations. A long look at a certain kind of solitude, love and loss.
This new novel from the author of The Neapolitan Quartet is also set in Naples, and was superbly reviewed in Italy.
NB Publication of this book has been delayed until 1st September. Pub... read more
Absorbing first novel about a group of female friends turning forty - their marriages, children, relationships... Mary McCarthy reconfigured for MeToo?
NB Publication of thi... read more
The lives of two children are thrown off kilter after WW1. Menaced by cynical aunts and orphanages, they run away to France to look for lost loved ones. Ages 8-11.
...and why it's good for the planet, the economy and our lives. We may even have time to read it. Prof Dorling is a specialist in demography at Oxford and knows his onions.
WD won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Into the Silence. Discursive, erudite and observant, he turns now to the story of Colombia's mightiest river.
NB Publication of this book has been de... read more
The first full biography (with access to his papers given by his family) to this Indian cultural icon and significant C20th musician, who influenced the Beatles, Coltrane, Glass, Menuhin.