Gift From the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh ( hardback)

£9.99

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  • Publisher:Vintage Publishing
  • Imprint:Chatto & Windus
  • ISBN:9780701188627
  • Published:26 Feb 2015
  • Dimensions:171 x 132 x 18 (mm)
  • Pub. Country:United Kingdom
'Quietly powerful and a great help. Glorious' Emma Thompson 'Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.' Holidaying by the sea, and taking inspiration from the shells she finds on the seashore, Anne Morrow Lindbergh meditates on youth and age, love and marriage, peace, solitude and contentment. First published in 1955 and an instant bestseller, Gift from the Sea's insights - into aspects of the modern world that threaten to overwhelm us, the complications of technology, the ever multiplying commitments that take us from our families - are as relevant today as they ever were, perhaps even more so.
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Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman ( paperback March 2022)

£10.99

The instant Sunday Times bestseller 'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living' EMMA GANNON

What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get round to what counts? We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling.

Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations.

And it shows how the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we've made, as individuals and as a society. Its many revelations will transform the reader's worldview. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny.

Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

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The Bilingual Brain : by Albert Costa

£10.99

... And what it tells us about the Science of Language 

This engaging book explores just how multiple languages are acquired and sorted out by the brain. . .
The definitive study of bilingualism and the human brain from a leading neuropsychologist

Over half of the world's population is bilingual and yet few of us understand how this extraordinary, complex ability really works. How do two languages co-exist in the same brain? What are the advantages and challenges of being bilingual? How do we learn - and forget - a language? In the first study of its kind, leading expert Albert Costa shares twenty years of experience to explore the science of language. Looking at studies and examples from Canada to France to South Korea, The Bilingual Brain investigates the significant impact of bilingualism on daily life from infancy to old age.

It reveals, among other things, how babies differentiate between two languages just hours after birth, how accent affects the way in which we perceive others and even why bilinguals are better at conflict resolution. Drawing on cutting-edge neuro-linguistic research from his own laboratory in Barcelona as well from centres across the world, and his own bilingual family, Costa offers an absorbing examination of the intricacies and impact of an extraordinary skill. Highly engaging and hugely informative,The Bilingual Brain leaves us all with a sense of wonder at how language works.

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How Should One Read A Book? By Virginia Woolf

£7.99

Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos and so get the deepest and widest pleasure from what we read?'Published for the first time as a standalone volume, Virginia Woolf's short, impassioned essay, How Should One Read a Book? celebrates the enduring importance of great literature. In this timeless manifesto on the written word, rediscover the joy of reading and the power of a good book to change the world. One of the most significant modernist writers of the 20th Century, Virginia Woolf and her visionary essays are as relevant today as they were nearly one hundred years ago.

Features a new introduction by Sheila Heti.
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Grief is the thing with Feathers, Max Porter ( 2016)

£9.99

An extraordinary debut novella by Max Porter, loosely about a family dealing with the immediate period of grief following their mother’s death. Crow is the metaphorical visitor. Recently performed as a powerful stage play with Cillian Murphy.

 

 In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.

In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. This extraordinary debut, full of unexpected humour and emotional truth, marks the arrival of a thrilling and significant new talent.

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The Shack

£9.99

With 18 million copies sold worldwide, THE SHACK is an international bestseller that explores life's toughest questions through the gripping story of one man's struggle to find answers to his suffering. Mack's youngest daughter, Missy, was abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, still trapped in his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack.

Against his better judgement Mack arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon. What he finds there will change his life forever. THE SHACK wrestles with the timeless question, 'Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?' Mack's experiences when he faces up to his darkest nightmares will astound you, and perhaps transform you as much as it did him.

This is the kind of book you'll want to tell everyone about. Millions have discovered it already - now it's your turn.
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The Future of Geography, Tim Marshall ( available PB or HB)

£20.00

The Future of Geography : How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World

This isn't science fiction. It's astropolitics. We're entering a new space race - and it could revolutionise life on Earth.

Space: the new frontier, a wild and lawless place. It is already central to communication, economics, military strategy and international relations on Earth. Now, it is the latest arena for human exploration, exploitation - and, possibly, conquest.

We're heading up and out, and we're taking our power struggles with us. China, the USA and Russia are leading the way. From physical territory and resources to satellites, weaponry and strategic choke points, geopolitics is as important in the skies above us as it is down below.

If you've ever wondered if humans are going back to the Moon, who will benefit from exploration or what space wars might look like, the answers are here. With all the insight and wit that have made Tim Marshall the UK's most popular writer on geopolitics, this gripping book shows how we got here and where we're going, covering great-power rivalry; technology; commerce; combat in space; and what it means for all of us down here on Earth. This is essential reading on power, politics and the future of humanity.

Praise for The Power of Geography:'Fascinating . . .

I can't imagine reading a better book this year.'Daily Mirror'Another outstanding guide to the modern world. Marshall is a master at explaining what you need to know and why.' Peter Frankopan

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Present Moment,Wonderful Moment : Thich Nhat Hanh ( paperback Aug 2021)

£12.99

Thich Nhat Hanh's work has proven to be the antidote to our modern pain and sorrows' Ocean Vuong

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. Beloved Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh offers 79 meditations to help you through your daily routines in a peaceful and mindful way.

This beautifully illustrated book shares a simple verse with an enlightening commentary that will give you the space and heart to live each day in a connected and calm way. 'The monk who taught the world mindfulness' Time

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Notes to Self, by Emilie Pine (pb)

£10.99

The extraordinary #1 bestseller - a word-of-mouth literary phenomenon'

Do not read this book in public: it will make you cry' Anne Enright'

I am afraid of being the disruptive woman. And of not being disruptive enough. I am afraid.But I am doing it anyway. In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the business of living as a woman in the 21st century - its extraordinary pain and its extraordinary joy. Courageous, humane and uncompromising, she writes with radical honesty on birth and death, on the grief of infertility, on caring for her alcoholic father, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self. Devastatingly poignant and profoundly wise - and joyful against the odds - Notes to Self offers a portrait not just of its author but of a whole generation.

Winner of the Bord Gais Non Fiction Irish Book Award in 2018.

Paperback, June 2019 ( pls note picture is of hardback) 

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Doppelgänger, Naomi Klein ( hardback Sept 2023)

£25.00

When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger.

Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable?To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting 'the children'). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister. This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass.

It's for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters. 

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, AND PROSPECT*

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Prophet, Helen Macdonald ( hardback August 2023)

£18.99

Present-day science fiction that feels like the best sort of spy novel - NEIL GAIMAN


This is Prophet. It knows when you were happiest. It gives life to your fondest memories and uses them to destroy you... '

An all-American diner appears overnight in a remote British field.  And the deaths quickly follow. A weapon like no other - Prophet - is targeting innocent people. But nobody knows who created it, or why.

Sunil Rao seems a surprising choice of investigator. Chaotic and unpredictable, the former agent is the antithesis of his partner Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein, the model of a military man. But Sunil has the unique ability to distinguish truth from lies: in objects, words and people, in the past and in real time.

And Adam is the only one who truly knows him, after a troubled past together. Now, as they battle this strange new reality, they are drawn closer than ever to defend what they both hold most dear. Prophet can weaponise the past.

But only love will protect the future.

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White Holes, Carlo Rovelli ( hardback Oct 2023)

£14.99

White Holes : Inside the Horizon

 A mesmerizing trip to the strange new world of white holes, from Carlo Rovelli, the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on PhysicsLet us journey into the heart of a black hole. Let us slip beyond its boundary, the horizon, and tumble - on and on - down this crack in the universe. As we plunge, we'll see geometry fold, we'll feel the equations draw tight around us.

Eventually, we'll pass it: the remains of a star, deep and dense and falling further far. And then - the bottom. Where time and space end, and the white hole is born .

. . With lightness and magic, here Carlo Rovelli traces the ongoing adventure of his own cutting-edge research, of the uncertainty and joy of going where we've not yet been.

Guiding us to the edge of theory and experiment, he invites us to go beyond, to experience the fever and the disquiet of science. Here is the extraordinary life of a white hole.

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Babel, RF Kuang ( paperback Sept 2023)

£9.99

'An ingenious fantasy about empire' GUARDIAN

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. Oxford, 1836. The city of dreaming spires. It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world. And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift. Until it became a prison... But can a student stand against an empire? An incendiary new novel from award-winning author R.F.Kuang about the power of language, the violence of colonialism, and the sacrifices of resistance.

'A masterpiece that resonates with power and knowledge. BABEL is a stark picture of the cruelty of empire, a distillation of dark academia, and a riveting blend of fantasy and historical fiction - a monumental achievement' Samantha Shannon

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The Book You Want Everyone You Love to Read, Philippa Perry ( hardback Oct 23)

£10.99

Life success is all about relationships and the quality of those connections, whether that's with family, partners, friends, colleagues or most importantly yourself. If you can get those relationships on a functional and even keel, then the other tricky stuff that life throws your way becomes easier to manage. In this warm, practical and witty book, No.1 Sunday Times bestselling psychotherapist Philippa Perry shows you how to approach life's big problems.

How do you find and keep love? What can you do to manage conflict better? How can you get unstuck and cope with change and loss? What does it mean to you to be content? Are other people just annoying or are you the problem?With a healthy dose of sanity, Philippa Perry's compassionate advice could help you become a happier, wiser person.

Following on from the hugely successful, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read - for parents of children of ALL ages.

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Before We Say Goodbye, Toshikazu Kawaguchi ( hardback October 2023)

£14.99

Toshikazu Kawaguchi's poignant Before We Say Goodbye, translated from Japanese, explores the age-old question: what would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

The regulars at the magical Cafe Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary, secret menu time travel offering.

But the journey is not without risks and there are rules to follow. Travellers must have visited the cafe previously and most importantly, must return to the present in the time it takes for their coffee to go cold. In the tradition of Kawaguchi's sensational 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold' series, readers are be introduced to a new set of visitors:- The husband with something important left to say- The woman who couldn't bid her dog farewell- The woman who couldn't answer a proposal- The daughter who drove her father away .

Catch up on the rest of the series with Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales from the Cafe and Before Your Memory Fades.

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Illuminations, Alan Moore ( paperback Sept 23)

£9.99

In his first-ever short story collection, which spans forty years of work and features many never-before-published pieces, international bestselling author and legendary creator of From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and other modern classics, Alan Moore, presents nine stories full of wonder and strangeness, each taking us deeper into the fantastical underside of reality. In A Hypothetical Lizard, two concubines in a brothel for fantastical specialists fall in love, with tragic ramifications.

In Not Even Legend, a paranormal study group is infiltrated by one of the otherworldly beings they seek to investigate. In Illuminations, a nostalgic older man decides to visit a seaside resort from his youth and finds the past all too close at hand. And in the monumental novella What We Can Know About Thunderman, which charts the surreal and Kafkaesque history of the comics industry over the last seventy-five years through several sometimes-naive and sometimes-maniacal people rising and falling on its career ladders, Moore reveals the dark, beating heart of the superhero business.

From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to theoretical Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Illuminations is exactly that - a series of bright, startling tales from a contemporary legend that reveal the full power of imagination and magic
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The Biggest Ideas In The Universe, Sean Carroll (paperback August 2023)

£10.99

Knowledge is power... A landmark new series from a prize-winning scientist and communicator.In this major trilogy, Sean Carroll opens up the world of physics and shows that you don't necessarily need a science degree to gain a deeper insight into the workings of the universe. Starting with the ideas that revolutionised our view of nature, Space, Time and Motion poses deep questions about the cosmos, guiding us through classical physics from Euclid and Galileo to Newton and Einstein.

Carroll investigates how a twin could be seven years older than her brother, and demonstrates why it's easier than you might think for a drifting astronaut to get back to the safety of the space station. These are the laws of physics as you've never understood them before.
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How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Bill Gates ( paperback June 2023)

£10.99

The COVID-19 pandemic isn't over, but even as governments around the world strive to put it behind us, they're also starting to talk about what happens next. How can we prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy? Can we even hope to accomplish this? Bill Gates believes the answer is yes, and in this book he lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another disaster like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world's foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, he first makes us understand the science of corona diseases.

Then he helps us understand how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, can not only ward off another COVID-like catastrophe but also go far to eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu. Here is a clarion call - strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance - from one of our most effective thinkers and activists.
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This Is Europe, Ben Judah ( hardback June 2023)

£22.00

What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population of some 750 million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey? Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries, steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines, fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety and a new start?

In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral but always empathetic portraits of other people's lives, journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity, migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest for freedom. Laid dramatically bare, it may not always be a Europe we recognize - but this is Europe.

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Regenesis : Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, George Monbiot (paperback May 2023)

£10.99

From the bestselling author of Feral, a breathtaking first glimpse of a new future for food and for humanityFarming is the world's greatest cause of environmental destruction - and the one we are least prepared to talk about. We criticise urban sprawl, but farming sprawls across thirty times as much land. We have ploughed, fenced and grazed great tracts of the planet, felling forests, killing wildlife, and poisoning rivers and oceans to feed ourselves.

Yet millions still go hungry. Now the food system itself is beginning to falter. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, we can resolve the biggest of our dilemmas and feed the world without devouring the planet.

Regenesis is a breathtaking vision of a new future for food and for humanity. Drawing on astonishing advances in soil ecology, Monbiot reveals how our changing understanding of the world beneath our feet could allow us to grow more food with less farming. He meets the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable grower revolutionising our understanding of fertility; through breeders of perennial grains, liberating the land from ploughs and poisons; to the scientists pioneering new ways to grow protein and fat.
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The Measure, Nikki Erlick ( paperback May 2023)

£9.99

 Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice. It seems like just another morning.

Around the world, people wake up, check the news, open the front door. On every doorstop is a box. Inside that box is the exact number of years that person has left to live.

Whether they open it or hide it under their bed, each person must learn to live in this new world: a couple who thought they didn't have to rush their life together, a doctor who cannot save himself from his own fate, best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything... Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is a sweeping, ambitious and invigorating story about family, friendship, hope and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.
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Goshawk Summer, James Alfred ( paperback May 2023)

£10.99

WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2022

A beautiful inspirational tale set in an extraordinary time.' Ray Mears'Wonderful ... they don't come much more expert than James Aldred' Lauren Laverne What happens to nature when we are no longer there? In early 2020, wildlife cameraman James Aldred was commissioned to film the lives of a family of goshawks in the New Forest. Then lockdown.

No more cars, no more aeroplanes, no one in the woods - except James - in a place empty of people but filled with birdsong and new life. In these silver nights and golden days, there were tumbling fox cubs, calling curlew and, of course, the soaring goshawks - shining like fire through one of our darkest times. A goshawk summer unlike any other; an extraordinary season in the forest.

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The Last Days of Roger Federer : And Other Endings, Geoff Dyer ( paperback May 2023)

£10.99

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

In this endlessly stimulating investigation into 'things coming to an end, artists' last works, time running out', Geoff Dyer sets his own encounter with late middle age against the last days and last achievements of writers, painters, athletes and musicians who've mattered to him throughout his life. He examines Friedrich Nietzsche's breakdown in Turin, Bob Dylan's reinventions of old songs, Beethoven's final quartets, Jean Rhys's return from the dead (while still alive) and much more.

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Cacophony of Bone, Kerri Ni Dochartaigh (paperback Jan 2024)

£10.99

Two days after the Winter Solstice in 2019 Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year of many changes.

The pandemic arrived and their isolated home became a place of enforced isolation. It was to be a year unlike any we had seen before. But the seasons still turned, the swallows came at their allotted time, the rhythms of the natural world went on unchecked.

For Kerri there was to be one more change, a longed-for but unhoped for change. Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of a year - a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life - from one winter to the next. It is a telling of a changed life, in a changed world - and it is about all that does not change.

All that which simply keeps on - living and breathing, nesting and dying - in spite of it all. When the pandemic came time seemed to shapeshift, so this is also a book about time. It is, too, a book about home, and what that can mean.

Fragmentary in subject and form, fluid of language, this is an ode to a year, a place, and a love, that changed a life.
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Through a Vet’s Eyes, Dr Sean Wensley ( paperback April 2023)

£9.99

One of the Financial Times' Best Summer Books of 2022'. This book has stayed with me, and I learned a great deal from reading it! Linda

 Written by Bangor based vet, Sean Wensley, who is originally from the NW of England.

A compelling account of the trials, tribulations and triumphs of life as a vet - and a lesson to us all on how we should treat the animals with which we share our lives.' - Stephen Moss, naturalist and author of The Robin: A biography.

Our lives are intrinsically linked to those of animals - whether that's the animals we farm for food, those living in the wild, those we use for sport or the ones we choose to keep as pets. We all have a responsibility to consider our impact, and even small changes in our own lives could significantly improve the quality of theirs. Dr Sean Wensley is an award-winning vet and lifelong naturalist, advocating animal wellbeing around the world.

Fusing keen scientific insight with tender meditations on the natural world, Through a Vet's Eyes reveals the injustices which animals experience every day and raises an important question: how can we choose a better life for animals? Compelling and compassionate, Through a Vet's Eyes helps us to see things from the animals' perspectives, and illuminates the ways we can better care for our fellow creatures.

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The 'Maybe Motherhood' Bundle ( Buy all 3 get 10% discount)

£9.99

At a certain time of your life, the rest of the world, if not you, becomes slightly obsessed with the biological question of whether ( or not) to have children. These books are all loosely concerned with that question and what it means, particularly if your first reaction is no, thanks. 

The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano

Nine different lives. Following the butterfly effect of one life-defining choice, nine times over, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano winds through all the paths and decisions that shape a life. It cuts to the heart of what it means to be a woman.

Expectation

Hannah, Cate and Lissa are young, vibrant and inseparable.Their shared London world is ablaze with art and activism, romance and revelry - and the promise of everything to come. Ten years on, they are not where they hoped to be... each hungers for what the others have. And each wrestles with the same question: what does it take to lead a meaningful life? The most razor-sharp and heartbreaking novel of the year, EXPECTATION is a novel about finding your way: as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a rebel.

Olive

Olive and her friends have shared every milestone. From first loves and first heartbreaks to flatshares and the first scary steps into the real world, they've been through it all - together. But in the maze of life, through the winding paths that lead to different choices and different futures, will the bonds of friendship hold strong when Olive needs them most? Moving, memorable and a mirror for anyone at a crossroads.

 

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The Electricity of Every Living Thing, Katherine May ( paperback 2019)

£9.99

A Woman's Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home

 Perfect for fans of The Salt Path and The Outrun, this book is a life-affirming exploration of wild landscapes, what it means to be different and, above all, how we can all learn to make peace within our own unquiet minds. 'A windswept tale, beautifully told' Raynor Winn - The Salt Path 'A manifesto for the value of difficult people. I loved it' Amy Liptrot - The OutrunIn August 2015, Katherine May set out to walk the 630-mile South West Coast Path.

She wanted to understand why she had stopped coping with everyday life; why motherhood had been so overwhelming and isolating, and why the world felt full of inundation and expectations she can't meet. Setting her feet down on the rugged and difficult path by the sea, the answer begins to unfold. It's a chance encounter with a voice on the radio that sparks a realisation that she has Asperger's Syndrome.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing tells the story of the year in which Katherine comes to terms with her diagnosis. It leads to a re-evaluation of her life so far - a kinder one, which finally allows her to be different rather than simply awkward, arrogant or unfeeling. The physical and psychological journeys become inextricably entwined, and as Katherine finds her way across the untameable coast, she also finds the way to herself.

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Pure Colour, Sheila Heti (paperback Feb 2023)

£9.99

Pure Colour is an original, a book that says something new for our difficult times.' Anne Enright, Guardian'

What if this world is just a first draft, made by some great artist in order to be destroyed?In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home to study.

There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira's chest like a portal - to what, she doesn't know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters that strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up. Pure Colour tells the story of a life, from beginning to end.

It is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and a shape-shifting epic. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

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All The Living and The Dead, Hayley Campbell ( paperback Feb 2023)

£8.99

All the Living and the Dead : An Exploration of the People Who Make Death Their Life's Work

In this profoundly moving and remarkable book, journalist Hayley Campbell explores society's attitudes towards death, and the impact on those who work with it every day. 'If the reason we're outsourcing this burden is because it's too much for us,' she asks, 'how do they deal with it?' Would facing death directly make us fear it less?Inspired by her own childhood fascination with the subject, she meets embalmers and a former death row executioner, mass fatality investigators and a bereavement midwife.

She talks to gravediggers who have already dug their own graves and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear. Through Campbell's incisive and candid interviews with people who see death every day, she asks: Does seeing death change you as a person? And are we all missing something vital by letting death remain hidden?

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The Half Known Life, Pico Iyer ( paperback Jan 2024)

£10.99

The Half Known Life : Finding Paradise in a Divided World

STANFORDS BOOK OF THE MONTH - JANUARY 2023'Nothing less than a guided tour of the human soul' Elizabeth Gilbert

One of our most perceptive travel writers embarks on an exploration of the world's holiest places and where we might find paradise on Earth. It's so easy, I thought, to place Paradise in the past or the future - anywhere but here. After half a century of travel, from Ethiopia to Tibet, from Belfast to Jerusalem, Pico Iyer asks himself what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict.

In a spectacular journey, both inward and outward, Iyer roams from crowded mosques in Iran to a film studio in North Korea, from a holy mountain in Japan to the sometimes spooky emptiness of the Australian outback. At every stop, he makes connections with unexpected strangers - mystics and taxi drivers and fellow travellers - and draws on his own memories, of time spent in a Benedictine monastery high above the Pacific, of regular travels with the Dalai Lama, of hearing his late mother speak of sunlit moments in pre-Partition India. By the end, he has upended many of our expectations and dared to suggest that we can find paradise right in the heart of our angry, confused and divided world.

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Life Is Hard : How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way, Kieran Setiya (Hardback |October 2022)

£16.99

 Reading this book is like speaking with a thoughtful friend who never tells you to cheer up, but, by offering gentle companionship and a change of perspective, makes you feel better anyway" The New York Times Book Review'

From personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world, sometimes simply going on can feel too much. But could there be solace - and even hope - in acknowledging the hardships of the human condition? Might doing so free us from the tyranny of striving for our "best lives" and help us find warmth, humanity, and humour in the lives we actually have? Could it inspire in us the desire for a better world? In this profound and personal book, Kieran Setiya shows how philosophy can help us find our way. He shares his own experience with chronic pain and the consolation that comes from making sense of it.

He asks what we can learn from loneliness and loss about the value of human life. And he explores how we can fail with grace, confront injustice, and search for meaning in the face of despair. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy, as well as fiction, comedy, social science and personal essay, Life is Hard is a book for this moment - a work of solace and compassion.
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The Good Drinker : How I Learned to Love Drinking Less by Adrian Chiles (paperback June 2023)

£9.99

The popular broadcaster and columnist sets out to discover the unsung pleasures of drinking in moderation. The recommended alcohol limit is 14 units a week. Adrian Chiles used to put away almost 100.

Ever since he was a teenager, drinking was his idea of a good time - and not just his, but seemingly the whole nation's. Still, it wasn't very good for him: the doctor made that clear. If you lined them up, Adrian must have knocked back three miles of drinks.

How many of them had he genuinely wanted? A mile?There's an awful lot of advice out there on how to quit booze completely. If you just want to drink a bit less, the pickings are slim. Yet while the alcohol industry depends on a minority of problem drinkers, the majority really do enjoy in moderation.

What's their secret? Join the inimitable Chiles as he sets out around Britain and plumbs his only slightly fuzzy memories of a lifetime in pubs in a quest to find the good drinker within.
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Sacred Nature : Karen Armstrong ( paperback June 2023)

£10.99

In this hugely powerful book, Karen Armstrong argues that if we want to avert environmental catastrophe, it is not enough to change our behaviour: we need to learn to think and feel differently about the natural world - to rekindle our spiritual bond with nature. For most of human history, and in almost all the world's cultures, nature was believed to be sacred, and our God or gods to be present everywhere in the natural world.

When people in the West began to separate God and nature in modern times, it was not just a profound breach with thousands of years of accumulated wisdom: it also set in train the destruction of the natural world. Taking themes that have been central to the world's religious traditions - from gratitude and compassion to sacrifice and non-violence - Armstrong offers practical steps to help us develop a new mindset to reconnect with nature and rekindle our sense of the sacred. Sacred Nature reveals the most profound connections between humans and the natural world.

It speaks to anyone interested in our relationship with nature, worried about the destruction of our environment, and searching for new ways of thinking to shape the action needed to save our planet. 
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How to Live when You could be Dead, Deborah James ( hardback September 2022)

£14.99

I was alive when I should have been dead.

In another movie, I missed the sliding door and departed this wondrous life long ago. Like so many others, I had to learn to live not knowing if I have a tomorrow, because, statistically, I didn't. At the age of 35, I was blindsided by incurable bowel cancer - I was given less than an 8 per cent chance of surviving five years.

Five years later, my only option was to live in the now and to value one day at a time. How do you turn your mind from a negative spiral into realistic and rebellious hope? How do you stop focusing on the why and realise that 'why not me' is just as valid a question? When Deborah James was diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer at just 35, she learned a powerful lesson: the way we respond to any given situation empowers or destroys us. And with the right skills and approach, we can all face huge challenges and find strength and hope in the darkest of places.

How to Live When You Could Be Dead will show you how. It will awaken you to question your life as if you didn't have a tomorrow and live it in the way you want to today. By harnessing the power of positivity and valuing each day as though it could be your last, you'll find out, as Deborah did, that it is possible to live with joy and purpose, no matter what.

Ebury, a division of Penguin Random House, will pay GBP3 from the sale of each copy of How To Live When You Could Be Dead by Deborah James sold in the UK to Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK.
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The People Immortal, Vasily Grossman ( hardback August 2022)

£12.99

One of Grossman's three great war novels - alongside Life and Fate and Stalingrad. "A significant, valuable addition to Grossman's small but powerful body of work" WILLIAM BOYD"

Set during the catastrophic defeats of the war's first months, it tracks a Red Army regiment that wins a minor victory in eastern Belorussia but fails to exploit this success. A battalion is then entrusted with the task of slowing the German advance, and eventually encircled, before ultimately breaking out and joining with the rest of the Soviet forces.

Grossman's descriptions of the natural world - and his characters' relationship to it - are both vivid and unexpected, as are his memorable character sketches: eleven-year-old Lionya is determined to hang on to his toy revolver as he walks a long distance behind German lines;  and Semion Ignatiev, a womanizer and gifted story-teller, turns out to be the boldest and most resourceful of the rank-and file soldiers. Grossman spent most of the war years close to the front line. But The People Immortal is far from being mere morale-boosting propaganda.

On the contrary, as letters included in this volume make clear, it was read as a textbook, and as a work of military education. This edition includes not only the unredacted novel itself, translated here for the first time since 1946, but also a wealth of background material. A heavily redacted English translation of The People Immortal was published in 1946.

This current edition is the first that reflects Grossman's original text. Translated from the Russian by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler

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Seven Ways To Change The World, Gordon Brown ( paperback June 2022)

£12.99

Seven Ways to Change the World : How To Fix The Most Pressing Problems We Face

When the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe in 2020, it created an unprecedented impact. But out of such disruption can come a new way of thinking, and in this superb book, updated to include the latest events in Ukraine and at COP26, former UK prime minister Gordon Brown offers his solutions to the challenges we face now and in the future. In the book, he states that there are seven major global problems we must address: global health; climate change and environmental damage; nuclear proliferation; global financial instability; the humanitarian crisis and global poverty; the barriers to education and opportunity; and global inequality and its biggest manifestation, global tax havens.

Each one presents an immense challenge that requires an urgent global response and solution. All should be on the world's agenda today. None can be solved by one nation acting on its own, but all can be addressed if we work together as a global community.

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Fake History : Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World Otto English, ( paperback April 2022)

£9.99

 An alternative history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever told and how they've been used over time. Lincoln did not believe all men were created equal.

The Aztecs were not slaughtered by the Spanish Conquistadors. And Churchill was not the man that people love to remember. In this fascinating new book, journalist and author Otto English takes ten great lies from history and shows how our present continues to be manipulated by the fabrications of the past.

He looks at how so much of what we take to be historical fact is, in fact, fiction. From the myths of WW2 to the adventures of Columbus, and from the self-serving legends of 'great men' to the origins of curry - fake history is everywhere and used ever more to impact our modern world. Setting out to redress the balance, English tears apart the lies propagated by politicians and think tanks, the grand narratives spun by populists and the media, the stories on your friend's Facebook feed and the tales you were told in childhood.

And, in doing so, reclaims the truth from those who have perverted it. Fake History exposes everything you weren't told in school and why you weren't taught it.
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A Life on Our Planet : My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future, David Attenborough ( paperback May 2022)

£9.99

With a new afterword, Why You Are Here: A speech on the opening of the COP26 climate summit.As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline.

A Life on Our Planet contains my witness statement, and my vision for the future - the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake, and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. We have the opportunity to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited. All we need is the will do so.
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The War on the West, Douglas Murray ( paperback March 2023)

£10.99

In The War on the West, international bestselling author Douglas Murray asks: if the history of humankind is one of slavery, conquest, prejudice, genocide and exploitation, why are only Western nations taking the blame for it? It's become perfectly acceptable to celebrate the contributions of non-Western cultures, but discussing their flaws and crimes is called hate speech. What's more it has become acceptable to discuss the flaws and crimes of Western culture, but celebrating their contributions is also called hate speech.

Some of this is a much-needed reckoning; however, some is part of a larger international attack on reason, democracy, science, progress and the citizens of the West by dishonest scholars, hatemongers, hostile nations and human-rights abusers hoping to distract from their ongoing villainy. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows the ways in which many well-meaning people have been lured into polarisation by lies, and shows how far the world's most crucial political debates have been hijacked across Europe and America. Propelled by an incisive deconstruction of inconsistent arguments and hypocritical activism, The War on the West is an essential and urgent polemic that cements Murray's status as one of the world's foremost political writers.
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Childhood Unlimited, Virginia Mendez ( Paperback, April 2022)

£12.99

 In 2013, Disney released its most egalitarian film to date - but 59% of all the lines in Frozen are spoken by male characters. - 57% of children's books published annually have central male characters; just 31% have central female characters. Raising your child beyond the limitations placed on them by gender is, let's face it, an uphill battle.

If you don't know where to start, or how to start, you will find inspiration, insight and plenty of practical strategies in Childhood Unlimited. From navigating the gendered constructs that dominate children's films, television and media generally, to choosing appropriate and stimulating toys beyond the binary divide, this accessible and relatable book will make the whole process much less daunting. Based on interviews with, and research by, some of the best thought-leaders from the fields of psychology, neuroscience and education, the insights in this book will not only open the eyes of any parent or caregiver, they will inspire you to help your child to look at the world in a critical, creative and empowered way.

Free from the restraints of the stereotypes that surround gender, your child has the opportunity to reach their true potential - and this is the book that you need to launch them on that journey.

 

** recently launched right here in Books Paper Scissors, Virginia is an adopted Northern Irish author and a Spanish native ** 

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