Explore a world on the edge of change through three epic stories spanning five hundred years of imagined history, unpacking systems of power and what we are capable of in the pursuit of freedom. The story starts in The Philosopher’s Wife . Deep in the North, a philosopher exiled for promoting his atheist work amidst a bloody religious war yearns to ignite a revolution, but his personal life has collapsed into chaos. What begins as a desperate attempt to cure his wife’s animalistic behaviour erupts into a power struggle between the sexes, unleashing violent reckonings while the world outside hurtles towards an epoch-changing revolution. Over twenty years later, The Scavenger’s Daughter examines the true face of empire as Northern forces continue to march against the South, “liberating” all who stand in their way. In a landscape blown apart by war, we follow Jack and Ash, orphan soldiers belonging to the Black Swan army, trying to survive the camp, toxic masculinity, and each other until they can be free. When Jack returns to camp, his freedom having been bought for him by a mysterious philosopher, he believes his new life is just around the corner. But as rations wear thin and the king seizes the opium trails, the camp is thrown into chaos, putting everything Jack and Ash have known—including Jack’s first love, Sarah—at risk. Centuries later, in Four Sisters , we meet Sarah again as a woman and former Madam who has survived death, the toppling of regimes, and centuries of war. When a mysterious plague breaks out, she is forced to relocate to a quarantined zone called “The Skirts” with four young girls who were orphaned by the women she once employed. But when a strange doctor arrives and discovers the girls are plague-positive, Sarah must decide whether to go ahead with an experimental treatment or none at all. As time itself begins to erode, this found family of women must face loss, love, and their individual struggles for power in a violent world. For fans of Game of Thrones , The Handmaid’s Tale , and The Mists of Avalon , The Empire is both foreign and shockingly familiar, leaving you asking, how did we get here, and where are we going?

Nomoto may be an amateur chef, but she dreams big—at least in terms of food portions. Unfortunately, her appetite isn't as large as her imagination, so she can't give her masterpieces the full enjoyment they deserve. Luckily, one evening, she finds the perfect audience in her neighbor, Kasuga, who just happens to love eating. As this important gourmet duo warms up to each other, could tender feelings be brewing?

A tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss, and the bird women who live beneath the lake. Every summer the peaches ripen in Port Peter, and the tourists arrive to gorge themselves on fruit and sun. They don’t see the bird women, who cavort on the cliffs and live in a meadow beneath the lake. But when summer ends and the visitors go back home, every pregnant Port Peter girl knows what she needs to deliver her child to the Birds in a laundry basket on those same lakeside cliffs. But the Birds don’t want Georgia Jackson. Twenty years on, the peaches are ripening again, the tourists have returned, and Georgia is looking for trouble with any ill-tempered man she can find. When that man turns out to be Arlo Bloom—her mother’s ex and the new priest in town—she finds herself drawn into a complicated matrix of friendship, grief, faith, sex, and love with Arlo, his wife, Felicity, and their son, Isaiah. Vivid, uncanny, and as likely cursed as touched by grace, Bird Suit is a brutal, generous story as sticky and lush as a Port Peter peach.

A dazzling and deeply moving story about humans turning into trees - for fans of Love and Other Thought Experiments and Never Let Me GoWhat makes a person want to be a tree?Bren and his partner Caelyn are feeling at a standstill in their lives. One day they come across a video of people in the forest who believe that if they stand still for long enough they will transform into trees. The idea is absurd. But it's spreading. Soon, people start to go missing and trees appear in unlikely places.As cities decay and the world becomes greener, Caelyn becomes more and more convinced that arborescence is exactly what will save the planet from human destruction. Bren isn't so sure. Drifting apart, Bren and Caelyn are forced to question what it really means to be human - and if they are ready to stand still.'A dazzling blend of cosmic eco-horror and arthouse sci-fi... one of the most profound and beautiful books you'll ever read' Chris Flynn, author of Orpheus Nine'Original, mind-bending and uplifting' Inga Simpson, author of The Thinning'Reads like a thriller but has the tenderness and insight of poetry' Ben Rawlence, author of The Treeline

Welcome to Guards! Guards!, the eighth book in Terry Pratchett’s legendary Discworld series. Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis ("noble dragon" for those who don't understand italics) has appeared in Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King (it is a noble dragon, after all...). How did it get there? How is the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night involved? Can the Ankh-Morpork City Watch restore order – and the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork to power? Magic, mayhem, and a marauding dragon...who could ask for anything more?

Nomoto may be an amateur chef, but she dreams big—at least in terms of food portions. Unfortunately, her appetite isn't as large as her imagination, so she can't give her masterpieces the full enjoyment they deserve. Luckily, one evening, she finds the perfect audience in her neighbor, Kasuga, who just happens to love eating. As this important gourmet duo warms up to each other, could tender feelings be brewing?

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

One hundred and fifty years ago, the telephone burst onto the world stage like magic, a supernatural instrument bringing voices from afar. Instantly, the ability to speak across vast distances began to transform every part of from business organization to military tactics, from news gathering to sex work.Telephones, though an extraordinary invention, became so ubiquitous – in offices and on streets, on bedside tables and kitchen walls – that they came to seem ordinary. People forgot how they ever lived without them.In The Telephone, renowned science historian James Gleick explodes myths about the telephone’s invention and reveals the corrupt scheming and ruthless tactics of those who sought to make money from it.As dial telephones, landlines, telephone books and telephone booths vanish into the past, he shows how this commonplace object ushered in the information age, and changed not only the world but who we are as human beings.PRAISE FOR JAMES GLEICK'Some writers excel at crafting a historical narrative, others at elucidating esoteric theories, still others at humanizing scientists. Gleick is a master of all these skills' – The Wall Street Journal'Gleick does what only the best science writers can take a subject of which most of us are only peripherally aware and put it at the center of the universe' – Time

The first full history of an extraordinary eighteenth-century British entertainment Glittering masquerades, held at the most fashionable London venues, dominated the calendars of the Georgian elite. A thrilling opportunity to gather, flirt, and consume, hosts such as “Empress of Pleasure” Teresa Cornelys welcomed the great and the good in elaborate costumes—including bear suits, harlequin outfits, or, in the case of Elizabeth Chudleigh, very little at all. The masquerade was a place of make-believe and revelry, and a party like no other. Meghan Kobza invites us into these dazzling gatherings, and shows how they became a wider cultural obsession. Organised by wealthy impresarios, the masquerade allowed the aristocracy to flaunt their status and enjoy themselves behind the closed doors of opulent ballrooms, theatres, and gardens, dressed by an industry of ever more inventive habit makers. For the rest of society, the masquerade was notorious for mischief and misbehaviour, and a focus for voracious gossip. Lavishly illustrated, full of life and originality, The Masquerade is a revelatory account of an event which captivates us to this day.

Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

A pillar of the West African oral tradition for centuries, this epic traces the adventures and achievements of the Mande hero, Sunjata, as he liberates his people from Sumaworo Kante, the sorcerer king of Soso, and establishes the great medieval empire of Mali. David Conrad conveys the strong narrative thrust of the Sunjata epic in his presentation of substantial excerpts from his translation of a performance by Djanka Tassey Conde. Readers approaching the epic for the first time will appreciate the translation's highly readable, poetic English as well as Conrad's informative Introduction and notes. Scholars will find the familiar heroes and heroines taking on new dimensions, secondary characters gaining increased prominence, and previously unknown figures emerging from obscurity.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

 Bats of the Republic  features original artwork and an immaculate design to create a unique novel of adventure and science fiction, of political intrigue and future dystopian struggles, and, at its riveting core, of love.     In 1843 Chicago, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas falls in love with the high society daughter of Joseph Gray, a prominent ornithologist. Mr. Gray sets an impossible condition for their marriage—Zadock must deliver a sealed and highly secretive letter to General Irion, fighting one thousand miles southwest, deep within the embattled and newly independent Republic of Texas. The fate of the Union lies within the mysterious contents of that sealed letter, but that is only the beginning . . .     Three hundred years later, in the dystopian city-state of the Texas Republic, Zeke Thomas has just received news of the death of his grandfather, an esteemed Chicago senator. The world has crumbled. Paper documents are banned, citizens are watched, and dissenters are thrown over the walls into "the rot." When Zeke inherits—and then loses—a very old, sealed letter from his grandfather, Zeke finds himself and the women he loves at the heart of a conspiracy whose secrets he must unravel, if it doesn't destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first.     The two propulsive narratives converge through a wildly creative assortment of documents, books within books, maps, notes, illustrations, and more. Zach Dodson has created a gorgeous work of art and an eye-popping commercial adventure for the 21st century.From the Hardcover edition.

Aboard the Titanic, Lobster watches Angelina devour his father, before being plucked out of the aquarium himself. Just as he is put in the boiling pot, the ship hits the iceberg and the pot is thrown to the floor. Lobster survives, with some changes: he finds himself sexually attracted not only to a human, but to the very human who ate his father. He gives her one life-changing orgasm before their tragic separation, following an ugly incident in one of the lifeboats. Thus begins a love story like no other. But this is not only a surreal concept. Lecasble's rich symbolism — about the shells we build to protect ourselves, the difficulty of communication, and the profound changes engendered by love — is further enhanced by powerfully erotic, vivid prose.