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To Cook a Bear is the fantastic story of revivalist preacher Lars Levi Laestadius and the young Sami boy he saves from a ditch and cares for. It is the summer of 1852 in the Kengis village of Sweden's far north, and Jussi - as the boy is called - has fled from a cruel home plagued by abuse, starvation, and alcoholism. Jussi becomes the preacher's faithful disciple. Laestadius is an avid botanist, and with Jussi in tow he sets out on long botanical treks to teach him all about plants and nature; but also how to read, write and not least to love and fear God. For it is revivalist times, and thanks to Laestadius, impassioned faith spreads like wildfire among the locals. While the preacher's powerful Sunday sermons grant salvation to farmers and workers, they gain him enemies among local rulers, who see profits dwindle as people choose revival over alcohol. One day a maid goes missing in the deep forest, and soon thereafter another disappears. One of them is found dead, the other badly wounded, and the locals suspect a predatory bear is at large. The constable is quick to offer a reward for capturing the bear, but the preacher sees other traces that point to a far worse killer on the loose. Along with Jussi, the preacher reinvents himself as something of a forensic expert, unaware of the evil that is closing in on him. A gripping and vivid read, To Cook a Bear manages to both entertain and to burrow deep down into life's great philosophical questions. Reminiscent of Victor Hugo's Les miserables and Marilynne Robinson's Lila, To Cook a Bear goes straight to the heart. Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A tale of enduring power' Paula McLain From the author of the No.1, two million-copy bestseller Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic story of a family separated, their search for answers, and an epic journey to reunite the missing... Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous aftermath of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest. For heiresses Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery's end, the pilgrimage westward reignites an agonizing question. Could her long-lost family still be out there? Louisiana, 1987: Arriving in Augustine, Louisiana, first-year teacher Benedetta Silva finds herself teaching students whose poverty-stricken lives she can scarcely comprehend. The town is impossibly set in its ways, suspicious of new ideas and new people. But amid the gnarled live oaks and ancient plantation homes lies the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything. A heart-wrenching novel inspired by little-known historical events, based on actual "Lost Friends" advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones, lost to them when their families were sold off. 'Tragic, thought-provoking but ultimately uplifting . . . an enthralling adventure' Lancashire Evening Post

Maths is the story of the world around us, and the wisdom it gives us can be the difference between success and disaster. We are all doing maths all the time, from the way we communicate with each other to the way we travel, from how we work to how we relax. Many of us are aware of this. But few of us really appreciate the full power of maths - the extent to which its influence is not only in every office and every home, but also in every courtroom and hospital ward. In this eye-opening and extraordinary book, Yates explores the true stories of life-changing events in which the application - or misapplication - of mathematics has played a critical role: patients crippled by faulty genes and entrepreneurs bankrupted by faulty algorithms; innocent victims of miscarriages of justice and the unwitting victims of software glitches. We follow stories of investors who have lost fortunes and parents who have lost children, all because of mathematical misunderstandings. Along the way, Yates arms us with simple mathematical rules and tools that can help us make better decisions in our increasingly quantitative society. You will discover why it's always sensible to question a statistic, often vital to ask for a second opinion and sometimes surprisingly handy to stick to the 37% rule... "This is an exquisitely interesting book. It's a deeply serious one too and, for those like me who have little maths, it's delightfully readable" - IAN MCEWAN "Kit Yates is a natural storyteller. Through fascinating stories and examples, he shows how maths is the beating heart of so much of modern life. An exciting new voice in the world of science communication" - MARCUS DU SAUTOY "Used wisely, mathematics can save your life. Used unwisely, it can ruin it. A lucid and enthralling account of why maths matters in everyone's life. A real eye-opener." - Prof Ian Stewart FRS, author of Do Dice Play God?

After a college party, two boys drive a girl home: drunk and passed out in the back seat. Rumours spread about what they did to her, but later they'll tell the police a different version of events. Alice will never remember what truly happened. Her fracture runs deep, hidden beneath cleverness and wry humour. Nick - a sensitive, misguided boy who stood by - will never forget. That's just the beginning of this extraordinary journey into memory, fear and self-portrayal. Through university applications, a terrifying abusive relationship, a fateful reckoning with addiction and a final mind-bending twist, Alice and Nick will take on different roles to each other - some real, some invented - until finally, brought face to face once again, the secret of that night is revealed. Startlingly relevant and enthralling in its brilliance, True Story is by turns a campus novel, psychological thriller, horror story and crime noir, each narrative frame stripping away the fictions we tell about women, men and the very nature of truth. It introduces Kate Reed Petty as a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction. Inventive, electrifying and daring, True Story is a novel like nothing you've ever read before. 'A mind-blowing page-turning un-put-downable heartwarming empathetic formally inventive horror suspense thriller, with a life-affirming and timely feminist message' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot 'Where our obsession with true-life crime meets page-turner' Stylist, The best summer reads for 2020 'Provocative' Red 'Clever and inventive, this is a supremely accomplished debut about the nature of truth in a world littered with monsters both real and imagined. It's up to the reader to decide which is which' Daily Express

'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of CirceCo-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?'An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history' John Scalzi, bestselling author of Old Man's War'Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet' Ann Leckie, Hugo Award-winning author of Ancillary Justice'Rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse' Martha Wells, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Murderbot DiariesWINNER OF THE 2019 Reddit Stabby Award for Best NovellaSHORTLISTED FOR: The Ray Bradbury Prize / The British Science Fiction Association Award /Nebula Award/ Kitschies Red Tentacle Award/ Kitschies Inky Tentacle / Brave New Words Award

Darkly imaginative alternative history thriller from the global bestseller and author of the Bernie Gunther thrillers. America, 1960. In Washington, DC, John F Kennedy has just been elected President. In Havana, Fidel Castro has been in office for a year, and with Cold War tensions rapidly heating up and the Soviets leading the space race, the thought of a Communist leader so close to home is already raising American blood pressure. Anti-communist fever is rampant in the USA, with a paranoid establishment seeing reds under every bed. Nevertheless, the decision to snuff out the threat of Castro by hiring Tom Jefferson, America's best assassin, to kill him comes from an unusual quarter: the Mafia. But Jefferson's very skillset that makes him the perfect man for this job also ensures he has no qualms in double crossing his criminal paymasters. Jefferson has no issue with Castro: his preferred target is someone much closer to home...

Unforgettable' The Times 'Grippingly told and brilliantly reported' Mail on Sunday 'Startlingly intimate' Sunday Times 'Fascinating' Daily Mail 'Groundbreaking' Evening Standard 'Exceptional and moving' Spectator 'Hidden Valley Road contains everything: scientific intrigue, meticulous reporting, startling revelations, and, most of all, a profound sense of humanity. It is that rare book that can be read again and again.' -David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon One of the New York Times' '20 most anticipated books of 2020': the heartrending story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease. 'An extraordinary case study and tour de force of reporting.' -Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins - aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony - and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope. 'This book tore my heart out. It is a revelation-about the history of mental health treatment, about trauma, foremost about family-and a more-than-worthy follow-up to Robert Kolker's brilliant Lost Girls.' -Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and Give Me Your Hand

The townsfolk of Motal, an isolated, godforsaken town in the Pale of Settlement, are shocked when Fanny Keismann - devoted wife, mother of five, and celebrated cheese-maker - leaves her home at two hours past midnight and vanishes into the night. True, the husbands of Motal have been vanishing for years, but a wife and mother? Whoever heard of such a thing. What on earth possessed her? Could it have anything to do with Fanny's missing brother-in-law, who left her sister almost a year ago and ran away to Minsk, abandoning their family to destitution and despair? Or could Fanny have been lured away by Zizek Breshov, the mysterious ferryman on the Yaselda river, who, in a strange twist of events, seems to have disappeared on the same night? Surely there can be no link between Fanny and the peculiar roadside murder on the way to Minsk, which has left Colonel Piotr Novak, head of the Russian secret police, scratching his head. Surely a crime like that could have nothing to do with Fanny Keismann, however the people of Motal might mutter about her reputation as a vilde chaya, a wild animal . . . Surely not. "Boundless imagination and a vibrant style . . . a heroine of unforgettable grit" DAVID GROSSMAN "A story of great beauty and surprise" GARY SHTEYNGART

*From the author who brought you the 'genius' bestsellers The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k and Get Your Sh*t Together* In The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, our favourite 'anti-guru' Sarah Knight unleashed the power of saying no. In Get Your Sh*t Together, she prioritised the sh*t you need and want to do so you can achieve your hopes and dreams. Now she's back, doubling down on your happiness with her latest message: You Do You. Being yourself should be the easiest thing in the world. Yet instead of leaning in to who we are, we fight it, listening too closely to what society tells us. You Do You helps you shake off those expectations, say f**k perfect, start looking out for number one and keep on with your badass self. From career and finances to relationships and family, lifestyle and health, Sarah Knight rips up the rulebook. Writing about her mistakes and embarrassments in her own personal quest to 'do me' - because nobody gets everything right all day, every day - Sarah Knight shows why you can and should f**k up and teaches you to let yourself off the hook, bounce back and keep standing tall.

The latest no-f**ks-given guide from New York Times bestselling author of the international sensation The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, Get Your Sh*t Together, and You Do You Do you waste time overthinking things you can't do anything about? Do you freak out when things don't go to plan? Does anxiety get in the way of you living your best life? When life hands you a big fat f**king lemon, Calm the F**k Down gives you practical ways to manage the situation, not to mention your anxiety about the situation. One hundred per cent practical and zero percent Pollyanna-ish, this is a book that acknowledges all the bad shit that can and probably will happen to you - from break ups and breakdowns to floods, family feuds and France running out of butter - and shows you what you can realistically do about it so you can get on with your life, stop worrying and wallowing, and start bouncing back. Think of Calm the F**k Down as the friend who, instead of reassuring you that 'everything's going to be okay,' actually shows you how to make it so.

They say you die three times. The first time for me was when my heart stopped beating beneath his hands by the lake. The second was when what was left of me was lowered into the ground in front of Ivan and Raksha at Bromma Church. The third will be the last time my name is spoken on earth. "A haunting portrait of the starkest meanings of love and family. Stridsberg's literary talent left me awestruck" Kate Reed Petty, author of True Story "A disturbingly beautiful book" Expressen Inni lives her life on the margins, but it is a life that is full and complex, filled with different shades of dark and light... Until she is brutally murdered one summer's day, on a lake shore at the heart of a distant, rain-washed forest. On the surface, this is the story of the moment her life is violently extinguished - a moment that will never end, not ever - but it is also about the time before, and about the lives that carry on afterwards. It's about her children, her parents, her childhood of neglect, her volatile adolescence, and the chain of choices, tragedies and accidents that lead her to a life on the streets and take her into the wrong crowd, the wrong places and, finally, the wrong car with the wrong person. Sara Stridsberg's new novel is about absolute vulnerability, brutality and isolation. At times disturbing, this is a devastating story of unexpected love, tenderness and light in the total darkness.

Discover over 300 seasonal book recommendations in the ultimate reading list for book lovers everywhere. Spanning the dreary, cold days of January to the first flushes of spring and then the blazing August heat, bibliophile Francesca Beauman offers up a wealth of book recommendations. From The Count of Monte Cristo to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, each has been selected to chime with a particular time of year and provide a richer reading experience. Beautifully illustrated throughout, this charming guide will delight, inspire and seriously extend your 'To Be Read' list!

After breaking ties with Yugoslavia, the USSR and then China, Enver Hoxha believed that Albania could become a self-sufficient bastion of communism. Every day, many of its citizens were thrown into prisons and forced labour camps for daring to think independently, for rebelling against the regime or trying to escape - the consequences of their actions were often tragic and irreversible. Mud Sweeter than Honey gives voice to those who lived in Albania at that time - from poets and teachers to shoe-makers and peasant farmers, and many others whose aspirations were brutally crushed in acts of unimaginable repression - creating a vivid, dynamic and often painful picture of this totalitarian state during the forty years of Hoxha's ruthless dictatorship. Very little emerged from Albania during communist times. With these personal accounts, Rejmer opens a window onto a terrifying period in the country's history. Mud Sweeter than Honey is not only a gripping work of reportage, but also a necessary and unique portrait of a nation. With an Introduction by Tony Barber *Winner of the Polityka Passport Prize**Winner of the Koscielski Award* Translated from the Polish by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones and Antonia Lloyd-Jones "[An] incredibly moving collection of oral histories . . . important enough to be added to the history curriculum" Telegraph "A moving evocation of the 'everyday terror' systematically perpetrated over 41 years of Albanian communism . . . An illuminating if harrowing insight into life in a totalitarian state." Clarissa de Waal, author of ALBANIA: PORTRAIT OF A COUNTRY IN TRANSITION "Albania, enigmatic, mysterious Albania, was always the untold story of the Cold War, the 1989 revolutions and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Mud Sweeter Than Honey goes a very long way indeed towards putting that right" Charlie Connelly, New European

Enter the world of One Folgate Street and discover perfection . . . but can you pay the price? Jane stumbles on the rental opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to live in a beautiful ultra-minimalist house designed by an enigmatic architect, on condition she abides by a long list of exacting rules. After moving in, she discovers that a previous tenant, Emma, met a mysterious death there - and starts to wonder if her own story will be a re-run of the girl before. As twist after twist catches the reader off guard, Emma's past and Jane's present become inexorably entwined in this tense, page-turning portrayal of psychological obsession. Following in the footsteps of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, The Girl Before is being brought to the big screen by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard.

Manuscripts teem with life. They are not only the stuff of history and literature, but they offer some of the only tangible evidence we have of entire lives, long receded. Hidden Hands tells the stories of the artisans, artists, scribes and readers, patrons and collectors who made and kept the beautiful, fragile objects that have survived the ravages of fire, water and deliberate destruction to form a picture of both English culture and the wider European culture of which it is part. Without manuscripts, she shows, many historical figures would be lost to us, as well as those of lower social status, women and people of colour, their stories erased, and the remnants of their labours destroyed. From the Cuthbert Bible, to works including those by the Beowulf poet, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, Sir Thomas Malory, Chaucer, the Paston Letters and Shakespeare, Mary Wellesley describes the production and preservation of these priceless objects. With an insistent emphasis on the early role of women as authors and artists and illustrated with over fifty colour plates, Hidden Hands is an important contribution to our understanding of literature and history.