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"Can you keep a secret?" It's harder than it seems - after all, it's only human to thirst after the juicy updates, jaw-dropping stories, and idle chatter that we typically collect over drinks with friends. No one knows this better than journalist Kelsey McKinney, whose Normal Gossip podcast has accrued a listenership of millions. In YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling. What even is gossip, and why is it considered a sin? Why are we obsessed with the details of celebrity drama and tabloid headlines? How do we use and abuse gossip - and why do we want to do it at all? McKinney dives deep into a range of cultural cornerstones - from the Epic of Gilgamesh as told by chatbots, to the scandalous betrayals in The Traitors - and captures the heart of gossiping: how enchanting and fun it can be to lean over and whisper something a little salacious into your friend's ear. With wit and honesty, McKinney unmasks what we're actually searching for when we demand to know the truth - and how much the truth really matters in the first place.

A posthumous work from the beloved conservationist and naturalist Gerald Durrell, to celebrate the centenary of his birth, with a new foreword by HRH Princess Anne. Myself and Other Animals is a new book mosaicked from unpublished autobiographies, uncollected pieces and previously published extracts from Durrell’s work and archives. The result is an extraordinary journey through Durrell’s life in his own words, edited and introduced by his widow Lee Durrell. Drawing on a memoir that Durrell started writing before he became too ill to continue it, and an unfinished book from a trip to Australia in 1969 to the Great Barrier Reef, Northern Territory and Queensland, here is the unvarnished story of Durrell’s life, from touching family tributes to golden bats and pink pigeons. Moving from India to England and then to the always sun-lit Corfu, told with dry wit and insight into our fellow animals, here is the vivid finale of one of Britain’s most beloved conservationists and prose stylists.

I WOULD TURN THE WORLD TO DARKNESS FOR YOU In a world ruled by the Stars, cruel and merciless gods, Elara has been cursed by fate. A prophecy promises she will fall for a Star, but that it will kill them both. Yet when the Star of Wrath and War descends to hunt Elara, the neighbouring kingdom sees an opportunity to take her from her home, the Kingdom of Night, to Helios, Kingdom of Light. Where she strides straight into the arms of an enemy prince. There, Elara is forced to either let Prince Lorenzo train her into a weapon worthy of battling against the tyrannical reign of the Stars, or to accept her fate. But there are shadows even within the Kingdom of Light - and they threaten to reveal the darkness in Lorenzo's past and the ancient magic that slumbers in Elara's veins. And with it all, the undeniable, star-crossed pull between them...

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action. But speaking truth to power can be dangerous - and power will stop at nothing to stay on top. As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old? Darting between decades and genres, THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain’s most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

A myth-busting book about how the world produces and consumes its food and how to do so without killing the planet In this ambitious, myth-busting book, leading scientist and internationally bestselling author Vaclav Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today- Why are some of the world's biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why is food waste a colossal 1,000kcal per person daily, and how can we solve that? Could we all go vegan and be healthy? Should we? How will we feed the ballooning population without killing the planet? How Food Really Works shows how we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. Ultimately, this data-based, rigorously researched guide explains how we will survive and thrive long into the future.

An urgent, indispensable guide to why Taiwan matters – for China, the West and everyone’s future When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities. Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success story: just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society. For the United States and the West, the island is a bastion of freedom against China’s assertive presence in the region. And yet China, increasingly bellicose under Xi Jinping, insists Taiwan is part of its territory and must be returned to it. Should China blockade the island and mount an invasion, it would set off a chain reaction that would pitch it against the US – escalating a regional war into a global one. Taiwan is thus a geopolitical powder keg. The Taiwan Story helps us understand how and why we’ve arrived at this dangerous moment in history. With unparalleled access to Taiwan’s political leaders and a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture, Professor Kerry Brown provides a new reading of Taiwan, its twenty-three million people, and how they navigate being caught in this frightening geopolitical standoff. This is the essential book delving into Taiwan’s unique story, buried beneath the headlines, told in an accessible, expert and urgent way.

A hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-shortlisted author. It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives - all connected by a single drop of water. In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. Arthur's only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, Arthur's world opens up far beyond the slums, with one book soon sending him across the seas: Nineveh and Its Remains. In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy sit of Lalish in Iraq. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon Narin and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people. In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. Zaleekhah foresees a life drained of all love and meaning - until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything. A dazzling feat of storytelling from one of the greatest writers of our time, Elif Shafak's There are Rivers in the Sky is a rich, sweeping novel that spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops: 'Water remembers. It is humans who forget.'

From the Sunday Times-bestselling author, comes a heart-stopping countdown narrative recreating the liberation of Paris in 1944, one of the great and most dramatic hinge moments of WW2 When the Germans marched in and the lamps went out in the City of Light the millions who loved Paris mourned. Liberation, four years later, triggered an explosion of joy and relief. It was the party of the century and everybody who was anybody was there. General Charles de Gaulle seized the moment to create an instant legend that would take its place alongside the great moments in French history. After years of oppression and humiliation Parisians had risen to reclaim their city and drive out the forces of darkness – or so the story went. This fresh new account of the liberation, packed with revelation, tells the story of those heady days of suspense, danger, exhilaration – and vengeance – through the eyes of a range of participants, reflecting all sides of the conflict: Americans, French and Germans; resisters and collaborators. Among them are famous names like Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger and Pablo Picasso, but also some fascinating unknowns including a medic turned Resistance gunwoman, an androgynous Hungarian sculptor and a French bluestocking who quietly set about saving the nation’s art treasures from the Nazi looters. Paris ’44 looks behind the mythology to tell the real story of the liberation and expose the conflicts and contradictions of France under the occupation – the shame as well as the glory. This gripping war-time narrative will enthral anyone who has a place for Paris in their hearts.

He’d once called her dangerous. And he had been right. Aya was not a pawn. She was a spy. A warrior. A weapon. Aya has returned home at last. But she is not the same person who left Tala all those months ago. And Tala isn't the same either. The threat of war that could destroy the realm continues to grow and she is the only one who can save it. Because she is the Second Saint. The bringer of hope. The light in the darkness. Blessed with powers not seen in centuries. But there are those who stand to use her power for their own gain and Aya learns that danger is closer to home than she ever could have imagined.

She could be anyone. She could be you. Nobody ever found out what happened to Laika Martenwood, the girl who vanished without a trace on her way to school one morning. But for her sister Willa, life shattered into tiny pieces that day, and she has never been able to put them back together again. Willa sees Laika everywhere- on buses, at parties, in busy streets. It's been twenty-five years, and the only thing that has kept her going is her belief that her sister is alive, somewhere. But when a dinner party conversation about childhood memories spirals out of control, a shattering revelation from one of the guests forces Willa to rethink everything she thought she knew about her past. And, out of the debris of that explosive evening, the truth of what really happened begins to emerge. Piece by piece. Masterfully plotted with shades of Magpie and The Push, Things Don't Break on their Own is a propulsive debut about how our memories shape us, and the lies we tell to escape them.

Daphne always loved the way Peter told their story. That is until it became the prologue to his actual love story with his childhood bestie, Petra. Which is how Daphne ends up rooming with her total opposite and the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra's ex, Miles. As expected, it's not a match made in heaven - that is until one night, while tossing back tequilas, they form a plan. And if it involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their adventures together, well, who could blame them? But it's all just for show, of course, because there's no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé's new fiancée's ex . . . right? A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Emily Henry

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position. What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Perez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen-and Perez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor. Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the lines between magic, science, and fraud are never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive-even if that means enlisting the help of Guillen Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent and creator of the Grishaverse comes a bewitching novel set in the Spanish Golden Age, brimming with peril and dark deeds.

Three women. Three blazing stories of violent resistance. Three complicated paths to justice. Brittany Smith, a young Alabama woman, killed a man she said raped her in her home, but was denied a self-defense claim. Angoori Dahariya led a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, dedicated to avenging victims of domestic abuse. Cicek Mustafa Zibo fought in a thousands-strong all-female militia that battled ISIS in Syria. Each woman has been criticised for their actions by those who believe that violence is never the answer; yet each has transmuted a story of pain into a story of power. In this intimate, shocking and rigorous investigation, award-winning journalist Elizabeth Flock examines the lives of three women who chose to use lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them - government, police, courts - utterly failed to do so. In luminous prose, Flock asks searching questions about cultures in which violence seems like the only means of survival, where deeply ingrained ideas about masculinity have helped breed the unsafe conditions that women face. Can women's acts of vengeance help to create lasting change in misogynistic and paternalistic systems, or will they ultimately hurt their cause? The novelistic accounts of these three women offer profound insights into the quest for understanding what a society where women have real power might look like.