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For eight grim months Great Britain stood alone as the only European power still carrying on the struggle against Nazi Germany. Eight months in which the Luftwaffe tried and failed to drive the RAF from the skies; eight months in which the Nazi fleet tried to starve Britain into submission. Focusing on the period from May 1940 to the end of the year, THEIR FINEST HOUR embraces Sir Winston Churchill's first days as Prime Minister, France's defeat, British troops' mass evacuation from Dunkirk and the uneasy summer when the enemy was daily expected upon our shores. However, it also features the first gleams of light as the danger of invasion faded and the year closed with Desert Victory. The descriptions of these times and events, both desperate and hopeful, are drawn from the pen of the man who shaped them and who led his people in resistance to every challenge, bringing the period to a close with the first victorious counter-attack.

CLOSING THE RING covers the decisive 12 months between June 1943 and June 1944. Command of the seas had returned to Allied hands, the U-boats were mastered and the Luftwaffe beaten. These achievements made possible the 'closing of the ring' which was to extinguish Axis resistance and eventually end the war. The danger was no longer defeat but stalemate. Russian armies were driving the German invaders back into their own country, Italy was freed from the fascist yoke and Africa was cleared. However, before the Allies lay the formidable task of invading the aggressors in their own land. Frankly and unreservedly, Sir Winston Churchill reveals the tensions and divergences of opinions concerning how best to achieve this among the three great partners, Britain, USA and Russia.

Hanging the chronicle and discussion of great military and political events upon the thread of his personal experiences, Sir Winston Churchill provides an immediate and current account of all the tremendous events of the coming of war as they unfolded. THE GATHERING STORM explores the events of the period between the end of the Great War and the beginning of the Second World War and details Sir Winston Churchill's belief that the latter should never have been allowed to occur. Mankind, he asserts, must learn from the lessons of the past as 'There was never a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.'

TRAVELLING TO WORK is the third volume of Michael Palin's widely acclaimed diaries. After the Python years and a decade of filming, writing and acting, Palin's career takes an unexpected direction into travel, which will shape his working life for the next twenty-five years. Yet, as the diaries reveal, he remained ferociously busy on a host of other projects throughout this whirlwind period. TRAVELLING TO WORK opens in September 1988 with Michael travelling down the Adriatic on the first leg of a modern-day AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. He was not the BBC's first choice for the series, but after its success and that of the accompanying book the public naturally wanted more. Palin, though, had other plans. Following the tumultuous success of A FISH CALLED WANDA, he is in demand as an actor. His next film, AMERICAN FRIENDS, is based on his great-grandfather's diaries. Next he takes on his most demanding role as the head teacher in Alan Bleasdale's award-winning drama series GBH. There is also his West End play, THE WEEKEND, and a first novel, HEMINGWAY'S CHAIR, and a lead role in FIERCE CREATURES, the much-delayed follow-up to WANDA. Michael describes himself as 'drawn to risk like a moth to a flame. Someone grounded and safe who can be tempted into almost anything.' He duly finds time for two more travel series, POLE TO POLE in 1991, FULL CIRCLE in 1996, and two more bestselling books to accompany them. These latest Diaries show a man grasping every opportunity that came his way, and they deal candidly with the doubts and setbacks that accompany this prodigious word-rate. As ever, his family life, with three children growing up fast, is there to anchor him. TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. These ten years in different directions offer riches on every page to his ever-growing army of readers.

This is real Tehran: a city that is hidden from view and rarely written about, where survival depends on an intricate network of lies and subterfuge. It is a place where mullahs visit prostitutes, drug kingpins run crystal meth kitchens, surgeons restore girls' virginity and homemade porn is uploaded onto the Internet and sold in the bazaars. Plotted around the city's great central thoroughfare, Vali Asr Street, CITY OF LIES chronicles the lives of eight protagonists drawn from across the spectrum of Iranian society. This is a world of gangsters, socialites, dutiful housewives and volunteer militiamen - ordinary people forced to lead extraordinary lives. Based on extensive interviews and research, CITY OF LIES is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of modern Tehran, and of what it is to live, love and survive under one of the world's most repressive regimes.

PRINT IS DEAD LONG LIVE PRINT Imagine a world in which books, libraries and newspapers are things of the past. A world in which we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail taxis before we leave our offices and even create and sell language in a digital marketplace called the Word Exchange. Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language, and they're hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed. Then one evening, Doug disappears and Anana discovers a single written clue: ALICE. It's a code word Doug devised to signal if he ever fell into harm's way. Joined by Bart, her bookish colleague, Anana's search for Doug will take her into dark basement incinerator rooms, underground passages, secret meetings, and ultimately to the hallowed halls of the Oxford English Dictionary - the spiritual home of the written word.

Even monsters need peace. Even monsters need a person who truly wants to listen - to hear - so that someday we might find the words that are more than boxes. Then maybe we can stop men like me from happening...A prisoner sits on death row in a maximum security prison. His only escape from his harsh existence is through the words he dreams about, the world he conjures around him using the power of language. For the reality of his world is brutal and stark. He is not named, nor do we know his crime. But he listens. He listens to the story of York, the prisoner in the cell next to him whose execution date has been set. He hears the lady, an investigator who is piecing together York's past. He watches as the lady falls in love with the priest and wonders if love is still possible here. He sees the corruption and the danger as tensions in 'this enchanted place' build. And he waits.For even monsters have a story ...

BERLIN is a city of fragments and ghosts, a laboratory of ideas, the fount of both the brightest and darkest designs of history's most bloody century. The once arrogant capital of Europe was devastated by Allied bombs, divided by a Wall, then reunited and reborn as one of the creative centres of the world. Today it resonates with the echo of lives lived, dreams realized and evils executed. No other city has repeatedly been so powerful, and fallen so low; few other cities have been so shaped and defined by individual imaginations. Rory MacLean assembles a dazzlingly eclectic cast of Berliners over five centuries, from the wild medieval balladeer to the ambitious prostitute who refashioned herself as a royal princess, from the Scottish mercenary who fought for the Prussian Army to the fearful Communist Party functionary who helped to build the Wall. Alongside them we encounter Marlene Dietrich flaunting her sexuality in The Blue Angel, Goebbels concocting Nazi iconography, Hitler fantasising about the mega-city Germania and David Bowie recording 'Heroes'. Through these vivid portraits, Rory MacLean masterfully evokes the seen and the unseen, in a richly varied, unexpected tour of Berlin's history. The result is a unique biography of one of the world's most volatile and creative cities.

A mystery unsolved to this day A mystic who confounds the cynics A writer looking for the story that will make his name A ghost ship appears in the mist. To the struggling author Arthur Conan Doyle, it is an inspiration. To Violet Petra, the gifted American psychic, it is a cruel reminder. To the death-obsessed Victorian public, it is a fascinating distraction. And to one family, tied to the sea for generations, it is a tragedy. In salons and on rough seas, at seances and in the imagination of a genius, these stories converge in unexpected ways as the mystery of the ghost ship deepens. But will the sea yield its secrets, and to whom? Intricate, atmospheric, and endlessly intriguing, The Ghost of the Mary Celeste is a spellbinding exploration of love, loss and the fictions that pass as truth.

Written by one of Israel's most notable scholars, this volume provides a breathtaking history of Israel from the origins of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century to the present day. Anita Shapira's gripping narrative explores the emergence of Zionism in Europe against the backdrop of relations among Jews, Arabs and Turks, and the earliest pioneer settlements in Palestine under Ottoman rule. Weaving together political, social and cultural developments in Palestine under the British mandate, Shapira creates a tapestry through which to understand the challenges of Israeli nation-building, including mass immigration, shifting cultural norms, the politics...

THE ODYSSEY, which tells of Odysseus's long voyage home after the battle of Troy, is one of the defining masterpieces of Western literature. Populated by one-eyed man-eating giants, beautiful seductive goddesses, and lavishly hospitable kings and queens, it is an extraordinary work of the imagination, the original epic voyage into the unknown that has inspired other writing down through the ages - from ancient poems to modern fiction and films. With its consummately modern hero, full of guile and wit, THE ODYSSEY is perfectly suited to our times. Thanks to the scholarship and poetic power of the highly acclaimed Stephen Mitchell, this new translation recreates the energy and simplicity, the speed, the grace, and continual thrust and pull of the original, so that THE ODYSSEY's ancient story bursts vividly into new life.

Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in-for-me,' Julius Caesar cried as he fell under the thrusts of twenty daggers. Oh, all right, Caesar didn't cry that, Kenneth Williams did in the movie Carry on Cleo. But nor did he sigh 'Et tu, brute?' as Shakespeare would have us believe. The history we think we know is full of misconceptions, mischiefs, misunderstandings ...and monks who misused their spell-checkers. What the general reader needs is a history that explores our ancestors with humour and compassion. 'Humour' and 'history' are not two words you often see in the same sentence: our past was a dangerous and dirty place full of cruel rulers, foul food and terrible toilets. A short life, not a merry one, for most. Dangerous days in which to live and, inevitably, die. Die dreadfully too. 'Murder breathed her bloody steam.' That's what rhymester Byron said when he looked at the crumbling Coliseum. The Roman Emperors: they came, they saw, they left behind their bloody steam. This is their story - it could be the funniest history you'll ever read.

People don't just listen to Johnny Cash: they believe in him. Although part of his life has been told on film, there are many compelling layers to his story that have remained hidden -- until now. Robert Hilburn tells the unvarnished truth about a musical icon whose personal life was far more troubled and his artistry much more profound than even his most devoted fans have realised. As music critic for the Los Angeles Times, Hilburn knew Cash well throughout his life -- he was the only music journalist at the legendary Folsom Prison concert in 1968, and he interviewed him extensively just before Cash's death in 2003. Drawing upon his personal experience with Cash and a trove of never-before-seen material from the singer's inner circle, Hilburn gives us a compelling, human portrait of one of the most iconic figures in modern popular culture -- not only a towering figure in country music, but also a seminal influence in rock.

I come from a country which was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday. When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday 9 October 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price. Shot in the head at point blank range while riding the bus home from school, few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in Northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest ever nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, and of Malala's parents' fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. It will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.

One of our finest narrative historians, and journalist for the SUNDAY TIMES and LITERARY REVIEW, Lawrence James, has written a genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill, set within a fully detailed historical context, but solely focusing on his relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late 19th century, Churchill's first experience of the Empire was serving in conflicts in India, South Africa and the Sudan. His attitude towards the Empire at the time was the stereotypical Victorian paternalistic approach - a combination of feeling responsible and feeling superior. Conscious even then of his political career ahead, Churchill's natural benevolence towards the Empire was occasionally overruled for political reasons, and he found himself reluctantly supporting - or at least not publicly condemning - British atrocities. As a politician he consistently relied on the Empire for support during crises, but was angered by any demands for nationalisation. He held what many would regard today as racist views, in that he felt that some nationalities were superior to others, but he didn't regard those positions as fixed. His (some might say obsequious) relationship with America reflected that view. America was a former colony where the natives had become worthy to rule themselves, but - he felt - still had that tie to Britain. Thus he overlooked the frequently expressed American view that the Empire was a hangover from a bygone era of colonisation, and reflected poorly on Britain's ability to conduct herself as a political power in the current world order. This outmoded attitude was one of the reasons the British voters rejected him after a Second World War in which - it was universally felt - he had led the country brilliantly. His attitude remained Victorian in a world that was shaping up very differently. However, it would be a mistake to consider Churchill merely as an anachronistic soldier. He grasped the problems of the Cold War immediately, believing that immature nations prematurely given independence would be more likely to be sucked into the vortex of Communism. This view chimed with American foreign policy, and made the Americans rather more pragmatic about their demands for self-governance for Empire countries. Lawrence James has written a fascinating portrait of an endlessly interesting statesman - and one that includes tantalising vignettes about his penchants for silk underwear and champagne.

So much begins on the banks of the Nile: all religion, all life, all stories, the script we write in, the language we speak, the gods, the legends and the names of stars. This mighty river that flows through a quarter of all Africa has been history's greatest and most sustained creator. In this dazzling, idiosyncratic journey from ancient times to the Arab Spring, Robert Twigger weaves a Nile narrative like no other. Along the way we meet crocodiles and caliphs, nineteenth-century adventurers and twentieth-century novelists, biblical prophets and classical lovers, dam-builders and crusaders. As he navigates a meandering course through the history of the world's greatest river, he plucks the most intriguing, colourful and dramatic stories - truly a Nile red in tooth and claw. The result is both an epic journey through the whole sweep of human (and pre-human) history, and an intimate biography of the curious life of this great river, overflowing with stories of excess, love, passion, splendour and violence.