Daniel York Loh

After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives between 1958 and 1962, an ageing Mao launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy.

As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state. When the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology.

In-depth interviews and archival research at last give voice to the people, undermining the picture of conformity that is often understood to have characterised the last years of Mao's regime. By demonstrating that decollectivisation from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, Frank Dikötter casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.

Imagine the universe as a forest, patrolled by numberless and nameless predators. In this forest, stealth is survival - any civilisation that reveals its location is prey. Earth has. Now the predators are coming.

Crossing light years, the Trisolarians will reach Earth in four centuries' time. But the sophons, their extra-dimensional agents and saboteurs, are already here. Only the individual human mind remains immune to their influence. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a last-ditch defence that grants four individuals almost absolute power to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from human and alien alike.

Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead.

A special World Book Day story in the epic and action-packed DRAGON REALM series from bestselling authors Katie & Kevin Tsang. Perfect for 8+ fans who love fantasy, magic, adventure and DRAGONS!

Twelve-year-old Billy Chan and his friends each share a bond with a dragon. When new dragons fall from the sky into the Human Realm, the group join forces to reunite them with their lost egg. But the Dragon Realm is filled with dangerous golden elixir, magical creatures and threats lurking round every corner. Can our heroes accomplish their mission, or will they fall at the last hurdle?

For another edge-of-your-seat adventure starring Billy Chan and friends, check out the complete Dragon Realm series - Dragon Mountain, Dragon Legend, Dragon City, Dragon Rising and Dragon Destiny.

What does it mean to be truly free? And can any of us be free until all of us are?

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Nathan Law has experienced first-hand the shocking speed with which our freedom can be taken away from us, as an elected politician arrested simply for speaking his mind.

He remembers what it is like to lack freedom - and his father's precarious three-day escape from China in a small rowing boat.

When authoritarianism makes gains around the world, demanding our silence as the price of doing business, it poses a challenge to democracy everywhere.

In this passionate rallying cry, Law argues that we must defend our freedom now or face losing it for ever.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns. This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind. Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable and unpredictable interaction of its three suns. This is the Three-Body Problem and it is the key to everything: the key to the scientists' deaths, the key to a conspiracy that spans light-years and the key to the extinction-level threat humanity now faces.

In 1949 Mao Zedong hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City. Instead of liberating the country, the communists destroyed the old order and replaced it with a repressive system that would dominate every aspect of Chinese life.

In an epic of revolution and violence which draws on newly opened party archives, interviews and memoirs, Frank Dikötter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the brutal politics of Mao's court. A gripping account of how people from all walks of life were caught up in a tragedy that sent at least five million civilians to their deaths.