Raj Ghatak

Kitty Charing's life-changing inheritance comes with a catch. Her eccentric and childless guardian, Mr. Penicuik, is leaving Kitty all of his vast fortune - but with one condition. She must marry one of his five grand-nephews. However, Kitty's clear favourite - the rakish Jack Westruther - doesn't appear at all interested in the arrangement. To make Jack jealous, Kitty impulsively convinces his cousin, the kind-hearted and chivalrous Freddy Standen, to enter into a pretend engagement. But the more time she spends with Freddy, the more Kitty wonders whether Jack is the right choice after all...

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Political philosopher Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics. In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded on three vital principles: liberty, equality, and also uncertainty. The latter, he argues, is crucial for ensuring democracy's dynamic and creative character. Authoritarians, as well as Big Tech, seek to render politics (and individual citizens) predictable; democracy holds open the possibility that new ideas, movements and identities can be created. 

Acknowledging fully the dangers posed by populism, by kleptocratic autocracies like Russia's and by the digital authoritarianism of Xi, Müller also challenges the assumptions made by many liberals defending democracy in recent years. He shows how the secession of plutocratic elites in the West has undermined much of democracy's promise. In response, we need to re-invigorate our institutions, especially political parties and professional media, but also make it easier for citizens to mobilize. Taking on many of the most difficult political questions we face, this book is a vital rethinking of what democracy is, and how we can reinvent our social contract.

In an entertaining, living history of the modern United Kingdom, Andrew Marr traces how radically we have transformed through the course of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. The author gallops through our modern history, telling the story of Britain’s culture, innovation, politics, arts and more. From Sylvia Plath to Elvis Costello, Frank Critchlow to Bob Geldof and David Attenborough to the Beatles, the author explores how each era shaped the next, to land us where we are today. And where exactly is that?

We like to think we know the story of how Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, but there is one part of the story that has never been told. It features a group of MPs who repeatedly spoke out against their party and their government's policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini. Remarkably, nearly all of them were gay or bisexual. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hated them. He had them followed, harassed, spied upon and derided in the press, and called them 'the glamour boys' in reference to their sexuality. They suffered abuse, innuendo and threats of de-selection, yet they spoke out repeatedly against Hitler's territorial ambitions and his treatment of political prisoners and the Jews. In doing so they risked everything, swimming against the overwhelming tide of public opinion at a time when even the suggestion of homosexuality could land you in prison. Forced by the laws of the day to hide their true nature, they ran the danger of exposure on a daily basis. Some of them used their capacity for lying as spies. Others saw brutality in Hitler's camps first hand. Five of them died in action. Without them, this country would never have faced down the Nazis. This is their story.

Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, including several never previously in print, Languages of Truth chronicles a period of momentous cultural shifts. Across a wide variety of subjects, Rushdie delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need, and what emerges is a love letter to literature itself. Throughout, Rushdie shares his personal encounters, on the page and in person, with storytellers from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison, and revels in the creative lines that can join art and life.

Always attuned to the malleability of language, Rushdie considers the nature of truth, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism and censorship. Written with the author's signature wit and energy, Languages of Truth offers pleasure and insight in equal measure, confirming Rushdie's place as one of the most original and important thinkers of our time.

Calcutta, 1967: Supratik has become dangerously involved in political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind, before disappearing, is a note. At home, his family slowly begins to unravel, and destructive secrets are unearthed.

Why does it make sense to Ethiopian runners to get up at 3am to run up and down a hill? Who would choose to train on almost impossibly steep and rocky terrain, in hyena territory? And how come Ethiopian men hold six of the top ten fastest marathon times ever?

Michael Crawley spent fifteen months in Ethiopia training alongside (and sometimes a fair way behind) runners at all levels of the sport, from night watchmen hoping to change their lives to world class marathon runners, in order to answer these questions. Follow him into the forest as he attempts to keep up and get to the heart of their success.

Driven from their home by drought and disease, Tariq and his river tribe travel to the great capital city of Ethrial. But once they arrive, Tariq realises that they are still in grave danger - and time is running out! Tariq is a seer, and he's had a troubling vision of a tidal wave that will drown the whole city. But when Tariq warns of impending disaster, he is banished from the city.

The only ones who believe Tariq are Livia, and elf inventor, and Artos, the soldier who arrests him. An ancient legend called The Saga of the Spiritstones might hold the key to preventing a disaster. Can Tariq and his new friends find a long-lost Spiritstone and use its powerful elemental magic to save Ethrial, and the people they love, from complete devastation?

Book 1 in the Spiritstone Saga series.