The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain.Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed.

Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn’t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain’s occasional failings and more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. And not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, and an extra day off at Christmas.

Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest and quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous and the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute and perceptive insight into all that is best and worst about Britain today.

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet - Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon

Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone.

In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking listeners behind the scenes, Where Wizards Stay Up Late captures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture.

To Play the King - Michael Dobbs

Newly elected Prime Minister Francis Urquhart takes on the new King, in the controversial No 1 bestselling second volume in the Francis Urquhart trilogy – now reissued in a new cover.

After scheming his way to power in ‘House of Cards’, Francis Urquhart made a triumphant return in ‘To Play the King’ – a Sunday Times No 1 bestseller that became a hugely successful BBC TV series, with Ian Richardson resuming his award-winning role as Francis Urquhart.

Its highly controversial and uncannily topical storyline – in which the role of the monarchy in modern Britain comes under scrutiny as Prime Minister Francis Urquhart threatens to expose Royal secrets when his plans are blocked by the idealistic new King – coincided with a huge increase in public interest in the future of the Royal Family following a series of Royal scandals.

The Fall Guy - James Lasdun

It is summer, 2012. Charlie, a wealthy banker with an uneasy conscience, invites his troubled cousin Matthew to visit him and his wife in their idyllic mountaintop house. As the days grow hotter, the friendship between the three begins to reveal its fault lines, and with the arrival of a fourth character, the household finds itself suddenly in the grip of uncontrollable passions. As readers of James Lasdun s acclaimed fiction can expect, The Fall Guy is a complex moral tale as well as a gripping suspense story, probing questions of guilt and betrayal with ruthless incisiveness. Who is the real victim here? Who is the perpetrator? And who, ultimately, is the fall guy? Darkly vivid, with an atmosphere of erotic danger The Fall Guy is Lasdun s most entertaining novel yet."

Since we Fell - Dennis Lehane

I LOVED YOU
I HATED YOU
I NEVER KNEW YOU...

Rachel's husband adores her. When she hit rock bottom, he was there with her every step of the way as she slowly regained her confidence, and her sanity. But his mysterious behaviour forces her to probe for the truth about her beloved husband.

How can she feel certain that she ever knew him?

And was she right to ever trust him?

Want you gone - Chris Brookmyre

What if your deepest secret was revealed?

Sam Morpeth is growing up way too fast, left to fend for a younger sister when their mother goes to prison and watching her dreams of university evaporate. But Sam learns what it is to be truly powerless when a stranger begins to blackmail her.

Who would you turn to?

Meanwhile, reporter Jack Parlabane has finally got his career back on track, but his success has left him indebted to a volatile, criminal source. Now that debt is being called in, and it could cost him everything.

What would you be capable of?

Thrown together by a vindictive and mysterious mutual enemy, Sam and Jack are about to discover they might be each other's only hope

Giro d'Italia : the story of the world's most beautiful bike race - O'Brien, Colin

Born of tumult in 1909, the Giro d'Italia helped unite a nation.

Since then it has reflected it too; the race's capricious and unpredictable nature matching the passions and extremes of Italy itself.

A desperately hard race through a beautiful country, the Giro has bred characters and stories that dramatise the shifting culture and society of its home: Alfonsina Strada, who cropped her hair and raced against the men in 1924. Ottavio Bottecchia, expected to challenge for the winner's Maglia Rosa in 1928, until killed on a training ride, probably by Mussolini's Black Shirts. Fausto Coppi, the metropolitan playboy with amphetamines in his veins, guided by a mystic blind masseur; and his arch rival Gino Bartali; humble, pious and countrified (and brave: recently it emerged he smuggled papers for persecuted Jewish Italians). The Giro's most tragic hero - Marco Pantani, born to climb but fated to lose.

Halted only by World Wars, the Giro has been contested since 1909. The 2017 edition will be its one hundredth. This book celebrates it in all its kaleidoscopic glory.