Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo

Kaz Brekker and his crew of deadly outcasts have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn't think they'd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they're right back to fighting for their lives.

Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kaz's cunning and test the team's fragile loyalties.

A war will be waged on the city's dark and twisting streets - a battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the Grisha world.

What Seems to Be the Problem - Adam Kay and Mark Watson

What Seems to Be the Problem with Adam Kay and Mark Watson reveals the intriguing and hilarious ways the body can go wrong - and the amazing stories that unfold when the medical world tries to help.... 

In conversation with his (very health-anxious) friend, the comedian Mark Watson, best-selling doctor-turned-writer Adam Kay takes a scalpel to the bizarre past, often-surprising present and fantastical future of medicine. 

From Leonardo da Vinci's extraordinary experiments all the way to Adam's own eye-watering experience on the wards, What Seems to Be the Problem is riddled with wild historical tales, contemporary anecdotes and jaw-dropping facts. A fascinating and funny trip through humanity's often misguided attempts to make us better.

Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World - James Ball

2016 marked the birth of the post-truth era. Sophistry and spin have coloured politics since the dawn of time, but two shock events - the Brexit vote and Donald Trump's elevation to US President - heralded a departure into murkier territory.

From Trump denying video evidence of his own words, to the infamous Leave claims of £350 million for the NHS, politics has rarely seen so many stretching the truth with such impunity.

Bullsh*t gets you noticed. Bullsh*t makes you rich. Bullsh*t can even pave your way to the Oval Office.

This is bigger than fake news and bigger than social media. It's about the slow rise of a political, media and online infrastructure that has devalued truth.

This is the story of bullsh*t: what's being spread, who's spreading it, why it works - and what we can do to tackle it.

The Lola Quartet - Emily St. John Mandel

The Lola Quartet: Jack, Daniel, Sasha and Gavin, four talented musicians at the end of their high school careers. On the dream-like night of their last concert, Gavin's girlfriend Anna disappears. Ten years later Gavin sees a photograph of a little girl who looks uncannily like him and who shares Anna's surname, and suddenly he finds himself catapulted back to a secretive past he didn't realize he'd left behind.

But that photo has set off a cascade of dangerous consequences and, as one by one the members of the Lola Quartet are reunited, a terrifying story emerges: of innocent mistakes, of secrecy and of a life lived on the run.

Filled with love, music and thwarted dreams, Emily St. John Mandel's The Lola Quartet is a thrilling novel about how the errors of the past can threaten the future.

Empire - Gore Vidal

Here is the story of arguably America's finest hour; of the time when the twentieth century dawned, Queen Victoria died, and America, basking deliciously in excess wealth, rather thought it might snap up an empire of its own. Yet while politicians muse over the potential of China or the Philippines - even Russia - empires are being built at home; railway empires; industrial empires; newspaper empires. Into this arena float the delectable Caroline Sanford, putative heiress and definite catch. Caroline is an oddity; she has been raised in France where they teach rich girls to talk and think. American society women, required only to think of themselves as the most interesting beings on earth, are rather alarmed. American men are amused - until Caroline shirks from marriage, sues her brother, buys a newspaper, and becomes that even greater oddity - a powerful woman. Mingling with the movers and shakers of the day - with President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolf Hearst, Henry James, the Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys - Caroline Sanford echoes the glorious passage of the United States as it sweeps into a new century, reaching boldly for the world.

How To Be Right: … in a world gone wrong - James O'Brien

Every day, James O’Brien listens to people blaming benefits scroungers, the EU, Muslims, feminists and immigrants. But what makes James’s daily LBC show such essential listening – and has made James a standout social media star – is the careful way he punctures their assumptions and dismantles their arguments live on air, every single morning.

In the bestselling How To Be Right, James provides a hilarious and invigorating guide to talking to people with faulty opinions. With chapters on every lightning-rod issue, James shows how people have been fooled into thinking the way they do, and in each case outlines the key questions to ask to reveal fallacies, inconsistencies and double standards.

If you ever get cornered by ardent Brexiteers, Daily Mail disciples or little England patriots, this book is your conversation survival guide.


‘I have had a ringside seat as a significant swathe of the British population was persuaded that their failures were the fault of foreigners, that unisex lavatories threatened their peace of mind and that ‘all Muslims’ must somehow apologise for terror attacks by extremists. I have tried to dissuade them and sometimes succeeded… The challenge is to distinguish sharply between the people who told lies and the people whose only offence was to believe them.’
– James O’Brien