Bestsellers

The Wager | David Grann

On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, the Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell.c The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death-for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Earth Mysteries Guide to Ancient Sites in West Penwith | Cheryl Staffon

It was in 1992 that the first edition of “The Earth Mysteries Guide to Ancient S in West Penwith” was first published, the first of what turned out to be 4 such tovering all of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. In the intervening years, other books been published about the ancient sites, but this Guide remains still the only such bookle that gives full details of the sites and all the ‘Earth Mysteries’ information known a them. Now, with this first major revision of the Guide, with full colour photographs of the sites, it should serve a new generation for many years to come.

Earth Mysteries is an umbrella term, that covers ‘alternative archaeological research into the meaning and purpose of the sites built by ancient peoples, and can include the location and alignment of sites in the landscape, their anomalous magnetic and radioactive qualities, their astronomical orientations, the folklore linked to them, and the psychic and spiritual phenomena experienced at them. The first Edition of this booklet included much of this information, but in the years since then, much more has been discovered and reported in the pages of Meyn Mamvro magazine. This new Revision includes updates of that research, and brings together as much useful information on the sites as can be crammed into 52 pages!

House of Flame and Shadow | Sarah J Maas

Bryce Quinlan is stranded in a strange new world. She’s going to need all her wits about her to get home again and return to everything she loves. But that’s no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust. Meanwhile, Hunt Athalar is back in the Asteri’s dungeons. Stripped of his freedom and the happiness he’d fought so hard for, he’s without a clue as to Bryce’s fate. Hunt is desperate to help his mate, but until he can escape the Asteri’s chains, his hands are quite literally tied.

In this breathtaking sequel to the ‘House of Earth and Blood’ and ‘House of Sky and Breath’, Midgard is brought to the brink of collapse, and the fate of the world rests on the hope of rebellion. But the fight for survival, freedom, and love may cost everything Bryce and Hunt have.

The Hidden Years | Rachel Hore

September 1939, troubled young Imogen Lockhart travels to Cornwall by train to deliver two small boys to their prep school, which has been evacuated to Penmartin House for the duration of the war.

When she’s asked to stay on at the school as temporary cover for the usual matron she readily agrees. After all, it enables her to put off more serious decisions of what to do with her life. But her time at the school turns out to be more complicated than she’d imagined. In 1966, sensitive and musical Belle Patterson is restless. She’s finishing her first year at a Midlands university but not enjoying it and is troubled by secrets in her family life. When, after a chance meeting, she falls in love with talented and attractive folk musician Gray Tucker, he easily persuades her to abandon her studies and accompany him to Cornwall.

Orbital | Samantha Harvey

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the Earth.

They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans.

Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from Earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.

The Practice of Not Thinking | Ryunosuke Koike

What if we could learn to look instead of see, listen instead of hear, feel instead of touch? Author Ryunosuke Koike shows how, by incorporating simple Zen practices into our daily lives, we can reconnect with our five senses and live in a more peaceful, positive way. When we focus on our senses and learn to re-train our brains and our bodies, we start to eliminate the distracting noise of our minds and the negative thoughts that create anxiety. By following Ryunosuke Koike’s practical steps on how to breathe, listen, speak, laugh, love and even sleep in a new way, we can improve our interactions with others, feel less stressed at work and make every day calmer.

Old God’s Time | Sebastian Barry

There were no saints in any era, Tom knew, just good men and bad, and sometimes both in the one bottle.

Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a white Victorian Castle in Dalkey overlooking the sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, but his peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask questions about a decades-old case. A traumatic case which Tom never quite came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother and family who move in next door, a woman on the run from her own troubles. And what of Tom’s family, his wife June and their two children? 

Strong Female Character | Fern Brady

This is a book about how being a woman gets in the way of people’s expectation of what autism should look like and, equally, how being autistic gets in the way of people’s expectations of what a woman should look like.

‘Strong Female Character’ is a game-changing memoir on sexism and neurodiversity. Fern Brady will use her voice as a neurodivergent, working-class woman from Scotland to bring issues such as sex work, abusive relationships and her time spent in teenage mental health units to the page. It will take a sledgehammer to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope which is mistakenly applied to neurodiverse women. It will also look at how her lack of regard for social expectations ultimately meant she surpassed any limitations of what a Scottish working-class woman can do.

Faebound | Saara El-Arifi

BOUND BY DESIRE. WELCOME TO THE INTOXICATING WORLD OF THE FAE.

Yeeran is a warrior in the elven army and has known nothing but violence her whole life.

Her sister, Lettle, is trying to make a living as a diviner, seeking prophecies of a better future. When a fatal mistake leads to Yeeran’s exile from the Elven lands, they are both forced into the terrifying wilderness beyond their borders. There they encounter the impossible: the fae court.

The fae haven’t been seen for a millennium. But now Yeeran and Lettle are thrust into their seductive world torn between their loyalty to each other, their elven homeland, and their hearts. .

Meet Me At The Surface | Jodie Matthews

Everything that comes from the ground has to go back down? eventually

Merryn grew up on the wilds of Bodmin moor, raised by her mother and her aunt in an old farmhouse. Here, the locals never leave the village, fear for the future of their farms and cling desperately to the folkloric tales that are woven into their history. Except Merryn, who has escaped to Manchester for university, briefly untethering herself from her past.

When Merryn returns home for the memorial service of her ex-girlfriend Claud, she finds her childhood home stranger and more secretive than ever. She’s sure that her mother is hiding something. The villagers are hunting on the moors at night, but for what? And then there’s a notebook, found in an old chest of drawers, full of long-forgotten folklore that seems to be linked somehow to Claud?