Reading it, you will be led by Junichiro Tanizaki's light touch into a mysterious and tranquil world of darkness and shadows, where gold flashes in the gloom and a deep stillness reigns.

A magnet for trade and travellers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank.

James Walvin offers a new and an original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of the historic end to the slave trade in April 1807. John Newton (1725-1807), author of 'Amazing Grace', was a slave captain who marshalled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition.

Before long, with the enterprising nuns working tirelessly as typesetters, the Ripoli Press began printing a series of books and pamphlets that triggered an explosion of ideas in politics, philosophy and religion.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIET NICOLSONVita Sackville-West was an extraordinary woman from a long line of extraordinary women – this book tells their stories.

Read this specially designed new edition of Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer-prize winning exploration of what makes us human. Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe?

'I'm glad to taste something this sharp, this smart' Olivia Laing'Wide-ranging and unsparingly intelligent throughout' VogueIn her twenties Rachel Kushner went to Mexico in pursuit of her first love - motorbikes - to compete in the notorious and deadly race, Cabo 1000.

Read the devastating story of the Spanish flu - the twentieth century's greatest killer – and discover what it can teach us about the current Covid-19 pandemic. 'Both a saga of tragedies and a detective story...