Murder often comes with an easy scapegoat... When a boatman is murdered on a remote island off Van Diemen's Land, the authorities want to blame a famous, and very inconvenient, political prisoner.
Not all murder victims are mourned... For Robert Church, superintendent of the Parramatta Female Factory, the most enjoyable part of his job is access to young convict women. Inmate Grace O'Leary ha
A fast-paced, witty and gripping historical crime opener to The Monsarrat Series from Tom Keneally and his eldest daughter MegIn an Australian penal colony at the edge of the known world, gentleman co
Democracy today is widely regarded as an ideal form of government. Yet in practice it sometimes seems a sham, a political puppet show in which hidden elites pull all the strings. As trust in elected r
Who are we? How should we live? Professor James Miller introduces twelve great philosophers who dedicated their lives to answering these questions. From Plato, who risked his reputation to tutor a tyr
The EU referendum in the UK and Trump's victory in the USA sent shockwaves through our democratic systems. In Democracy and Its Crisis A. C. Grayling investigates why the institutions of representativ
A Strange and Sublime Address, Amit Chaudhuri's first book, features a Bengali boy who spends his school holidays at his uncle's home in Calcutta. Heatwaves, thunderstorms, mealtimes, prayer-sessions,
What happens when authorities you venerate condone something you know is wrong?Every major religion and philosophy once condoned or approved of slavery, but in modern times nothing is seen as more evi
Can we ever really understand the present without first understanding the past?From the winner of the 2019 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Prize, and the author of the multi-award winning Laurus, comes a sweep
Whether exploring the thorny issues of wives' sexual duties, divorce, homosexuality, or sex outside marriage, discussions of sexual ethics and Islam often spark heated conflict rather than reasoned ar
The death of Jessica Burke was easy to explain: a history of depression, a heroin habit, a girl alone in her bathtub. But when her psychoanalyst, Daniel Abend, receives an ominous, handwritten poem, h
Sudan has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. After decades of civil war, rebel uprisings and power struggles, in 2011 it gave birth to the world's newest country - South Sudan. But it's
The liberatory sentiment that stoked the Arab Spring and saw the ousting of long-time Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak seems a distant memory. Democratically elected president Mohammad Morsi lasted onl
What are the chances?! This exclamation greets the scarcely believable coincidence - you're picked up by the same taxi driver several years and thousands of miles apart or, in a second-hand bookshop f
In an age where so many are preoccupied with global issues of freedom, human rights, peace and religious intolerance, the Baha'i Faith and its teachings are more relevant than ever before. This volum
Who has the answer to the world's fuel problems? How can we bring ruined land back to life? Where do roboticists turn when they try to engineer a hive mind? Termites. Strange though it seems, scient
The fault lines that can fracture a marriage are all contained in these six words: FAMILIARITY, FIGHTING, FAMILY, FINANCES, FOOLING AROUND AND FINDING HELP. It's time to get to know your F words. Us
Philadelphia, early 1844. As violent tensions escalate between `nativists' and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe's fears for the safety of his wife Virginia and mother-in-law Muddy are compoun
In October 2015, the Chinese Communist Party banned its 88 million members from excessive drinking, improper sexual relationships... and holding golf club memberships. But, with "the rich man's game"
Still one of Gibran's most well-loved works over 70 years after its original publication, Jesus the Son of Man is a striking fictional portrait of Christ as seen through the eyes of his contemporaries
The story of an awful, universe-gone-mad-mistake, and one girl's emotional battle for clarity and forgivenessTiger's mother has always been her whole world, but now she's sixteen her mother's control
Is anything truly random? Does infinity actually exist? Could we ever see into other dimensions?In this delightful journey of discovery, David Darling and extraordinary child prodigy Agnijo Banerjee d
Revealing Islam's formative influence on literary Romanticism, this book recounts a lively narrative of religious and aesthetic exchange, mapping the impact of Muslim sources on the West's most semina
Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Bernhardt and Kafka. Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a few dozen men and women changed the way we see the world. But many have vanished from
The world's best negotiators have moved beyond the conventional wisdom by utilising cutting-edge studies and real-world results. It's time you did too. For over twenty years, David Sally has been te
One of the leading members of the positive psychology movement draws on cutting-edge research and lab-tested tools to explain:* Why positivity is more important than happiness* How it relieves depress
Drawn from the first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses, Roy Mottahedeh's absorbing tale of Islam and Politics in revolutionary Iran is widely regarded as one of the best records of that turbulent time eve
A BBC History Magazine Book of the YearA writer, soldier, politician, courtier, spy and explorer, Sir Walter Ralegh lived more lives than most in his own time, in any time. The fifth son of a Devonshi
A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: "You don't know me, but I'm your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our
Never before have we had so much information available to us about food and health. There's GAPS, paleo, detox, gluten-free, alkaline, the sugar conspiracy, clean eating... Unfortunately, a lot of it
Dementia is now the primary cause of death in many developed nations. While the search for an effective treatment continues, the question is: can anything be done to protect ourselves from Alzheimer's
In a world without aircraft, to believe flight might be possible required a certain kind of character. You had to be starry-eyed, a possessor of practical ingenuity, nerves of steel and a level of san
AN INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS ON RELIGION 2014 PICKFew things provoke controversy in the modern world like the religion brought by Prophet Muhammad. Modern media are replete with alarm over jihad, underag
The Cancer Survivors Club brings together first-hand accounts of ordinary people who have beaten cancer. They are old and young, their diagnoses common and rare, their courses of treatment long and sh
This book takes a fresh look at the foundations of modern Islam. Scholars often locate the origins of the modern Islamic world in European colonialism or Islamic reactions to European modernity. Howev
Are you looking for The One? Well, according to Dr Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and relationship expert, you don't have to look any further for the way to find that special someone than you
Homosexuality is anathema to Islam - or so the majority of both believers and non-believers suppose. Throughout the Muslim world, it is met with hostility, where state punishments range from hefty fin
'The first and perhaps only book on the relative merits of American and British English that is dominated by facts and analysis rather than nationalistic prejudice. For all its scholarship, this is al
A New Statesman Book of the YearThe wolf stands at the forefront of the debate about our impact on the natural world. In one of the most celebrated successes of modern conservation, it has been reintr
