See larger image QI Annual 2011 (Hardcover) By (author) John Lloyd, John Mitchinson List Price: 12.99 GBP New From: 0.01 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

QI Annual 2011, by John lloyd and John Mitchinson

The latest QI Annual, ‘H’, to accompany the new top-rated BBC1 TV series. Holy Horology!! By the Hoary Horsefeathers of Hoggoth!! Here’s the Heroic H Annual!! A Humungous Haul of Honey, Halves, Hipsters, Hats and Health & Safety from those Highbrow Homunculi at QI! Heaving with Hippos, Heraldry, Hot-dogs, Hermaphrodites and Houdini! Marvel at Superfry and the Hair-raising Happenings of Captain Vegas, Wonderbrand and Rossnobleman! Plus, Doctor Derren – alias Hypnoboy – and the Horrendous Hamsters of Judge Jupitus! Hello! Happiness!

See larger image The EFG Bumper Book of QI Annuals (Hardcover) By (author) John Lloyd, John Mitchinson List Price: 12.99 GBP New From: 3.13 In Stock Used from: 1.48 In Stock

EFG Bumper Book of QI Annuals, by John lloyd and John Mitchinson

The QI Annuals are the nearest things to having the hit BBC1 TV show live in your living room. Top comedians and brainiacs, from Stephen Fry and Alan Davies to guests such as Phill Jupitus, Jo Brand, Clive Anderson, Jeremy Clarkson and Rowan Atkinson, have joined top cartoonists and illustrators, and the estimiable QI elves themselves in the first three QI Annuals, covering the letters E, F and G (starting at A is so overrated). This bumper paperback edition contains three annuals and are the perfect gift for the millions of new QI fans who have recently joined the series since its transfer to primetime BBC1.

See larger image Livin' the Dreem: A Year in My Life (Hardcover) By (author) Harry Hill List Price: 18.99 GBP New From: 0.96 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

Livin’ the Dreem, by Harry Hill

Harry Hill’s unexpurgated diary of his year promises to do for the celebrity memoir what the Hadron Collider has done for particle acceleration. Think Samuel Pepys meets Katie Price. This frank and sometimes controversial diary details one hectic year in the eye of the showbiz storm, cut with a heavy mix of the day-to-day goings-on in Bexhill, where Harry lives at home with his mother and occasional Filipino fiancée, Lay Dee. Follow the near fatal goings-on during Harry’s filming of Britain’s Most Dangerous Roads, his attempts to become a judge on X Factor and his struggle to meet the Welsh chanteuse Duffy at Warwick Avenue. Read of his dog’s ongoing battle with the bottle, and how he is sacked from the sniffer staff at Gatwick Airport due to sexual harassment. Learn how Harry’s Nan gets on in her holiday home in Iraq, her affair with the milkman and her subsequent struggle to have fun whilst living on a curfew.

See larger image The Complete Book of Sisters (Paperback) By (author) Dr Luisa Dillner List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 3.21 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

The Complete Book of Sisters, by Dr Luisa Dillner

A sister is for life: your best friend, or your worst enemy. She is the yardstick by which you measure how well you’re doing and the keeper of your family secrets. She may be the first person you rush to when something wonderful happens or the one whose shoulder you cry on. She’s the one you’re compared to and the one to compete with. In this entertaining collection there are sisters ranging from the loving Brontës to the scrapping Mitfords (who could never remember who was in and who was out of favour), to the Pankhursts (who fought for women’s suffrage only to fall out with each other), to sisters of Lenin and Hitler, and of Kings and Queens. There are sisters whose job it is to compete with each other, such as Venus and Serena Williams. ‘It wasn’t fun eliminating my little sister, but I have to be tough’, said Venus. A Lewis Carroll poem says, ‘never stew your sister’. If cooking her isn’t allowed, what is the worst thing you can do to your sister? If you want to make sure she’ll never forgive you, pinch her man or borrow her clothes.

See larger image The Complete Book of Mothers-in-Law: A Celebration (Paperback) By (author) Dr Luisa Dillner List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 0.59 In Stock Used from: 0.08 In Stock

The Complete Book of Mothers-in-Law, by Dr Luisa Dillner

Most of us either have a mother-in-law or will be one. It’s not a role most women take on gladly. Mothers-in-law are traditionally the butt of jokes and the scapegoats for family squabbles. But are they really as nasty, possessive and interfering as their reputation suggests? Luisa Dillner looks beyond the stereotype of the mother-in-law and finds they come in many different varieties; from loveable and loyal to lonely, ferocious and scheming.

There are brave mothers-in-law such as the explorer and missionary David Livingstone’s who trekked hundreds of miles across Africa to help out with the grandchildren, impossible ones like the actress Judy Garland, who picked her own son-in-law, and royal ones such as Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II who both found controlling their sons- and daughters-in-law their hardest job of all.

Far from being all bad, mothers-in-law have many redeeming features and can be sources of help and support for their sons- and daughters-in-law. With a bit of understanding and a good dollop of tolerance this relationship can be one of the most rewarding of your adult life.

See larger image The Complete Book of Aunts (Hardcover) By (author) Rupert Christiansen, Beth Brophy List Price: 12.52 GBP Used from: 0.01 In Stock

The Complete Book of Aunts, by Rupert Christiansen

Lovable aunts, exotic aunts, seductive aunts, sad, mad and bad aunts, aunts in jail and aunts on the razzle – here is a delightful and entertaining guide to the most misunderstood of relatives. Taking his own beloved aunt Janet as a starting point, Rupert Christiansen embarks on a celebration of aunts and their influential role throughout history.

See larger image Simon's Cat: Beyond the Fence (Hardcover) By (author) Simon Tofield List Price: 12.99 GBP New From: 3.99 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

Simon’s Cat: Beyond the Fence, by Simon Tofield

Simon Tofield returns with a charming follow-up which sees the adorable but incorrigible cat embark on a series of adventures beyond the garden fence. Sharply observed and beautifully drawn, this new book promises to be an even bigger hit than the first.

See larger image What the Hell are You Doing?: The Essential David Shrigley (Hardcover) By (author) David Shrigley List Price: 20.00 GBP New From: 15.97 In Stock Used from: 2.98 In Stock

What The Hell Are You Doing? The Essential David Shrigley, by David Shrigley

A beautifully designed and darkly comic collection of work, The Essential David Shrigley collects together the best of Shrigley’s work, old and new. It is a celebration of the surreal world of one of our finest contemporary artists.

See larger image A Life in Pictures (Hardcover) By (author) Alasdair Gray List Price: 35.00 GBP New From: 18.24 In Stock Used from: 12.92 In Stock

A Life in Pictures, by Alasdair Grey

Alasdair Gray is known throughout the world for his writing, but he is also a highly regarded artist who not only illustrates and designs his own books, but has created many beautiful and intriguing portraits, paintings, posters and murals. Alasdair started painting and writing from an early age, and in his seventies he’s still vigorously doing both. In this autopictography he gathers together the work that has mattered most to him over the years, and weaves the story of his life through and around these pictures in his own unmistakable style. A beautifully and copiously illustrated book, designed by himself, this is life as seen by one of the millennium’s most entertaining and wry creative geniuses.

See larger image A Life in Pictures (Hardcover) By (author) Alasdair Gray List Price: 35.00 GBP New From: 18.24 In Stock Used from: 12.92 In Stock

A Life in Pictures, by Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray is known throughout the world for his writing, but he is also a highly regarded artist who not only illustrates and designs his own books, but has created many beautiful and intriguing portraits, paintings, posters and murals. Alasdair started painting and writing from an early age, and in his seventies he’s still vigorously doing both. In this autopictography he gathers together the work that has mattered most to him over the years, and weaves the story of his life through and around these pictures in his own unmistakable style. A beautifully and copiously illustrated book, designed by himself, this is life as seen by one of the millennium’s most entertaining and wry creative geniuses.

See larger image The Christmas Cookie Club (Paperback) By (author) Ann Pearlman List Price: 6.99 GBP New From: 0.01 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock Release date October 14, 2010.

The Christmas Cookie Club, by Ann Pearlman

What would we do without one another? It was a statement, not a question. Each of us knew the answer for herself.

Every year on the first Monday of December, Marnie and her twelve closest girlfriends gather with batches of beautifully wrapped homemade cookies. Everyone has to bring a dish and a bottle of wine and, as they eat, they take turns telling the story of the cookies they have baked. Stories that, somehow, are always emblematic of the year that has just passed.

This year, the stories are especially important. Marnie’s oldest daughter has a risky pregnancy. Will she find out tonight how that story will end? Jeannie’s father is having an affair with her best friend. Who else knew about the betrayal? Rosie’s husband doesn’t want children, but can she live with his decision? Each woman, each friend has a story to tell.

The Cookie Club is about the passion and hopefulness of a new romance, the betrayal and disillusionment some relationships bring, the joys and fears of motherhood, and above all, it’s a celebration of the friendships between women.

See larger image Seeing Things (Paperback) By (author) Oliver Postgate List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 0.01 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

Seeing Things, by Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postgate’s death in December 2008 was greeted with great sadness. For over forty years his name was synonymous with the best in children’s television – Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine, The Pogles, Noggin the Nog, Pingwings. Oliver wrote and narrated the stories, while Peter Firmin illustrated the characters and made the puppets. Their classic films are still loved by viewers of all ages. In this delicious autobiography Oliver Postgate describes how he came to create his stories and characters, developing innovative techniques of animation and puppetry alongside his friend and co-producer Peter Firmin. Amazingly, almost all of Oliver’s films were made in a cowshed in Kent on a budget of next to nothing. But the path to film-making was far from conventional, or even planned. Oliver Postgate was the grandson of George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party in the 1920s, and his father was Raymond Postgate, who became famous as the founder and author of The Good Food Guide. Oliver followed in neither’s footsteps. Before his first TV production, Alexander the Mouse in 1958, he had already been a war evacuee; a conscientious objector; a farm labourer; a relief worker in post-war Germany; an artist; an actor; and an inventor. The story of Oliver Postgate’s extraordinary and adventurous life, and the wonderful characters who populated it, both real and imagined, is witty, charming, beautifully remembered and beautifully told.

See larger image Mary & Carol Higgins Clark Christmas Collection: The Christmas Thief, Deck the Halls, He Sees You When You're Sleeping (Paperback) By (author) Carol Higgins Clark, Mary Higgins Clark List Price: 9.99 GBP New From: 0.01 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

The Christmas Collection, by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark

Three days before Christmas, Alvirah Meehan – the famous lotterywinner and amateur detective – and Regan Reilly try to meet the harsh demands and tough deadlines of the kidnappers who have held Reilly’s father for a $1,000,000 ransom. To make matters worse, a winter storm is gathering, putting their lives in greater danger. Deck The Halls is filled with twists and turns, intrigue and danger, as well as a hearty dose of holiday cheer.

In He Sees You When You’re Sleeping, Sterling receives his summons into heaven a few days before Christmas. In order to be deemed fit to enter heaven this year he is sent back to earth and given an opportunity to prove his worthiness by helping someone else. That someone is seven-year-old Marissa. She has been separated from her father and grandmother who have, following the threats of two mobsters, both been forced into the Witness Protection Program. Filled with suspense and humour, this is a delightful and warm-hearted tale of perseverance, redemption and love.

Alvirah Meehan and Regan Reilly join forces once again in The Christmas Thief to solve a Christmas mystery. The time they must track down the beautiful ninety-foot tree that is hijacked on its way to the Rockefeller Centre for the Christmas season.

See larger image The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain's Greatest Comedian (Hardcover) By (author) Andrew Stott List Price: 20.00 GBP New From: 6.89 In Stock Used from: 5.99 In Stock

The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, by Andrew McConnell Stott

The son of a deranged Italian immigrant, Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837) was the most celebrated of English clowns. The first to use white-face make-up and wear outrageous coloured clothes, he completely transformed the role of the Clown in the pantomime with a look as iconic as Chaplin’s tramp or Tommy Cooper’s magician. One of the first celebrity comedians, his friends included Lord Byron and the actor Edmund Kean, and his memoirs were edited by the young Charles Dickens. But underneath the stage paint, Grimaldi struggled with depression and his life was blighted with tragedy. His first wife died in childbirth and his son would go on to drink himself to death. The outward joy and tomfoolery of his performances masked a dark and depressing personal life, and instituted the modern figure of the glum, brooding comedian. Joseph Grimaldi left an indelible mark on the English theatre and the performing arts, but his legacy is one of human struggle, battling demons and giving it his all in the face of adversity.

See larger image Cold Kiss (Paperback) By (author) John Rector List Price: 7.99 GBP New From: 0.01 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

Cold Kiss, by John Rector

Nate and Sara are broke – and on the run from the past.

When a shady hitchhiker offers them cold hard cash for a lift, they can’t afford to say no.

But very soon they’ll be wishing they had. Because picking him up is about to become the biggest mistake they ever made – and the price they’ll have to pay will be greater than they could ever have imagined…

• Read an extract from Cold Kiss on Bookdagger

See larger image Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands (Paperback) By (author) Aatish Taseer List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 3.52 In Stock Used from: 2.98 In Stock

Stranger to History, by Aatish Taseer

As a child, all Aatish Taseer ever had of his father was his photograph in a browning silver frame. Raised by his Sikh mother in Delhi, his father, a Pakistani Muslim, remained a distant figure. It was a fractured upbringing which left Aatish with many questions about his own identity. Stranger to History is the story of the journey Aatish made to try to understand what it means to be Muslim in the twenty-first century. Starting from Istanbul, Islam’s once greatest city, he travels to Mecca, its most holy, and then home through Iran and Pakistan. Ending in Lahore, at his estranged father’s home, on the night Benazir Bhutto was killed, it is also the story of Aatish’s own divided family over the past fifty years.

See larger image Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip (Paperback) By (author) Peter Hessler List Price: 14.99 GBP New From: 10.81 In Stock Used from: 3.37 In Stock

Country Driving, by Peter Hessler

In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the long-time Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver’s license. For the next seven years he travelled the country, tracking how the automobile and the improved transport system were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of everyday people – farmers, migrant workers and entrepreneurs – who have reshaped the country during one of the most critical periods in its history.

See larger image The Secret Life of France (Paperback) By (author) Lucy Wadham List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 0.40 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

The Secret Life of France, by Lucy Wadham

Lucy Wadham’s first work of non-fiction is a candid and funny account of her long and tumultuous love affair with France, her adoptive land. At the age of eighteen Wadham ran away from English boys – who she found emotionally immature and sexually unconfident – and into the arms of a Frenchman. She soon discovered that romantic relationships in France were fraught with their own set of problems: not only do the French put women on a pedestal, but both sexes are required to act out the sort of seduction games that disappeared from English society centuries ago. Wadham, who dressed in Doc Martens and baggy jumpers, struggled to fit in.

Twenty-five years later, having married in a French Catholic church, put her children through the French education system and divorced in a French court of law, Wadham examines the profound and varied differences between the Anglo-Saxon and French worldviews. Using her own experience, as a wife and mother, and later as an investigative journalist for the BBC, Wadham explores French attitudes towards sex, marriage, adultery, money, work, happiness, war and race, and in so doing reveals much about our own priorities and the nature of our identity.

The Secret Life of France challenges our preconceptions and debunks many of the myths – bleak and rosy – on which our view of France rests. Might we have something to learn from this most infuriating and contrary neighbour?

See larger image The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy (Paperback) By (author) Rachel Cusk List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 0.59 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

The Last Supper, by Rachel Cusk

An original, witty and perceptive memoir of a family journey through Italy, from the celebrated writer Rachel Cusk.

A family decide to sell up and go to Italy to search for art and its meanings, for freedom from routine, for a different path into the future. Award-winning writer Rachel Cusk describes a three-month journey around the Italy of Raphael and rental villas, of the Piero della Francesca trail and the tourist furnaces of Amalfi, of food and football and fancy ice cream. With her husband and two children, she uncovers the mystery of a foreign language, the need for friendship, the perils and pleasures of unbelonging, the strange involvement of the personal and the universal.

Both sharp and humane in its exploration of the desire to travel and to escape, of art and its inspirations, beauty and ugliness, and of the challenge of balancing domestic life with creativity, The Last Supper is an astonishing memoir.

See larger image Bicycle Diaries (Paperback) By (author) David Byrne List Price: 9.99 GBP New From: 2.07 In Stock Used from: 2.06 In Stock

Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne

Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bicycle as his principal means of transportation in New York City. A few years later he discovered folding bikes, and starting taking them with him on music tour overseas, and experienced a sense of liberation as he pedalled around many of the world’s principal cities. The point of view from his bike seat has given Byrne a panoramic window on urban life over the last thirty years as he has cycled round cities such as London, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Manila, New York, and San Francisco. From music and the visual arts, to globalisation, politics, the nature of creative work, fashion and art, this book gives the reader an incredible insight into what Byrne is seeing and thinking as he pedals around these cities. Filled with intimate photographs, incredible musical stories and a powerful ecological message, this is a enchanting celebration of bike riding – of the rewards of seeing the world at bike level.

See larger image The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica (Paperback) By (author) Ian Thomson List Price: 8.99 GBP New From: 3.21 In Stock Used from: 2.67 In Stock

The Dead Yard, by Ian Thomson

Jamaica used to the source of much of Britain’s wealth, an island where slaves grew sugar and the money flowed out in vast quantities. It was a tropical paradise for the planters, a Babylonian exile for the Africans shipped to the Caribbean. Since independence in 1962, it has gradually become associated with a new kind of hell, a society where extreme violence has become ordinary and gangs control the areas where most Jamaicans live.

Ian Thomson’s brave new book explores a country of lost promise, a country that most older Jamaicans in Britain cannot recognise as their own. Once a beacon of optimistic third world politics, the island is now sunk in corruption, hopelessness and drug wars. Jamaica’s music was once the lilting anthem of idealists everywhere; now it is a repetitive glorification of homophobia and violence.

Thomson walks the streets and rides the buses that most middle-class Jamaicans, let alone white visitors, avoid like the plague. He describes poverty, the reality of gang rule and police brutality. He meets Jamaicans who are trying to make a difference, and astonishingly complacent members of the elite.

This is an unforgettable portrait of a country that has had a huge influence on British culture, for good and ill.

See larger image Coast to Coast (Paperback) By (author) Jan Morris List Price: 9.99 GBP New From: 3.78 In Stock Used from: 0.63 In Stock

Coast to Coast, by Jan Morris

Fresh from her successful scoop reporting the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Jan Morris spent a year journeying across the United States, by car, train, ship and aeroplane. In herwords a “period piece”, Coast to Coast describes an American identity markedly different from today. In her brilliant prose, Morris records with exuberence and curiosity a time of innocence in the US – when television was in its infancy, the Big Mac had not been invented and the popular song of the day was “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”.

See larger image Hello Dubai: Skiing, Sand and Shopping in the World's Weirdest City (Paperback) By (author) Joe Bennett List Price: 12.99 GBP New From: 0.01 In Stock Used from: 0.01 In Stock

Hello Dubai, by Joe Bennett

Boom town, modern marvel, commercial hub, where middle-east meets wealthy west, playground for tourists, crawling with ex-pats, built by Indians, owned by Arabs, Dubai has risen from next to nothing to an awful lot in little more than thirty years. How? And can it go on? Has it sold itself to the corporate dollar? Is it anything more than a mall in the desert? Will the sands return? Joe Bennett goes to find out.

See larger image Talking to Zeus: My Year in a Greek Garden (Paperback) By (author) Jane Shaw List Price: 7.99 GBP New From: 2.96 In Stock Used from: 1.67 In Stock

Talking to Zeus, by Jane Shaw

Jane Shaw was working as a volunteer in Chelsea’s famous Physic Garden when she earned a placement to work for a year on a very special organic garden in Greece. But this was to be no easy-going break in the Mediterranean. The five-acre plot, which Jane swiftly named ‘Alcatraz’, was devoid of creature comforts, perched on a steep, remote hillside that was blindingly hot in summer and freezing in winter, and overseen by a 74-year-old, passionate, mercurial eccentric English lady called Joy. On arrival, Jane is immediately drawn into the intrigue of village life, such as the ongoing feud with the nouveau riche ex-pat neighbour with a sports car, whom Joy suspects has dug an illegal bore hole to water his terraced lawns. But most of all she is beguiled by the vibrant energy of the landscape, the folklore, the food and the numerous engaging characters who flock to Joy as the wise matriarch of the locale. The story arcs through a year of seasons in the garden as Jane learns to love its wild beauty and to relish the hard work and care it needs. This is a charming, wildly entertaining and joyful portrait of a very special place, and will appeal to anyone who loves gardening, or who has enjoyed books such as Driving Over Lemons.

Serena

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive from Boston in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire. Serena is new to the mountains – but she soon shows herself the equal of any worker, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband’s life in the wilderness. Yet she also learns that she will never bear a child. Serena’s discovery will set in motion a course of events that will change the lives of everyone in this remote community. As the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel, this riveting story of love, passion and revenge moves toward its shocking reckoning.

From Those Wonderful Folks Who gave You Pearl Harbor, by Jerry Della Femina

In 1970 Jerry Della Femina wrote this gossip-filled, insider’s account of working on Madison Avenue during the golden age of advertising. It caused a sensation, became a bestseller and established itself as a cult classic.

Years later, it inspired the multi-award-winning drama Mad Men.

American Rust, by Philipp Meyer

It is the story of two young men bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia and the beauty around them who dream of a future beyond the factories, abandoned homes, and the polluted river.

Isaac is the smartest kid in town, left behind to care for his sick father after his mother commits suicide and his sister Lee moves away. Now Isaac wants out too. Not even his best friend, Billy Poe, can stand in his way: broad-shouldered Billy, always ready for a fight, still living in his mother’s trailer. Then, on the very day of Isaac’s leaving, something happens that changes the friends’ fates and tests the loyalties of their friendship and those of their lovers, families, and the town itself.

Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, Philipp Myer’s American Rust is an extraordinarily moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendance, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.

• Download a chapter from American Rust

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Steven Chbosky

Charlie is a freshman. And while he’s not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But Charlie can’t stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

Stardust, by Joseph Kanon

Hollywood, 1945. Ben Collier returns from war to the news that his filmmaker brother Daniel has died in mysterious circumstances — the papers say it was an accident, but others suspect suicide. Daniel was a heroic figure who helped many prominent German intellectuals escape Europe before the war and then settled in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife, Liesl. Why would a man with such a bright future take his own life? Could he have been murdered?

Ben is determined to uncover the truth and uses his friendship with Continental Studios boss Sol Lasner to penetrate the maze of studio politics and Hollywood secrets. Beneath the surface shine of the movie business lies a darker world where even the biggest stars and star-makers are vulnerable to old secrets being exposed and old loyalties tested…

• Take a tour of Hollywood past with Jospeh Kanon
• Stardust reading group guide
  

Founding Brothers, by Joseph J. Ellis

Founding Brothers is an illuminating, Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic: Adams, Burr, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington. During the 1790s these great statesmen came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the future. Ellis focuses on six key ‘moments’ in this era: Burr and Hamilton’s deadly duel; the ‘secret dinner’ of Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, during which the seat of the nation’s capital was determined; Franklin’s petition to end slavery, and Madison’s efforts to quash it; Washington’s farewell address that offered his country some parting advice about US involvement in other nations’ affairs; Adams’s difficult term as Washington’s successor; and Adams and Jefferson’s correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their views of the Revolution and its legacy.

In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis shows us the private characters behind the public personas, and argues that the checks and balances that permitted the republic to endure were intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of these men. Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics – then, and now.

Wall Street, by Steve Fraser

This epic book is a passionate, critical history of the most powerful financial district in the world. Steve Fraser’s story of America’s love-hate relationship with its own economic power is brought to life with colourful tales of robber barons and aristocrats, Napoleonic financiers and reckless adventurers, men to the manor born and men from nowhere. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Wall Street is history on a grand scale, fully deserving of its subject.

Mystery Train, by Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus’s study of American rock and roll is universally acclaimed as the benchmark work of modern rock criticism. Using a handful of artists – a brace of bluesmen, The Nad, Sly Stone, Randy Newman and Elvis Presley – Marcus illuminates and interprets the American Dream in rigorous prose touching on the myth, landscape and oral tradition of the continent.

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

Acclaimed on publication as a contemporary classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and Lucille, orphans growing up in the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast northwest of America. Abandoned by a succession of relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead mother. Steeped in imagery of the bleak wintry landscape around them, the sisters’ struggle towards adulthood is powerfully portrayed in a novel about loss, loneliness and transience.

Private Life, by Jane Smiley

Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He’s the most famous man their Missouri town has ever produced: a naval officer and an astronomer – a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret’s mother calls the match ‘a piece of luck’.

Yet Andrew confounds Margaret’s expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in San Francisco, and soon she realizes that his devotion to science leaves little room for anything, or anyone, else. She stands by him through tragedies both personal and those they share with the nation. But as World War II approaches, Andrew’s obsessions take a darker turn, forcing Margaret to reconsider the life she’d so carefully constructed.

Private Life is a portrait of marriage and the mysteries that endure even in lives lived side by side, a riveting historical panorama, and an unforgettable novel from one of our finest storytellers.

The Motel Life, by Willy Vlautin

‘The night it happened I was drunk, almost passed out, and I swear to God a bird came flying through my motel room window . . .’

Narrated by Frank Flannigan, The Motel Life tells the story of how he and his brother Jerry Lee take to the road in a bid to escape the hit-and-run accident which kick-starts the narrative. Written with huge compassion, and an eye for the small details of life, it has become one of the most talked about debuts of recent years.

Lake Wobegon Days, by Garrison Keillor

Lake Wobegon Days is the marvellous chronicle of an imaginary place located somewhere in the middle of the state (but not on the map) and named after an Indian word meaning ‘Here we are!’ or ‘We sat all day in the rain waiting for you.’ From the narrator – a skinny Protestant kid fascinated by the Catholic church – we learn of the town’s beginnings and of the settlers who made their lives there. A contemporary classic filled with warmth and humour, sadness and tenderness, songs and poems, it is also an unforgettable portrait of small-town America.

Diner, by Barry Levinson

Baltimore 1959, and a gang of male friends in their early twenties reconvene for the wedding of their pal Eddie. Boogie is the hustler of the group, a trainee hairdresser mired in gambling debts. Shreevie is the elder statesman, already married (albeit tetchily) to Beth. Fenwick is the reckless trust-fund prankster; Modell the straight-faced jester; Billy the thoughtful intellectual.

The sole obstacle barring Eddie’s marriage is that he has decreed that his fiancée Elyse must first pass a taxing quiz on pro-football trivia; and there’s the rub. On the threshold of adulthood, the guys remain happiest hanging out together in the neighbourhood diner, feasting on sodas and French fries in gravy, shooting the breeze about pop records, first dates and schoolboy pranks. Maturity, responsibility and real red-blooded women are the challenges they truly fear.

Like the other two entries in Barry Levinson’s ‘Baltimore trilogy’ (Tin Men and Avalon), Diner is a satisfyingly literary creation, free of plot points or grandstanding resolutions. People just talk; true-life characters and situations are lovingly and wittily evoked. Diner is the original ‘guys together’ picture, a template for future hits such as Swingers.

Bunny is a salesman in search of a soul. He is soon to discover his days are numbered . . . Bunny Munro sells beauty products and the dream of hope to lonely housewives along the south coast of England. Set adrift by his wife’s sudden death and struggling to keep a grip on reality, he does the only thing he can think of – with his young son in tow, he hits the road. While Bunny plies his trade and his sexual charisma door-to-door, nine-year-old Bunny Junior sits patiently in the car, exploring the world through the pages of his encyclopaedia. As their bizarre and increasingly frenzied road trip shears into a final reckoning, Bunny finds that the ghosts of his world – decrepit fathers, vengeful lovers, jealous husbands and horned psycho-killers – have emerged from the shadows and are seeking to exact their toll. A tender portrait of the relationship between father and son, The Death of Bunny Munro is a stylish, angry and hugely enjoyable read, bursting with the wit and mystery that fans will recognise as hallmarks of Cave’s singular vision.

Read an extract

The Gathering Night, by Margaret Elphinstone

Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and her family live off the land. But when her brother goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half-starved and maddened with grief, Alaia’s mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son. The Gathering Night is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disaster. This gripping novel is set deep in our stone-age past, but resonates as a parable for our troubled planet 8,000 years on.

Seven-Tenths, by James Hamilton-Paterson

Seven-Tenths is James Hamilton-Paterson’s classic exploration of the sea. A beautifully written blend of literature and science, which includes the acclaimed essay ‘Sea Burial’. Hamilton-Paterson writes about fishing, piracy, ecological crisis and many other subjects, and is especially good on the melancholy fascination of those border places and moments when the sea and land meet, and human experience seems transient. At a time of growing concern about our degradation of the oceans, this extraordinary book retains all its relevance and power.

This is How, by M.J. Hyland

All actions have consequences. This is how life goes. Patrick is a loner, an intelligent but disturbed young man struggling to find his place in the world. He ventures out on his own, and, as he begins to find happiness, he commits an act of violence that sends his life horribly and irreversibly out of control. But should a person’s life be judged by a single bad act? This is How is a compelling and macabre journey into the dark side of human existence and a powerful meditation on the nature of guilt and redemption.

Read an extract

The Widow’s Tale, by Mick Jackson

A newly widowed woman has done a runner. She just jumped in her car, abandoned her (very nice) house in north London and kept on driving until she reached the Norfolk coast. Now she’s rented a tiny cottage and holed herself away there, if only to escape the ceaseless sympathy and insincere concern.

She’s not quite sure, but thinks she may be having a bit of a breakdown. Or perhaps this sense of dislocation is perfectly normal in the circumstances. All she knows is that she can’t sleep and may be drinking a little more than she ought to.

But as her story unfolds we discover that her marriage was far from perfect. That it was, in fact, full of frustration and disappointment, as well as one or two significant secrets, and that by running away to this particular village she might actually be making her own personal pilgrimage.

By turns elegiac and highly comical, The Widow’s Tale conjures up this most defiantly unapologetic of narrators as she begins to pick over the wreckage of her life and decides what has real value and what she should leave behind.

Read an interview with Mick Jackson

This Striped World, by Emma Jones

With their tidal imagination, the poems in this debut collection sweep between old worlds and new, seeking the lost and recovering the found among shipwrecks, underwater zoos and transitory lands.

Emma Jones brings her inventive worlds dramatically to life in a series of vividly distilled meetings: of settlers and indigenous peoples, of seawaters and shore, of humanity and the wilds of nature. Here tigers stalk the captive and the free, while Daphne tells of her new leaves, ‘They sing, and make the world.’ The same might be said of the poems themselves in this restless and memorable search for belonging.

Listen to an interview with Emma Jones

Our Tragic Universe, by Scarlett Thomas

‘I was reading about the end of the universe when I got a text message from my friend Libby . . .’ If Kelsey Newman’s theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg – locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline long-gone for a book that she can’t write – this thought fills her with dread. Meg is lost in a labyrinth of her own devising. But could there be an important connection between a wild beast living on Dartmoor, a ship in a bottle, the science of time, a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe and the Cottingley Fairies? Or is her life just one long chain of coincidences? Smart, entrancing and buzzing with big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, and how a story might just save your life.

How to make the fabric of the universe

African United

A superb portrait of the divided continent of Africa, told through one fo the few things that unites it. Football inspires competition and inflames passions nowhere as strongly as in Africa. Take the player born and raised in Congo who scored the winning goal for Rwanda against the country of his birth and promptly had his house burnt down for his trouble. Or the Kenyan football chant ‘Oliech! Odinga! Obama!’, which celebrates the country’s star striker, its popular prime minister and its most famous adopted son. Meanwhile, the influence of African football continues to spread rapidly through Europe. Today, no Premiership team is complete without a major African star – Drogba, Essien, Touré, Adebayor, and Kanu. Countless African players are now enriching English football and becoming household names. Steve Bloomfield’s wide-ranging and incisive book investigates Africa’s love of football, its increasing global influence, the build-up to the 2010 World Cup and the social and political backdrop to the greatest show on earth.

Read an extract

FA Confidential, by David Davies

From England dressing room to FA boardrooom, David Davies has enjoyed access to all areas in football. He has known everyone from David Beckham to Wayne Rooney, from Sir Alex Ferguson to Sven-Göran Eriksson, as well as legends like Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and George Best. He has lived through all English football’s triumphs, tragedies, farces and scandals of modern times. Now, with the national sport perceived by many to be in crisis, no one is better placed to shed light on what has happened and why.

His is a tale of fake sheikhs, fickle secretaries and beauty queens, and of how a boy from the Euston Road fell in love with football, and how he came to run one of the most high-profile organisations in the land.

Football Lexicon, by John Leigh, David Woodhouse

• Why is a left foot either trusty or educated, but a right foot is neither?
• Why is a bad back pass almost invariably suicidal?
• Why can you score from a corner with a free header, but never with a free shot?
• Why are hooligans always a tiny minority even when there seem to be hundreds of them throwing seats across Kenilworth Road?

Discover how stock phrases – schoolboy howler, sweeper system – are only part of the story in the artfully twisted language of football. Let Leigh and Woodhouse take you on a journey, from the top-flight vocabulary of commentators to the more speculative efforts of footballers, from the Champions League circus to a Wednesday night in Rochdale. And prepare to be very entertained.

Ingerland: Travels With a Football Nation, by Mark Perryman

The England Supporters Club boasts more members than those of several other European nations combined, many of whom travel to every England away game. And while young working-class white men still make up the majority of fans, the hooligans of the 1970s and 80s are today much more likely to be singing and chanting alongside black, Asian and female supporters, and the conduct — not to mention the reputation — of England supporters abroad has changed out of all recognition in recent years. Both celebration and exploration, Ingerland is a thought-provoking and evocative insight into what inspires the devotion of the England football fan. Packed with interviews with England supporters of all ages and backgrounds, each of whom gives their own individual voice to the debate, this is both a fascinating social document and a passionate personal testament to our national game.

Six Months in Sudan, by James Maskalyk

James Maskalyk set out for the contested border town of Abyei, Sudan, in 2007. The newest Médicins Sans Frontières’ doctor in the field, he arrived with only his training, full of desire to understand this most desperate part of the world. He returned home six months later profoundly affected by the experience.

Six Months in Sudan is an illuminating and affecting account of saving lives in one of the most harrowing and dangerous places on Earth. Read an extract from the memoir James Orbinski describes as ‘a rare window on the inner life of an aid worker, on what it means to be a humanitarian around the hard edges of war, and on the certain drive to go on.’

Strange Telescopes, by Daniel Kalder

When Daniel Kalder, acclaimed author of one of the most unusual and feted travel debuts of the twenty-first century, Lost Cosmanaut, descended into the sewers of Moscow in pursuit of the mythical lost city of tramps, he didn’t realise that he was embarking on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that would lead him thousands of miles across Russia to the Arctic Circle via the heart of Asia. Now he has returned, mad-eyed and bearded, to tell the tale.

After exploring the depths of Moscow’s ‘Underground Planet’, Kalder descends yet further to a Ukrainian vision of hell, chasing down demons and exorcists in the dubious afterglow of the Orange Revolution, before ascending to meet Vissarion Christ, one-time traffic cop, now messiah to thousands of followers calmly awaiting the apocalypse at the foot of his holy mountain in Siberia. Finally, in the long polar night at the edge of the world Kalder enters the only wooden skyscraper on the planet and encounters a man with a bizarre secret that may explain everything . ..

Salvation and damnation, humour and pathos and keen and caustic observations collide as Daniel Kalder expertly guides us through the alternative realities, rebels and opportunists, further expanding the possibilities of the travel memoir with this unique account of a modern day quest that reveals the astonishing lengths people will go to when they view the world through a ‘strange telescope’.

Wrong About Japan, by Peter Carey

In 2002, twice Booker-winning author Peter Carey travelled to Japan, accompanied by his son Charley. In this stunning memoir-cum-travelogue Carey charts this journey, as father and son look for the hidden puzzles and meanings within Manga and Anime, and what these particular art forms might reveal about Japanese culture and history. Tense, funny, honest and moving,  Wrong About Japan offers a uniquely personal exploration of two very different cultures.

Bicycle Diaries, by David Byrne

Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes, and starting taking them on tour. Byrne’s choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided. Convinced that urban biking opens one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population, Byrne began keeping a journal of his observations and insights.

An account of what he sees and who he meets as he pedals through metropolises from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Istanbul to San Francisco, Manila to New York, Bicycle Diaries also records Byrne’s thoughts on world music, urban planning, fashion, architecture, cultural dislocation, and much more, all with a highly personal mixture of humour, curiosity, and humility. Part-travelogue, part-journal, part-photo album, Bicycle Diaries is an eye-opening celebration of seeing the world at bike level.

Travels with a Typewriter, by Michael Frayn

A hugely entertaining collection of Michael Frayn’s travel writing from the sixties and seventies, including pieces on Germany, Cuba, Israel, Japan and Russiam.

In mid-career, Frayn took up his old trade of journalism, and wrote a series of occasional articles for the Observer about some of the places in the world that interested him. He wanted to describe ‘not the extraordinary but the ordinary, the typical, the everyday’, and his accounts became the starting point for some of the novels and plays he wrote later. From a kibbutz in Israel to summer rains in Japan, bicycles in Cambridge to Notting Hill at the end of the 1950s, they are glimpses of a world which sometimes seems tantalisingly familar, sometimes vanished forever.

Where Underpants Come From, by Joe Bennett

When Joe Bennett bought a five-pack of ‘Made in China’ underpants in his local New Zealand hypermarket for $8.59, he wondered who on earth could be making any money, let alone profit, from the exchange. How many processes and middlemen are involved? Where and how are the pants made? And who decides on the absorbent qualities of the gusset?

Where Underpants Come From tells you all you need to know – in fact, probably more – about this mystery of global commerce. Leaving his supermarket trolley behind Joe embarks on an odyssey to the new factory of the world, China, to trace his pants back to their source. Along the way he discovers the extraordinarily balanced and intricate web of contacts and exchanges that makes global trade possible — and rapidly elevating China to the status of world economic superpower. He also grapples with chopsticks, challenges his own prejudices and marvels at the contrasts in one of the world’s oldest, but fastest changing, societies. Funny, wise and insightful, it is another wonderful journey from the author of A Land of Two Halves and Mustn’t Grumble.

Anthropology, by Dan Rhodes

I loved an anthropologist. She went to Mongolia to study the gays. At first she kept their culture at arm’s length, but eventually she decided that her fieldwork would benefit from assimilation. She worked hard to become as much like them as possible, and gradually she was accepted. After a while she ended our romance by letter.

It breaks my heart to think of her herding those yaks in the freezing hills, the peak of her leather cap shielding her eyes from the driving wind, her wrist dangling away, and nothing but a handlebar moustache to keep her top lip warm.

A Red Rose or a Satin Heart, edited by Antonia Fraser

Meet the romantics and the unromantics, the passionate and the fainthearted, the tragic and the comic, in all their lyrical glory. This anthology explores the full range of emotions inspired by poetry’s most popular subject: love. Antonia Fraser has made a touching, inspired and wonderfully diverse selection. Poems range from the fifteenth century to the present, from ballads to sonnets to modern verse. Included alongside well-known classics by Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, are contemporary poems by Kathleen Jamie, John Burnside and Carol Ann Duffy, illuminating the ways of the heart in all its forms.

The Madness of a Seduced Woman, by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

“During all those years when everyone wanted me to tell them…how I came to fire that shot, I never wanted to talk. Now I think I do…” Agnes Dempster – young, beautiful, and accused of murder.

Vermont, 1890. After an unhappy childhood, Agnes Dempster turns her back on her family and escapes to the city to begin a new life. There she meets Frank Holt, a local stonecutter, a man who captures her imagination and opens her eyes to an entirely different world.

They begin a relationship, but over time Agnes becomes more dependent on Frank and this soon becomes an obsession – a dangerous one. And when she discovers her beloved is not as perfect as the image she had created of him, the cracks in her already fragile psyche begin to deepen. He is a betrayer, a man who will never make her happy. And as her life spirals out of control Agnes is propelled into a state of barely-controlled madness; a madness that leads to a chaotic and destructive resolution which will affect her and those around her for the rest of their lives…

How to Kill Your Husband, by Kathy Lette

All women want to kill their husbands some of the time “Where there’s a will, I intend to be in it,” wives half-joke to each other. Marriage, it would appear, is a fun-packed frivolous hobby, only occasionally resulting in death. But when Jazz Jardine is arrested for her husband’s murder, the joke falls flat. Life should begin at 40 – not with life imprisonment for killing your spouse.

Jazz, stay-at-home mum and domestic goddess; Hannah, childless career woman; and Cassie, demented working mother of two are three ordinary women. Their record collections are classical, not criminal. Cassie and Hannah set out immediately to prove their best friend’s innocence, uncovering betrayal, adultery, plot twists, thinner thighs and toy boys aplenty en route but will their friendship survive these ever darker revelations?

Sexy, funny and wise, Kathy Lette’s irresistible novel is about women not Having It All But Doing It All. It’s about how today’s mother is often a married lone parent. It’s about the fact that no woman has ever shot her husband while he was vacuuming. This is Kathy Lette at her brilliant best, casting her trade mark caustic eye on what goes on in the bedrooms and kitchens of ordinary married couples. A novel which will strike a cord with married women everywhere and ensure that, from now on, they all read the small print on their marriage licenses.

Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries 1941-1973, edited by Victoria Glendinning with Judith Robertson

The love affair between the writer Elizabeth Bowen and the elegant and charming Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie blossomed quickly after their first meeting in 1941 and continued over the next three decades until Bowen’s death in 1973. Theirs was a passion that flourished in the heightened, dangerous atmosphere of wartime London that Bowen wrote about so vividly in her novels. When Ritchie’s diplomatic career took him further afield — to Paris, Bonn, New York and Ottawa — the lovers wrote to one another continuously, sharing their hopes and fears, their boundless affection for one another, and their longing to be together again.

Published for the first time in this exquisite volume, accompanied by extracts from Ritchie’s remarkably candid diaries, the love letters of Elizabeth Bowen reveal a passionate, intelligent, eloquent, strong-minded and wonderfully funny woman. They also reveal a man bewitched by her writer’s mind and imagination, and by her adoring vision of him as a greater man than he ever felt himself to be.

Aunt Margaret’s Lover, by Mavis Cheek

Aunt Margaret, surrogate mother to teenage Saskia, has just waved goodbye to her niece. She has sent her to Canada for a year. Now, buoyed up by an unexpected legacy that’s given her a year of freedom, Aunt Margaret decides to kick up her heels a little and have some fun . . .

QI: The Book of the Dead,

In The Book of the Dead you will meet hundreds of Dead People, some well-known, others completely obscure, organised into 42 short chapters that play merry hell with the usual classifications. So, instead of Royalty, Scientists and Sportsmen, you’ll find rather more diverting categories like People who died Penniless, The One-Legged, Only Children, People who failed at School, Those only Remembered by a Single Quotation and the Last People to Know Everything.

Why did a church composer invent the hand grenade? What was Leonardo’s proudest achievement? If The Book of the Dead doesn’t persuade you to immediately join the massed ranks of those looking at the radishes from below, it will certainly make the tricky business of Living a tad less grim and a lot more interesting.

To celebrate the launch of The Book of the Dead, take the ‘Which Quite Interesting dead person are you?’ personality test.

The Hell of it All, by Charlie Brooker

‘Mankind clearly peaked about 40 years ago. It’s been downhill ever since. For all this talk of our dazzling modern age, the two biggest advances of the past decade are Wi-Fi and Nando’s. That’s the best we can do.’

In his latest laugh-out-loud collection of misanthropic scribblings, hideous Q-list celebrity failure Charlie Brooker tackles everything from the misery of nightclubs to the death of Michael Jackson, making room for Sir Alan Sugar, potato crisps, global financial meltdown, conspiracy theories and Hole in the Wall along the way. The collapse of civilisation has never felt this funny (unless you’re a sociopath, in which case it’s been an uninterrupted laugh riot since the days of the Somme).

This book is guaranteed to brighten your life, put a spring in your step, and lie to you on its back cover.

Simon’s Cat, by Simon Tofield

With over 20 million hits on YouTube in little over a year, Simon’s Cat, is a genuine word-of-mouth phenomenon. Fans from all over the world have fallen for this adorable but anarchic feline who will do just about anything to be fed.

This autumn, Simon Tofield’s beautiful drawings and warm humour come alive on the page in the first of a series of irresistible stocking-filler humour books.

Read an interview with the author here.

Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story, by Paul Auster

Paul Auster’s charming Christmas fable has found new life in this beautifully illustrated edition.

It begins with a dilemma: a writer has been asked by the New York Times to produce a story that will appear in the paper on Christmas morning. The man agrees, but he has a problem: how do you write an unsentimental Christmas story? He unburdens himself to his friend at the local cigar shop, a colourful character called Auggie Wren. ‘A Christmas story? Is that all?’ says Auggie, before striking a deal. For the price of lunch he’ll pass on ‘the best Christmas story you’ve ever heard. And I guarantee every word of it is true.’

What follows is utterly beguiling, a story – involving a blind woman, a lost wallet and a Christmas dinner – in which everything is turned upside down.

Crime at Christmas, by C. H. B. Kitchin

A Christmas party in Hampstead is rudely interrupted by a violent death. Can the murderer be one of the relatives and intimate friends celebrating the festive season in the great house? The stockbroker sleuth Malcolm Warren investigates, in this brilliantly witty mystery from this classic crime writer.

First published in 1934, the second in the Malcolm Warren series sees our some-time detective unravel the mystery behind two gruesome deaths in a mere twenty-four hours. A master of suspense and surprise, Kitchin sets the festive scene by conjuring up the most vivid of characters and presents us with a likeable narrator to guide us through.

‘Kitchin’s knowledge of the crevices of human nature lifts his crime fiction out of the category of puzzledom and into the realm of the detective novel. He was, in short, ahead of his day.’ H .R. F. Keating.

The Pocket Book of Boosh, by Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt

‘Welcome to what will in no doubt be a groundbreaking work of collage / literature.’ Howard Moon ‘Hey Camden children, Vince here. Hope you dig the Boosh book and all the groovy photos Bollo took. Skip past Howard’s bits though. Well dry.’ Vince Noir

I can think of no higher praise for The Mighty Book of Boosh than to say it is almost as good as a mid-70s Goodies annual. It has lots of pictures, and is shiny. Guardian

Read Bookgeeks’ review.

The QI Annual 2010, by QI

The third great QI Annual written, drawn, photographed and lavishly blu-tacked together by the many writers, performers and brains from the BBC1 TV series, including: Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, Rowan Atkinson, Jeremy Clarkson, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Phill Jupitus, Jimmy Carr and many more.

Imagine a shop that for generations has sold all the accoutrements for the perfect suicide. This family business prospers in all its bleak misery, until the day it encounters joie de vivre in the shape of younger son, Alan.

What will become of The Suicide Shop in the face of Alan’s relentless good cheer, optimism and determination to make the customers smile. IIn this futuristic novel, which has sold 53,000 copies in hardback in France, Jean Teulé humourously explores the universal themes of life, death and family.

Jean Teulé lives in Marais with his companion, the French film actress Miou-Miou. An illustrator, filmmaker and television presenter, he is also the prize winning author of ten books including one based on the life of Verlaine. In researching that book he discovered that a group of nineteenth-century poets had founded a review called The Suicide Shop and this inspired his novel. He has also written biographies of Rimbaud and François Villon.

The Faber Book of Utopias, edited by John Carey

Every age has its utopias, from Plato’s Republic to contemporary sci-fi visions. In this spellbinding anthology John Carey charts the course of every conceivable dream world – whether communist, fascist, anarchist, green, golden age, techno-fantastic or hermaphroditic – combining a broad historical sweep with lively variety.

An experienced and imaginative anthologist, editor of The Faber Book of Reportage and The Faber Book of Science, Carey has gathered together a vast range of texts from Ancient Egypt to modern California, the authors of which, in different ways, attempt to describe a better world than our own.

Titles with any kind of attempt to predict the future – utopias, dystopias, etc. Could include classic titles that did it very well or very badly!

Sulphuric Acid, by Amélie Nothomb

Some time in the future, audiences have tired of traditional reality television shows. One channel decides to try something new and ‘Concentration’ – the reality television death camp – is born.

Participants for the show are rounded up and loaded onto cattle trucks, among them the beautiful young woman Pannonique. When Pannonique is delivered to the death camp and the cameras are turned on, she unknowingly becomes a media star, but she soon understands that her situation is all too real . . .

A huge bestseller in Nothomb’s adopted France, Sulphuric Acid is a blackly funny, shocking and provocative satire on our modern obsession with reality television and celebrity.

The First Stone, by Elliott Hall

Private eye Felix Strange doesn’t work homicide cases. He saw enough dead bodies fighting in Iran, a war that left him with a crippling disease that has no name and no cure. So when Strange is summoned to a Manhattan hotel room to investigate the dead body of America’s most-loved preacher, he’d rather not get involved. Strange has a week to find the killer, and even less time to get the black-market medicine he needs to stay alive.

In an America where biblical prophecy is foreign policy, Strange knows that his hiring is no accident. He can’t see all the angles, and he knows he’s being watched. In a race against time Strange must face religious police, organized crime and a dame with very particular ideas, while uncovering a conspiracy that reaches the very heart of his newly fundamentalist nation. One of the most stunningly original debut crime novels ever written, The First Stone is both an epic of the imagination and an action-packed mystery set in a time and place too chillingly close to our own.

It is the first in an ambitious trilogy that pays homage to the genius of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy, while offering a wholly original take on the noir genre.

Visit Elliott Hall’s blog concerning all things future, including robots and zombies!