Collection: Adult

There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses and estates, their lives and loves, their foibles and eccentricities. And we entertain the strong suspicion that, while they may be fellow citizens, they are very far from being People Like Us.

In Heirs and Graces Eleanor Doughty draws on her unparalleled access to a bewildering range of dukes, duchesses, earls and others to create a vivid picture of who they are and how they tick. En route she traces their progress from a post-war era when they and their like were described by one future Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer as 'selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent' to their diverse current roles as guardians of vast ancestral mansions, farmers, financiers and much else beside. She looks at key rites of passage, from cradle, via boarding school to grave. And she tells stories of their ups and downs, and of the doings of the heroes and villains who fill their ranks.

The result is a wonderfully rich, often amusing, always revealing account of the fortunes of the aristocracy over the past century and a series of fascinating glimpses into what it is like to be an aristocrat in Britain today.

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution.

Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves.

To regain its capacity to effectively deter China and retain its unmatched global status, the United States must deepen its partnership with the nation's most innovative tech companies. In The American Edge, Seth G. Jones explains how the industrial bases of the world's great military powers have risen, fallen, and evolved relative to each other over the past century, from Imperial Germany and Japan during World War II, to the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, to the recent rise of China. In doing so, Jones reveals how the US is on a trajectory toward failure-a failure to effectively deter major adversaries, and to fight and win a great power war if necessary.

China is on a wartime footing. It is rapidly building its defense industrial base to deter and-if deterrence fails-to fight the United States. During periods of wartime, the US defense industrial base has always needed to maximize production capacity, minimize excessive regulations, and provide incentives to the private sector for innovation. Today, though, the US military industrial base is operating on a peacetime footing despite China's massive military buildup and Russia's total war in Ukraine. Set in its ways and trapped in outdated procurement systems, it lacks the capacity, responsiveness, flexibility, and surge capability to meet the military requirements to deter China.

However, the US does have a tremendously innovative private sector, from companies like SpaceX to Microsoft and Anduril, and this private sector can be leveraged. If the US can regain its capacity to respond flexibly and deter China in the current struggle for global power, it will need to come through the partnership with and utilization of these private companies. Along with providing a deep history of the economic foundations of how America's ascent to military superpower, this book shows how these innovative firms are helping the US military regain its edge and thereby retain its status as the world's paramount military force.

In this unprecedented history of intelligence cooperation during the Cold War, Aviva Guttmann uncovers the key role of European intelligence agencies in facilitating Mossad's Operation Wrath of God. She reveals how, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre, Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism were hunted and killed by Mossad with active European cooperation. Through unique access to unredacted documents in the Club de Berne archive, she shows how a secret coalition of intelligence agencies supplied Mossad with information about Palestinians on a colossal scale and tacitly supported Israeli covert actions on European soil. These agencies helped to anticipate and thwart a number of Palestinian terrorist plots, including some revealed here for the first time. This extraordinary book reconstructs the hidden world of international intelligence, showing how this parallel order enabled state relations to be pursued independently of official foreign policy constraints or public scrutiny.

After working alongside iconic figures like Diana Ross, Prince, and Maya Angelou and as VIBE's founding fashion director, Michaela angela Davis provides both a celebration of Black media's vibrant history and a critical examination of its challenges and identity politics.

On her first day of second grade, a group of older girls surrounded Michaela. The ringleader drafted her little sister, armed her with a pair of scissors, and shouted a command: cut Michaela's big blond pigtails off or face her fury. Michaela and her braids survived the attempted "jump," but she never saw the world and hair the same way again.

Recognizing how her light skin, light eyes, and light hair facilitated her access to the explosive intersections of hardcore, house, and hip-hop culture, Michaela angela Davis's Tenderheaded is the coming-of-age story of a stylist and editor who hustled during the golden age of the downtown NYC scene of the '80s, established a career through the hip-hop-fueled '90s, and reckoned with the media industry in the "post-racial" Obama years while being in service to Black women every step of the way.

With a life and career as complex and textured as her hair, Davis has written more than a memoir. A tribute to Black girls and women everywhere, Tenderheaded is a cultural manifesto that reckons with the role media and American history play in the fascinating and chaotic shaping of a collective identity.

A collection of searching, curious, and surprising essays catalyzed by the author's move in her sixties to a small Italian village, exploring selfhood, coincidence, inheritance, and the impermanence of identity

In 2021, in her mid-sixties, Martha Cooley moved with her husband from the United States to Castiglione del Terziere, a village in northernmost Tuscany. Prompted by this relocation, the essays in My Little Donkey chronicle her encounters with people, animals, the past, and herself as she reckons with the fallout of a major life-change.

Following curiosity where it leads, Cooley delves into music and silence, the vagaries of history, the complexity of familial legacies, and the presence and power of animals in human lives. With its spirited examinations of uncanny coincidences and chance events, My Little Donkey's varied essays offer the vivid pleasures of story combined with the provocations of a writer looking behind the curtain of appearances, intent on honest assessments of what she sees and feels. Whimsical yet at the same time intellectually and emotionally bold, these essays tackle the conundrum of time's passage: how to adapt, pay attention, embrace contradiction, and enjoy the ride?

When Danilyn Rutherford and her husband Craig noticed that their six-month-old daughter Millie wasn't making eye contact, they took her to their pediatrician. And an optometrist. Then a neurologist. Later, to a team of physical and occupational therapists. None of the doctors could give Millie a diagnosis, but it was clear that her brain was not developing at the rate it should. At an age when some children take their first steps, Millie had the cognitive ability and motor skills of a three-month-old. Three years later, Craig died suddenly of a heart attack and Danilyn found herself on the precipice of her anthropology career as a widow and single mother, still trying to solve the puzzle posed by Millie's inaccessible mind.

Now in her twenties, Millie has never been able to express herself verbally, but she has a thriving social environment rooted in the people around her and in things her companions and family can see, hear, smell, and feel. Life in Millie's world is far richer than might be immediately evident to those who think and communicate in conventional ways.

Beautiful Mystery explores what it means to be a person in the spaces between what we can and cannot say, and how we can fight to care for those we love when they don't have the language to fight for themselves. Through her unique lens as a mother and an anthropologist, Rutherford tells the story of arriving in Millie's world, what she found there, and how Millie showed her that words aren't always what makes us human. Enlightening and deeply felt, Beautiful Mystery proves that you don't have to understand someone to love them--a lesson that, if we all learned it, might allow us to live together in a fractured world.

In December 2024, to global astonishment, former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led a coalition to overthrow the Syrian regime. This fascinating account unravels HTS's dramatic transformation since 2019, from a besieged insurgent enclave to a conservative Islamist government.

Drawing on interviews with HTS leaders including Ahmad al-Sharaa himself--as well as diplomats, dissidents and opponents--the authors reveal the group's pragmatic evolution while ruling Idlib province, in the face of global and local constraints. They uncover how HTS approached religious minorities, redefined its understanding of sharia, and embraced a non-radical conservative society. HTS reshaped its identity not only in northwest Syria, but on the world stage, aligning with NATO member and secular republic Turkey, confronting both al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and marginalizing die-hards in its own ranks, in favor of a popular, mosque-based Islam.

This book offers a glimpse into HTS's startling journey, blending frontline narratives with sharp analysis to decode the group's success in outmaneuvering the regime and mapping its own path to power.

In the lawlessness of post-World War II France, a resilient young woman fights to survive and make a living, no matter the cost--from the New York Times bestselling author of Three Hours in Paris and the Aimée Leduc series

After Libération, spring 1945: Seventeen-year-old Huguette Faure is a survivor. The war has taken everything from her--both her parents and her sense of safety. Now, pregnant and on the lam, she cannot return to her childhood home in Paris. Forced to reinvent herself, she must outrun her father's enemies, who want her dead. After narrowly avoiding jail time--thanks to the help of a kindhearted police officer named Claude Leduc--Huguette lands a job assisting a legendary film director. As her role develops from helping him with chores to cooking his books, she sees an opportunity to break free from the ghosts of her past once and for all.

In this big-hearted story of resilience, New York Times bestselling author Cara Black offers a wholly original depiction of postwar France as well as introduc

A Barnes & Noble Best History Book of 2025

Four men in a lifeboat. Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder. "A perfect enunciation of the classic philosophical conundrum: can you sacrifice one innocent life to save many?" (Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi)

On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism. Their decision to sacrifice the youngest--17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker--ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as heroes and survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, a landmark murder trial that would establish the legal precedent that necessity cannot justify murder--a principle that continues to shape Anglo-American law today. In Captain's Dinner, acclaimed journalist, Pulitzer Prize juror, and New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen masterfully depicts both the harrowing weeks at sea and the sensational trial that followed. "Is killing one innocent person justified if it saves the lives of three others? Cohen's answer--in this riveting account--reads like a thriller" (former U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken). Through this Victorian tragedy, Cohen reveals an enduring conflict between primal instincts and moral principles. This book will "make you think long and hard about what you might do to survive" (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania). Perfect for readers of David Grann's The Wager and Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, this pulse-pounding true story has become a real-life example of one of life's greatest moral dilemmas. "Thoroughly researched and impeccably argued" (Martel). Rich with narrative detail and real-life courtroom twists, "brilliant and profound," (bestselling author Amy Chua), Captain's Dinner strikes at the heart of a question that haunts us all: When does survival justify murder?

This little book is here to celebrate those who see, think and experience the world in their own extraordinary ways, because we are all awesome exactly as we are.

Embrace your own unique brilliance and find the confidence to make your mark on the world with this little book of positive words. Whether you have ADHD, autism, dyslexia or any other neurodivergence, Great Minds Think Differently is here to help you celebrate your gift and unleash the power of your mind.

Inside you will find pages bursting with positive, uplifting and joyful quotes from a variety of trailblazers, change-makers and ground-breakers who have led the way in helping us to embrace change. This is more than just a book; it's a call to recognize the power in being exactly who you are, and a reminder that the world is richer, more vibrant and more wonderful because you're in it.

Be inspired to live boldly, think differently and shine brightly, because the world needs the unique magic that only you can bring.

A captivating, 2-volume photography collection of nearly 400 photos reflecting the life and legacy of The Band from 1968 to 1969, as captured by friend and renowned photographer, Elliott Landy

"I don't believe there will ever be anything that even vaguely resembles that kind of musical unity again. Nor does there need to be. They said it all." --Eric Clapton

"Suddenly, this music comes on, and everything changes. There was no other music like it at the time, and no other music like it to this day." --Bruce Springsteen

The life and sound of the late-1960s rock sensation, The Band, are brought to life on the page with this stunning music photography book. Elliott Landy, premier photographer of the rock and roll era, captured The Band for an unforgettable year as they created their first two albums, Music from Big Pink and The Band. The intriguing relationship between a band, the inception of a fresh sound, and the photographer who captured it all is chronicled on each page with bold, unforgettable images.

With his intimate and relaxed approach behind the lens, Landy captured the essence of the young band in their comfortable surroundings as they discovered their unique Americana sound. Landy's artistic eye was deeply trusted and cherished by The Band. The engaging images featured on each page are set to memorable backgrounds, like the band's salmon-colored house, affectionately called the "Big Pink", and many natural landscapes around Woodstock, New York, the music and art mecca of the times. This sleek music photography book is a work of art and a must-have for every true rock and roll fan.

There is one brand that is immediately recognized as the last word in luxury Swiss watchmaking - Patek Philippe.

For over 180 years, the watchmaker has been creating some of the most sought-after, finely crafted and innovative models in the luxury watch market. From its origins in Geneva as an artisan business to its position today as a brand of global renown, Little Book of Patek Philippe tells the story of these masterpieces of design.

One hundred images showcase every iconic model - Nautilus, Calatrava, Aquanaut, Golden Ellipse and more - and celebrity fans from Albert Einstein to Drake. Expert text reveals the brand's history, key moments and future.

One of Us Is Lying meets Knives Out--with beasts, murder, and magic--in this first book in a thrilling locked-room whodunnit YA fantasy duology by Andrea Hannah and New York Times bestseller Rebecca Mix.

After a decade of war, the kingdoms of Avendell and Istellia have finally agreed to peace. As nobles and magic wielders from both countries arrive at remote Castle Avendell for a historic all-night masquerade to celebrate, King Costis summons an unlikely group to his chambers: the crown prince, his Istellian bride-to-be, his personal guard, a wild beast tamer, and the palace's questionable new healer. But before Costis can reveal why he has gathered them, the castle goes dark.

When the lights come back, the king is dead--murdered with the princess's knife, in a weak spot only his guard knew of, and with venom from one of the beast tamer's monsters lacing the blade.

With no clear killer--and everyone a suspect--they make a risky pact: Tell no one until the treaty is signed. But when a winter storm seals everyone inside and someone aware of the king's untimely death begins to pick off guests one by one, the six suspects must work together to discover who killed the king . . . before one of them is next.

A follow up to her National Jewish Book Award-winning debut novel, in the aftermath of the breakup of her marriage, a once famous actress of the Yiddish theater travels to Tel-Aviv to revisit the apartment she once shared with her husband

Soon after, she finds herself at the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition Hospice in Jaffa, a sanitorium, run by a group of nuns. Unclear as to how she got there, she begins to piece together the events that led her to this moment. From New York to Tel -Aviv, and the Siberian gulag, The World Between explores the landscape of a marriage, friendship, loss, and the way childhood war trauma bleeds into every aspect of the characters' lives.