A perceptive, generous survey of Britain's towns, in all their grit and glory.'Moss is good at digging out the secret delights of his locations . . . In a country where familiar hotspots like St Ives and Whitby are being ravaged by the holiday-let market, there is radical value, for Moss, in pointing to more marginal sites of interest.'ALEX NIVEN, NEW STATESMAN'Moss's quiet curiosity is infectious . . . How could you not wis...

Patagonia is the ultimate landscape of the mind. Like Siberia and the Sahara, it has become a metaphor for nothingness and extremity. Its frontiers have stretched beyond the political boundaries of Argentina and Chile to encompass an evocative idea of place. A vast triangle at the southern tip of the New World, this region of barren steppes, soaring peaks and fierce winds was populated by small tribes of hunter-gatherers and roaming nomads when Ferdinand Magellan made landfall in 1520. A f...

**'A fitting tribute to the greatest county in England' DAVID SWIFT, author of Scouse RepublicCotton, coal and canals.Trains, technology and television.Lancashire has shaped the modern world.**Liverpool was once the world's busiest port. Manchester powered the industrial revolution and became a symbol of global free trade. Blackpool invented the working-class seaside resort. All three are situated in the historic county of Lancashire: unique, often mi...

Forming a vast triangle at the southern tip of South America, Patagonia is a landscape of barren steppes, soaring peaks, and fierce wind, inspiring generations of travelers and artists. From the empty plans to the crashing seas, from the giant dinosaur fossils to the massive glacial sculptures, Chris Moss introduces readers to Patagonia's dramatic landscape--a land that, like Siberia and the Sahara, has become a metaphor for nothingness and extremity. A vivid and accessible introduction to...

Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness with supplies to live alone for a year. He sought to explore the effects of deep solitude on the body and mind and to find the spiritual answers he’d been seeking all his life. With only a cat and his thoughts as companions, he wrestled with inner storms while the forces of nature raged around him. The physical challenges were immense, but the struggles of...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century**At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, sh...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME • A NEW YORK TIMES READER TOP 100 PICK FOR BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE CENTURYThe extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times.**When Death has a story to tell, you listen.It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath...

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this “extraordinary” and beloved novel that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review), named a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century.Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a weal...

England, says Matthew Engel, is the most complicated place in the world. And, as he travels through each of the historic English counties, he discovers that's just the start of it. Every county is fascinating, the product of a millennium or more of history: still a unique slice of a nation that has not quite lost its ancient diversity.He finds the well-dressers of Derbyshire and the pyromaniacs of Sussex; the Hindus and huntsmen of Leicestershire; the goddess-worshippers of Somerse...

A glorious insight into the history, landscape and people of Britain, from The Sunday Times bestseller.George Stephenson’s Liverpool & Manchester Railway was the first in the world where steam locomotives pulled paying passengers, and his locomotive the Rocket changed the face of travelling in Britain. On his journey from Liverpool to Scarborough Michael Portillo examines the history of the Manchester cotton mills, encounters industries as diverse as hat-making, fishing, the baking...

A glorious insight into the history, landscape and people of Britain, from The Sunday Times bestseller.The first rail link between England and Scotland, the Preston to Edinburgh line transformed some of the most remote and inaccessible communities of Britain and fuelled the growth of resorts such as Blackpool and Morecambe Bay. Beginning at Preston, Michael Portillo takes a detour through the spectacular scenery of the Settle & Carlisle line, including the famous Ribblehead Viaduct...

Abysmal weather, slag heaps, funny accents; the bleak uplands of a landscape carved out of millstone grit; townscapes of abandoned mills and shipyards; the detritus of an industrial revolution well past its sell-by date. These, all too often, are the gloomy perceptions of 'the north', the foundations for the belief that northerners spend their lives battling hardship and misery, and that nothing beyond Watford is worth a bag of chips.With an insider's sensitivity and a journalist's enquiring ...