“The Map of Knowledge is an endlessly fascinating book, rich in detail, capacious and humane in vision.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, winner of the Pulitzer PrizeAfter the Fall of Rome, when many of the great ideas of the ancient world were lost to the ravages of the Dark Ages, three crucial manuscripts passed hand to hand through seven Mediterranean cities and survived to fuel the revival o...

Enter the mysterious world of sixteenth-century science, where astronomers and alchemists shared laboratories.In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into view – one guided by observation, technology and logic.But omens and elixirs did not disappear from the sixteenth-century laboratory. Charms and potions could still be found nestled between glistening br...

“The Map of Knowledge is an endlessly fascinating book, rich in detail, capacious and humane in vision.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, winner of the Pulitzer PrizeAfter the Fall of Rome, when many of the great ideas of the ancient world were lost to the ravages of the Dark Ages, three crucial manuscripts passed hand to hand through seven Mediterranean cities and survived to fuel the revival o...

Enter the mysterious world of sixteenth-century science, where astronomers and alchemists shared laboratories.In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into view—one guided by observation, technology and logic.But omens and elixirs did not disappear from the sixteenth-century laboratory. Charms and potions could still be found nestled between glistening bras...

Brought to you by Penguin.As a child, Chris Thorogood dreamed of seeing Rafflesia - the plant with the world's largest flowers. He crafted life-size replicas in an abandoned cemetery, carefully bringing them to life with paper and paint. Today he is a botanist at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden and has dedicated his life to studying the biology of such extraordinary plants, working alongside botanists and foresters in Southeast Asia to document t...

In this fresh, fast-paced modern murder mystery—the first in a wildly funny and inventive new series—a ghostwriter is chosen to collaborate on a presidential candidate’s memoir, only to discover just how much trouble a smart woman with time on her hands can get up to …“I tell other people’s stories for a living. … I’ve always been a snoop where other people are concerned, and I discovered in my late twenties I have a knack for spinning tales about them, and for making these tales s...

In literary legend, Faustus is the quintessential occult personality of early modern Europe. The historical Faustus, however, was something quite different: a magus—a learned magician fully embedded in the scholarly currents and public life of the Renaissance. And he was hardly the only one. Anthony Grafton argues that the magus in sixteenth-century Europe was a distinctive intellectual type, both different from and indebted to medieval counterparts as well as contemporaries like the engin...

SOON TO BE ADAPTED FOR TV!'Glorious fun, packed with puzzles and twists. An absolute riot’ Tom Mead, author of The Murder WheelA gripping new mystery featuring Detective Tess Fox and her con-artist sister Sarah Jacobs.Members of the Lewes Bonfire Society would say afterwards that the event would have been a huge success that year, if it hadn’t been for the dead body…When the charred remains of MP Rupert Mil...

Best New Books on Space 2024 – Forbes‘Rarely is a non-fiction book about science this engaging’ – ForbesWhy darkness is so important – to plants, to animals, and to ourselves – and why we must protect it all costs.Darkness is the first thing we know in our human existence. Safe and warm inside the bubble of the womb, we are comfortable in that embracing dark. But as soon as we are bought into the light, we learn to fear th...

Brought to you by Penguin.London, September 1978: exiled Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is murdered in broad daylight on Waterloo Bridge with what appears to be a poison-tipped umbrella. It would become the most infamous unsolved killing of the Cold War.Many years later, young journalist Ulrik Skotte is approached with explosive new information about a man alleged to be responsible for Markov’s death – a spy code-named Piccadilly who wor...

Brought to you by Penguin.Birdsong in a Time of Silence is the story of a man rediscovering his passion for birdsong and nature. Narrated against the backdrop of the current pandemic, the book opens by acknowledging the new awareness of birds and birdsong that was made possible by the coincidence of spring and the experience of lockdown. Starting with a portrait of the blackbird - most prominent and articulate of the early spring singers - the book proceed...

Brought to you by Penguin.In the early years of Vladmir Putin’s Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the President’s most trusted assets. By 2023, he had become a dangerous warlord – and also one of Putin’s chief rivals in Russia’s tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading an attempted coup, and shortly after killed in a mysterious plane crash.But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, his role in the war with Ukraine, and the chaos ...