Tim Ecott is a former BBC World Service correspondent specialising in Africa and the Indian Ocean. He has written for The Economist, The Times, Telegraph and Guardian and continues to contribute to BBC radio output on the World Service and Radio 4.For many years he has been a regular visitor to the Faroe Islands.

An island without a harbour, encircled by perilous cliffs and rising high above the wild Atlantic ocean, farmed by the same family for eight generations. What is it like to live at the edge of the world?In this marvel of quiet reflection and keen observation, Tim Ecott takes the reader to Stóra Dímun - an isolated island farm in the Faroe Islands with only two permanent residents. He finds a remarkable way of living; one where you're isolated but never truly alone,...

The story of our love affair with vanilla - the world's most versatile flavouring.The locations read like the contents of an exotic holiday brochure: Tahiti, Madagascar, Reunion, Seychelles and the Gulf Coast of Mexico - all of them inextricably linked with the story of vanilla.Vanilla is a botanical mystery - a uniquely sensual plant who's secret was unlocked by an African slave in 1841. Aristocrats, apothecaries and modern day tycoons have all chased 'The...

Following the natural cycle of the year, The Land of Maybe captures the essence of the 18 mysterious Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. Here, a fast disappearing world is home to a close-knit society where just 50,000 people share Viking roots and a unique language. Buffeted by the elements in a volatile environment, the Faroese still hunt seabirds, herd pilot whales and eat mutton fermented in the salt winds that howl across dark fjords. A passionate naturalist, Ecott immerses himself i...

'A simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking portrait of a poor white family life in the twilight of apartheid' Richard E. Grant**'Funny, never self-pitying and a pleasure to read' Guardian'Both haunting and funny. [Ecott] writes with compassion and honesty to give us a truly memorable account of an extraordinary upbringing' Fergal Keane**Tim Ecott's family swapped Northern Ireland for apartheid Johannesburg in the 1970s. But just six mon...

'In this excellent book, Ecott's evocative telling makes me want to go to this weird and wonderful place.' - PAUL THEROUX'I never want to leave the remote island world so atmospherically, precisely educed between the covers of this book. Ecott's prose has the power of tides, his perception is as searching as the Atlantic wind, and he has the soul of a natural-born naturalist. A masterpiece.' - JOHN LEWIS-STEMPLEFollowing the natural cycle o...

_________________'BRITAIN'S FINEST LIVING NATURE WRITER' - THE TIMESWINNER OF THE THWAITES WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2015What really goes on in the long grass?Meadowland gives an unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life from January to December, together with its biography. In exquisite prose, John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons from cowslips in spring to the hay-cutting of s...

Phizzwhizzing new cover look and branding for the World's NUMBER ONE Storyteller!BOY, Roald Dahl's bestselling autobiography, is full of hilarious anecdotes about his childhood and school days, illustrated by Quentin Blake.As a boy, all sorts of unusual things happened to Roald Dahl. There was the time he and four school friends got their revenge on beastly Mrs Prachett in her sweet shop.There are stories of holidays in fishing boats, African adventures and t...

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**'Thrilling dispatches from a vanishing world' ObserverAnimals don't exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk comes Vesper Flights, a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world.He...

Deep Country is Neil Ansell's account of five years spent alone in a hillside cottage in Wales.'I lived alone in this cottage for five years, summer and winter, with no transport, no phone. This is the story of those five years, where I lived and how I lived. It is the story of what it means to live in a place so remote that you may not see another soul for weeks on end. And it is the story of the hidden places that I came to call my own, and the wild crea...

The outer world flew open like a door, and I wondered - what is it that we're just not seeing?In this greatly anticipated sequel to Findings, prize-winning poet and renowned nature writer Kathleen Jamie takes a fresh look at her native Scottish landscapes, before sailing north into iceberg-strewn seas. Her gaze swoops vertiginously too; from a countryside of cells beneath a hospital microscope, to killer whales rounding a headland, to the constellations of satelli...

A Twist of the Knife is Peter James’s gripping first full-length collection of short stories, now containing the novellas The Perfect Murder, Footloose written with Val McDermid and In The Nick of Time written with Ian Rankin.With each twist of the knife, a chilling new journey begins . . . From a woman intent on bizarre revenge to a restaurant critic with a morbid fear of the number thirteen, and from a man arra...