*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES ART BOOK OF THE YEAR*A revelatory insider portrait of one of the world's greatest galleries, and the inspiring story of one guard's quest to find solace and meaning in art.'Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of the year would have been written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist - but by a museum guard?' Sunday Times

New York Times bestsellerNamed one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the Financial Times, the New York Post, Book Riot, and The Sunday Times (London).An “exquisite” (The Washington Post) “hauntingly beautiful” (Associated Press) portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum gu...

Brought to you by Penguin.Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase into New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny.They're the guards in dark blue suits, keeping careful watch over this vast treasure house. Caught up in the early days of a glamorous journalism career, Patrick Bringley never thought he'd be one of them. Then his brother was diagnosed wi...

Brought to you by Penguin.*A BBC RADIO 4 Book of the Week*A radical new account of how the idea of the West has shaped our history, told through the stories of fourteen fascinating lives.We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread stretching from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern Western world. But what if this is wrong?Told through the lives of fourteen fascinating historical...

Brought to you by Penguin.Stephen Hawking's closest collaborator offers the intellectual superstar's final thoughts on the cosmos.One of the biggest questions Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. But his famous theory on the Big Bang ran into a crisis when the equations predicted a multiverse - countless different universes, most of whic...

Brought to you by Penguin.Sophisticated, mature and richly atmospheric, a debut novel about three young people navigating the risks and possibilities of intimacyFor fans of André Aciman, Deborah Levy and the Penguin European Writers seriesThora, August and Hugo come from different worlds - one an art school dreamer, one a wealthy scion of the old elite, and one an ordinary boy from out of town. But over the course o...

This audiobook is read by the author, Jeremy Bowen.Now updated with a new chapter on the 7 October attacks and more.A Sunday Times Paperback of the YearA Spectator and New Statesman Book of the Year‘An illuminating and riveting read’ – Jonathan Dimbleby'Arresting . . . excellent, doom-freighted' – The Times

'A great writer' 'A music journalist of integrity' **'**There's only one Ted Kessler!'Paul Weller Billy Childish Liam GallagherPaper Cuts is the inside story of the slow death of the British music press. But it's also a love letter to it, the tale of how music magazines saved one man's life. Ted Kessler left home and school around his seventeenth birthday, determined 'to be someone who listened to music professional...

Brought to you by Penguin.In a quiet Surrey village sits Leventree, an architectural practice set up by idealistic couple Florence and Arthur Mayhood, offering apprenticeships to young offenders after their release. Motivated by his own memories of Borstal, Arthur aims to mentor young adults with a troubled upbringing and give them opportunities to succeed.Their first protégées are siblings, Joyce and Charlie Savigear, who quickly settle in; but when a dang...

Brought to you by Penguin.Throughout the twentieth century, Berlin stood at the centre of a convulsing world. This history is often viewed as separate acts: the suffering of the First World War, the cosmopolitan city of science, culture and sexual freedom Berlin became, steep economic plunges, the rise of the Nazis, the destruction of the Second World War, the psychosis of genocide, and a city rent in two by competing ideologies. But people do not live their lives ...

Quintessential Tyler, yet full of surprises - a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah's Compass chimes gently, heartbreakingly with our times.With the humour and poignancy of her classic The Accidental Tourist (though with a protagonist who doesn't venture far from home) Anne Tyler's new novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year. A classical pedant, he's just be...

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLERA FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEARAn enthralling 6,000-year journey through the history of books and readingLong before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emis...