A thought-provoking meditation on food, family, identity, immigration, and, most of all, hospitality--at the table and beyond--that's part food memoir, part appeal for more authentic decency in our daily worlds, and in the world at large.Be My Guest is an utterly unique, deeply personal meditation on what it means to tend to others and to ourselves--and how the two things work hand in hand. Priya Basil explores how food--and the act of offering food to oth...

The German word Freiraum, literally translated, means free room. Freiraum is more than just physical space though, it is also a mental state of creativity and freedom. In 1929 Virginia Woolf argued for the necessity of a "room of one’s own" for women writers: Freiraum, both literal and figurative, to think and to create. Almost a century later, having a private room is still a privilege, not only but especially for women. A virus knowing no boundaries or borders emphasized this inequality,...

It's a hot, crowded train. Helen Summers is on her way to see her sister Jill to tell her an awful secret. Another passenger, Kerm, is on his way back from his grandfather's funeral.They are strangers, jammed against each other in a crowded carriage. Noisy school kids fill the train - and three of them are about to cause a whole heap of trouble. In the chaos, Helen and Kerm are thrown together in a way they never expected.Catching a train? Read Strangers on the 16:02

A thought-provoking meditation on food, family, identity, immigration, and, most of all, hospitality--at the table and beyond--that's part food memoir, part appeal for more authentic decency in our daily worlds, and in the world at large.Be My Guest is an utterly unique, deeply personal meditation on what it means to tend to others and to ourselves--and how the two things work hand in hand. Priya Basil explores how food--and the act of offering food to oth...

From My Legendary Girlfriend to Half a World Away, Mike Gayle's bestselling novels have taken his millions of readers through many key times for the modern man - friendship, courtship, stag weekends, marriage, work, holidays, significant birthdays - and Seeing Other People is no different.A heart-warming, heart-stopping, and heart-breaking novel.Joe Clarke is about 78% sure he's just had an affair. Well, that is the beautiful office inter...

Would a proper adult ignore the spilt milk under the fridge for weeks?Would a proper adult take three years to post a solitary Christmas card?Would a proper adult have decades-old underwear in active service?Mike Gayle is nowhere near being a proper adult - even though his tenth wedding anniversary is looming; his second child is due any moment; and in less than twenty-four hours he is going to be officially closer to forty than he is to thirty.Appalled by th...

The Happiness of Blond People by bestselling, multi-award-winning novelist Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul, is a powerful essay on immigration, multiculturalism and the experience of Muslims in Europe - available only as a Penguin Short."You know, I never understand. How come their children are so quiet and well disciplined?""Yeah," said the distressed father, his voice suddenly softer. "Blond children never cry, do they?"

This Step 4 Biography Reader shares the inspiring story of Malala Yousafzai, the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Even as a young girl in Pakistan, Malala spoke up about the importance of girls’ education, via speeches and a blog. Since the Taliban regime was intent on denying girls an education and silencing anyone who disagreed with their laws, this was very dangerous. Malala was shot, but she survived the attack and it did not silence her. In fact, she spoke at the United Na...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERWe all know the system isn’t working. Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.”In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a faire...

From Lebanon's golden age, through years of civil conflict and its aftermath, these women offer a captivating portrait of a country in flux. Well-known authors such as Emily Nasarallah, Hanan al-Shaykh and Alawiya Sobh, alongside newer voices, share he desire to push boundaries, tackling subjects from the crippling effects of war in past decades, through longing for romantic adventures in a conservative society, to the functioning of families across the divides of emigration and generation...

Choman Hardi’s Considering the Women explores the equivocal relationship between immigrants and their homeland - the constant push and pull - as well as the breakdown of an intermarriage, and the plight of women in an aggressive patriarchal society and as survivors of political violence. The book’s central sequence, Anfal, draws on Choman Hardi’s post-doctoral research on women survivors of genocide in Kurdistan. The stories of eleven survivors (nine women, an elderly man and a boy child) ...

No two curries are the same. This Curry asks why the dish is supposed to represent everything brown people eat, read, and do.Curry is a dish that doesn't quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often bec...