British Essays

Nine essential works by C. S. Lewis in one deluxe audio edition: Mere Christianity The Screwtape Letters The Great Divorce Miracles The Problem of Pain A Grief Observed The Abolition of Man The Weight of Glory George MacDonald...

The #1 Sunday Times bestseller Named a best book of the year by Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and Kirkus Reviews “One of the best books on politics our era will see . . . A book of astonishing literary quality.” —Matthew Parris, The TLS “[Rory Stewart] walked across Asia, served...

From Susan Orlean—acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book—Rin Tin Tin is “an unforgettable book about the mutual devotion between one man and one dog” (The Wall Street Journal). He believed the dog was immortal. So begins Susan Orlean’s...

New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar. Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a...

Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history...

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a...

This is the big one from Peter Ackroyd — and a worthy companion to London: The Biography. Only Peter Ackroyd can combine readable narrative and unique observation with a sharp eye for the fascinating fact. His method is to position Shakespeare in the close context of his world. In this way, he...

Thunder at Twilight is a landmark historical vision, drawing on hitherto untapped sources to illuminate two crucial years in the life of the extraordinary city of Vienna—and in the life of the twentieth century. It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived in Vienna on a...

The classic introduction to economic thought, now updated in time for the publication of New Ideas from Dead CEOs This entertaining and accessible introduction to the great economic thinkers throughout history? Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and more?shows how...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK Food dominates our every waking minute: Hype restaurants. Allrecipes. The Great British Bake Off. In this dazzling cultural history, bestselling food writer Ruby Tandoh (author of Cook As You Are) traces how—and why—we’ve all become foodies. “Ruby Tandoh is...

The first novel Jane Austen tried to publish — and the last to reach print. This Erato Press critical edition restores Northanger Abbey to its rightful place: not as a minor Austen comedy, but as the most formally daring and self-aware novel she ever wrote. Composed around 1798–1803, sold to a publisher for ten pounds, inexplicably shelved for thirteen years, and finally published posthumously in 1817, Northanger Abbey is a novel that arrived late to its own party — and found, on arrival, that it had anticipated everything. Its heroine reads Gothic fiction and expects the world to ...

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography “An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood “A captivating account of Orwell as...

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW  EDITORS' CHOICE PICK AND 2024 NOTABLE BOOK AN NPR FAVORITE READ OF 2024 “Peri’s joint biography is a thrilling, haunting yarn of the sort that the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson himself became famous...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson, CBE. This definitive recording includes an introduction to the audio edition written and performed by Jeanette Winterson. Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had...

What if Basil Fawlty ran your customer service helpline? What if Mr Bean was stuck in your hybrid meeting? What if Darth Vader had to queue in the rain at Waitrose? In Very British Problems: How the World’s Favourite Characters Survive Britain, some of the most iconic characters from film, TV, books and comics are dropped straight into the glorious chaos of modern British life. From Basil Fawlty, David Brent and Blackadder to Darth Vader, Yoda, Sherlock Holmes and the Sorting Hat, this sharp, witty and very British collection shows how the world’s best-known heroes, villains and legends...

“An utterly delightful peek into the real life of an English village bookshop, as told to us by the owner herself. A must-read for everyone who’s ever felt most at home in a bookstore.” - Julia Quin, New York Times bestselling author of Bridgerton Based on the popular Substack that Julia...

"Only connect." Two words that became the most famous imperative in English fiction — and the one its author spent three novels proving was impossible. E.M. Forster published five novels in nineteen years. Then he stopped. He was forty-five years old, at the height of his powers, and he never published another novel again. He lived for forty-six more years in silence. The five novels he left behind — especially the three collected here — are among the most penetrating studies of human connection and disconnection in the English language: what it means to reach across the divisions of ...

An eloquent memoir of a young man's life transformed by literature. In A Jane Austen Education, Austen scholar William Deresiewicz turns to the author's novels to reveal the remarkable life lessons hidden within. With humor and candor, Deresiewicz employs his own experiences to demonstrate the...

"[These essays] reflect a lively, unselfconscious, rigorous, erudite, and earnestly open mind that's busy refining its view of life, literature, and a great deal in between." —Los Angeles Times Split into five sections--Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering--Changing My Mind finds...

The New York Times bestselling author of Stuff Matters presents a rollicking guided tour of the secret lives of gases: the magnificent, strange, and fascinating substances that shape our world. Gases are all around us—they fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars, and warm our...