A chronological survey of the world's most influential books. Many books have become classics, must-reads or overnight publishing sensations, but how many can genuinely claim to have changed the way ..

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People have always shared stories, whether to teach moral lessons, to entertain, or to record important events in history. Today the range of excellent fiction available to read is truly breathtaking ..

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One `golden afternoon' in Oxford, in July 1862, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, accompanied three young sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith, on a boating trip. To keep the children amused, Dodgso..

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Following her father's death, Katharine Smyth turned to her favourite novel, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, as a way of making sense of her bereavement. Written out of a lifelong admiration for W..

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'Wonderfully entertaining, hilarious. Contains the distilled wisdom of some of the greatest writers who ever lived' Allison Pearson, Sunday Telegraph What should I do with my life? What if my..

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Sometimes the setting of a novel is as important as the story - where would Dickens be without London, or Edith Wharton without New York? Who can read Jamaica Inn and not want to visit Bodmin Moor, or..

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In The Art of Memoir, master memoirist Mary Karr synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and "black-belt sinner," providing a uniqu..

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'Fascinating ... A stimulating contribution to our never-ending fascination with Holmes himself, and, even more perhaps, his genial creator' Sunday Times A medical student at the University of Ed..

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As a young medical student at the University of Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle studied under the vigilant eye of Dr Joseph Bell. He observed as Dr Bell identified a patient's occupation, hometown and a..

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'If you're someone who dreams of penning a bestseller, read this book' The Week'What if the success of E.L.James and Dan Brown was not so random? What if there were an algorithm that could pick out t..

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Book lovers, rejoice! In this love letter to all things bookish, Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations. Readers will: ..

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Many people know that Sherlock Holmes was an enigmatic detective who, with his companion Dr. Watson, pursued criminals through Victorian and Edwardian England. What, perhaps, they don't know is that h..

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Ever wondered how ink is made? Or what is the bestselling book of all time? Or which are the oldest known books in the world? Highbrow to lowbrow, all aspects of the book are celebrated and explo..

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This is a book of book lists. Not of the '1,001 Books You MUST Read Before You Die' variety but lists that tell stories. Lists that make you smile, make you wonder, and see titles together in entirely..

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'Joyous . . . fascinating' Cathy Rentzenbrink'I love it! A real gem' Joanne Harris'Will have the inevitable effect of sending readers in search of these intriguing lost names' Barry ForshawAbsence doe..

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'JOYOUS . . . READERS WILL LOVE THIS FASCINATING BOOK' CATHY RENTZENBRINK 'A GODSEND WITH THE PRESENT SEASON APPROACHING' IRISH INDEPENDENT 'THE PERFECT GIFT FOR A BOOK-OBSESSED FRIEND' STYLIST, 5..

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Around 40 semi-official 'Book Towns' now exist around the world, with most concentrated in Europe, South-East Asia, North America and Australia, but until now, there has been no directory of their loc..

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A brilliant, idiosyncratic collection of introductions and afterwords (plus some liner notes) by New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon-"one of contemporary litera..

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From the author of the best-selling The End of Your Life Book Club, an inspiring and magical exploration of the power of books to shape our lives in an era of constant connectivity. 'I'm on a search ..

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With a foreword by James NaughtieTurn the pages of the most famous books of all time and marvel at the stories behind them. Over 75 of the world's most celebrated, rare, and seminal books are examined..

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Books That Changed the World tells the fascinating stories behind 50 books that, in ways great and small, have changed the course of human history. Andrew Taylor sets each text in its historical conte..

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Here are forty texts to read at some stage in your life- forty texts that can enrich you in all manner of ways. Some are recent, like Harry Potter; some ancient, like Homer and Lao Tzu. There are memo..

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Great literature is thrilling. It will feed your hungry mind and take your heart on a journey. It will help you on the wonderful path to one of life's most elusive and hard-won freedoms, freedom from ..

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Every shelf is different and every bookshelf tells a different story. One bookshelf ca..

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We're not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We're talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in..

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Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and highly entertaining extended essay, Jorge Carrion takes his reader on a journey around the world, via its bo..

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Cats have strong personalities that enchant and engage, and it turns out there are many of them living in every reader's favorite environment: the bookstore. With personalities and histories as varied..

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Passionate, witty, informed, and gloriously opinionated' Jacqueline Wilson 'I felt like this was written just for me, and I think everyone will feel this way' Jenny Colgan 'Beautiful and moving.....

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When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up different worlds and cast new light on this one. She was whisked away to Narnia - and Kirrin Island - and Wonderland. She vent..

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What caused Dickens to leap out of bed one night and walk 30 miles from London to Kent?How did a small town on the Welsh borders become the second-hand bookshop capital of the world?Why did a jellyfis..

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Did Charlotte Bronte take opium? Did the Reverend Bronte carry a loaded pistol? What, precisely, does 'wuthering' mean? Distinguished literary critic John Sutherland takes an idiosyncratic look at the..

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A celebration of bookshops all over the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Andrey Kurkov, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann, now in paperback. A cabinet of curiosities, a ..

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A celebration of bookshops around the world, by an award-winning cast of writers including Ali Smith, Pankaj Mishra, Elif Shafak and Daniel Kehlmann In Browse Henry Hitchings asks fifteen writers from..

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Every Sunday, readers of The New York Times Book Review turn with anticipation to see which novelist, historian, short story writer, or artist will be the subject of the popular By the Book feature. T..

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Language - in its communicative and playful functions, its literary formations and its shifting meanings - is a perennially fascinating topic. C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words explores this fascination ..

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Charles Dickens is the definitive illustrated guide to the man and his works with images of documents from Dickens' personal archive written by one of descendants. It follows Dickens from early childh..

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In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Penguin Classics, Classic Penguin: Cover To Cover showcases over ten years of stunning cover designs. It begins with the now-iconic redesign of the black spin..

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How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing t..

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When We Were Very Young Children's Books delight the young and the young at heart. From the gentle ritual of Goodnight Moon to the incredible odyssey of bad boy Max in Where the Wild Things Are, thes..

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When Kent Nerburn received a letter from Jennifer, a young woman questioning her calling to spend her life in the arts, the writer and artist was struck by how closely her questions mirrored the doubt..

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A biography of the great epic poem. Dante has no equal as he sings of other-worldly horror and celestial beatitude alike. Yet for all our distance from medieval theology, the Florentine poet's..

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Have you ever wished you could tell your favourite books just what they mean to you? Or wanted to give a piece of your mind to the 'must-read' book that you wish you hadn't? Librarian Annie Spence has..

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A master of the novel, short story and memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Everybody's Foolnow gives us his very first collection of personal essays, thoughts on writing, reading and living. ..

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A Book of the Year for The Times and the Sunday Times `The writer is the engineer of the human soul,' claimed Stalin. Although one wonders how many found nourishment in Turkmenbashi's Book ..

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Literacy, long upheld as a standard bearer for progress, is not always a force for good. Had Stalin's mother never sent him to the seminary he never would have learned to read and so never discovered ..

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Among the brilliant writers and thinkers who emerged from the multicultural and multilingual world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. For them, the..

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Behind every great writer there is a beloved pet, providing inspiration in life and in death, and companionship in what is often a lonely working existence. They also offer practical services, such as..

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A conversation-changing look at the social, familial, neurological, and psychological benefits of reading aloud, especially for parents and children. A miraculous alchemy occurs when one p..

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A guide to the greats in British literature! From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Charles Dickens' Tiny Tim to Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy and Shakespeare's Juliet, British authors have created some of th..

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After its publication in 1667, John Milton's Paradise Lost was celebrated throughout Europe as a supreme achievement of the human spirit. Now it is little read. To bring readers back to Milton's ..

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A humorous "guide to life" for grown-ups! One day, Diane Muldrow, a longtime editor of the iconic Little Golden Books, realized that, despite their whimsical appearance, there was hardly a real-life s..

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