Vintage books Frostquake. How the frozen winter of 1962 changed Britain forever Nicolson Juliet

In Titus Awakes the 77th Earl of Groan leaves the crumbling castle of Gormenghast and finds the larger world even stranger than his birthplace. Confronted by elemental and human threats - snowstorms, shipwrecks and attempts on his life - Titus' bravery is tested and he must fight to free himself from the claims of his past • Peake began this fourth and final volume of the Gormenghast stories but he died having only written a few pages. Using notes and the fragments he left behind, his wife, the painter and writer Maeve Gilmore, has created a richly imagined sequel that fans of The Gormenghast Trilogy will delight in

Процессы, происходившие в недрах Земли, стали движущей силой эволюции в Восточной Африке • Древних греков подтолкнул к демократии гористый рельеф • Результаты выборов в США объясняют границы древнего моря • Отправьтесь в удивительное путешествие по прошлому нашей планеты вместе с профессором Льюисом Дартнеллом, чтобы узнать, с чего наша история началась на самом деле. Объединяя естествознание и историю, он рассказывает о феноменальных масштабах влияния Земли на ход развития цивилизации и помогает понять, какие трудности и возможности ждут нас в будущем • Книга на английском языке • Human evolution in East Africa was driven by geological forces • Ancient Greece developed democracy because of its mountainous terrain • Voting behaviour in the United States today follows the bed of an ancient sea

The pre-eminent study of the six wives of Henry VIII by a master historian • Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived • CATHERINE OF ARAGON: the pious Spanish Catholic who suffered years of miscarriages and failed to produce a male heir • ANNE BOLEYN: the pretty, clever, French-educated Protestant whose marriage to Henry changed England forever • JANE SEYMOUR: the demure and submissive contrast to Anne Boleyn's radical and vampish style • ANNE OF CLEVES: 'the mare of Flanders' whose short marriage to the overweight Henry followed a farcical 'beauty contest' • CATHERINE HOWARD: the flirtatious teenager whose adulteries made a fool of the ageing king... CATHERINE PARR: the shrewd, religiously radical bluestocking who outlived him

How does Italy really work? • When Valeria travels from hot, dusty Basilicata to begin her studies in a northern university town, she has little idea of the kind of education she will find there. Italian Life is her story, and that of the students and professors around her: a story of power and corruption, influence and exclusion, and the workings of a society where your connections are everything • Written with flair and insight, Italian Life joins Tim Parks' bestselling books about his beloved and paradoxical adopted country. It is a gripping, entertaining, behind-the-scenes account of how Italy actually happens, and the ways it can surprise those who know it inside out

The untold story of Britain's most secretive special forces unit • June 1942. The shadow of the Third Reich falls across Europe. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan - a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees. This top secret unit becomes known as X Troop. Others simply call them a suicide squad • From British internment camps, to the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the hellscape of Terezin concentration camp, Leah Garrett follows this band of brothers who will stop at nothing to defeat the Nazis

How does the novel represent human consciousness on the page? • In eleven sparkling essays on some of the great novelists of the last 200 years – from Charles Dickens to Martin Amis, Henry James to Philip Roth – David Lodge pursues this question with characteristic verve and wit. One of the best novelists and critics of his generation, Lodge is the perfect guide to look afresh at the mysterious workings of the creative mind

The essential crime book of our times, from the author of the bestselling McMafia • Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2012 • We live our lives online - banking, shopping, working, dating - but have we become complacent? • Who's got your money? • We share our personal details, our thoughts and movements with a faceless screen, with no real idea what lies behind it • Who's got your identity? • DarkMarket exposes the shocking truth about what lurks behind our computers: an underground crime network that invades our privacy and threatens our security on a daily basis • Who's got your life? • Glenny tracks down the key players - including criminals, national and international security experts, police, crack addicts, the Saudi Royal Family, and most importantly, victims - to reveal the true scale of this new global threat

As dazzling as the decade they dominated, The Beatles almost single-handedly created pop music as we know it. Today, their songs are cited as seminal influences by stars like Oasis and Blur. Eloquently giving voice to their time, The Beatles quite simply changed the world • Fully updated to include material from The Beatles Live at the BBC and the Anthology series, this acclaimed book goes back to the heart of The Beatles - their records. Drawing on a unique resource of knowledge and experience to 'read' their 241 tracks - chronologically from their first amateur efforts in 1957 to 'Real Love', their final 'reunion' recording in 1995 - Ian MacDonald has created an engrossing classic of popular criticism in which the extraordinary songs of The Beatles remain a central and continually surprising presence

Agatha Christie called her ‘a shining light’. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery? • Scandal, secrets and suspicions abound when one of the directors at the prestigious publishing house of Barnabas is found dead, locked in the company’s strongroom • All eyes are on the other partners at the firm – cousins of the dead man with much to gain from his demise – and all rumours hint at a connection to the disappearance of another director decades earlier • Desperate to salvage their reputation, the cousins turn to Albert Campion – but will his investigations clear the Barnabas family name, or besmirch it forever? • As urbane as Lord Wimsey…as ingenious as Poirot… Meet one of crime fiction’s Great Detectives, Mr Albert Campion

'Our very best writer today' Milan Kundera • Sparkling with comic genius and narrative exuberance, I Served the King of England is a story of how the unbelievable came true. Its remarkable hero, Ditie, is a hotel waiter who rises to become a millionaire and then loses it all again against the backdrop of events in Prague from the German invasion to the victory of Communism. Ditie's fantastic journey intertwines the political and the per

‘A brilliant book about singing… I have been talking to Nick Coleman about music, in person and in my head, for forty years now. [With Voices] you have the opportunity to hear what I have heard. I hope you take it’ Nick Hornby in The Believer • What happens when we fall in love with a voice; the siren call of someone singing? • The history of post-war popular music is traditionally told sociologically or in terms of musicological influence and innovation in style. Voices takes a different tack. In ten discrete but cohering essays Coleman tackles the arc of that history as if it were an emotional experience with real psychological consequences – as chaotic, random, challenging and unpredictable as life itself • Voices is the story of what it is to listen and learn

What would happen if society was run by women? Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagines the result • When three American men discover a community of women, living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without man's knowledge, experience and strength, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have found is a civilisation free from disease, poverty and the weight of tradition. All alone, the women have created a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority