F****our speculative stories of disasters, dystopias and destroyed civilisationsJohn Christopher is probably best known for his seminal science ficion novel The Death of Grass and his ‘Tripods’ trilogy for young adults, which was adapted for BBC TV and became a cult classic. Alongside John Wyndham, he was one of the foremost exponents of ‘disaster fiction’, and these four fantastic productions all centre around post-apocalyptic themes – from deadly disease...

Brought to you by PenguinFOUR FRIENDS. ONE MURDER. A GAME THEY CAN'T ESCAPE'It was only a game.'Until a boy went missing.'No one was meant to get hurt.'But a body has been found.'Just some innocent fun.'Except one of them is a killer.Ready or not, here I come.It's time to play hide and seek again.

When most of us think about Artificial Intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that Artificial Intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways, the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning a...

This is the second series of one-off comedies written by the genius behind the smash-hit radio sitcom “Cabin Pressure” – John Finnemore. The first series won the coveted Writers Guild of Great Britain award for Best Comedy.Each show is a comedy perfumed by just two actors - including (across the series) famous household names such as Martin Clunes (“Doc Martin”), Julia McKenzie (“Fresh Fields”) and the inimitable voice of Carolyn in “Cabin Pressure”, Stephanie Cole.The show...

National Public Radio’s Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world’s most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford’s twenty years of observing firsthand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China’s border with Kazakhstan. As he takes the reader on this journey, he will also take us through China’s past and pre...

From Silk to Silicon tells the story of who these men and women were, what they did, how they did it, and how their achievements continue to shape our world today. They include:• Genghis Khan, who united east and west by conquest and by opening new trade routes built on groundbreaking transportation and management innovations.• Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who arose from oppression to establish the most powerful bank the world has seen.• Cyrus Field, who becam...

In The Greatest Knight, renowned historian Thomas Asbridge draws upon the thirteenth-century biography and an array of other contemporary evidence to present a compelling account of William Marshal's life and times. Asbridge charts the unparalleled rise to prominence of a man bound to a code of honor yet driven by unquenchable ambition.Marshal was the true Lancelot of his era—a peerless warrior and paragon of chivalry. As a five-year-old boy, William was sentenced to execu...

“Beautiful and haunting . . . one of literature’s most unlikely picaresques, a road novel in which the rogue heroes can’t seem to leave home.”—The Boston GlobeSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Kansas City Star • BooklistHomer and Langley Collyer are brot...

The bestselling author of E=mc2 weaves tales of romance, divine inspiration, and fraud through an account of the invisible force that permeates our universe—electricity—and introduces us to the virtuoso scientists who plumbed its secrets.For centuries, electricity was seen as little more than a curious property of certain substances that sparked when rubbed. Then, in the 1790s, Alessandro Volta began the scientific investigation that ignited an explosion o...

Each year, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, challenges some of the world's greatest scientists, artists, and philosophers to answer a provocative question crucial to our time. In 2014, he asked 175 brilliant minds to ponder: What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance? The answers are as surprising as they are illuminating. In This Idea Must Die:Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior

A net of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Bacon; the Gunpowder Plot; the worst outbreak of the plague England had ever seen; arcadian landscapes; murderous, toxic slums; and, above all, sometimes overwhelming religious passion. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than it had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between the polarities. This was the world that created the King James Bible. It is the ...

The latest volume in the bestselling series from Edge.org—dubbed “the world’s smartest website” by The Guardian—brings together 206 of the world’s most innovative thinkers to discuss the scientific concepts that everyone should know.As science informs public policy, decision making, and so many aspects of our everyday lives, a scientifically literate society is crucial. In that spirit, Edge.org publisher and author of Know This, John Brockman, asks 206 of the worl...