Intended to be a defence of the Christian religion, Pensées is a penetrating collection of thoughts on faith, reason and theology. Unfinished at the time of Pascal’s death, the book consists of philosophical fragments on the ‘wretchedness’ of man and the controversial schisms of the church at the time. It includes the philosopher’s infamous wager encouraging belief over agnosticism, as well as his thoughts on numerous other topics, including the great essayist Montaigne and the Stoic teach...

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a core text of modern philosophy. Presenting an examination of the nature of human reason, its central argument is that the way in which man perceives his environment is a direct consequence of the mind’s ability to act on this environment and convert it into something meaningful. The work brings together two opposing schools of philosophy rationalism and empiricism and proposes a third way, which came to be known as transcendental idealism.

Proclus - or Proclus of Athens, as he is sometimes known - is widely and rightly considered to be one of the most significant later Neoplatonist philosophers. At age 40 (c.437 CE) or so, Proclus became head of the revived Plato’s Academy in Athens. In his role for the next 50 years, the unmarried Proclus worked hard, combining effectively the roles of administrator, teacher and writer. Astronomy, ethics, mathematics, physics, theology - Proclus tackled all of those topics that together fel...

Written in 1916 against the backdrop of the First World War, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism explains the flaws and power of capitalism, which inevitably lead to monopolies, imperialism and colonialism. Lenin develops Marx’s theories of political economy, which had been put forward 50 years earlier in Das Kapital. He goes on to argue that imperialism is the most advanced state of capitalism, characterised by the domination of monopolies on an international scale, with the expo...

***A new Peter Diamond novel from the CWA Diamond-Dagger-winner Peter Lovesey***'His work is the gold standard for UK crime fiction writing' DEADLY PLEASURES'Peter Lovesey writes feel-good crime yet he never lets the comedy vitiate the mystery' THE TIMES_______________When his former deputy, Julie, invites Detective Peter Diamond and his partner Paloma to spend a week at her home in the depths of rural Some...

London, 1896. Madame Tussauds opens to find one of its nightwatchmen decapitated and his colleague nowhere to be found. To the police, the case seems simple: one killed the other and fled, but workers at the museum aren't convinced. Although forbidden contact by his superior officer, Scotland Yard detective John Feather secretly enlists 'The Museum Detectives' Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton to aid the police investigation. When the body of the missing nightwatchman is discovered encased ...

Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a twenty-first-century private eye called Johnny Getz, whose office is over Shear Amazing, a hairdressing salon. Johnny has been hired by Ruby Hubbard, whose father, an antiques shop owner, has gone missing, and Johnny insists on involving 'Pete' in his investigation.When Diamond, Johnny and Ruby enter the shop, they find a body and a murder investigation is launched. D...

A senior executive at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is found in his office with a bullet hole between his eyes, a pistol discarded close by. The death has officially been ruled as suicide by local police, but with an apparent lack of motive for such action, the museum's administrator Gladstone Marriott suspects foul play. With his cast-iron reputation for shrewdness, private enquiry agent Daniel Wilson is a natural choice to discreetly explore the situation, ably assist...

1794...Returning to England, Harry and James become embroiled in a vicious struggle between rival smugglers played out in the English Channel. Witnesses to a bloody confrontation, they flee to Deal – only to find that, behind its picturesque facade, the town is a haven for traders in contraband, seething with corruption and violence. The Ludlow brothers' search for a well-deserved rest quickly turns into a savage contest of wills between Harry and an unseen enemy who intends to protect his...

Swift’s allegorical satire about religion and politics follows the lives of three brothers, Martin, Peter and Jack, who each represent a faction of the Christian faith Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism and the Dissenting faiths respectively. Each brother inherits a coat (representing religious practice) from his father (God) on the condition that he does not change it. But instead, the three quarrelsome youths disobey their father and change their coats beyond recognition. A Tale of a Tub was...

It is 1793. John Pearce and his Pelicans are going home - to gain their freedom and put the treacherous Captain Ralph Barclay in the dock. Emily Barclay discovers Pearce has papers that would ruin her husband's career and her future security. And then comes that dread thing, a fire aboard a wooden ship of war! Cast adrift, Pearce and his Pelicans find help from an unlikely source. Finally back on British soil, they hope they have reached the end of their troubles, but with the documents mi...

In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing between 50 and 100 million people. Nowhere escaped this common enemy: in Britain, 250,000 people died, in the United States it was 750,000, while European deaths reached over two million. The numbers are staggering. And yet at the time, news of the danger was suppressed for fear of impacting war-time morale. Behind the numbers are human lives, stories of those who suffered and fought it – in the hospita...