The perfect gift for word lovers, trivia fanatics, and the culturally curious. From the author of the international bestseller Schott's Original Miscellany comes a visually rich book that breaks down the colorful language and systems of signs that make up the vocabulary of our world. Named a Best Book of October 2025 by Kirkus, Financial Times, and Town & CountryHere is an obsessive and fascinati...

Schottenfreude is a unique, must-have dictionary, complete with newly coined words that explore the idiosyncrasies of life as only the German language can.Ever thought, There should be a German word for that? Well, thanks to the brilliantly original mind behind Schott’s Original Miscellany, now there is. In what other language but German could you construct le mot juste for a secret love of bad foods, the inability to remember jo...

Jeeves and Wooster return in a new espionage caper full of japes, high jinks, and jiggery-pokery in a series that is “impossible to read without grinning idiotically” (Evening Standard).The Drones club’s in peril. Gussie’s in love. Spode’s on the war path. Oh, and His Majesty’s Government needs a favor . . .I say! It’s a good thing Bertie’s back, what?In his eagerly anticipated sequel to Jeeves and the King of Clubs

Jeeves and Wooster are spies for the English Crown in this delightful homage to P.G. Wodehouse: "impossible to read without grinning idiotically" ( Evening Standard , UK).The misadventures of Bertie Wooster and his incomparable personal gentleman, Jeeves, have delighted audiences for nearly a century. Now bestselling author Ben Schott brings this odd couple back to life in a new tale full of the hijinks, entanglements, imbroglios, and Wodehousian wordplay that reade...

Jeeves and Wooster return in a new espionage caper full of japes, high jinks, and jiggery-pokery in a series that is “impossible to read without grinning idiotically” (Evening Standard).The Drones club’s in peril. Gussie’s in love. Spode’s on the war path. Oh, and His Majesty’s Government needs a favor . . .I say! It’s a good thing Bertie’s back, what?In his eagerly anticipated sequel to Jeeves and the King of Clubs

What ho! A new Jeeves and Wooster novel that is "impossible to read without grinning idiotically" (Evening Standard), penned in homage to P.G. Wodehouse by bestselling author Ben Schott -- in which literature's favorite master and servant become spies for the English Crown.The misadventures of Bertie Wooster and his incomparable personal gentleman, Jeeves, have delighted audiences for nearly a century. Now bestselling author Ben Schott brings this odd couple back t...

"Creative Confession" brings together three short critical texts written by Paul Klee, one of the most distinctive artists of the early twentieth century. Reflective and often lyrical, the essays exemplify Klee's artistic thinking and his relationship with the creative process.Entitled "Graphic Art" (published as Creative Confession, 1920), "Ways of Nature Study" (1923) and "Exact Experiments in the Realm of Art" (1928), the texts arch into each other through a number of common and overlap...

As read on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week**'Moving, intellectual and unsentimental. I think it will become a classic' Melvyn Bragg'Thoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful'** Kate MosseIn 1995, at the age of forty-two, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke. Since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mort...

Since selections first appeared in the New Quarterly and the National Post as part of “The Afterword,” Steven Heighton’s memos and dispatches to himself — a writer’s pointed, cutting take on his own work and the work of writing — have been tweeted and retweeted, discussed and tacked to bulletin boards everywhere. Coalesced, completed, and collected here for the first time, a wholly new kind of book has emerged, one that’s as much about creative process as it is about crea...

An informative, fun and rather charming essay on the nature and history of one of life’s most desirable assets, Charm, by renowned culture and design critic, Stephen Bayley.Aiming to wound, a schoolmaster wrote on future design-guru Stephen Bayley’s last ever school report “Charm alone will not get him through”. Bayley took this to mean that an affable, genial, outgoing nature was not enough to ensure survival in a harsh world of statistical performance. But survive and flourish is...

To consider comedy in its many incarnations is to raise diverse but related questions: what, for instance, is humour, and how may it be used (or abused)? When do we laugh, and why? What is it that writers and speakers enjoy - and risk - when they tell a joke, indulge in bathos, talk nonsense, or encourage irony? This Very Short Introduction explores comedy both as a literary genre, and as a range of non-literary phenomena, experiences and events. Matthew Bevis studies the classics of comic...

A thoughtful, gleeful encyclopedia of emotions, both broad and outrageously specific, from throughout history and around the world.How do you feel today? Is your heart fluttering in anticipation? Your stomach tight with nerves? Are you falling in love? Feeling a bit miffed? Do you have the heebie-jeebies? Are you antsy with iktsuarpok or filled with nakhes? Recent research suggests there are only six basic emotions. But i...