Headline Books

For listeners of Stephen Hawking, a fascinating account of the universe from the perspective of world-leading astrophysicist Heino Falcke, who took the first ever picture of a black hole.

10th April 2019. A global sensation.

Heino Falcke, a man 'working at the boundaries of his discipline and therefore at the limits of the universe' had used a network of telescopes spanning the entire planet to take the first picture of a black hole.

Light in the Darkness examines how mankind has always looked to the skies, mapping the journey from millennia ago when we turned our gaze to the heavens, to modern astrophysics. Heino Falcke and Jorg Romer entertainingly and compellingly chart the breakthrough research of Falcke's team, an unprecedented global community of international colleagues developing a telescope complex enough to look directly into a black hole - a hole where light vanishes, and time stops.

What does this development mean? Is this the beginning of a new physics? What can we learn from this about God, the world and ourselves? For Falcke, astrophysics and metaphysics, science and faith, do not exclude one another. Black Hole is both a plea for curiosity and humility; it's interested in both what we know, and the mysteries that remain unsolved.

Alison Weir, historian and author of the Sunday Times best-selling Six Tudor Queens series, recounts the story of Henry VIII's last wife - Katharine Parr, the queen who survived him.

A woman torn between love and duty.

Two husbands dead, a boy and a sick man. And now Katharine is free to make her own choice.

The ageing King's eye falls upon her. She cannot refuse him...or betray that she wanted another.

She becomes the sixth wife - a queen and a friend. Henry loves and trusts her. But Katharine is hiding another secret in her heart, a deeply held faith that could see her burn....

Katharine Parr. Henry's final queen. Her story.

Renowned, bestselling historian Alison Weir reveals a warm, clever woman of great fortitude who rose boldly to every turn her life took.

Alison Weir, historian and author of the Sunday Times best-selling Six Tudor Queens series, recounts the story of Henry VIII's last wife - Katharine Parr, the queen who survived him.

A woman torn between love and duty.

Two husbands dead, a boy and a sick man. And now Katharine is free to make her own choice.

The ageing King's eye falls upon her. She cannot refuse him...or betray that she wanted another.

She becomes the sixth wife - a queen and a friend. Henry loves and trusts her. But Katharine is hiding another secret in her heart, a deeply held faith that could see her burn....

Katharine Parr. Henry's final queen. Her story.

Renowned, bestselling historian Alison Weir reveals a warm, clever woman of great fortitude who rose boldly to every turn her life took.

Set in the gorgeous, sprawling countryside of the Pacific Northwest, Eileen Garvin's The Music of Bees is about finding friendship in the most unlikely of places, and the families we choose for ourselves.

Heartwarming, inspirational and redemptive, it is perfect for fans of The Language of Flowers and Rachel Joyce.

After the sudden death of her husband, Alice Holtzman finds herself a social pariah. Unfashionable, middle-aged, childless and with only 120,000 honeybees for company.

On the other side of town, Jake Stevenson and his enormous blue mohawk had a bright future in front of them studying music, all until an accident at a high school party leaves him with a broken spine.

But when Alice crashes her pick-up truck, packed with thousands of restless honeybees, into Jake, knocking him from his wheelchair, it is the start of an unlikely of friendship that will pull both of them through the darkest stages of their grief. As these new friends begin to heal one another, Alice realises that Jake has a gift - not only is he a natural with her bees, but he can hear their buzzing as a form of music.

All seems right with their world - until the buzzing stops. With a pesticide company threatening the local honeybee population, and everything Alice and Jake have worked for, these friends must unite to defend their bees.

Set in the gorgeous, sprawling countryside of the Pacific Northwest, Eileen Garvin's The Music of Bees is about finding friendship in the most unlikely of places, and the families we choose for ourselves.

Heartwarming, inspirational and redemptive, it is perfect for fans of The Language of Flowers and Rachel Joyce.

After the sudden death of her husband, Alice Holtzman finds herself a social pariah. Unfashionable, middle-aged, childless and with only 120,000 honeybees for company.

On the other side of town, Jake Stevenson and his enormous blue mohawk had a bright future in front of them studying music, all until an accident at a high school party leaves him with a broken spine.

But when Alice crashes her pick-up truck, packed with thousands of restless honeybees, into Jake, knocking him from his wheelchair, it is the start of an unlikely of friendship that will pull both of them through the darkest stages of their grief. As these new friends begin to heal one another, Alice realises that Jake has a gift - not only is he a natural with her bees, but he can hear their buzzing as a form of music.

All seems right with their world - until the buzzing stops. With a pesticide company threatening the local honeybee population, and everything Alice and Jake have worked for, these friends must unite to defend their bees.

Drawing on remarkable and never-before-seen material, the extraordinary story of one of the most horrific and devastating encounters of the Second World War.

Sunday, June 22nd, 1941: almost four million Nazi troops marched on Moscow, with a brutal scorched-earth tactic that saw millions of Soviet citizens massacred. A level of brutality paralleled only after the Soviet's triumphed at Stalingrad and took mindless revenge as they marched back into Berlin.

Beginning with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, to the appalling circumstances of the Fall of Berlin in April 1945 and told from the perspective of the people of Russia and Eastern Europe, Barbarossa is a heartrending story of tragedy, suffering and heroism.

Stewart Binns draws on Russian archives to paint a uniquely intimate picture of the war from the Soviet side of this terrible conflict - presenting this dark moment in history in panoramic detail, matching sweeping accounts of tactical manoeuvres with harrowing personal stories of civilian hardship and bravery.

Drawing on remarkable and never-before-seen material, the extraordinary story of one of the most horrific and devastating encounters of the Second World War.

Sunday, June 22nd, 1941: almost four million Nazi troops marched on Moscow, with a brutal scorched-earth tactic that saw millions of Soviet citizens massacred. A level of brutality paralleled only after the Soviet's triumphed at Stalingrad and took mindless revenge as they marched back into Berlin.

Beginning with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, to the appalling circumstances of the Fall of Berlin in April 1945 and told from the perspective of the people of Russia and Eastern Europe, Barbarossa is a heartrending story of tragedy, suffering and heroism.

Stewart Binns draws on Russian archives to paint a uniquely intimate picture of the war from the Soviet side of this terrible conflict - presenting this dark moment in history in panoramic detail, matching sweeping accounts of tactical manoeuvres with harrowing personal stories of civilian hardship and bravery.

From a 2018 Wainwright Prize shortlisted author, THE CIRCLING SKY is part childhood memoir, blended with exquisite nature observation, and the story of one man's journey over a year to one of the UK's key natural habitats, the New Forest of Hampshire

In the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom, and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities. It is also part polemic on our collective and individual responsibility for the land and world in which we live, and how we care for it.

As Neil Ansell concludes so eloquently, 'Evolution has no choice in what it does, but we do, as a species, if not always as individuals'.

From a 2018 Wainwright Prize shortlisted author, THE CIRCLING SKY is part childhood memoir, blended with exquisite nature observation, and the story of one man's journey over a year to one of the UK's key natural habitats, the New Forest of Hampshire

In the form of several journeys, beginning in January 2019, Neil Ansell returns for solitary walks to the New Forest in Hampshire, close to where he was born. With beautiful sightings and observations of birds, trees, butterflies, insects and landscape, this is also a reflective memoir on childhood, on the history of one of the most ancient and important natural habitats in the United Kingdom, and on the Gypsies who lived there for centuries - and were subsequently expelled to neighbouring cities. It is also part polemic on our collective and individual responsibility for the land and world in which we live, and how we care for it.

As Neil Ansell concludes so eloquently, 'Evolution has no choice in what it does, but we do, as a species, if not always as individuals'.

Veteran climber Mark Synnott never planned on climbing Mount Everest, but a hundred-year mystery lured him into an expedition--and an awesome history of passionate adventure, chilling tragedy, and human aspiration unfolded.

On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and "Sandy" Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world, where no one had stood before. They were last seen eight hundred feet shy of Everest's summit. A century later, we still don't know whether they achieved their goal, decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay did, in 1953. Irvine carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and take a photograph before they fell to their deaths?

Mark Synnott made his own ascent up the infamous North Face along with a filmmaker using drone technology higher than any had previously flown. His goal: to find Irvine's body and the camera he carried that might have held a summit photo on its still-viable film. Synnott's quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives and museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan High Plateau, and up the North Face into a storm during a season described as the one that broke Everest. An awful traffic jam of climbers at the very summit resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese government agents turned adversarial. An Indian woman crawled her way to safety and survival. Synnott himself went off the safety rope--if he had slipped, no one would have been able to save him--desperate to solve the mystery.

A magnificent story a la The Lost City of Z, The Third Pole conveys the miracle of a mountain the world wants to own, and the first explorers who may have done so.