Showing results by publisher "Sceptre" in All Categories

An exceptional history of ideas and a contemporary critique on the story of self-making: from the Renaissance to the present day Today's defining celebrities have crafted public personae that walk the tightrope between authenticity and artificiality. Ordinary people now follow suit: lovingly...

*WINNER of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023* **AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER** A stunning account of this century's most intense urban fire, and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind. In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of...

An early morning on a beach in Virginia. As he is taking his daily swim, Arman Bajalan - formerly an interpreter in Iraq - discovers a dead body. After surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in the US. Now, sure that the murder is connected to his past, he knows he's still not safe. Seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her fresh-off-the-beat partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the man's pocket. It leads them to Sally Ewell, a local journalist as grief-stricken as Arman by the Iraq war.

Detective stories from the natural world, from the author of the Wainwright and Rathbones Folio Prize-longlisted Ghost Trees. In 1913 all the musk plants in the world stopped smelling. Unable to resist the lure of this mystery, Bob Gilbert turns detective, determined to find the truth in the...

From the #1 Irish bestselling author of When All is Said and Listening Still comes a haunting, exquisitely written story of enduring love that asks us - would you ever give up on trying to find your child, if they vanished without a trace? One unremarkable afternoon, Rosie watched her daughter...

What's in a cloud? What separates a tropical storm from a winter blizzard? And what exactly is El Niño? Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather could be the difference between life and death. In Reading the Glass, he offers a sailor's-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere and unveils the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate.

When she is sixteen, Kit suffers a summer of sleeplessness that isn't quite what it seems; her body lies in bed while she wanders through her family home, the streets of her run-down seaside town and into the houses of friends and strangers. Unseen and unheard, she witnesses her parents and their deteriorating relationship in a painful new way. Her home thrums with quiet violence that she can no longer ignore. With this secret knowledge it becomes impossible not to react and a single word soon changes everything.

'A revelation' KATY HESSEL 'Brilliant' OBSERVER Over one night, alone in the Punta della Dogana Museum in Venice, Leïla Slimani grapples with the self as it is revealed in solitude. In a place of old and new, she confronts her past and her present, through her life as a Moroccan woman, as a...

There's a Cornish saying that nothing is left behind in an autumnal tide, the powerful tug between the sun and the equator makes the water surface stronger, and it pulls and builds until we are left with what is known as great tides - but as I stand here on my childhood beach someplace in my 40s...

Juliet Capulet is the heartbeat of the world's most famous love story. She is an enduring romantic icon. And she is a captivating, brilliant, passionate teenage girl who is read and interpreted afresh by each new generation. Searching for Juliet takes us from the Renaissance origin stories behind William Shakespeare's child bride to the boy actor who inspired her creation onstage. From enslaved people in the Caribbean to Italian fascists in Verona, and real-life lovers in Afghanistan. From the Victorian stage to 1960s cinema, Baz Luhrmann and beyond.

'It's summer. I stand where perhaps Ellen stood, in this ground thick with new thistle and long grass. She would have ken this coast in all weathers: in the summer when it was as gentle as a lake and in the winter, with the high winds and stinging salt spray.' A beautifully written journey...

In September 1883, a small town in the South Australian outback huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the entire community is caught up in the search for him. As they scour the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly—newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen—confront their relationships, both with one another and with the ancient, impervious landscape they inhabit. 

Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and completing the trilogy of books which began with her first bestseller Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox. How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest? Why is a famous fabric pattern from...

Looking to Sea is an alternative history of Britain in the twentieth century, told through the prism of ten iconic artworks of the sea, one for each decade. 'We see nothing truly until we understand it.' John Constable An alternative history of Britain in the twentieth century, Looking to Sea is...

On a year-long exchange programme in rural Oregon, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap Kashmiri chai for volleyball practice and understand why everyone around her seems to dislike Obama. An unforgettably witty narrator, Hira finds herself stuck between worlds. The experience is memorable for reasons both good and bad; a first kiss, new friends, racism, Islamophobia, homesickness. Along the way Hira starts to feel increasingly unwell until she begins coughing up blood, and receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis, pushing her into quarantine and turning her newly established world upside down.

A dazzling, shocking novel that speaks to our times, drawing on the 16th-century case of the witches of Warboys. Alice Samuel might be old and sharp-tongued, but she's no fool. Visiting her new neighbours in her Fenland village, she suspects Squire Throckmorton's household is not as God-fearing...

Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company. 

* AN OBSERVER AND DAILY MAIL "BOOKS OF 2022" PICK * Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which lyrically evokes a vanished world. In this captivating memoir, Melvyn Bragg recalls growing up in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton, from...

'Jessica Andrews's first novel, Saltwater, was wonderful. The follow-up, Milk Teeth, is even better' Alex Preston, 'Fiction To Look Out For In 2022', The Guardian From the author of the award-winning Saltwater comes a beautifully told love story set across England, France and Spain. A girl grows...