Italian pianist and composer Francesco Lotoro has been on a lifelong quest to find this remarkable music. He has painstakingly salvaged and performed symphonies, operas and songs written by the incarcerated musicians, many of whom died in the camps. He has travelled the globe to meet with families and survivors whose harrowing testimonies bear witness to the most devastating experiences in twentieth-century history.

Movingly piecing together the human stories of those who wrote and performed whilst imprisoned, this compelling book takes readers on a journey into their extraordinary lives and music, shining a light on a unique beauty that somehow prevailed against all odds.

From Woodward and Bernstein's famous expose´ of a crooked American president to the shocking murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia who confronted deep-rooted corruption in Malta, Hard Truth explores ten dramatic cases where journalists showed astonishing bravery in uncovering the truth; sometimes paying the ultimate price.

Stephen Sackur spent many years holding political leaders to account as the presenter of BBC HARDtalk. In Hard Truth he takes us inside a series of global investigations, highlighting the work of extraordinarily courageous journalists, many of them women, in a journey that takes him from the West Bank to Washington, Moscow to Manila.

Hard Truth is also the story of Sackur re-examining the assumptions underpinning the journalism he grew up with. Is it enough to bear witness and move on? What does impartiality mean when the truth itself is drowning in a sea of disinformation and lies? Do we need journalists who see themselves as 'activists for the truth'?

In a media landscape dominated by a handful of tech oligarchs, in which lies are weaponised and reality is warped by algorithms, independent journalists are increasingly on the front line of the fight to save democracy itself. Hard Truth shows us that there is hope. It is a fight that can still be won.

Covering 200 years of royal history from Queen Victoria to King Charles, and looking forward to the future reign of King William, Power and the Palace is the gossip-laden and highly revelatory account of the relationship between the sovereign and the prime minister – the real story behind The Crown.

Power and the Palace lifts the lid on the mysterious power nexus at the heart of the British state: the secretive and little understood relationship between the monarchy and the government. In vivid, page-turning prose, Valentine Low takes us behind the scenes of the weekly audience to uncover the ever-changing dynamic between sovereign and prime minister – from the romance and flattery that bound Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli, to the personal and political gulf that separated Elizabeth II from Margaret Thatcher.

He reveals how the monarchy has gradually ceded political power over the past two hundred years while behind closed doors fighting to keep its finances secure – ensuring the long-term survival of the institution. But it has not all been smooth sailing, and the book includes moments of dramatic tension when the relationship threatened to unravel.

Based on nearly 100 interviews with senior politicians, top civil servants, royal aides and constitutional experts, Power and the Palace rewrites our understanding of the political power of the monarchy.

The youngest of the Maitland siblings, Marie had watched her elder sisters be married off one by one, destined to take up the unavoidable path for women in sixteenth-century Scotland. However, as she neared marrying age, her father, an influential judge, poet and Keeper of the Privy Seal under Mary, Queen of Scots, went blind and suddenly needed someone to act as his scribe and secretary. In taking up this role, Marie indeed avoided the unavoidable, dedicating her life to her father's work. After his death, she put the finishing touches on the Maitland Quarto, long recognised as significant for its preservation of the poetry of the male great-and-good of sixteenth-century Scotland.

A rare feat for a woman at the time, but Marie's story doesn't stop there. For hidden in the pages of the Maitland Quarto, historian and translator Ashley Douglas discovered Marie's own secret lesbian love poetry. Penning such poetry in the hostile climate of post-Reformation Scotland, with its suffocating tightening of moral control over society, was an incredible act of bravery. Unable to sign it directly, Marie, insistent on her voice and love being known, littered the manuscript with clues to its true penmanship. Clues that, until now, have remained unseen.

Building on her initial discovery of Marie's poetry, in With My Own Hand Ashley Douglas draws on a vast range of newly unearthed primary historical records to tell the fascinating story of Marie and her manuscript, in full, for the very first time.

'With My Own Hand is a beautiful tribute to a woman lost to time, a work of history as courageous as its subject . . . Douglas has given us a gift in these pages. We need more historians like her' – Leah Redmond Chang

Far Above the World will document one of the UK's greatest creative artists, capturing his formative years before he became a household name, and then taking the reader through a spectacularly colourful and vibrant journey of a man who constantly reinvented himself and his music.

'This book sets a new standard in economic history' – TIM HARFORD, author of How To Make the World Add Up

How many times have we been told that the working woman is a modern phenomenon? That men were responsible for the prosperity of humanity? That women's production was, for much of human history, confined to reproduction?

Economica shows that women have always been at the heart of economic progress, as entrepreneurs, merchants and industrialists – from Phryne, the richest woman in Ancient Athens, to Ching Shih, a sex-worker turned pirate who controlled trade in the South China Sea. Author Victoria Bateman also highlights the amazing stories of female workers who built the Pyramids, traded on the Silk Road and dominated London's medieval breweries.

Spanning the past twelve millennia, from the Stone Age to the present day, Economica rewrites our understanding of women's role in the economy, and tells a more accurate history of us all.

'Victoria Bateman's revelatory and compelling new book puts women at the very heart of mankind's economic history. Economica should help ensure that's where they will remain' – BEN CHU, BBC

'A must-read for anyone interested in women's history and economic justice' – AMANDA FOREMAN, author of Georgiana and A World on Fire

'Utterly fascinating . . . Strassmann is the perfect guide to this world: an author as much fascinated by the science and research as she is motivated by the sheer joy and wonder of the birds themselves' – James Macdonald Lockhart, author of Raptor

In The Social Lives of Birds, evolutionary biologist Joan Strassmann examines what it means for birds of a feather to flock together. Some birds sleep together. Some join the foraging groups of other species. Some are only social during the breeding season, forming nesting colonies in trees, cliffs, and sandbanks. Some are altruistic, helping to rear young that are not their own. Some males perform mating dances together.

Strassmann explains how flocks provide safety in numbers, roosts offer warmth and shelter, and colonies allow for protected breeding. But group behavior is not without its costs-including increased competition, infidelities, tick infestations, and more. Strassmann exposes the conflicts birds face and the many ways in which they resolve these conflicts.

With stories of birds from around the world-from broad-winged hawks that migrate south together in the fall, tree swallows that roost together in the thousands, and tropical anis that nest in communes-The Social Lives of Birds explores the different kinds of bird groups and what to look for when watching them. Above all, it reveals that solitary life, it seems, is not for the birds.

'Delightful and informative' – Lee Dugatkin, author of How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)

WHILE THE MILITARY LEADERS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE WATCH FROM THE SIDELINES, BRITANNIA'S WARLORD CARATACUS FIGHTS TO UNITE THE WARRING TRIBES.

AD 43, Britannia. A barbarian land . . .

Caratacus is warlord of his tribe. Only King Cunobelinus holds more power. The island's clans are constantly at war. Caratacus has relentlessly driven new alliances, but those are ready to crumble at any provocation. A situation King Verica, an implacable enemy, is keen to exploit, with the support of ever-ambitious Rome. And Rome has a spy in Cunobelinus's inner circle.

The elders believe their island is impregnable. Caratacus is powerful enough to ignore their mockery, as he calls on thousands of men to enlist, and prepare to defend their homeland. But even Caratacus cannot be certain that an army of warriors and ragtag bands of farmers can be turned into a disciplined fighting force that can defy the mighty military machine poised to invade.

Caratacus and his men are preparing for the most deadly battle of their lives. The future of their world is at stake.

Readers are gripped by the books of Simon Scarrow and T. J. Andrews:

'A riveting read from start to finish. Cannot wait for the next instalment' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'The characters in this book are brilliantly created, full of depth and lively description' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'Thundering good adventure . . . I regretted having to put it down to go to bed' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐