'Supple, horrifying and mordantly droll' New York Times

'Nothing short of brilliant' Wall Street Journal

'A subtle, often darkly funny novel about the relationship between art and power' Sunday Times

'A dazzling performance and a real page turner' Salman Rushdie

From 'one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today' (Jeffrey Eugenides), a visionary tale inspired by the life of the 20th century film director G.W. Pabst, who left Europe for Hollywood to resist the Nazis and then returned to his homeland with his wife and young son and began making films for the German Reich.

An artist's life, a pact with the devil, a novel about the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.

G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest, perhaps the greatest director of his era: when the Nazis seized power he was filming in France, to escape the horrors of the new Germany he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, who he made famous, can help him. And thus, almost through no fault of his own, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. The returning family is confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. But Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Berlin, wants the film genius, he won't take no for an answer and makes big promises. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.

Daniel Kehlmann's novel about art and power, beauty and barbarism is a triumph. The Director shows what literature is capable of.

The Last Kings of Hollywood tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema. Along the way, Coppola directed The Godfather, then the highest-grossing film of all-time, until Spielberg surpassed it with Jaws – whose record Lucas broke with Star Wars, which Spielberg surpassed again with E.T. By the early 1980s, they were the richest, best-known filmmakers in the world, each with an empire of their own. The Last Kings of Hollywood is an unprecedented chronicle of their rise, their dreams and demons, their triumphs and their failures – intimate, extraordinary, and supremely entertaining.

We all want a best friend like Nora Ephron: frank but forgiving, wry but caring, someone who knows not only what to say but how to say it.

Don’t know what to wear?
‘Black matches with everything, especially black.’

Trouble in love?
‘You can never know the truth of anyone’s marriage, including your own.’

Searching for a new belief system?
‘My religion is Get Over It.’

Here is the best of Nora for every season of life, across her storied career, from her early days in the news media to her cult classic novel, to her unexpected turn as a legendary Hollywood writer. Nora saw it all, and with a wicked sense of humour and shrewd intellect, she made it all deliciously funny.

Filled with unforgettable lines, this is a celebration of Nora’s singular wit and generosity – start at the beginning or flip to any page for instant delight.

Praise for Nora Ephron:

‘Triggered me to write my own book, and ask myself questions about who I was, and what kind of woman I am and how the world has shaped me.’ LILY ALLEN

‘I am only one of millions of women who will miss Nora’s voice.’ LENA DUNHAM

‘Funny, knowing and smart.’ INDIA KNIGHT

‘Nobody does it funnier.’ MAUREEN LIPMAN

The loss of David Lynch in January 2025 produced an extraordinary outpouring of love and grief that revealed how deeply he mattered. But the strength and size of this reaction came as a surprise to many. In life, Lynch was a wilfully obtuse cult filmmaker who had been unable to get a film financed for the last two decades of his life. In death, both the man himself and his work are unquestionably in the pantheon of all-time greats.

He leaves behind an adjective, ‘Lynchian’, a term used to describe work that echoes his. And yet, only Lynch could be truly Lynchian, and those who copy him fail to have an impact. So why does his work affect people so deeply? Why do some find it haunting and unforgettable while others dismiss it as meaningless? Answering that question takes us into the strange realms of psychology, art and theology. We will discover why ambiguity and mystery are so seductive, how Lynch’s creative and meditative practices overlapped and why a director whose work contains so much abuse of women has such a female-skewing fanbase.

Through a personal, first-person lens, Lynchian unpacks the mystery but refuses to solve the enigma of an artist whose work reshaped cinema from the inside out – where story gives way to dreams, and meaning lies not in answers, but in experience.

‘A while ago I decided to read anything Higgs writes. He seems to be able to take any subject and poke at it until it yields up its secrets’ FRANK COTTRELL BOYCE

‘Reading John Higgs is like being shot with a diamond. Suddenly everything becomes terrifyingly clear’ MOJO

‘Higgs’s prose has a diamond-hard quality. He knows how to make us relate’ THE TIMES

Discover the genius of Martin Scorsese – one of cinema’s greatest storytellers.

For over 50 years, Martin Scorsese has been one of cinema’s most celebrated directors. From a Catholic kid in Manhattan to a legendary filmmaker, he’s shaped Hollywood with masterpieces such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas  and The Irishman.

But what makes a Scorsese film unique? His stories explore power, morality, and human nature, blending raw emotion with intellectual depth. Whether reinventing noir, musicals or crime dramas, his work captures the pulse of America and the Italian-American experience.

This book dives into all 26 of his films, breaking down his signature themes, iconic collaborations with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, and his place in film history. A true movie fanatic and preservationist, Scorsese continues to push boundaries – proving that cinema isn’t just entertainment, it’s an art form.

A graduate of Granada Television’s award-winning World in Action investigative reporting team, Greengrass has become one of the most successful and influential film-makers to come out of the British Isles.

Using blistering vérité techniques forged on the streets of Beirut and Belfast, his films – including The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and Captain Phillips – pack all the punch of news reports, taking more than a billion dollars at the box office and forever changing the way Hollywood makes movies.

Opening up his personal archive to film critic and historian Tom Shone for the first time, the film-maker lays bare the roots of his own obsession with unravelling the ‘secret history of the West’ and provides an exclusive inside track on a career that turned Hollywood upside down.

‘Cameron has written a book that feels like music, an intimate souvenir, like a song you can’t stop listening to’ STEVIE NICKS

‘His clarity of observation and memory, his choice words, his people – Cameron Crowe, wonderfully, continues to serve us’ WES ANDERSON

‘If you’re a lover of music, or you’ve ever been in love, then you have something to say. Cameron has always been someone who knows just how to say it’ HARRY STYLES

Cameron Crowe was an unlikely rock and roll insider. Born in 1957 to parents who strictly banned the genre from their house, he dove headfirst into the world of music. By the time he graduated high school at fifteen, Crowe was already contributing to Rolling Stone magazine. With his parents uneasily convinced, he went on to interview and tour with icons like Led Zeppelin; Lynyrd Skynyrd; Bob Dylan; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young; and Fleetwood Mac.

Crowe spends his teens politely turning down the drugs and turning on his tape recorder. He talks his journalism teacher into giving him class credit for his road trip covering Led Zeppelin’s 1975 tour, which lands him – and the band – on the cover of Rolling Stone. He hunkers down with David Bowie as the sequestered genius transforms himself into a new persona: The Thin White Duke. Why did they give him such unprecedented access? ‘Because you’re young enough to be honest,’ Bowie tells him.

At its heart, The Uncool is a surprisingly intimate family drama that charts the path that leads Crowe to writing and directing some of the most beloved films of the past forty years. It’s a touching and joyful dispatch from a lost world, a chronicle of the real-life events that became Almost Famous and a coming-of-age journey filled with music legends as you’ve never seen them before.

‘A delicious tale of a devotee who worships at the altar of rock and roll ? It’s a love letter to fandom, sealed with Cameron’s trademark sincerity and heart’ MAGGIE ROGERS

‘A major literary talent’ KAVEH AKBAR, author of Martyr!

‘Akin to a Spanish Angela Carter’ TELEGRAPH

The Last Dream brings together twelve stories from legendary film director Pedro Almodóvar’s personal archive. Delivering a tantalising glimpse into Almodóvar’s world, together they reflect his most intimate obsessions, as well as his daring evolution as an artist.

Ranging from a beautiful chronicle of the death of Almodóvar’s mother in ‘The Last Dream’, to a love story between Jesus and Barabbas, a cult film director out in search of painkillers on a bank holiday weekend, the original story behind the film Bad Education, and a gothic tale of a repentant vampire, these mischievous stories delight and surprise.

‘A heady mix of factual and fictitious, befitting of one of cinema’s most imaginative storytellers’ OBSERVER

‘Keenly observed and spiritually sumptuous’ EMPIRE

Translated by Frank Wynne

*Readers love THE LAST DREAM*

‘Dive into a world where vibrant characters and deep emotions come to life on the page’

‘An intriguing blend of the personal, thoughts, his remarkable professional film career and more from the superb Pedro Almodóvar’

‘Colourful characters and situations, a little madness. Warmth, humour and strangeness’

Without David Lynch, our world would have been a much more ordinary place. As a filmmaker, screenwriter, designer, musician, visual artist and living avatar of all things uncanny, his influence pervaded every corner of our culture.

Alongside his game-changing TV series ‘Twin Peaks’, Lynch also created big-screen masterpieces such as his DIY debut ‘Eraserhead’ and unconventional mystery thrillers ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Lost Highway’ and ‘Mulholland Drive’. But Lynch was also a cult figure in his own right, releasing albums under his own name, staging art shows, photography exhibitions and design showcases from LA to Milan, and sharing his spiritual philosophy and love of Transcendental Meditation with audiences around the globe.

Published in a lavish, slip-cased edition, David Lynch: His Work, His World covers all aspects of this truly eclectic output while also exploring Lynch’s many influences to tell the full story of how he worked, created, thought and lived.