The British far right is working to dismantle our democracy. This shocking, eye-opening first-hand account reveals who they are, how they operate and how they are normalising extreme ideologies including eugenics.

In summer 2024, riots swept England in the biggest wave of far-right violence in the post-war period. But far-right activity takes many other forms as well, all of them dangerous.

Journalist Harry Shukman knows the dangers all too well: he’d gone undercover to infiltrate these groups. For over a year, he carefully attached his hidden lapel camera and pretended to be an extremist named Chris.

We follow Shukman as he hangs out in the pub with a secretive community network, canvasses with political party Britain First and attends a neo-Nazi conference. We meet a circle of Holocaust deniers, a race science organisation with a major Silicon Valley investor and right-wing think tanks supported by Conservative policymakers. What we witness is hard to believe, or stomach.

Year of the Rat is a gripping and urgent exposé – nail-bitingly tense, darkly absurd and utterly chilling. Risking his safety and sanity, Shukman has removed the far right’s terrifyingly everyday mask. Now, we must ensure it stays off.

Mining Men explores how these men felt when the pits were closed and what happened next, including former miners who became factory workers, detectives, driving instructors, counsellors, the local mayor and one who even ended up working on Fleet Street. Featuring accounts from Ayrshire to the South Wales Valleys, from the ‘People’s Republic of South Yorkshire’, to the ‘Sunshine Corner Coalfields’ of Kent, each chapter offers a different perspective of the industry.

Britain’s last deep coalmine closed in 2015, yet just fifty years ago the mining industry was a juggernaut, employing over 250,000 workers. Combining new personal interviews with extensive archival research, Emily P. Webber illuminates the extraordinary history of the industry once considered the backbone of Britain.

By situating the miners’ strike of 1984-85 in a longer history of the coalfields, we can understand why miners and their families fought so hard against pit closures, and what happened after the pit wheels stopped turning. Vivid, evocative and richly alive with minute detail, Mining Men uncovers what the mining industry once meant to its workers and their communities, and what Britain lost when it was gone.

‘The following things have seemed impossibly camp to me at one point or another: a doll whose body acts as a cover for a toilet roll, a tantrum over wire coat hangers, a 1950s muscle magazine featuring a photo of a young man dressed as a gladiator, and a rat underneath a silver serving platter’

An essential reappraisal of camp across time and across the globe, from the author of Fabulosa! and Outrageous!

Camp has been an inescapable part of popular culture for at least the last 150 years. Famously unrestrained and ever evolving, it has not only captured the cultural imagination, but also played an important role as a form of protest and resistance.

Paul Baker takes us through camp’s rebellious and revolutionary past with warmth, humour and sensitivity, starting with the court of Louis XIV and the dandies of the eighteenth century through to Showgirls, Harlem’s drag balls and Columbian telenovelas.

Throughout its history, camp has been a place of refuge and renewal, of heroism and hedonism. This glorious celebration traces camp’s journey from the fringes of society to the mainstream.

From Alice Walker to Beyoncé, from Audre Lorde to Doreen Lawrence, from Aretha Franklin to Zendaya: Catherine Joy White charts her own journey to self-discovery through the prism of extraordinary women to create a beautiful tapestry of Black joy.

Taking on the legacy of Angela Davis’s Women, Race and Class, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, This Thread of Gold brings new life to the history of Black women’s resistance.

The Ultimate Guide to parkrun (always with a lower case p!) covers how parkrun started, how it is staged every week, how to get involved as a runner, walker, or volunteer – and even how to start your own run.

Written by a running writer and qualified athletics coach, this celebratory book goes behind the scenes to tell the heartwarming human stories behind parkrun. But it also brims with practical information, with training plans for different types of runners so that you can (if you wish to) improve your own finishing time.

Published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the founding of the mass participation event in Autumn 2024, the book delves into parkrun’s origins as the brainchild of Paul Sinton-Hewitt, an unemployed man in London. Just 13 runners competed in the first Bushy Park Time Trial on 2 October 2004.

Now parkrun has more than 9 million runners at more than 2,200 parks in 23 countries, with the most popular countries being the UK, Australia, and South Africa.

The book features all aspects of parkrun, including how public-spirited volunteers put on the event, sustainably and for free, every week, and fun boxes such as the most interesting courses around the world, from Poland to the Falkland Islands.

About the author

Lucy Waterlow is a journalist, ghostwriter and author who has contributed to national newspapers and specialist publications such as  Runner’s World and  Women’s Running.

She is a keen amateur runner, and a qualified England Athletics coach in running fitness. She is the co-author of  Nell McAndrew’s Guide To Running  and  Run Mummy Run: Inspiring Women to be Fit, Healthy and Happy.

A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Through social media, justice has been democratized and the silent majority are getting a voice. But are we using our voice for good?

Instead we are mercilessly finding people’s faults and defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those who position themselves outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control.

In this prescient, unnerving yet often hilarious book, Jon Ronson meets the victims of modern public shamings and, in doing so, plunges us deep into the heart of a very modern terror: the terror of being found out. Full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws – and the very scary part we all play in it – this is Jon Ronson at his very best.

A Sunday Times Book of the Year when first published, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

Georgie Codd never had a dad. And she didn’t think that would ever change – until a stranger’s practical joke made her wonder if she could find one. So began her quest for a father figure, placing ‘dadverts’ in newspapers, magazines and corners of the internet she thought the fatherly might frequent.

Along with the conversations, meetings and the twists and turns of seeking family relationships with strangers comes a curious look at the societal, cultural and biological functions of fatherhood. What makes someone decide to have or not have a child? What is the experience for single parents, for queer communities, for people rejected by their birth family – or for those who do the rejecting? And why were so many ‘dads’ angling for something other than parenthood?

By turns brilliant and bonkers, hilarious and poignant, this is an unexpected story of the strange, intimate things we mean when we talk about family.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT NATURE WRITING PRIZE 2023

‘Modern, revealing and restorative, a coastal treasure’ Amy Liptrot

‘Like its talismanic title, Huband’s voice is distinct and singular. A gorgeous reckoning with the sea, islands and mythology’ Sinéad Gleeson

‘A wild melding of body and landscape. A deep, immersive, storm-tossed read’ Helen Jukes

‘As vital and complex as the oceans themseleves’ Joanna Pocock

A powerful journey of sea and self, trial and hope on the islands of Shetland

On the storm-tossed beaches of the Shetland Archipelago, Sally Huband is searching. A message in a bottle, a mermaid’s purse, a lobster trap tag, each find connects her more deeply with our oceans. But it is Sally’s quest for a fabled sea bean that unlocks the myths of these islands and carries her through chronic illness towards a new and more resilient self.