In early 2022, Charlie Walker set out to hike 600 miles along the frozen rivers of Siberia. He hoped to cut through the myth of the gulag and the permafrost to understand who its people are and how they reckon with their haunted past, as well as what the future might hold for this remote corner of our world. But on 24 February, Russia invaded Ukraine, with devastating consequences. What had begun as an adventure swiftly descended into a paranoid nightmare, as Walker began to suspect he was being monitored by the Russian authorities. Shortly afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned.

On Thin Ice juxtaposes the harsh beauty of a Siberian winter with a thriller-like series of events that exposes the dark heart of Putin's propaganda machine. It is both the extraordinary record of one man’s walk through the most inhospitable place on earth and a powerful insight into a deeply troubled – and troubling – nation.

'Written with all the pace and energy of a John Grisham novel … An incredible true story and a great read!' BILL BROWDER

'If you want to know how Putin ruined Russia and to understand why it matters, you should read Rule of Lies' OLIVER BULLOUGH

'Jamison Firestone is a legend … his books is a remarkable firsthand account' FIONA HILL

An American lawyer’s brilliant, propulsive story of witnessing and playing a part in the transformation of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin. A true tale of fascinating personalities, criminal intrigue, harrowing situations, audacious actions and international politics that combines Bill Browder’s Red Notice with Michael Lewis’s Liar's Poker.

Raised by his father, a multimillionaire conman and crack addict who owned Manhattan’s most expensive brothel, twenty-four-year-old Jamison R. Firestone decided to change the channel. He graduated from law school in 1991 and sought his fortune in Gorbachev’s USSR, establishing Russia’s first independent foreign law firm.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Jamison lived in the maelstrom that was Russia, defending himself and his clients from mafia attacks, dealing with corrupt police officers, having his law office raided by armed commandos, and once having to bug the offices of the Russian police.

Jamison was at the centre of some of Russia’s most important events. He employed Sergei Magnitsky who was murdered for uncovering the largest tax theft in Russian history and teamed up with Bill Browder and Alexei Navalny to expose his killers. Along the way he inadvertently taught Navalny to make videos exposing corruption and started a war with the Russian government over passage of the Magnitsky Acts which threatened to sanction Russia’s most powerful people.

A real-life story that reads like a spy novel, Rule of Lies goes deep inside contemporary Russia and events that have reshaped the globe. Darkly comic, sometimes horrifying and deeply moving, it is a chilling warning of what can happen when a nascent democracy succumbs to one man’s corrupt iron rule, becoming not only an authoritarian nation but a profoundly criminal one-a true mafia state.

‘A must-read’ iPAPER

‘Original and heart-warming’ LINDSEY HILSUM

‘Remarkable … the perfect antidote to our times’ CHRISTINA LAMB

From the Orwell Prize-winning author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned comes a powerful account of human resilience, capturing our capacity for love and connection against all odds.

We live in an era defined by crisis – whether it be war and displacement, or climate collapse and rapidly widening inequality. Acclaimed international correspondent Sally Hayden has spent her career covering some of the darkest moments of our time, and yet even in the face of unimaginable adversity, she’s witnessed the love and care of everyday people.

Hayden introduces us to a couple separated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a mother in northeast Nigeria who risks everything to save her daughter from forced marriage to Boko Haram militants. We meet a group of Syrian women searching tirelessly for their missing spouses and children, while launching a call for justice, and learn about letters from the bereaved to the dead, still being written over a decade after the tsunami that devastated Japan.

In stories that crisscross the globe, from Uganda to Lebanon, Rwanda to Iraq, Hayden asks us: what if news was recounted through the actions people take for those they love? Would it become harder to dehumanise those who seem different to us? This is Also a Love Story dares us to recognise how love can be found in even the most difficult of times, and to question what might be needed to create a better world.

‘Shows us that in the midst of war, around the most acute suffering, there is also tremendous heroism’ NATHAN THRALL, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama ‘

Sally Hayden uncovers miracles. She may be one herself’ ALEX PERRY, author of Blood Will Flow

‘A beautifully penned tribute to what can keep us human in the face of catastrophe. Read this book to lighten your soul’ ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN, author of The Palestine Laboratory

'Such a compelling account of a small but significant dark corner of history… Profound, angry, and tender all at once' VIRGINIA FEITO, author of MRS MARCH

'Fascinating and very compelling' ZOE VENDITOZZI, co-author of HOW TO KILL A WITCH

'A moving story of desperation, violence and survival' HELEN LEWIS, author of DIFFICULT WOMEN

Abusive husbands. Desperate women. Poisonous solutions.

At the turn of the 20th century, the women of Nagyrév, Hungary, were in trouble. Their stories were hauntingly similar: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable.

The village midwife – their confidante – offered an answer: arsenic. Soon, women began slipping poison into their husbands' brandy, porridge, and stews. Over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicentre of one of the deadliest series of poisonings in modern history.

In The Women Are Not Fine, journalist Hope Reese pieces together archival newspapers, court documents, police records and more to uncover the truth behind this extraordinary case. Her findings serve as a stark warning: when women are pushed to the brink, the consequences can reverberate through history.

'Amazing. I couldn't put it down.'
ELAINE FEENEY, author of As You Were

'Every woman needs to read this book. Every man needs to read this book.'
EDEL COFFEY, author of In Her Place
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Hungry is the powerful new memoir from Number One bestselling author Katriona O'Sullivan – a raw, courageous exploration of survival, identity and the lifelong search for self-acceptance.

Raised in a home marked by poverty, addiction and abuse, Katriona defied the odds: from teenage motherhood struggling with her own addictions to becoming a university professor and successful author. But beneath the achievements lay a more private struggle – with her body, her worth, and the unrelenting drive to be enough.

In this fiercely honest memoir, she interrogates how trauma, class and gender shape the way women see themselves – and how society teaches them to measure their value.

Told with stunning courage and vulnerability, Hungry is both a personal reckoning and a powerful reclaiming of body, voice and self. It is one woman's story – and a rallying cry for every woman who has ever felt she had to shrink to survive.

MORE PRAISE FOR HUNGRY:

'I tore through it.' – TANYA SWEENEY, journalist and author of Esther is Now Following You

'As profound and honest as anything I have ever read' – LIZ NUGENT, author of Strange Sally Diamond

'A beautiful telling of determination despite the odds' – Irish Times

'Raw and remarkable' – Irish Independent

PRAISE FOR KATRIONA O'SULLIVAN:

'One of the most remarkable people you will ever meet' – Guardian

'Powerful – Katriona is a legend' – BARRY KEOGHAN

'Raw, passionate and resolutely honest – I'll never forget it' – ANNIE MAC

'Moving, uplifting, brave, heroic' – NUALA MCGOVERN, Woman's Hour, BBC Radio Four

Jo Hamilton was one of more than 700 sub-postmasters prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 based on information from the Post Office's faulty Horizon accounting system. She was told to put right a wrong she hadn't committed and pushed to the very brink of her existence – remortgaging her house, borrowing from anyone she could in order to repay money that she hadn't taken, and questioning her own sanity.

Immortalised in ITV smash hit drama, Mr Bates v The Post Office, this is Jo Hamilton's extraordinary first-hand account of how she built a Post Office that was at the very heart of her community and lost it all through no fault of her own. For the first time, beyond the headlines and the corridors of the Old Bailey and the UK's political institutions, we will finally hear Jo's full story and the human side of this scandal as well as the untold struggle she faced during the biggest miscarriages of justice in modern history. Ultimately, this is a story of hope and the strength of community and the ability of a few to fight back against the odds.

‘This is quite something – a really brave, honest and heart-rending memoir’ SARAH JESSICA PARKER

‘Extraordinary ? inspires courage and compassion, but also, crucially, demands change’ EMMA THOMPSON

‘A page-turning memoir that will move you to live more’ GINA MARTIN

A BEST BOOK OF 2026 FOR THE OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, DAILY MIRROR, IRISH TIMES, GQ MAGAZINE, LIT HUB, BBC AND MORE

One November day, Gisèle Pelicot was called to a local police station and life as she knew it ended. Her husband of fifty years had been caught by a supermarket guard filming up women’s skirts. But on his computer was shattering evidence: for nearly a decade, he had been secretly drugging and raping her and inviting dozens of strangers into their home to abuse her.

Four years later, he and fifty other men were put on trial and Gisèle’s courage in waiving her right to anonymity made global headlines. ‘Shame must change sides,’ she declared, giving voice and hope to millions. Her words became a rallying cry and her decision marked a turning point in public feeling about sexual violence.

For the first time, and with unwavering honesty and grace, she describes a difficult childhood, first love, her career and motherhood. It is a life in determined search of happiness, both before and after her devastating discovery. She is an ordinary person who faces extraordinary catastrophe, whose example changes the world.

Ultimately, Gisèle Pelicot emerges with a renewed passion and reverence for living, and for love. A Hymn to Life is an unforgettable testament and promise: that victims have no reason to feel ashamed; that even after unimaginable betrayal we can go on; and that colour will always return to life.

‘In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern? a powerful and important book’ Daily Telegraph

A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome’s most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years.

Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately,She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.

These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here.

Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority.

Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

This is the memoir behind the headlines: intimate, fierce, unforgettable.

In 2011, Virginia Roberts Giuffre hit the headlines as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison and whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalysed his fall from grace.

But first and foremost, she became known as a voice of courage and resilience for women everywhere.

This is her story, in her own words.

A story that has never been told in full before now.

Giuffre’s story demonstrates with extraordinary power that victims are made, not born. And that once you come to truly understand the horrifying impact of abuse, you will never again question why a victim stays, or returns over and over again.

In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published.

This is the powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront adversity and trauma of the darkest form, yet found the strength to move forwards, reclaim her voice and shine a light on evil – advocating for others and fighting for a safer, fairer world.

Nobody’s Girl is a remarkable recounting of one woman’s fortitude in the face of depravity and despair, and the legacy she leaves behind.