Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Greg Hackett - Editorial Expert
An avid crime and thriller reader when younger Greg is now more interested in non-fiction and in particular books which explain the natural world and our relationship with it. You will also find the biographies of extraordinary people propping up his reading list which is unsurprising as his career has mostly been in live events where he has had the opportunity to hear many remarkable human stories in person. Most recently Greg has founded the London Mountain Film Festival which shares the inspiring experiences of remarkable people doing amazing things in incredible places. He is also a publisher of gifts for hill-walkers and an enthusiastic but challenged home-brewer.
There is something profound about inheriting someone else’s dreams. You are occupying their alternative future, hand in glove, soul on soul, carrying forward a life that might have been. That is the challenging position Katie Carr finds herself in after the death of her brother Toby. Having already undertaken the painstaking task of bringing his unfinished book (Moderate Becoming Good Later) to publication, she sets herself an even more daunting challenge and picks up a paddle to complete the remaining areas of the Shipping Forecast that Toby never had the chance to visit.
So off she floats - ... View Full Review
It’s 75 years since the Peak District pipped the Lake District at the post to take the title of England’s first national park. Tom Chesshyre cites the mass Kinder Trespass of 1932 as the key moment in shifting our national consciousness to protect our most beautiful spaces. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, and three centuries ago this area, a mix of rugged gritstone and smooth limestone, was described by Daniel Defoe as a ‘howling wilderness’.
It was the ‘labouring classes’ - especially those on the Manchester side of the ... View Full Review
Sometimes the most world-changing ideas are almost invisible. Jaime Dávila’s Forgotten tells the story of Cornelis Corneliszoon, a 16th-century Dutch millwright whose wind-powered sawmill was a nearly overlooked idea that shaped history. By automating timber processing, he made shipbuilding faster, cheaper, and more reliable — a single practical innovation with ripple effects far beyond the Netherlands.
The impact of Corneliszoon’s invention turbo-charged the Zaan district, where mills shared improvements and created an early industrial ecosystem that gave the Dutch an edge in trade, naval power, and empire-building. Dutch innovations in mechanised sawmills, shipbuilding, finance, ... View Full Review
Leaf through page after page of engaging, colourful and sometimes deeply frustrating puzzles which challenge you to "say what you see" in order to come up with the right answer. The solutions may be films, celebrities, places, phrases... with each page presenting a new photo-collage challenge.
It's a concept which is simple yet addictive, making the book instantly unputdownable for anyone who enjoys puzzles, puns, or wordplay. Think Dingbats or Catchphrase, then take it up a notch and add striking graphics. These brainteasers are bright, witty, and visually appealing, with a sense of humour baked into every clue.
Sometimes you ... View Full Review
If you live and breathe cinema, The Movie Lover’s Quiz Book is tailor-made for you. With over 900 questions covering films, movie stars, directors and more, this book invites you to challenge your big screen knowledge across a variety of formats.
The picture clues and multiple-choice rounds are crafted with a real quiz-night feel, making it perfect for solo play, a movie-buff night with friends, or even a family film trivia session. With 20 full quizzes of picture clues, connections and conundrums, Wigglesworth gives his audience a run for their money.
Each of the quizzes is broken into rounds, and ... View Full Review
Exactly 200 years after the very first train rolled across England, Tom Chesshyre invites us to slow down, hop on a carriage, and really notice Britain. This isn’t about high-speed thrills - it’s about the small stuff: quiet stations, forgotten halts, and the stories you only catch if you’re paying attention.
The book kicks off (and fittingly finishes) in Darlington, the birthplace of the railways, and then takes you on a proper tour: the classic Settle to Carlisle route, the far north of Thurso, and all the way down to Penzance. Along the way, there ... View Full Review
George Lewis’s Don’t Panic! takes the expectant dad on a chronological ride from pregnancy right through to baby’s first birthday, with a deadpan northern wit that makes even the scariest milestones feel less daunting.
One of the book’s highlights are the “Dad Tricks” – pithy paragraphs of advice that pop up throughout, offering comic relief just when you need it. Lewis also ropes in fellow comedians like Kerry Godliman, Russell Kane and Andy Parsons, so the whole thing feels like a supportive nod from the comedy world to bewildered new ... View Full Review
Chuckling my way through the early chapters of Rob Furber’s The Gambler, I was on the lookout for warnings of terrible things to come: a sobering tale of addiction, loneliness, the inevitable downfall of a chancer. Not at all. What unravelled instead was a love story fuelled by the rollercoaster career of a trader — except in this story the trader isn’t playing the stock exchange, he’s turning up at, among other things, Eurovision Song Contest rehearsals. And the rollercoaster he’s riding sounds like a whole load of fun… if you ... View Full Review
Sometimes science will make discoveries that change the world, but sometimes it is just about how we look at those big leaps forward. In his latest landmark work, The Genetic Book of the Dead, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins holds Darwinism to the light and reveals the potential of natural selection to not only explain how creatures look and behave the way that they do in order to survive in their environments, but also to explain past environments, distant kingdoms, and use anatomy and cellular biology to explain these unseen landscapes.
Every book marks a moment in time, when all ... View Full Review
Jamie Doward asks the question: is running fight or flight? He has plenty to flee. Shame, grief, and what he calls “monstrous behaviour” haunt his past. This is the memoir of a man on the run—from his demons, his drinking, his self-destructive tendencies. For Jamie, running isn’t about fitness or medals—it’s about survival. “If I don’t run,” he says, “bad things happen.”
At its heart, And So I Run is a raw and often bleak exploration of mental health, addiction, and the fragile masculinity ... View Full Review
There's a cynical market taking money from people who have a complex relationship with food. In the world of running, that relationship is further complicated by the demands placed upon the body to compete. As an ultra-runner, leading sports dietitian and someone who has herself struggled with food, Renee McGregor stands out as someone to be trusted.
Fuel for Thought is a refreshingly honest and evidence-based exploration of nutrition in sport, cutting through fads and misinformation to provide practical, science-backed advice. McGregor challenges myths around dieting, restrictive eating, and performance, making it clear that proper fuelling isn’t just ... View Full Review
Flicking through Walk Britain is like chatting to a mate in the pub about their favourite days out. Elise Downing's style is cosy, funny, and sprinkled with details that bring to life all of those reasons that make walking such a joy. Forget about over-detailed directions and gear pedantry, here are cake shops, laughs, Dad stories, and titbits of local knowledge, the like of which we all love to hear from our friends as they amble alongside us. The pleasure in these moments is in the telling as much as the listening. Perhaps that's why this book works so well, ... View Full Review
Join Our Community
Join our community for the latest bookish news, reading recommendations, exclusive opening extracts, author events and competitions. It\'s all free. And enter a monthly draw to win a £50 Gift Card. See past winners here
