This book offers an imaginative mix of games and tips to remind you of the simple joys of waking up with a clear head.Whether you are about to embark upon a short detox, quit the sauce for good, or just looking for a night off, these alcohol-free activities will light your way.

Our phones have become a constant distraction; it's time we put them down and rediscovered the simple art of taking a few minutes out. This book offers an imaginative list of games and tips aimed at curing us of our portable tech addiction. More than mere time-killers, these activities include ways to unleash your creative side and train your brain, but above all methods to set you on the road to calm.

Live well and feel great - go vegan in 15...The vegan revolution is here. More and more people are looking to eat and shop in a way that treads as lightly as possible on our fragile planet and that doesn't cause suffering to animals. In Vegan in 15, renowned green food blogger and cook Kate Ford presents the easy way to 'go vegan' - showing you how to conjure up incredibly tasty meals in just 15 minutes, wi...

We are a nation that loves its ancient woods and trees. We prize our sturdy oaks, craggy pines, bluebells and primroses, badgers and dormice. We value the history and heritage of places that have been woodland since before the Norman Conquest. But only a generation ago we were all set to wipe them out. It was said that in the space of just 30 years, nearly half of our ancient woods were destroyed. How and w...

John Sutherland, one of Britain's most celebrated professors of English literature, is here to test, stretch, amuse and instruct you with his definitive quiz on all things grammatical.Why do purists insist that 'television' is wrong while telephone is correct?Was Bill Clinton taking risks with language as well as his presidency when he declared, 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman'?And can the ...

At 2.20am on 15th April 1912, the Titanic was plunging 12,000 feet to the ocean floor. Machinery, coal, crystal goblets, pianos and jewellery all tumble through the dark water. Hundreds of passengers and crew remain trapped below decks - hundreds more will perish on the surface. This is the definitive chronology of the Titanic's final hours, told in fascinating detail and offering a real-time experience of ...

On 30th April 1945 Germany is in chaos - Russian troops have reached Berlin. All over the country, people are on the move - concentration camp survivors, Allied PoWs, escaping Nazis - and the civilian population is fast running out of food. The man who orchestrated this nightmare is in his bunker beneath the capital, saying his farewells. Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute is pure chronological narrat...

The most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years...In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and Paris resident John Baxter recounts his year-long experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Baxter sets off on the trail of Paris's legendary artists and writers. Along the way, he tells the city's history through a brilliant cast of characters: the favourite cafes of Erne...

"In the summer of 1940, lying in the sun, I saw a family of redstarts, unconcerned in the affairs of our skeletal multitude, going about their ways in cherry and chestnut trees..." Soon after his arrival at Warburg PoW camp, British army officer John Buxton found an unexpected means of escape from the horrors of internment. Passing his days covertly watching birds, he was unaware that he, too, was being wat...

London, July 1946. A woman's body is found in a disused bomb site off the Holloway Road. She is identified as Lillian Frobisher, "a respectable wife and mother" who lived with her family nearby. The police assume that Lillian must have been the victim of a sexual assault; but when the autopsy finds no evidence of rape, they turn their attention to her private life - How did she come to be in the bomb site,...

Can you identify that tree outside the window? Probably not. Most of us don't know an oak from a sycamore, let alone a beech from a birch. Perhaps it is time to turn over a new leaf...Out of the Woods is an affectionate, convivial introduction to Britain's trees, in which Will Cohu takes you on a revelatory ramble through country and city - from woodlands of majestic oak and ash, via alder-clad lay-bys, t...

This fascinating and original book provides a better insight into the life of "just your average Muslim" than you will find anywhere else. A powerful antidote to common but exhausted stereotypes, it challenges non-Muslims to reexamine their perceived ideas of what they think they know and Muslims to examine how they portray themselves to the world. It encourages us all to reflect on our similarities, not ou...

On 30th April 1945 Germany is in chaos...Russian troops have reached Berlin. All over the country, people are on the move - concentration camp survivors, Allied PoWs, escaping Nazis - and the civilian population is fast running out of food. The man who orchestrated this nightmare is in his bunker beneath the capital, saying his farewells. This is the gripping story of Hitler's final hours, as seen through t...

Athens, 1942 - two sisters divided by politics and tragedy...In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years in exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in prison, and whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby. Nikitas had been distressed in the days before his death and, curious to find out why, his English widow Maud sta...

For Adam Ruck, France and cycling go together like a rich Camembert and a heady glass of Bordeaux. This book - full of useful details and tips - follows him through six intricately plotted Gallic cycling routes; from Lake Geneva to the Channel, the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, Vichy to Roanne, Paris to Provence, Roanne to the Atlantic, and Burgundy to Spain. Having lived in France in his youth, Adam, ...

Life on Planet Earth is not weirder than we imagine. It's weirder than we are capable of imagining. And we're all in it together: humans, blue whales, rats, birds of paradise, ridiculous numbers of beetles, molluscs the size of a bus, the sexual gladiators of slugs, bdelloid rotifers who haven't had sex for millions of years and creatures called water bears: you can boil them, freeze them and fire them off ...

Vatanescu, an impoverished construction worker, wants a future for himself and a pair of football boots for his son. So he decides to head north to a cold, dark country where there is money to be made. Taking up with a Russian human trafficker, he joins the bottom rung of a begging ring in Finland. But the prospects in this line of work are not as good as he had hoped, and soon Vatanescu is on the run. Hi...

For many years, Lyn and Ros Rogers were the owners of Drifters, a famous game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains. But when President Robert Mugabe launched his violent land reclamation programme, everything changed. The Rogers found their home under siege, their friends and neighbours expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleaded with them to do, they haul...

With everything from Achilles' heel to Pythagoras' theorem, from Oedipus and his complex to Margaret Thatcher and Thucydides, this book aims to unlock the richness of the Greek world and show just how profoundly it has informed our own. Consider the way we think: about right and wrong, about the nature of beauty, goodness, and truth. What, in the end, it is to be a human being amid the immensity of the univ...

Christof, Christophe, Christopher and Cristofol are four brothers - sons of the same father and four very different mothers, yet none of them knows of the others' existence. They live in Frankfurt, Paris, London and Barcelona and they share the fact that their father, Gabriel Delacruz - a truck driver - abandoned them when they were little. Years later, when they learn that Gabriel has been declared m...