Collection: Adult

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR.

Florida, 1982. A nine-year-old watches as his dead father's possessions are hauled away: his clothes and tools, his faux-leather recliner. His sensei says it's a perfect time to turn his weaknesses into weapons. His PE teacher says he runs like a pregnant ostrich. His mother takes out a personal ad. Everyone is trying to teach him a lesson but he is, it seems, a slow learner. Meanwhile, with each passing day, his father recedes, growing less and less plausible, almost a myth.

Twenty-five years later, adrift in suburban Southern California, married with a son of his own, he's still trying to sort through the fragments of his father's death while imparting his own sketchy education onto his son. Which snakes are poisonous? Why did I tell him that Candyland is based on a true story? Why has he stopped asking me to go skateboarding with him and his friends? After discovering a travel journal he didn't know his father kept, he and his son light out on a road trip, retracing the father's mystifying journey.

They drive up the Pacific Coast, foggy, overtaken by beauty. As he strains to decipher his father's notes, his relationship with his son begins to take on new heft and shape. With wit and compassion, Moffett delivers a bracingly intimate account of fatherhood, and discovery, and the experiences of two men far from home.

From a unique collaboration between the co-author of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells and an acclaimed visual artist comes seven richly illustrated fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future.

These tales from the stones are neither new nor old. They are full of 'wild folk', shape-shifting spirits that carry the energy that connects all things. You will meet selkies and silver trout and the black fox, as big as a wolf and so fast and cunning she drives the lord of the manor to madness and oblivion; the woman of flowers who is happier living as an owl; the boy who learns to feel the songs and stories of trees through his skin; Wayland, the smith who can hammer metal to such airy thinness he makes his own wings; and the great white raven, a bird so rare it awakens the king who sleeps beneath the stones of the wild west cliffs of Wales.

This book brings together the words of Jackie Morris and the stained-glass paintings of Tamsin Abbott, but the stories come from both, a true collaboration born out of friendship and hope. These are tales to make you see, listen and most of all feel the wild magic that links stone, tree, fox and star.

It's time we held these adorable little freaks accountable.

Get ready to discover the dark and seedy underworld of the animal kingdom with Animals Are A-holes. From drunk monkeys to stabby platypuses to kidnapping penguins, this book is an illustrated rap sheet of wildly offensive behaviors and shocking crimes committed by the animals you thought you knew. Think all creatures deserve our love and respect?

Get a load of these disturbing facts:
- Hedgehogs are cannibals.
- Dolphins are thugs.
- Chipmunks hate visitors.
- Pigeons are gamblers.
- Octopi punch fish for fun.

Get the real dirt on misbehaving mammals, unlovable birds, and inappropriate invertebrates with Animals Are A-holes, the long-awaited exposé they don't want you to read.

Sapiens meets Why We Sleep in an evolutionary romp through the science of sleep--and how we can get better rest--by one of the world's leading sleep scientists.

We spend roughly a third of our lives in bed, but for millions of us, not all of that time is spent sleeping. We strive for eight hours per night, only to lie awake thanks to stress, our ever-present devices, a new baby, or that 4pm coffee you thought you needed.

As sleep scientist and recovering insomniac Merijn van de Laar shows, we're hardly the first to experience this. When homo sapiens evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when saber-toothed tigers were their biggest nighttime worry, wakefulness served to protect one's tribe at night. Research shows these episodic sleep patterns even gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage. We can look to their example for guidance in improving our sleep health, too: how our sleep patterns change as we age, the benefits of communal sleep, the importance of environmental factors such as temperature and light. While our myriad gadgets may distinguish us from early humans, understanding the ways our brains evolved to rest can chart the course toward a better night's sleep.

Drawing from emerging science, archeological research into our ancestors' habits, and close observation of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures, How to Sleep Like a Caveman explains everything from why we sometimes jerk awake at night--likely a remnant of having slept in trees--to why our efforts to "optimize" our sleep schedules might just be a fool's errand. The result is a surprising, accessible new framework for thinking about sleep--the way we were designed to.

A modern guide to the fashionable world of prickly, spiny houseplants.

Cacti and succulents are the hottest new trend. These spiny little plants are taking Instagram by storm, and are steadily making their way into the most stylish homes. With their striking shapes and many different colors, they provide the perfect, low maintenance design accent for contemporary living spaces. Easy to care for, they also bring tranquillity and mindfulness.

Gynelle Leon founded London's first ever shop dedicated to cacti and succulent, called Prick. Here, with inspirational and achievable styling tips and advice, she shares her secrets to using these plants to transform your home. With profiles on the huge range of cactus varieties and information on caring for and styling your houseplants, this is the perfect guide to bringing the outdoors in.

This is the story of baseball's rich magical history and the centuries-old culture of superstition in the sport. It is a love letter to the jinxes, curses, rituals and myths of baseball's past and present -- and to the innate mysticism of the game.

For more than 150 years, a magical culture has been central to the game of baseball: At the turn of the 20th century, a battle between two lucky mascots defined early World Series matchups. Soon after, two generational curses spawned decades of heartbreaking losses for the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox. Today, players like Bryce Harper perform at-bat rituals, fans refuse to wash the jerseys of their favorite players, and baseball people everywhere refuse to utter the words "no-hitter" before there's been a hit.

In The Magical Game, journalist and converted baseball fan Addy Baird turns her reporter's eye to her favorite sport, investigating the roots of these magical practices and telling the story of baseball's long history of superstition, rituals, curses, jinxes, hoodoos, and hexes. Spanning three centuries of baseball history and three dozen more of magical history, Baird takes readers through fascinating, forgotten tidbits in the sport, untangles the game's legends, and considers baseball's uncertain future. In the face of recent MLB rule changes and the rise of advanced statistics, Baird looks at the many decades of concern about baseball's declining popularity and the evolution of the sport, as well as why and how a culture of magic has remained strong at the core of the game for so many years.

Funny, poetic, and deeply researched, The Magical Game will make readers fall in love with baseball all over again.

What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong?

In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren't what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig's revelatory portrait of gun violence in America's most famously maligned city.

Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don't, Ludwig shows gun violence to be more circumstantial--and more solvable--than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.

Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig's immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including "countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald'ses," Unforgiving Places is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn't require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

The Magician's Nephew opens the doorway to Narnia for the first time and introduces Aslan the Great Lion and the evil White Witch. Here they are captured in full-colour by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.

A must-read action plan to reclaim your focus, direct your attention, and save your mind in an era of endless distraction. Now available in paperback!

Our brains are wired for focus. We are designed for it, we crave it, and yet in our current age of overload, we often feel like our minds are bolting from one distraction to the next, with sustained focus always just out of reach. Finding Focus is an empowering guide to reclaiming your most precious resource: your attention. Leading behavioral scientist Dr. Zelana Montminy unveils the science behind focus and distraction, revealing how our hyperconnected reality and the endless flux between digital and physical life fragments our thoughts and diminishes our well-being. Finding Focus equips you with powerful strategies to:

- Silence the noise
- Rewire your brain
- Unleash your potential
- Rediscover yourself

If we can control our attention and be present, if we choose when and how we engage, we have a greater sense of wellbeing, deeper fulfillment, and a clear purpose. Finding Focus invites you to ask the question "Where do I want to direct my focus today?" It is a call to arms for anyone yearning to break free from the grip of distraction and live a life brimming with purpose and connection.