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Realms of the Round Table presents for the first time an extensive collection of forgotten tales, retold for a new generation of readers by a modern-day Merlin, the world-renowned Arthurian authority, John Matthews. Contained within are a rich feast of Arthurian love stories and tales that delve deep into the darker mysteries of the Great Wood and the denizens of fantastic lands beyond.

Myshkin was born on a certain day and died on a certain day - and some things happened to him in between. These things presented him with ethical questions, and this book is a record of his attempt to answer those questions. Discovered by his son after Myshkin's death, A Good Life is one man's reckoning with the life he has led and the choices he made. It is at once a philosophical handbook for living and a pause-resisting narrative.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa was one of Japan’s great writers - author of the stories Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grove, most famously - who lived through Japan’s turbulent Taisho period of 1912 to 1926, including the devastating 1923 Earthquake, only to take his own life at the age of just 34 in 1927. These are the stories of Patient X in one of our iron castles. He will tell his tales to anyone with the ears and the time to listen. Inspired and informed by Akutagawa’s stories, essays and letters, David Peace has fashioned a most extraordinary novel of tales.

Ravenna, 50BC. Caesar’s forces stand upon the borders of Gaul and Italy. The prospect of a civil war grows ever likelier each day. But for the veteran soldier Lucius Oppius, this may be one conflict too far. With a new lover, he is tempted to end his long military career - and start a new life. But can any man truly be free of his past and who he is? In Rome, Cicero attempts to secure a peace. Against him, a powerful faction in the Senate is bent upon destroying Caesar, for personal and political reasons.

When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed into a reality more akin to a dreamscape. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax.

At the Universal Advertising Agency in London a murder is being planned. Three men have been discovered taking bribes and face the grim prospect of the dole queue, unless they can get rid of the person who caught them. Their ringleader, thick-set and vicious Mr. Morris, soon discovers that killing is far easier than he thought - and that he even has a talent for it.

With reference to the ideas of a Yale professor who first identified the theory and to the writings of George Orwell from whose ‘newspeak’ the word was adapted, Booker sheds new light on the remarkable – and worrying – effects of ‘groupthink’ and its influence on our society. Booker defines the three rules of groupthink: the adoption of a common view or belief not based on objective reality; the establishment of a consensus of right-minded people, an ‘in group’; and the need to treat the views of anyone who questions the belief as wholly unacceptable.

A Spectator Best Book of the Year; An Aspects of History Best Book of the Year; An Engelsberg Ideas Best Book of the Year Five hundred years ago, Thomas Wolsey endowed in Oxford a foundation he called Cardinal‘s College. Henry VIII, the monarch who dismissed and ruined him, re-established it...

Pharsalus, 48 BC: The battle will decide the fate of a civil war and empire. Caesar's forces are outnumbered, but he believes his veterans will not be outmatched. For one veteran, the centurion Lucius Oppius, the battle will be about revenge rather than glory. Oppius has vowed to avenge his father's death. His enemy is Flavius Laco - a former gladiator and an agent of Pompey the Great. Against the backdrop of one of Ancient History's most momentous battles two soldiers will wage their own personal war.

Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on Gothic horror and science fiction genres. The name Frankenstein has become part of our everyday language, often used in derogatory terms to describe scientists who have overstepped a perceived moral line. But how did a 19-year-old woman with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel such as Frankenstein?

1072 AD. The Normans have captured England. The Turks have captured a Norman knight. And in order to free him, a Frank warrior named Vallon must capture four rare white hawks. In the company of a Sicilian scholar and an English falconer, Vallon sets off a heart-stopping odyssey to the far ends of the earth - from Greenland to Russia to Constantinople, across raging Arctic seas and blood-drenched battlefields.

These 25 new stories mark Graham Swift's return to the short form after seven acclaimed novels and confirm him as a master storyteller. They unite into a richly peopled vision of a country that is both a crucible of history and a maze of contemporary confusions.

Victorian England's most famous consulting detective is hot on the trail of London's most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper. But in Sherlock Holmes and the Whitechapel Vampire, Jack is a vampire and Holmes' refusal to believe it could be his undoing as the two match wits in this delightfully original first novel.

As one of the last remaining survivors of the Great Depression and the Second World War, I will not go gently into that good night. I want to tell you what the world looks like through my eyes, so you can help change it.... In November 2013, 91-year-old Yorkshireman, RAF veteran, and ex-carpet salesman Harry Leslie Smith’s Guardian article – "This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time" – was shared almost 60,000 times on Facebook and started a huge debate about the state of society.

In honour of H.R.F Keating's 80th Birthday, his fellow Detection Club Members and the leading lights in crime fiction serve up a new selection of tantalising conundrums. Edited by Peter Lovesey. Foreword by Dick Francis. Stories include: Lionel Davidson's Tuesday's Child; Len Deighton's Sherlock Holmes and the Titanic Swindle; Reginal Hill's Uncle Harry; P.D. James' Hearing Ghote; H.R.F Keating's Arkady Nikolaivich and many others.

The human mind is both extraordinary and compelling. From the leader who convinced his followers to kill themselves to the man who lost his memory, these famous accounts have provided invaluable insights for scholars and researchers and amazed the public at large. Brought to life by Rolls, each...

Alesia, 52 BC: The besiegers have become the besieged. Caesar's army stands upon the brink of annihilation, caught between two enemy armies. Ramparts have been constructed, but they must also be defended. The centurion Lucius Oppius believes he will be part of the defence, but Caesar has other plans for the former standard bearer. Oppius is ordered to venture north of Alesia to capture Vercingetorix's war chest of gold.

Shortlisted for the 2018 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book PrizeAleppo is one of the longest-surviving cities of the ancient and Islamic Middle East. Until recently it enjoyed a thriving urban life?in particular an active traditional suq, with a continuous tradition going back centuries...

At 22, the war is over for RAF serviceman Harry Leslie Smith - author of the acclaimed Harry's Last Stand - but the battle for love and hope rages on. Stationed in occupied Hamburg, a city physically and emotionally ripped apart by Allied bombing, and determined to escape grinding poverty of his Yorkshire youth, Harry unexpectedly finds a reason to stay: a young German woman by the name of Friede.

In the dark and slimy streets of Wapping a prostitute is beaten half to death, a not uncommon fate in late 18th century London. So begins this gripping tale set in 1798 in the Port of London. A cruel villain holds sway over the underworld. His name is Boylin. His face is scarred by lime and his back by the two hundred lashes he received following a naval court martial. He holds Captain Tom Pascoe responsible for his suffering.