Unforgettable Books
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A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONA dark, magical realist debut family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate.Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call--there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he's asking for her. This man isn't the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother's youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions--fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing employs a combination of stunningly rendered folklore and atmospheric prose to examine the legacy of colonialism through the eyes of three generations. Alice Evelyn Yang's debut novel is a story of family and forgiveness, of folklore and fate, that will leave you unsettled and undone.
$30.00
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Solitary Agents: A Gripping Spy Thriller from the Multi-Award-Winning Writer: A Gripping Spy Thriller from the Multi-Award-Winning Writer
EVERY TRAITOR WAS ONCE TRUSTED....'Goodman combines traditional elements - the nods to Buchan, Fleming and le Carré - with the topicality of 2020s technology' SUNDAY TIMES Jamie Tulloch and Sam Li never intended to be spies. Jamie, a former exec at a tech company, found himself caught up in a mission and discovered a taste for the secret world while Sam, a burnt-out corporate lawyer, was unexpectedly talent spotted by MI5. When both are plunged into covert training, they find themselves pitted against each other for their final evaluation - Exercise Red Poacher. Every year, MI6 trainees must evade capture, infiltrate sensitive sites and report back with the right intel, while their peers at MI5 try to stop them. But things take a sinister turn when they witness the apparent murder of one of their fellow recruits. Is it all part of the exercise? Or is someone trying to weaponise this game of spies into something far more deadly? Praise for David Goodman: 'If you think you've read every twist in every area of the genre, think again. Our winner has found a new take and delivers it with pace and propulsive storytelling. A Reluctant Spy is a sparkling new entry in the canon, with a vivid and unfamiliar setting as well as a gripping cast of characters. Don't start it last thing at night, or you might miss breakfast." VAL MCDERMID'A propulsive, intelligent, ripped-from-the-headlines spy novel that's guaranteed to cost you hours of sleep. Highly recommended' DAVID McCLOSKEY'A gripping debut, perfect for fans of Mick Herron and David McCloskey' THE SUN'A twisty storyline and convincing action scenes make this a very promising debut' FINANCIAL TIMES'A twisting, edge-of-your-seat tale of mercenaries, greed, corruption, and espionage' I.S. BERRY'In the very top tier of espionage fiction' M. W. CRAVEN'An excellent debut with terrific pace...will grip you to the end' JAMES SWALLOW
$28.00
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Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
"Phenomenal...a jaw-dropping book." --Jon Stewart, The Daily Show Named by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Prospect magazine as a best book of the year, this "scrupulously reported" (The New Yorker) and "astonishing" (The Daily Telegraph, London) book rivets with its portrayal of how Apple allowed itself to become dependent on China for a huge percentage of its manufacturing, making it vulnerable and unwittingly laying the groundwork for the Asian superpower to rival the US in technological expertise. After struggling to build products on three continents, Apple turned to China's seemingly endless supply of cheap labor. It soon deployed thousands of engineers, trained millions of workers, and invested hundreds of billions of dollars to create the most advanced global supply chain. These efforts fueled the iPhone's dominance--but also laid the foundation for a powerful, state-supported Chinese electronics industry. What began as a business decision evolved into a cautionary tale of global trade, tech rivalry, and national security. Without intending to, Apple helped Beijing acquire technological influence that could now be weaponized--a central concern in the ongoing US-China tech war. Drawing on over two hundred interviews, Patrick McGee exposes never-before-reported details from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen: internal emails, secretive executive meetings, and overlooked voices inside the company's China operations. You'll meet the "Gang of Eight" executives tasked with appeasing Beijing, a Mormon missionary who launched Apple retail in China, and a veteran whose dreams of improving factory conditions were crushed by both Apple's demands and Xi Jinping's authoritarian crackdown. From Foxconn and Tim Cook to the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan Semiconductor, this is a revelatory look at how Apple, in seeking efficiency, became entangled in the very politics it once claimed to challenge. For readers of Chip War, American Factory, and The Big Short, Apple in China is a searing examination of corporate power, Chinese nationalism, deglobalization, and the fragile relationship between Silicon Valley and the world's rising superpower.
$21.00
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The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World
"For six days, it was the Iranian Embassy on Princes Gate in London that riveted the world. . . . Macintyre's superb reconstruction restores it to vivid, complex life."--The Washington Post A thrilling tick-tock recounting of one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time--from the true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor. "[Ben Macintyre is] John le Carré's nonfiction counterpart."--The New York Times A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Minnesota Star Tribune, ParadeAs the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath. Policeman Trevor Lock was supposed to have gone to the theater that night. Instead, he found himself overpowered and whisked into the embassy. The terrorists never noticed the gun hidden in his jacket. The drama that ensued would force him to find reserves of courage he didn't know he had. The gunmen themselves were hardly one-dimensional--all Arabs, some highly educated, who hoped to force Britain to take their side in their independence battle against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Behind the scenes lurked the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had bankrolled the whole affair as a salvo against Iran. As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain's special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. Inside, Lock and his fellow hostages used all the cunning they possessed to outwit and outflank their captors. Finally, on the sixth day, after the terrorists executed the embassy press attaché and dumped his body on the front doorstep, the SAS raid began, sparking a deadly high-stakes climax. A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.
$20.00
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The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
Winner of the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Economist "Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic ecosystem that has led to the emergence of superpowerful AI." --James Surowiecki, The Atlantic "A lively biography. . . . The story of how Nvidia became the hottest investment on Wall Street and a household name is fascinating." --Katie Notopoulos, The New York Times Book Review Nvidia is as valuable as Apple and Microsoft. It has shaped the world as we know it. But its story is little known. This is the definitive story of the greatest technology company of our times. In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny's restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. Essential to Nvidia's meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI. Through unprecedented access to Huang, his friends, his investors, and his employees, Witt documents for the first time the company's epic rise and its single-minded and ferocious leader, now one of Silicon Valley's most influential figures. The Thinking Machine is the story of how Nvidia evolved to supplying hundred-million-dollar supercomputers. It is the story of a determined entrepreneur who defied Wall Street to push his radical vision for computing, becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. It is the story of a revolution in computer architecture, and the small group of renegade engineers who made it happen. And it's the story of our awesome and terrifying AI future, which Huang has billed as the 'next industrial revolution, ' as a new kind of microchip unlocks hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, self-driving cars, and new movies, art, and books, generated on command. This is the story of the company that is inventing the future.
$30.00
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Boots on the Ground: Modern Land Warfare from Iraq to Ukraine: Modern Land Warfare from Iraq to Ukraine
Written by a renowned expert in modern conflicts, this fully illustrated book provides an examination of ground warfare over the past 20 years and looks ahead to the future. Using lessons drawn from recent history including the war in Ukraine, Boots on the Ground offers a fascinating insight into how armies and battlefields of the future will look. Each chapter details one key aspect of modern ground warfare, expertly assessing the technologies and tactics in use at the sharp end. From artillery, nicknamed the 'God of War', to combat engineering, to the so-called 'battlefield taxis' or Infantry Fighting Vehicles, each chapter is packed full of detail and unpublished photographs. Boots on the Ground also reveals the increasing importance of the 'Grey Zone' and how cyber operations will have a direct impact on operations. This has been evident in Ukraine where cities have been attacked by Russian drones and Ukrainian forces sank a Russian ship in the Black Sea using a Bayraktar drone. But a case is also made for the continued importance of the infantry, showing how technology can only do so much and only then if in the hands of well-trained boots on the ground. Including case studies from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, and unrivalled access to serving Special Ops teams, Leigh Neville also offers an assessment of NATO armies and special forces and how prepared they are for possible operations against the evolving threats of Iran, Russia or even China.
$40.00
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Mark Twain
The #1 New York Times Bestseller - One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2025- A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book - Named a Best Book of 2025 by TIME, The Guardian, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus Reviews "Comprehensive, enthralling . . . Mark Twain flows like the Mississippi River, its prose propelled by Mark Twain's own exuberance." --The Boston Globe "Chernow writes with such ease and clarity . . . For all its length and detail, [Mark Twain] is deeply absorbing throughout." -- The Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America's first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn't long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation's most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play. Drawing on Twain's bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country's westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain's writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer's talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.
$45.00
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Patriot: A Memoir: A Memoir
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER - BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER, THE ATLANTIC, NPR - The powerful and moving memoir of a fearless political opposition leader who paid the ultimate price for his beliefs. "Patriot is by turns funny, fiery, reflective and tragic, laced with Navalny's trademark wry humor and idealism....a gutting personal account from a husband and father facing the reality that he will never be with his family again."--The New York Times"Honest"--The Washington Post - "Shocking"--The Atlantic - "Uplifting." --Vanity Fair"A testament to resilience" --Associated Press - "Will be seen as a historic text."--The Economist Alexei Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to challenging a world super-power determined to silence him, and his total conviction that change cannot be resisted--and will come. In vivid, page-turning detail, including never-before-seen correspondence from prison, Navalny recounts, among other things, his political career, the many attempts on his life, and the lives of the people closest to him, and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime. Written with the passion, wit, candor, and bravery for which he was justly acclaimed, Patriot is Navalny's final letter to the world: a moving account of his last years spent in the most brutal prison on earth; a reminder of why the principles of individual freedom matter so deeply; and a rousing call to continue the work for which he sacrificed his life. "This book is a testament not only to Alexei's life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship--a fight he gave everything for, including his life. Through its pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply--a man of profound integrity and unyielding courage. Sharing his story will not only honor his memory but also inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter." --Yulia Navalnaya
$21.00
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London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the bestselling, prizewinning author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London's glittering surface A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain's spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river. In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: Her son was dead. In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji and a murderous gangster known as Indian Dave. As the Brettlers set about investigating their son's death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they'd always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac's life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable--or unwilling--to bring the perpetrators to justice. In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers' quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.
$35.00
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The Old Breed... the Complete Story Revealed: A Father, a Son, and How WWII in the Pacific Shaped Their Lives: A Father, a Son, and How WWII in the Pacific Shaped Their Lives
As Seen on The Black Rifle Coffee Podcast Forty years after the publication of Eugene Sledge's memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa comes The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed by Eugene's son, Henry, adding new material and immeasurable depth to his father's story. The Old Breed... The Complete Story Revealed brings to life an abundance of new material from the original manuscript of Eugene Sledge's classic memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. By interspersing his own personal anecdotes throughout, Henry Sledge takes his father's work and gives it newfound context, sharing memories of conversations between father and son. The result is a flowing narrative that portrays an intimate look at a WWII veteran and his struggles to adapt to civilian life following the war.
$35.00
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Kennedy's Coup: A White House Plot, a Saigon Murder, and America's Descent Into Vietnam
Combining the dark intrigue of a Cold War thriller and the propulsive writing of a novel, Kennedy's Coup is a landmark work that will change your understanding of America's involvement in one of the most controversial and consequential wars in our history. Based on a decade of research and writing, enriched by eyewitness interviews and revealing documents obtained through dozens of freedom of information requests, Kennedy's Coup vividly recreates the Kennedy Administration's secret encouragement of the fatal 1963 military coup against South Vietnam's defiant president. The brutal assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem by his own generals--which capped weeks of bitter White House infighting amid JFK's wavering--led to dreadful consequences for the United States, opening the door to nine years of costly and futile warfare in Vietnam. A meticulous researcher and fluid writer, Jack Cheevers etches unforgettable portraits of the people behind this fascinating drama: the kindly, philosophy-loving American ambassador who tried to save Diem; the powerful Pentagon and State Department figures who battled for JFK's ear; the hard-driving young American journalists in Saigon who braved police beatings and death threats to dig out the story; the adder-tongued Madame Nhu, Diem's beautiful sister-in-law, who enraged critics with outrageous insults; the scheming South Vietnamese generals who slowly tightened a noose around their commander in chief; the hard-drinking CIA agent who carried secret US messages to the generals; and Diem and his Machiavellian brother Nhu, head of the feared secret police, who tried but failed to outwit both the Americans and their traitorous generals. While many Vietnam books mention Diem's murder in passing, this gripping account delves into the participants' personalities, motives, and actions in greater detail than ever before. The definitive history of one of the most catastrophic decisions ever made by a US president, shedding new light on events that altered the world, Kennedy's Coup will be a work of lasting importance.
$35.00
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A Task Force Called Faith: The Untold Story of the U.S. Army Soldiers Who Fought for Survival at Chosin Reservoir--And Honor Back Home: The Untold Story of the U.S. Army Soldiers Who Fought for Survival at Chosin Reservoir--And Honor Back Home
The forgotten heroes of Chosin--how Task Force Faith fought against impossible odds and a legacy of unfair shame. On the 75th anniversary of the legendary Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Steve Vogel tells the little-known story of the Army soldiers who gave all during the Korean War's most consequential battles and then were denigrated for their sacrifice. A Task Force Called Faith delivers a fresh perspective on Chosin, where 150,000 Chinese soldiers trapped 20,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers in the frozen mountains of North Korea in November and December of 1950. For seven decades, the Marines who successfully broke out from Chosin have been justly hailed as heroes, but the Army soldiers who fought alongside them have been reviled as cowards. In A Task Force Called Faith, Steve Vogel sets the record straight. What he's learned is the culmination of twenty-five years of digging into the story, first as a reporter for The Washington Post and now as a leading military historian. At Chosin, an Army force of 2,300 soldiers--a unit known as Task Force Faith--was positioned on the east side of the reservoir to protect the Marines' flank but was overwhelmed by a Chinese force eight times its size. Fighting with little ammunition, support or food in temperatures that plunged to 35 degrees below zero, more than 80 percent of the Army soldiers were killed, captured, or wounded. After the battle, they were falsely accused of throwing down their weapons and feigning wounds. As Vogel documents, their brave fight through four days and five nights bought time for the Marines on the west side to consolidate and fight their way out. The Army survivors and their families have long sought to clear their names of those terrible charges and reclaim the honor they won at the frozen lake. A Task Force Called Faith tells their story. Vogel carries the narrative to the present day, as the remains of many of the hundreds of soldiers still missing in action at Chosin continue to be identified and returned to their families. During a time of growing tension and uncertainty in the relationship between the U.S. and China, A Task Force Called Faith provides an original, deeply researched look at the brutal, undeclared war the two countries fought 75 years ago. Chosin was the moment the Cold War turned into a savage and exceedingly hot conflict, leaving behind an uneasy standoff that looms ever larger with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
$39.95
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