BOOK OF THE DAY

Evoking the tumultuous history of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, These Divided Isles investigates the complexities of culture and colonization to ask what the future holds for both countries.

Ireland is Britain's closest neighbor—the sea crossing from Scotland measures only twelve miles. Ireland was also its first conquered territory in what became Britain's empire. The two nation's stories have been intertwined since Anglo-Norman invaders crossed the Irish Sea during the twelfth century.

These Divided Isles tells the extraordinary history of the past century in this tumultuous relationship, from the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922 to the present day. This is a tale of deep division between Catholic nationalism and Protestant unionism, of wars and terrorist violence, and of occasional moments of great courage on the part of British and Irish leaders.

Today, the post-Brexit weakening of the UK's constitutional ties has coincided with the march of demography in Northern Ireland as the Protestant unionist majority continues to shrink. Sinn Féin's historic string of electoral victories in Northern Ireland since 2022 has once more resurfaced the unfinished business of partition. Here, Philip Stephens explores how Ireland might escape its troubled past by deploying history to inform the future rather than hold it in place.

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** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER **

Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon before you read the Booker Prize-winning sequel The Testaments

NOW AN AWARD-WINNING TV SERIES STARRING ELISABETH MOSS

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.

'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist' Bernardine Evaristo, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

'This novel seems ever more vital in the present day' Observer

READ THE TESTAMENTS, THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING SEQUEL TO THE HANDMAID'S TALE, TODAY

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A riveting and inspiring true story of two families linked by one heart—written by a bestselling author and palliative care doctor.

The first of our organs to form and the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of what makes us human; as long as it continues to beat, there is hope. In The Story of a Heart, Dr. Rachel Clarke interweaves the history of medical innovations behind transplant surgery with the story of two children—one of whom desperately needs a new heart.

One summer day, nine-year-old Keira Ball was in a terrible car accident and suffered catastrophic brain injuries. As the rest of her body began to shut down, her heart continued to beat. In an act of extraordinary generosity, Keira’s parents and siblings immediately agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max Johnson had been in a hospital for nearly a year, valiantly fighting the virus that was causing his young heart to fail. When Max’s parents received the call they had been hoping for, they knew it came at a terrible cost to another family—in what Clarke calls “the brutal arithmetic of transplant surgery.”

The act of Keira’s heart resuming its rhythm inside Max’s body was a medical miracle. But this was only part of the story. While waiting on the transplant list, Max had become the hopeful face of a campaign to change the UK’s laws around organ donation. Following his successful surgery, Keira’s mother saw the little boy beaming on the front page of the newspaper and knew it was the same boy whose parents had recently sent her an anonymous letter overflowing with gratitude for her daughter’s heart. The two mothers began to exchange messages and eventually decided to meet.

This is the unforgettable story of how one family’s grief transformed into a lifesaving gift. Clarke relates the urgent journey of Keira’s heart and explores the history of the remarkable surgery that made it possible, stretching back over a century and involving the knowledge and dedication not just of surgeons but of countless nurses and technicians, immunologists and paramedics. The Story of a Heart is a testament to compassion for the dying, the many ways we honor our loved ones, and the tenacity of love.

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A WALL STREET JOURNAL, WASHINGTON POST, AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
*Now with a new foreword on ChatGPT*
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How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years?

AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. However, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order and bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.

In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our AI world in 2041 in ten gripping short stories.

Gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future and reminds us that we are the authors of our own destiny.

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Academy Award–winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins delves into his illustrious film and theater career, difficult childhood, and path to sobriety in his honest, moving, and long-awaited memoir.

Born and raised in Port Talbot—a small Welsh steelworks town—amid war and depression, Sir Anthony Hopkins grew up around men who were tough, to say the least, and eschewed all forms of emotional vulnerability in favor of alcoholism and brutality. A struggling student in school, he was deemed by his peers, his parents, and other adults as a failure with no future ahead of him. But, on a fateful Saturday night, the disregarded Welsh boy watched the 1948 adaptation of Hamlet, sparking a passion for acting that would lead him on a path that no one could have predicted.

With candor and a voice that is both arresting and vulnerable, Sir Anthony recounts his various career milestones and provides a once-in-a-lifetime look into the brilliance behind some of his most iconic roles. His performance as Iago gets him admitted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and places him under the wing of Laurence Olivier. He meets Richard Burton by chance as a young boy in his art teacher’s apartment, and later, backstage before a performance of Equus as an established actor meeting his hero. His iconic portrayal of Hannibal Lecter was informed by the creepy performance of Bela Lugosi in Dracula and the razor-sharp precision of his acting teacher. He pulls raw emotion from the stoicism of his father and grandfather for an unforgettable performance in King Lear.

Sir Anthony also takes a deeply honest look at the low points in his personal life. His addiction cost him his first marriage, his relationship with his only child, and nearly his life—the latter ultimately propelling him toward sobriety, a commitment he has maintained for nearly half a century. He constantly battles against the desire to move through life alone and avoid connection for fear of getting hurt—much like the men in his family—and as the years go by, he deals with questions of mortality, getting ready to discover what his father called The Big Secret.

Featuring a special collection of personal photographs throughout, We Did OK, Kid is a raw and passionate memoir from a complex, iconic man who has inspired audiences with remarkable performances for over sixty years.

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The tumultuous period in English history that marked the end of the medieval era and the rise of the Tudors comes to stunning life in the final volume of Alison Weir’s four-part Medieval Queens series, filled with dramatic true stories chronicling the turbulent reigns of the last five Plantagenet queens.

The fifteenth century was a violent age. In Queens at War, Alison Weir chronicles the five queens who got caught up in wars that changed the courses of their lives: the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, and the Wars of the Roses between the royal Houses of Lancaster and York.

Against this tempestuous backdrop, Weir describes the lives of five Plantagenet queens, who occupied the consort’s throne from 1403 to 1485. Joan of Navarre was happily married to King Henry IV but was accused of witchcraft by Henry’s heir and imprisoned. Paris-born Katherine of Valois’s political marriage to Henry V was meant to bring peace between England and France. It didn’t, and Henry died during the Hundred Years’ War without ever seeing his newborn heir, Henry VI, who was wed to another French princess, Margaret of Anjou, in 1445. In the Wars of the Roses, Margaret staunchly supported her husband and son. Henry’s successor, Edward IV, became embroiled in scandal after he fell in love with and married Elizabeth Widville, mother of the tragic Princes in the Tower. The notorious Richard III usurped Edward’s throne and married Anne Neville, who died after losing her only child, forsaken by her husband.

“Underpinned by extensive reading of original sources” (The Washington Post), Weir’s Medieval Queens series strips away centuries of historical mythologizing to shed light on the genuine accomplishments and bravery of these fascinating female monarchs. Queens at War brings the series to an action-packed close.

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A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK · AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER · Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping novel from Emily Henry.

As featured in The New York Times · Rolling Stone · People · Good Morning America · NPR · Vogue · The Cut · USA Today · Cosmopolitan · Harper's Bazaar · Marie Claire · Glamour · ELLE · E! Online · The New York Post · Bustle · Reader's Digest · BBC · PopSugar · SheReads · Paste · and more!

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who’s telling it.

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WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • A “masterly” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice), “riveting” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Booker Prize–nominated and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return

“A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.”—The Washington Post

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode into tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, unable to leave Britain, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would expose them to danger.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face-to-face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author working at the peak of his powers.

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On the eve of his 100th birthday, national treasure Dick Van Dyke brings us this autobiographical collection of stories, reflections, and life advice on how he’s maintained a zest for life.

Dick Van Dyke danced his way into our hearts with iconic roles in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Now, as he’s about to turn 100 years old, Dick is still dancing and approaching life with the twinkle in his eye that we’ve come to know and love. In 100 Rules for Living to 100, he reveals his secrets for maintaining your joie de vivre and making the most out of the life you’ve been given. 

Through stories of his pivotal childhood, moments on film sets, his expansive family, and finding love late in life, Dick reflects on both the joyful times and the challenges that shaped him. His indefatigable spirit and positive attitude will surely inspire readers to count the blessings in their own lives, persevere through the hard times, and appreciate the beauty and complexity of being human.

BOOK OF THE DAY

POISONS IN YOUR FOOD

, award-winning science writer Ruth Winter makes consumers aware of the many potential dangers in the modern food supply and provides practical advice on minimizing these risks. 

The Dangers You Face

The book addresses a range of safety and health concerns that arise at various stages of the food chain, from production to preparation. Key dangers and topics covered include: 

Pesticides and Insecticides: The widespread use of these chemicals in food production and their potential long-term health effects.

"Hidden Ingredients" and Additives: The presence of numerous chemicals, preservatives, and artificial colors/flavorings in processed and convenience foods, which may pose risks (e.g., carcinogens).

Hazardous Food Handling: The potential for food poisoning and contamination from improper handling of fish, poultry, and meat, both in commercial settings (restaurants) and at home.

The Water Supply: Concerns about the safety and purity of drinking water.

Food Labeling: Issues surrounding the transparency and clarity of food labels.

Animal Drugs: The use of drugs and antibiotics in animal feed, which can lead to resistant strains of bacteria or tranquilize diners. 

What You Can Do About Them

Winter's book is a practical guide designed to help individuals and families protect themselves. While the specific advice is detailed within the book's chapters, the general approach involves: 

Informed Consumer Choices: Making informed decisions about what foods to purchase by understanding potential risks.

Reading and Understanding Labels: Learning to decipher and interpret ingredient labels on food products to avoid harmful additives.

Safe Food Preparation: Following proper home safety and handling procedures for raw ingredients like meat and fish to minimize the risk of bacterial contamination.

Minimizing Processed Food Intake: Reducing reliance on convenience foods that often contain more hidden ingredients and chemical agents. 

The book encourages a proactive, "Earth Day Every Day" approach to personal health through careful consideration of diet and food sources. 

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