1,800 miles, eight countries and one incredible journey from Mexico to Columbia, this is a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller and travel and adventure writing at its best. The award-winning author, explorer and photographer Levison Wood has taken part in world leading expeditions on five continents and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and acclaimed documentary presenter. The British explorer has walked expeditions which have taken him from the Nile River to the peaks of the Himalayas and in this book he recounts a four month long trek along the spine of the Americas travelling with Mexican photographer Alberto Cáceres. Journeying from sleepy barrios to unexcavated Mayan ruins, Wood encounters personal stories, cultures and popular legends that paint a riveting history of Mexico and Central America. He takes family meals with local hosts, learns to build an emergency shelter, and witnesses the surreal beauty of the landscapes. He attempts to cross one of the world's most impenetrable borders - the Darién Gap from Panama into South America, a notorious smuggling passage and the wildest jungle he has ever navigated. Genuinely adventurous, this is an accomplished piece of cultural reportage that combines travel journal with history lessons, memoir and survivalist handbook. Beginning in the Yucatán and moving south through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, we are taken to glamorous cities and ruins lying in unexcavated wilderness. Wood encounters indigenous tribes in Mexico, revolutionaries in a Nicaraguan refugee camp, fellow explorers and migrants heading towards the US. The relationships he forges along the way are at the heart of his travels and meantime he contends with the region's natural obstacles like quicksand, flashfloods and dangerous wildlife. 291pp, paperback with colour photos.

Hailed by some as the 'indispensable man' whose advice has been sought by every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger has also attracted immense hostility from critics who have cast him as an amoral Machiavellian, the ultimate cold-blooded 'realist'. In this remarkable book, Niall Ferguson has created an extraordinary panorama of Kissinger's world, and a paradigm-shifting reappraisal of the man. Only through knowledge of his early life as a Jew in Hitler's Germany, a poor immigrant in New York, a GI at the Battle of the Bulge, an interrogator of Nazis, and a student of history at Harvard, can we understand Kissinger's debt to the philosophy of idealism. And only by tracing his rise, fall and revival as an adviser to Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller and finally Richard Nixon can we appreciate the magnitude of his contribution to the theory of diplomacy, grand strategy and nuclear deterrence. Drawing not only on Kissinger's hitherto closed private papers but also on documents from more than a hundred archives around the world, this biography is a masterpiece which casts dazzling new light on an entire era. It was a trip to Vietnam that changed everything, and this essential account of an extraordinary life recasts the Cold War world and the Cuban Missile Crisis. 986pp in a magnificent Penguin softback, many photos. A book for every student of the history of our times.

Stories of human cruelty and compassion, Dr Gwen Adshead has spent 30 years providing therapy inside secure hospitals in prisons. Whatever her patient's crime - serial homicide, stalking or arson - she helps them to better know their minds by enabling them to articulate their life experience. Case by case she takes us into the treatment room and sheds new light on the unpredictable nature of the therapeutic process as doctor and patient try to find words for the unspeakable. This book has now become a Sunday Times Bestseller with the sub-title 'Encounters In Forensic Psychiatry', and it is a myth-buster of a book 'crammed with compelling, constructive, candid and compassionate insights into the criminal mind.' - Val McDermid. From one of the most distinguished and brilliant minds in psychiatry, you will keep reading not out of morbid or macabre fascination of these stories of extreme cruelty, but to understand the darker side of what it means to be human. It is a captivating journey through the corridors of Broadmoor Hospital and beyond, into the prison system, the community and the consultation room and Adshead's voice is constant and reassuring. Large softback, 355pp.

The confession of Laurence Jago, clerk, gentleman, reluctant spy. July 1794 and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for treason, the war against the French is not going in Britain's favour, and negotiations with the independent American colonies are on a knife edge. Laurence Jago, clerk to the Foreign Office, is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press which may lead to the destruction of the British Army, and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly suicide. Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but even as the body is taken to the anatomists, Laurence is certain both of his friend's innocence and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, and at a time when even the slightest hint of treason can lead to the gallows, how can Laurence find the true culprit without incriminating himself? With historical note on the year when war against Revolutionary France was one year old. 340pp and cast of characters in Downing Street, the Americans, the lawyers, the accused, the French and the writers like Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man.

A strikingly attractive woman, with a keen sense of fun, E. Nesbit attracted a circle of young admirers who left fascinating glimpses of her in their letters and memoirs. She included them in her stories, and the letters she sent them are exceptionally revealing. She put the best of herself into her books for children. As Marcus Crouch explained she 'threw away their strong, sober, essentially literary style and replaced it with a miraculously colloquial, flexible and revealing prose which was her unique contribution to the children's novel.' She wove her whimsey and magic into the everyday lives of children. Nesbit's own life was just as extraordinary as anything found in the pages of her books. In adulthood she became as Humphrey Carpenter puts it, 'An energetic hack, keen to try anything to support her wayward husband and her odd household.' Her abiding passion was for poetry with a socialist theme. She lived through a time of extraordinary political upheaval and she was instrumental in introducing socialist thinking into British intellectual life. A founder member of the Fabian Society, she counted George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells among her closest friends. She was tireless for campaigning for the alleviation of poverty in London, and she spent considerable time and energy in helping poor children living on her doorstep in Deptford. She enjoyed the finer things in life and made no apology for doing so. She had a keen eye for nature and detested the creeping urbanisation she saw all around her. Some of her finest writing celebrates the beauty of the British countryside. The biography reveals who the person was behind the best loved classics The Railway Children and Five Children and It. 337 page paperback with photos including one of an elderly E. Nesbit holding chicks.

Peter Grant is learning magic fast and it's just as well - he's already had run-ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the Police Force is less than easy, especially when you work in a department of two which doesn't even officially exist, a department that if you did described it to most people you would get you laughed at. And then there's his love life. The last person he fell for ended up seriously dead. It wasn't his fault, but still. Now something horrible is happening in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up the tube system that honeycombs the ancient foundations of London and the delays on the Northern line are the very least of it. Time to call in the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Unit 9, aka The Folly. Time to call in PC Peter Grant, Britain's Last Wizard. Down in the buried rivers, the Victorian sewers, there are whispers of vengeance from beyond the grave and PC Grant's case is about to come off the rails. 418pp in this super popular series. Paperback.

Masha's life has stopped. Once a spirited and independent woman with a rebellious streak, her life has been changed forever by a tragic event 12 years earlier. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds comfort in her faithful canine companion Haizum, and peace in the quiet lanes of her town's lido. Then a chance encounter with two extraordinary women, the fabulous and wise Kitty Muriel, a convent girl turned magician's wife turned 70-something roller disco fanatic, and the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice - opens up a new world of possibilities and a chance to start living again. But just as Masha dares to imagine the future, her past comes roaring back. A moving novel about the joy of friendship and the simple human connections that make life worth living, the characters are fabulously funny and you will laugh out loud regularly. 333pp, paperback.

The hugely popular economist sold over one million copies of this book which exposes why the rich are rich, the poor or poor, and why you can never buy a decent used car. Part exposé of the economic principles lurking behind daily events, his book explains everything from traffic jams to high coffee prices and why the gap between rich and poor nations is so great. Harford ranges from Africa, Asia, Europe and the US to reveal how supermarkets, airlines and coffee chains to name are few are vacuuming money from our wallets. He punctures the myths surrounding some of today's biggest controversies including high cost healthcare and why certain environmental laws can put a smile on a landlord's face. He covers scare resources, market power, efficiency, price gouging, market failure, inside information, why there is a Starbucks on every corner and how not to get duped at an auction. Find out why it is difficult to get a foot on the property ladder or where banks went wrong. A brilliantly enjoyable book which illuminates every aspect of the world we inhabit. 368pp in updated second edition, paperback.

With over 30 years' experience as a nurse, Anthea Allan thought she had seen it all, but with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust hourly into life and death challenges while on the critical care unit of St George's hospital in South London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits, but her appeal to help boost morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories, detailing the realities of being a frontline worker. Soon her accounts were circulating far and wide, capturing the attention of the nation and being feted by the likes of Richard Branson and Good Morning Britain's Susanna Reid. "Not many doctors know how to programme a ventilator. It doesn't matter how many ventilators there are, critical care nurses are required to operate them. We don't have enough critical care nurses." These are deeply personal, moving stories with all the names changed to protect identities and privacy. Colour photographs include rainbow cakes, holding the hands of a patient delivering end of life compassion, her co-workers wearing their scrubbers' caps and a picture with her own daughter on St George's helipad. Anthea's book is a testimony to love, resilience and the human spirit. Includes colour photographs, 328 pages.

First-rate suspense to devour in one sitting by the writer with a growing reputation for twisty and cunningly plotted thrillers. On the eve of his college graduation, Harry is called home by his stepmother Alice following the unexpected death of his father. But who really is Alice, his father's much younger second wife, and how much is known about her past? In a confusion of emotions, Harry must work out whether Alice's concern for him is purely maternal, or whether there is something darker and more threatening at work. Packed with suspense from the off, the real mystery underpinning this gripping tale concerns the strange relationships, deceit and trickery divided into a story of 'then' and 'now' and creating great tension and a few good surprises. A companion to another bestseller by this author Her Every Fear code 93571. 364pp, paperback.