Sophie Scott

Why do even well-educated people understand so little about mathematics? And what are the costs of our innumeracy? John Allen Paulos, in his celebrated bestseller first published in 1988, argues that our inability to deal rationally with very large numbers and the probabilities associated with them results in misinformed governmental policies, confused personal decisions, and an increased susceptibility to pseudoscience of all kinds. Innumeracy lets us know what we're missing, and how we can do something about it. Sprinkling his discussion of numbers and probabilities with quirky stories and anecdotes, Paulos ranges freely over many aspects of modern life, from contested elections to sports stats, from stock scams and newspaper psychics to diet and medical claims, sex discrimination, insurance, lotteries, and drug testing. Readers of Innumeracy will be rewarded with scores of astonishing facts, a fistful of powerful ideas, and, most important, a clearer, more quantitative way of looking at their world.

We live in the age of the individual. We are supposed to be slim, prosperous, happy, extroverted and popular. This is our culture’s image of the perfect self. We see this person everywhere: in advertising, in the press, all over social media. We’re told that to be this person you just have to follow your dreams, that our potential is limitless, that we are the source of our own success. But this model of the perfect self can be extremely dangerous. People are suffering under the torture of this impossible fantasy. Unprecedented social pressure is leading to increases in depression and suicide. Where does this ideal come from? Why is it so powerful? Is there any way to break its spell? To answer these questions, Selfie by Will Storr takes us from the shores of Ancient Greece, through the Christian Middle Ages, to the self-esteem evangelists of 1980s California, the rise of narcissism and the selfie generation, and right up to the era of hyper-individualistic neoliberalism in which we live now. It tells the extraordinary story of the person we all know so intimately – our self.

In a theatre in Las Vegas, the stage is all set for music hall star Sylvia Chrystal’s sell-out show. All she needs to do is turn up for the rehearsal. But Sylvia isn’t in Vegas. She wakes up, bloody and dishevelled, in Barcelona. And she has no idea how she got there. As her agents in America frantically try to find their missing star, Sylvia has a task of her own. She needs to try to work out why on earth she has just woken up in a pool of her own blood beside an airport runway in the blazing heat. As she gradually begins to try to piece together the events that led her to there, a series of strange flashbacks pierce her brain and one person emerges in full her long-time lover, Celestino. But Celestino has now married someone else, and Sylvia faces a is she in Spain to try and win him back, or will she try to leave the past behind and face what promises to be a bright future in the United States? As Sylvia falls in with a group of upper-class English drinking their way round Barcelona, one thing becomes increasingly in just the dirty clothes she woke up in and no money to her name, she is going to need a lot of help whichever choice she makes. But then Sylvia’s life starts to turn even blacker and spiral out of control, and things become even less clear than they were at the start. With its strange, dreamlike narrative, Siesta is a black, sexy thriller from a mistress of the genre. Praise for Patrice Chaplin ‘… a surging intensity that keeps the reader glued to the page.’ – New York Times ‘Powerful romantic fiction in the tradition of Emily Bronte.’ – Guardian Patrice Chaplin is an author, playwright, journalist and the producer of the BBC radio documentary on The Cabala in Spain. In addition to seven novels, including Harriet Hunter, Having it Away and The Unforgotten, she has written many short stories and plays for radio and television. She is the author of From the Balcony written for the National Theatre and Radio 3. Her novel Siesta is based on the years described in her volume of autobiography, Albany Park, and has been filmed.

A brilliant noir farce, a dystopian vision of Britain, a family history and the story of an obsession. Michael is a lonely, rather pathetic writer, obsessed by the film 'What a Carve Up!' in which a mad knifeman cuts his way through the inhabitants of a decrepid stately pile as the thunder rages. Inexplicably he is commissioned to write the family history of the Winshaws, an upper class Yorkshire clan whose members have a finger in every establishment pie, from arms dealing to art dealing, from politics to banking to the popular press,. During his research Michael realises that the Winshaws have cast a blight onto his life as they have on Britain. His confidence, his sexual and personal identity begin to reform In a climax set in the Winshaws' family seat the novel turns into the film 'What a Carve Up!' as a murderous maniac stalks the family...

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have remained, from 1927 to the present day, the screen's most famous and popular comedy double act, celebrated by legions of fans. But despite many books about their films and individual lives, there has never been a fully researched, definitive narrative biography of the duo, from birth to death. Louvish traces the early lives of Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy and the surrounding minstrel and variety theatre, which influenced all of their later work. Louvish examines the rarely seen solo films of both our heroes, prior to their serendipitous pairing in 1927, in the long-lost short "Duck Soup." The inspired casting teamed them until their last days. Both often married, they found balancing their personal and professional lives a nearly impossible feat. Between 1927 and 1938, they were able to successfully bridge the gap between silent and sound films, which tripped up most of their prominent colleagues. Their Hal Roach and MGM films were brilliant, but their move in 1941, to Twentieth Century Fox proved disastrous, with the nine films made there ranking as some of the most embarrassing moments of cinematic history. In spite of this, Laurel and Hardy survived as exemplars of lasting genius, and their influence is seen to this day. The clowns were elusive behind their masks, but now Simon Louvish can finally reveal their full and complex humanity, and their passionate devotion to their art. In Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy, Louvish has seamlessly woven tireless and thorough research into an authoritative biography of these two important and influential Hollywood pioneers.