Steven Pinker, one of the world's greatest thinkers and bestselling author of Enlightenment Now, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Language Instinct, reveals the power and perils of thinking alike

As a cognitive scientist, the ultimate subject of Steven Pinker’s fascination is how we think about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum. It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness, which we experience as something that is public or “out there,” is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.

Common knowledge, Pinker shows, can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretence of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge—to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

In exploring the paradoxes of human behaviour, When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows… invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other’s heads, and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

Alchemy is the hidden art of transformation. An exclusive power wielded by crime syndicates that market it to the world’s elites in the form of sand, a drug that enhances those who take it into a more perfect version of themselves: more beautiful, more charismatic, simply more.

Among the gleaming skyscrapers and rolling foothills of Angel City, alchemy is controlled by two rival syndicates. For years, Grand Central and Lumines have been balanced on a razor’s edge between polite negotiation and outright violence. But when two childhood friends step into that delicate equation, the city – and the paths of their lives – will be irrevocably transformed.

The daughter of a poor single mother, Sam would do anything to claw her way into the ranks of Grand Central in search of a better life. Plucked away from his family as a boy to become a Lumines apprentice, Ari is one of the syndicates'' brightest rising stars. Once, they might have loved each other. But as the two alchemists face off across opposite sides of an ever-escalating conflict, ambition becomes power, loyalty becomes lies, and no transformation may be perfect enough for them both to survive the coming war.

Oona Kelly Webster is an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. Married with two children, her twenty-five-year relationship falls apart when she books a silver wedding anniversary getaway at a luxurious château in France and her husband Charles suddenly drops a bombshell which will shatter her carefully built world.

Although devastated, Oona decides to travel to France without Charles, but soon after her arrival in the charming village of Milly-la-Forêt, the world comes to a standstill due to a terrifying pandemic and all travel is forbidden. Isolated and fearful, Oona then receives another shock when she discovers her job has been made redundant. The only thing which helps her to face the tragedy taking place across the world is that she can remain in France, where the beautiful surroundings and slower pace of life will slowly begin to heal her.

And when a chance encounter with her new neighbour, a well-known Hollywood actor who is also stranded far from home, blossoms into something deeper than friendship, Oona wrestles with the risks of opening her heart again— especially to a younger, very famous man who has two young children grieving for their mother.

With a second chance at happiness before her, Oona must be brave enough to stay open to even greater life changes at a time when the world is experiencing great fear and turmoil . . .

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties - successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women - his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude - a period of desire, despair and possibility - a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

Once I hand them off to you, these recipes are no longer mine. They’re yours, to do with as you please. And maybe, in the act of receiving, a little thread of connection will be woven between me and each of you.

How can a recipe express the joy of sharing a meal in person? This is the feeling that Samin Nosrat sets out to capture in Good Things, offering more than 125 recipes for the things she most loves to cook.

You’ll find go-to recipes for ricotta custard pancakes, chicken braised with apricots and harissa, a crunchy Calabrian chili crisp, super-chewy sky-high focaccia and a decades-in-the-making, childhood-evoking yellow cake. Samin also shares tips and techniques, from how to buy olive oil (check the harvest date) to when to splurge on the best ingredients (salad dressing) to the one acceptable substitute for Parmigiano Reggiano (Grana Padano, if you must).

Good Things captures, with Samin’s trademark blend of warmth and precision, the essence of what makes cooking such an important source of comfort and delight, and invites you to join her at the table.

Separated by darkness, bound by love.

For Brielle, survival isn’t just a fight—it’s a promise she’s made to herself, to find her way back to Lincoln. Taken by the prince of darkness, Brielle faces an existence in the depths of his dominion that is meant to crush all hope. But hope is the one thing she refuses to lose. With every grueling day, she discovers new strength and finds an unlikely ally who reminds her that surrender isn’t an option.

Meanwhile, Lincoln fights his own battle, haunted by the loss of Brielle and the possibility that she may never return. Yet, in the face of despair, he clings to the hope of a reunion, knowing that their love is the only light in the darkness closing in on them both.

Will they find a way to reunite against impossible odds, or has the darkness claimed them forever?

From urgently scribbling out his debut Killing Floor in pencil (the stub of which he still owns), to taking a step back with Blue Moon, and everything in between, here are 24 honest, witty and wise personal reflections on his life and work, crafted across decades.

Whether it is through Lee’s moving account of meeting a fan years after her mother brought her to a book signing; facing his first computer and the coming of the internet; writing about New York just before – and just after – 9/11, to later seeing his novels adapted for the big screen, each riveting piece deftly evokes where he was psychologically and physically when he wrote each novel.

Lee has clearly felt unwavering gratitude for his readers since 1997. And these stories were originally designed for fans of Reacher who may be interested in a ‘behind-the-scenes’ – or, in Lee’s words: ‘why the books turned out the way they did’.

But this collection is also so much more. It is the story of a man who once put pencil to paper in an attempt to turn his luck around . . . and who made every word count.

Human life is governed by the elements – water, earth, fire and air. They are fundamental to our existence. They sustain us, but they also challenge us.

In The Elements, John Boyne has created a vivid kaleidoscope to reflect that contradiction: a quartet of intertwined narratives, each providing a different perspective on cause and effect from the points of view of the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator and the victim.

From a mother on the run from her past, to a young football star on trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and finally a father on a transformative journey with his son, the four strands weave together to form a tapestry of intersecting lives.

Boyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving examination of the fault lines inherent to human experience. In crisp, spellbinding prose, he navigates a complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty, at every step challenging us to confront our own perceptions of who we are and what made us that way.

My protector is gone, revealed to be a monster. But I remind myself that I am not a damsel. I'm no princess bound within a tower.

I am a shadow.

Vasalie Moran was once a dancer in King Illian's court – until he framed her for murder. Barely surviving her two years in the dungeons, she's suddenly called to face her King. He offers her a deal: become his spy at the month-long royal Gathering and he'll grant her freedom.

As Illian's orders grow bloody and dangerous, forcing her to harm and betray those around her, Vasalie discovers the monster she serves may be aligned with a bigger monster – one far closer to home. With her world threatened, Vasalie enlists the help of Illian's brother and greatest adversary, the King of the East.

As the rivalry between brothers escalates with Vasalie caught in the middle, the truth of her past comes to light. If she wants to survive, she must decide who to trust, who to fight for, and how much of her soul she's willing to damn in the process.

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him.

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 is the result of his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization – how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today. Now fully updated to include all the latest advances in science, it is more ground-breaking than ever before.

This journey through time and space will inform a new generation of readers, as well as those who read this book on first publication with a new perspective based on what we know now.

Written in his inimitable style, Bryson makes complex subjects fascinating and accessible to everyone with an interest in the world around them.

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 reveals the world in a whole new way.

My name is Elinor Gilbert. And I am the Invisible Woman.

Elinor Gilbert was once a young woman with a thriving career at the FBI.

Now, decades past solving crimes with the bureau, she is personally and professionally forgettable.

Which is exactly what her former FBI boss needs. He disguises Elinor as a middle-aged nanny, and casts her as an agent on the inside of his investigation into a New York art dealer suspected of ties to organised crime.

But as Elinor pushes toward the truth, her superpower - anonymity - risks doubling as a fatal flaw.

The more the invisible woman integrates into her 'host' family, the more dangerously memorable she becomes.

Meka is used to death. After all, it's the family business.

As a mortician's assistant at her parents' funeral home, Meka's days are not for the squeamish. Luckily, her boyfriend Noah doesn't mind, and Meka finally feels ready to say those three little words that will change everything.

Then tragedy strikes and Meka's world is torn apart. Nothing makes sense, especially when strange things start to happen: Strangers follow her. Mysterious items are left at her door. And worst of all .

The dead don't seem to be staying dead.

Meka thought she understood death better than anyone, but it turns out the family business is more complicated than it seemed. And Meka isn't the only one desperate to unearth their secrets . because the truth may be worth dying for.

If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour.

Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor.

These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. They are the reckoning with mortality that we all must one day make, and speak deeply to what the author has come from and through.

Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? How do we achieve fulfilment with our lives if we don't know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

DIE AARDE HOU AAN MET DRAAI

As jy iemand verloor, gaan die lewe voort. Jý moet ook. Dit is wat die Van Wyk-gesin leer met een van hulle se dood.

Op ’n manier moet hulle sin maak uit wat gebeur het – en uit wat volg.

Daar is Ruan, die chirurg-pa wie se werk altyd eerste gekom het.

Markus, die matriekseun van wie almal groot verwagtinge het, wat bots met sy eie. Die drie jaar jonger Leandri wat besef sy het nooit haar ma geken nie. En Sophia wat met haar eerste skooljaar begin.

Veelbekroonde skrywer François Bloemhof het hierdie TV-reeks, wat só die land se verbeelding aangegryp het, verwerk tot ’n aangrypende roman wat wyd byval sal vind.

Two brand-new romantasy novellas bound into one deluxe, novel-length volume written from the perspectives of Grim and Oro, from #1 New York Times-bestselling author and #BookTok sensation Alex Aster

True love knows no bounds. This premium, dual-sided volume includes two complete novellas bound together to create one can’t-miss collector’s item.

The first novella—told from Grim’s perspective—gives readers insight into his past: the motivations and events that cemented his fate as Isla’s eventual love interest.

The second is narrated by Oro and offers a window into his complex identity: that of a king torn between desire for justice and passion for the woman he loves more than anything. Grim and Oro: Dueling Crowns Edition includes key moments from the rulers’ love stories with Isla, expanded upon in their own voices.

This gorgeous dual-sided Lightlark companion book from #1 New York Times bestselling author Alex Aster contains two full novellas bound together in one breathtaking package that boasts a suite of premium features:

• Dual-sided slipcase with two unique cover designs
• Die cuts and foil stamping in two colors on both sides of slipcase
• Full-color case with illustrations on both sides
• Full-color, stenciled edges
• Full-color endpapers with never-before-seen illustrations

'People say to me, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know now, would you change anything? I'm like, f*** no. If I'd been clean and sober, I wouldn't be Ozzy. If I'd done normal, sensible things, I wouldn't be Ozzy.'

Husband. Father. Grandfather. Icon.
1948 - 2025

At the age of sixty-nine, Ozzy Osbourne was on a triumphant farewell tour, playing to sold-out arenas and rave reviews all around the world.

Then: disaster.

In a matter of just a few weeks, he went from being hospitalised with a finger infection to having to abandon his tour - and all public life - as he faced near-total paralysis from the neck down.

Last Rites is the shocking, bitterly hilarious, never-before-told story of Ozzy's descent into hell. Along the way are reflections on an extraordinary life and career, including his marriage to wife Sharon, and what it took for him to return to the stage for the triumphant Back to the Beginning concert, streamed around the world, where Ozzy reunited with his Black Sabbath bandmates for the final time.

Unflinching, brutally honest, but surprisingly life-affirming, Last Rites demonstrates once again why Ozzy transcended his status as 'The Godfather of Metal' and 'The Prince of Darkness' to become a modern-day folk hero and national treasure.

Jan Smuts is revered by some as a national and international statesman, but he is condemned by others as an architect of segregation. In his new book, prize-winning author Bongani Ngqulunga examines Smuts’s political life in terms of how it affected black people.

He considers the impact of Smuts’s role in the treaty ending the Anglo-Boer War and the National Convention that created the Union of South Africa. He follows Smuts’s actions as a minister under Louis Botha, as prime minister from 1919 to 1924 and again from 1939 to 1948, and his relationship with Barry Hertzog’s National Party, first in opposition and then in a fused South African Party. Ngqulunga concentrates on the events and policies that affected black people directly, and he presents the views of people such as Sol Plaatje, Alfred Xuma, John Dube, D.D.T. Jabavu and Z.K. Matthews – and, later on, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. He shows how Smuts evolved in his views, eventually coming to recognise that segregation had failed. But the reforms he introduced in the 1940s were too little, too late, and were swept away by the National Party and its policy of apartheid.

Giving a balanced view that is both respectful and critical, Under Smuts’s Rule is a vital addition to the literature on Smuts and to South African history.

"He's fire and brimstone. I'm shattered ice. I'll gladly burn beneath him until the world comes crumbling down."

As an assassin for the rebellion, Raeve’s job is to complete orders and never get caught. When a rival bounty hunter shatters her world, Raeve finds herself captured by the Guild of Nobles – a group of powerful fae.

Crushed by the loss of his great love, dragon rider Kaan Vaegor took the head of a king and donned his melted crown. Now on a tireless quest to quell the never-ebbing ache in his chest, a clue lures him into the capital’s high-security prison where he stumbles upon the imprisoned Raeve …

Together, they seek truths that threaten to unravel everything they knew about their world – and each other.

Bestselling sensation When the Moon Hatched will transport you into a world filled with magic, dragons and a love that blazes through the ages…

Go deeper into the very best forbidden loves, love triangles and enemies to lovers ever written in this thrilling, swoon-worthy collection from across The Shadowhunters series.

Ten couples. United by love. Divided by danger.

Jace and Clary seek out an exiled Shadowhunter and learn that love can save the world – or destroy it.
Will and Tessa are enjoying their honeymoon in Paris when a séance sends them down an unexpected path.
Simon and Izzy are together in New York when they observe increased demonic activity.

These are just a few of the beloved couples whose romantic escapades will have you on the edge of your seat across time and storylines from Cassandra Clare’s expansive Shadowhunters series. Don’t miss a chance to reunite with:

Anna and Ari
Emma and Julian
Kieran, Mark, and Cristina
James and Cordelia
Thomas and Alastair
Sebastian and the Seelie Queen
Jocelyn and Luke

A love letter to every Shadowhunter fan, and perfect for any romantasy lover, this riveting story collection also includes a sneak peek at The Wicked Powers, the majestic trilogy that will be the grand finale of the entire series.

Relive the love stories that started it all or begin your Shadowhunters obsession with the first in each series: City of Bones, Clockwork Angel or Chain of Gold.

Ellie Kent longs to belong

Abandoned as a child and raised in the bleak confines of an asylum, Ellie is taken into service as a governess by a family bound for the distant colony of South Africa. But before reaching their destination, she is abandoned once more – cast adrift in a land as vast as it is unforgiving.

Left with no choice but to join a caravan of settlers, Ellie finds herself in the company of a questionable trader, a mysterious opera singer, and a young Afrikaner, Gysbert de Boer, tasked with delivering her safely to an uncertain future. As war brews on the horizon and the settlers struggle for survival in a land that offers little mercy, Ellie must carve out a home – or be lost to the wilderness forever.

A sweeping frontier fable, The Immortalites is a masterfully crafted tale of survival, sacrifice, and the search for belonging.

The captivating new historical novel from literary legend Isabel Allende – a riveting tale of love and war, discovery and redemption.

Emilia del Valle was always destined for great things. Abandoned at birth by her Chilean aristocrat father, Emilia comes of age in nineteenth-century San Francisco as an independent and fiercely ambitious young woman, decades ahead of her time. She will do whatever it takes to pursue her life’s passion for writing, even if it means publishing under a man’s name.

When Emilia lands a position as a journalist for the Daily Examiner, her unwavering sense of adventure – and newfound determination to survive in her own name – leads her to seize the chance to cover a brewing civil war in Chile alongside another talented reporter.

But the assignment offers Emilia more than just an opportunity to prove herself as a writer. Before long she finds herself on a treacherous, life-changing journey in a homeland she never knew, to uncover the truth about her father – and herself.

A new masterclass in historical storytelling from Isabel Allende, My Name is Emilia del Valle is a powerful tale of love and war, discovery and redemption, told by a valiant young woman who confronts monumental challenges, survives, and reinvents herself along the way.

Experience the "literary phenomenon" (New York Times) as never seen before with this stunning Twilight Saga hardcover boxed set, featuring exclusive wraparound box art, jacket designs, and stained edges.

Deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful, The Twilight Saga by #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephenie Meyer captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. In honor of the 20th anniversary of the first book, this gorgeous deluxe set includes hardcover editions of Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, and Midnight Sun with immersive box art, exclusive jacket redesigns, and lush designed stained edges on each book. Rediscover the series that redefined romance for a generation with this must-have set for any fan's shelf.

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator.

He’s perfectly happy investigating calm, low-stakes embezzlement cases - that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a case only he can solve.

Adam Valois, the missing son of a wealthy Los Gatos couple, was found floating dead in the Bay with a head injury and drugs in his system. The police have lost interest, ruling it a likely overdose.

But as Clay digs deeper into Adam’s mysterious death, he begins to suspect darker forces are at play . . .

'He left you some money.'

Mickey felt her mouth drop open. The first half of that sentence had rung clear and true. The second half had not. Her father was one to take, not give.

After he left them for his new family, Mickey resolved never to think of her father again. She's fine without him; yes, she drinks, but only sometimes and, really, she can’t not.

But with only $181 to her name, she’s not above attending some mandated therapy to access her inheritance. She’ll kneel at the Kleenex alter and soon be bingeing Bridgerton with a bottle of Russian Standard, five million dollars richer.

Arlo has more issues than most of her clients. Being a therapist has not prepared her for grief. She adored her father – his laughter, his charm, the smell of his cologne. She thought he adored her, too, but now he’s given his inheritance to a daughter no one knows, and Arlo is at a loss.

Two sisters are unknowingly thrown together for the first time.

It’s crazy, it's unethical.

It's perfect.

“One of the greatest achievements is to find beauty today, where you struggled to find it yesterday.”

From the global bestseller of Big Panda and Tiny Dragon, our two friends return to undertake a beautifully illustrated and poignant journey. This time the pair are on a quest to find the most beautiful place in the world.

On discovering a map that promises to lead them there, the search takes Big Panda and Tiny Dragon on a demanding expedition through tough terrain. The pair traverse dark forests, hazardous mountains, derelict ruins and dark caves.

There are times when the landscape threatens to overwhelm them, but together they keep walking. Each environment, so menacing at first, slowly yields pockets of light, life and beauty.

This is a story of a life-affirming friendship, of struggle and hope, and the immense power of looking for beauty in the most unlikely places.

A simple, thought-provoking tale with a deep resonance and well of wisdom inspired by Buddhist philosophy – the perfect gift for adults and children alike seeking comfort, understanding and, of course, beauty.