London has long inspired and celebrated books and writing, and some of the most well-known and beloved names in English Literature have all passed through the city – William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde, to name a few. With Literary London as your guide, walk in their footsteps, discover their old stomping grounds and shine a new light on both the authors and their city. Decorated with illustrations, maps, and interspersed with fact boxes about the lives of major London writers, this book delves deep into literary history to reveal a hidden world of spies, romantic poets and revolutionary outcasts, journeying via the publishing houses, cafes and parks that have played their part in inspiring them over the years. Traversing both genres and historical periods, Literary London is a snappy and informative guide to a city steeped in history and culture, telling the stories behind the stories.

A celebration of failures, doom, disaster, mistakes, miscalculations, hubris, folly and really, really bad albums. Written by the author of the cult hit, Crap Towns. Most books celebrate the exceptions rather than the rule. They focus on the over-achievers, the unique and strange success stories. They don't provide a fair reflection of the general tide of history - but they do make your average reader feel, well, more average. The 10 Worst of Everything redresses this imbalance and shows that you maybe shouldn't take it too badly if your own plans aren't working out. And there's nearly always someone worse off than you. Which is reassuring, if nothing else. This is a fascinating compendium of disappointing facts about the world, vital information about places to avoid, mind-boggling information about medicine, history and science, pop culture misses, as well as all the daft things we do to each other. It will help to prove the old adage that you can always learn more from failure than you can from success. And hey, even if you don't want to boost your brain, there's still the fun of watching other people go wrong.

From the man who had information about his underpants emailed to his entire office, to the girl who ruptured her stomach when over-indulging at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, Bad Dates lays bare (in more ways than one) the ritual of humiliation that is dating. The horrific tales it contains are sometimes embarrassing, often rude, and always absolutely hilarious. They proving conclusively that for every match made in heaven, there are dozens more made in hell!

From Sam Jordison, author of the bestselling Crap Towns series, comes I-SPY for Grown-ups. The I-SPY concept is very simple: it's like the 'I spy with my little eye' game, only instead of all the tedious stuff about 'something beginning with', there are pictures and descriptions and genuine opportunities to use your sleuthing skills to discover interesting things. This can be alarming - but when turned into a sport, it's also fun. The United Kingdom of Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland isn't very united anymore. Great Britain isn't very great. Or so say the wrong-headed doubters who want to talk us down! But where else can you see Morris Dancers, men in kilts, weirdly neat gardens and aggressively jovial village fetes? Nowhere else. And this guide helps you add to these great joys by awarding you points for seeing them. Isn't that the pip?