Sam Jordison

Discover one of the best cities in the world through the lens of some of the most iconic writers who have ever lived. 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.

Something has gone wrong. We're living in an age of celebratory racism, extreme inequality, uncertainty and fear. We're governed by people who claim to be populist but who seem to hate everyone. There are idiots at the wheel and we're heading for a cliff in a big red bus and no one knows how to save us. Enemies of The People reveals who has taken us to this dizzying precipice. It provides the actual, non-alternative facts about Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Vladimir Putin and their charming friends – and also explains where they got their crazy ideas. Why did people turn so mean? How did so-called social networks like Facebook become so very anti-social? Why did anyone think it would be a good idea to privatise railways? Just how much should we fear the robots? Why is no one doing anything about Global Warming? Why is no one doing anything about Boris Johnson either? This book explains all those vital questions and more. Remember, though – they say history is written by the victors and fortunately, many of those currently winning can’t seem to write more than 140 characters at a time. This gives us the golden opportunity to set the record straight and snatch back the narrative. But if we’ve any chance of victory, we first need to know our enemy.

From Sam Jordison, author of the bestselling Crap Towns series, comes I-SPY for Grown-ups.

A hilarious slacker's guide as to why you should never do all those things that you're supposed to do before you die.Have you regretted running a marathon? Have you been persuaded to read a terrible book? Have you eaten something you shouldn't have on someone else's bad advice? Did you have an awful time at Glastonbury? Has your dream holiday turned into a nightmare? Can't be arsed to read Ulysses?For anyone who is fed up of being told what to do with their time, or made to feel inferior because they don't want to fly half way round the planet on the off chance that a dolphin might swim somewhere their vicinity, this is the perfect book. A slacker's bible, SOD THAT! is the ultimate anti-list book.This is a very hilarious rallying call for common sense and dignified indolence rather than wasteful over-activity. SOD THAT! comes up with the top 103 things not to do. You know it makes sense.

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!