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Previously published as ‘In the Skin of a Jihadist’Twenty year-old “Mélodie”, a recent convert to Islam, meets the leader of an ISIS brigade on Facebook. In 48 hours he has ‘fallen in love’ with her, calls her every hour, urges her to marry him, join him in Syria in a life of paradise – and join his jihad.Anna Erelle is the undercover journalist behind «Melodie». Created to investigate the powerful propaganda weapons of Islamic State, “Melodie” is soon sucked in by Bilel, right-hand man of the infamous Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. An Iraqi for whose capture the US government has promised $10 million, al-Baghdadi is described by Time Magazine as the most dangerous man in the world and by himself as the caliph of Islamic State. Bilel shows off his jeep, his guns, his expensive watch. He boasts about the people he has just killed.With Bilel impatient for his future wife, “Melodie” embarks on her highly dangerous mission, which – at its ultimate stage – will go very wrong … Enticed into this lethal online world like hundreds of other young people, including many young British girls and boys, Erelle’s harrowing and gripping investigation helps us to understand the true face of terrorism.

Concise and Abridged EditionIn this blistering polemic, veteran journalist Mick Hume presents an uncompromising defence of freedom of expression, which he argues is threatened in the West, not by jackbooted censorship but by a creeping culture of conformism and You-Can’t-Say-That.In a fierce defence of free speech – in all its forms – Mick Hume’s blistering polemic exposes the new threats facing us today in the historic fight for freedom of expression. In 2015, the cold-blooded attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists united the free-thinking world in proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie’. But it wasn’t long before many were arguing that the massacres showed the need to restrict the right to be offensive. Meanwhile sensitive students are sheltered from potentially offensive material and Twitter vigilantes police those expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion. But the basic right being supressed – to be offensive, despite the problems it creates – is not only acceptable but vital to society. Without a total freedom of expression, other liberties will not be possible.

Concise and Abridged EditionIn this blistering polemic, veteran journalist Mick Hume presents an uncompromising defence of freedom of expression, which he argues is threatened in the West, not by jackbooted censorship but by a creeping culture of conformism and You-Can’t-Say-That.In a fierce defence of free speech – in all its forms – Mick Hume’s blistering polemic exposes the new threats facing us today in the historic fight for freedom of expression. Ours is an age when sensitive students must be sheltered from potentially offensive material in ‘safe spaces’, Twitter vigilantes police those expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion online, and many even insist that the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists showed the need to restrict offensive ideas and opinions.But the fundamental freedom being attacked – the right to be offensive, despite the problems it might create – is vital to a free and civilised society. Without unfettered freedom of expression, other liberties will not be possible.

A powerful polemic about the US-Mexico border and what is happening to the tens of thousands of children arriving in the US without papers‘We are driving across Oklahoma in early June when we first hear about the waves of children arriving, alone and undocumented, from Mexico and Central America. Tens of thousands have been detained at the border. What will happen to them? Where are the parents? And why have they undertaken a terrifying, life-threatening journey to enter the United States?’Valeria Luiselli works as a volunteer at the federal immigration court in New York City, translating for unaccompanied migrant children. Out of her work has come this book – a search for answers and an urgent appeal for humanity and compassion in response to mass migration, the most significant global phenomenon of our time.

‘We can draw lines across the world any way we choose, and in the history of race science, people have. What matters isn’t where the lines are drawn, but what they mean.’ Modern science is pivotal in our understanding of race – not because of the lines that thinkers through the centuries have chosen to trace, but because, once grouped, what they thought belonging to these groups signified.In Superior award-winning science writer Angela Saini explores the concept of race, both past and present. At its heart, race is the belief that we are born different, in character and intellectually, as well as in appearance. It’s the notion that as groups of people we have certain innate qualities that are not only visible, but which may also have helped define the passage of progress, of the success and failure of the nations our ancestors came from.But modern science has moved on from these beliefs, finding reality to be much more complicated. Taking us from Darwin through the civil rights movement to 23andMe, Saini examines how deeply our present is influenced by our past, and the role that politics has so often had to play in our understanding of race. Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious history and damaging consequences of race science – and the unfortunate reasons behind its apparent recent resurgence across the globe.

With a sharp eye for the magnificently absurd, Rod Liddle sets light to modern-day Britain.‘One of Britain’s funniest, most daring columnists. If he weren’t so offensive you’d almost call him a national treasure’ Mail on Sunday‘I, and my generation, seem feckless and irresponsible, endlessly selfish, whining, avaricious, self-deluding, self-obsessed, spoiled and corrupt and ill.’What is it that has transformed the British who in living memory were admired for their unassuming, stiff-upper-lipped capacity for `muddling through' into the feckless,obese, self-deluding, avaricious and self-obsessed whingers we have become? Savagely funny and relentlessly contrary, yet with a poignant sense of all that we have lost, Rod Liddle mercilessly exposes the absurdity, cant and humbuggery of the way we live now.

The definitive story of grime, the 21st Century’s most groundbreaking and influential musical phenomenon.Beginning at the start of the new millennium in the council estates of inner London, Inner City Pressure tells the full story of grime, Britain’s most exciting musical revolution since punk. Against seemingly insurmountable odds, grime’s teenage pioneers sent out a signal from the pirate radio aerials and crumbling estates of London’s poorest boroughs that would, 15 years later, resonate as the universal sound of youthful rebellion, as big in the suburbs as in the inner city.By 2018, the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Skepta have long since become household names. But have the conditions that produced this music now gone forever? What happens to those living on the margins when those margins become ever-smaller spaces? And what happens to a rebellious, outsider sound when it is fully accepted by the pop cultural mainstream? Inner City Pressure tells the astonishing story of a generation dancing, fighting and rioting against the forces gentrifying the capital.

‘Arguably the book for 2018’ Arifa Akbar, ObserverThe long-awaited, inspirational guide to life for a generation of black British women inspired to make lemonade out of lemons, and find success in every area of their lives.‘This book is a gift for anyone who wants to better understand what Black women and girls are up against – and the tremendous resources they draw upon as they make their way in the world’ Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of LeanIn.Org and OptionB.OrgSlay In Your Lane is a brilliant book about what it is like to be a woman, black and a Londoner in 2018. Everyone should read it’ Sadiq Khan‘Black women today are well past making waves – we’re currently creating something of a tsunami. Women who look like us, grew up in similar places to us, talk like us, are shaping almost every sector of society.’From education to work to dating, this inspirational, honest and provocative book recognises and celebrates the strides black women have already made, while providing practical advice for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future.Illustrated with stories from best friends Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke’s own lives, and using interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain – including BAFTA Award-winning director Amma Asante, British Vogue publisher Vanessa Kingori and Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis – Slay In Your Lane is essential reading for a generation of black women inspired to find success in every area of their lives.

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the advert of the Web, everywhere you turn you are told that we live in age of unparalleled freedom. This is dangerously naïve. From the revolution in Iran that wasn’t to the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich, we still live in a world where you can write a book and end up dead.After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech – religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states – are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. And it ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.

At the beginning of the financial crisis, in September 2008, Gordon Brown called an emergency press conference in which he declared, 'we will do whatever it takes to restore stability in the financial markets'.He was to repeated the phrase ‘whatever it takes’ constantly in the following weeks.As Shadow Chancellor Brown would do whatever it took to restore Labour's economic credibility. As leader-in-waiting he would do whatever it took to acquire the crown. As Prime Minister he would do whatever it took to buttress his enfeebled regime, going as far instigating a rapprochement with Peter Mandelson, a figure he had come to despise. Determined, wilful, multi-layered in his complexity, Brown would always do whatever it took to survive.New Labour, as a political force, rootless and defensive in its origins, would similarly do whatever it took to retain support in what its founders regarded as a conservative country.Written by one of the most influential political commentators in the UK, the Independent's chief political commentator, Steve Richards, this political expose examines Gordon Brown's wildly oscillating career and the ruthless and sometimes shallow pragmatism displayed by New Labour as a whole.

A book for anyone interested to know more about how the world really works by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow.‘This is one of the most important books of our time.’ Walter Isaacson‘A masterpiece’ Dan Simpson, Post-Gazette THE NEW YORK TIMES #3 BESTSELLERUS foreign policy is undergoing a dire transformation, forever changing America’s place in the world. Institutions of diplomacy and development are bleeding out after deep budget cuts; the diplomats who make America’s deals and protect democratic interests around the world are walking out in droves. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. Increasingly, America is a nation that shoots first and asks questions later.In an astonishing journey from the corridors of power in Washington, DC, to some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth – Afghanistan, Somalia, and North Korea among them acclaimed investigative journalist Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. His first-hand experience as a former State Department official affords a personal look at some of the last standard bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan.Drawing on newly unearthed documents, and richly informed by rare interviews with warlords, whistle-blowers, and policymakers – including every living secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton to Rex Tillerson – War on Peace makes a powerful case for an endangered profession. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, short-sightedness, and outright malice – but it may just offer a way out of a world at war.

Do you remember what life was like before the crash?• When level-headed couples were still taking mortgages five times their joint income.• When the middle class was divided between the haves and the have yachts.• When Her Majesty's Government boasted that their 'light-touch regulation' of finance had abolished boom and bust, and laughed hysterically at anyone who disagreed.By Christmas 2008, eight banks had been part-nationalised, Woolworths had disappeared, unemployment had reached nearly two million and the country's debt had hit record levels. We are now a bankrupt nation.After the Great Crash of 2008, Americans could at least blame an incompetent right-wing government. But when the money ran out, Britain was ruled by left wingers who had grown up despising the 'funny-money' men. And yet, like the most gullible investors on Wall Street, New Labour prostrated themselves before the snake oil charmers of financial capital.Since they came to power in 1997, Nick Cohen has been taking the pulse of what has turned out to be the longest period of left-wing government in British history. Over a decade later, he reports from the sickbed of liberal England as battered and broken voters contemplate a remarkable shift. With splendid outrage and great compassion, Waiting for the Etonians, is an account of a country that, for the first time since the end of the Empire, is considering embracing the old ruling class it has despised for decades.