Chatto & Windus Dinner with Joseph Johnson. Books and Friendship in a Revolutionary Age Hay Daisy

A ground-breaking new study brings us a very different picture of the Second World War, asking fundamental questions about ethical commitments • Accounts of the Second World War usually involve tales of bravery in battle, or stoicism on the home front, as the British public stood together against Fascism. However, the war looks very different when seen through the eyes of the 60,000 conscientious objectors who refused to take up arms and whose stories, unlike those of the First World War, have been almost entirely forgotten • Tobias Kelly invites us to spend the war five of these individuals: Roy Ridgway, a factory clerk from Liverpool; Tom Burns, a teacher from east London; Stella St John, who trained as a vet and ended up in jail; Ronald Duncan, who set up a collective farm; and Fred Urquhart, a working-class Scottish socialist and writer

From the acclaimed historian of global empire, the dramatic story of how steam power reshaped our cities and our seas, and forged a new world order • Steam power transformed our world, initiating the complex, resource-devouring industrial system the consequences of which we live with today. It revolutionized work and production, but also the ease and cost of movement over land and water. The result was to throw open vast areas of the world to the rampaging expansion of Europeans and Americans on a scale previously unimaginable • Unlocking the World is the captivating history of the great port cities which emerged as the bridgeheads of this new steam-driven economy, reshaping not just the trade and industry of the regions around them but their culture and politics as well

A romantic and comic gem from a precocious Victorian nine-year-old that has charmed readers for a century • The Young Visiters is a comic masterpiece that has delighted generations of readers since it was first published in 1919. A classic story of life and love in later Victorian England as seen from the nursery window, it was written in 1890 by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford • It all starts when Alfred Salteena, who is 'not quite the right side of the blanket', takes young Ethel Montacue to stay with his friend Bernard Clarke... Daisy Ashford has an exquisite eye for matchmaking and manners in English society, and her tale, with its hilarious observation and idiosyncratic spelling, is as irresistible today as it ever was • This edition of The Young Visiters is illustrated with drawings by Posy Simmonds which are as enchanting and witty as the story

Four generations. Three sisters. One divided nation • Tricked aboard a boat to East Africa, Pirbhai is only thirteen when he is forced by the British into labouring on the railway. Under sweltering heat, hungry and frightened, he commits a terrible act just to survive • He will never tell a soul, even when he meets Sonal, a fierce, loving woman with whom he starts a family in hope of a better life. But their granddaughters come of age in a divided nation. Latika falls headlong into the student protest movement, Mayuri's ambitions take her far from home, while Kiya's friendship with a Black Ugandan boy threatens them both • Finally forced to flee, the family scatters across the world. They take with them a favourite rolling pin, a handful of photos, and a secret - that one day, will help them find each other again

Two families. One night. A constellation of lives changed forever • When retired doctor Ben Wilf comes across ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman in the middle of the night under Division Street's old oak tree, he is treated to an unexpected and magical tour of the stars. But this is not the first time the boy and old man have met. In fact, they go way back, to the night of Waldo's birth, and further still • Secrets preside over the neighbourhood along with the majestic oak. One night in particular has been kept buried. Following it, the Wilfs - parents and children - change and grow, but each is haunted by what they choose to forget. Then the young Shenkmans move in across the street: a couple with their own secrets and a lonely, brilliant son who is captivated by the night sky

After fifty years in London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. Her children are divided on whether she stays or goes, and in the wake of their father's death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray • Meanwhile youngest daughter Melissa has never let go of a love she lost, and Michael in return, now married to Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. As Alice's final decision draws closer, all that is hidden between them rises to the surface • Set against the shadows of a city and a country in turmoil, Diana Evans's ordinary people confront fundamental questions. How should we raise our children? How to do right by our parents? And how, in the midst of everything, can we satisfy ourselves?

In her early twenties, Christie Watson was convinced she'd found her soulmate, in a glowing flash of light that turned out to be a tealight setting her quilt on fire. Twenty years later, her bed is burning once again... as she wakes in a perimenopausal sweat, night after night • This is the story of her journey through midlife: of the joy of letting go and the pain of the morning after, of the unstoppable power of female friendship and the struggle to raise teenagers as a single parent. It lays bare the exhilaration, agony, wonder and fears of being a middle-aged woman with a wild heart, a changing body and a new set of challenges. And as her world takes on a different shape, there's something else she starts to feel: the hot flush of possibility

In thirteen chapters, Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal for their architects - architects who either killed themselves or are rumoured to have done so. They range across time and space from a church with a twisted spire built in seventeenth-century France to a theatre that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC., and an eerily sinking swimming pool in her hometown of Turnhout • Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Charles Darwin to art history, stories from her own life and popular culture, patterns gradually come into focus, as Van den Broeck asks: what is that strange life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator? • Threaded through each story, and in prose of great essayistic subtlety, Van den Broeck meditates on the question of suicide - what Albert Camus called the 'one truly serious philosophical problem' - in relation to creativity and public disgrace

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes • Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages • Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry

Enlightenment Britain was ablaze with ambition and energy. Great writers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson, John Wilkes and Catharine Macaulay were part of a pioneering generation that shaped and inspired the American Dream. For the first time, bestselling historian Peter Moore vividly traces the transatlantic friendships and revolutionary ideas that inspired the Declaration of Independence • 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is the best-known phrase from that document, which was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in the summer of 1776. Today this line is evoked as a shorthand for that ideal we call the American Dream. But the vision it encapsulates – of a free and happy world – has its roots in Great Britain • This book tells the story of the years that preceded the Declaration

Summer is coming to a close on Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome • One misstep at a dinner party and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts like a ghost through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake • Taut, sensual and impossible to look away from, The Guest captures the latent heat and potential danger of a summer that could go either way for a young woman teetering on the edge

Discover the ultimate cookbook to transport you this winter • Nigellissima is a celebration of fresh, tasty and unpretentious cooking, inspired by Nigella's experiences of living, working and learning to cook in Italy • In 120 quick and easy recipes, Nigella shows you why Italian food has conquered the world, from sunny pasta dishes to rich lasagne and meats, with indulgent ice cream, cakes and puddings and perfect party food • With warm and witty food writing, mouthwatering photography and a beautiful hardback design, this is a book you will treasure for many years as well as a delicious gift for friends and family • Pasta - delicious new twists on spaghetti, risotto, lasagne and other favourites • Flesh, fish and fowl - easy meat dishes, chicken recipes and succulent fish • Vegetables and sides - tempting vegetable dishes, salads and potato recipes for any occasion • Sweet things - panna cotta, ice cream and gorgeous Italian baking • Nigella Collection: a vibrant look for Nigella's classic cookery books