Simon & Schuster Uncharted. How Uncertainty Can Power Change Heffernan Margaret

Amazon is the business story of the decade. Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, has built one of the most efficient wealth-creation machines in history • Like a giant squid, Amazon's tentacles are squeezing industry after industry and, in the process, upsetting the state of technology, the economy, job creation and society at large. So pervasive is Amazon's impact that business leaders in almost every sector need to understand how this force of nature operates and how they can respond to it • Saying you can ignore Jeff Bezos is equivalent to saying you could ignore Henry Ford or Steve Jobs in the early years of Ford and Apple. These titans monumentally changed how we do business, redefining the rules on a global scale. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the new disruptor on the block

‘How long do I have?’ I force a laugh • ‘Not long,’ he says very quietly. ‘They have confirmed your sentence of death. You are to be beheaded tomorrow. We don’t have long at all.’ • Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days. Using her position as cousin to the deceased king, her father and his conspirators put her on the throne ahead of the king’s half-sister Mary, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her crown and locked Jane in the Tower. When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner’s block. There Jane turned her father’s greedy, failed grab for power into her own brave and tragic martyrdom • ‘Learn you to die’ is the advice that Jane gives in a letter to her younger sister Katherine, who has no intention of dying

Can a chance encounter unlock one woman's past? • On holiday in Italy, Briony Wood becomes fascinated by the wartime story of a ruined villa hidden amongst the hills of Naples. Not only is it the very place where her grandfather was stationed as a soldier in 1943, but she also discovers that it harbours the secret of a love long lost • Handed a bundle of tattered letters found buried at the villa, Briony becomes enraptured by the blossoming love story between Sarah Bailey, an English woman, and Paul Hartmann, a young German. The letters lead her back almost seventy years to pre-war Norfolk • But as Briony delves into Sarah and Paul’s story, she encounters resentments and secrets still tightly guarded. All too quickly it is clear that what happened long ago under the shadow of Vesuvius, she suspects, still has the power to cause terrible pain

How the rewilding of eight acres of Norfolk marshland inspired a family and brought nature even closer to home • When writer Simon Barnes heard a Cetti's warbler sing out as he turned up to look at a house for sale, he knew immediately that he had found his new home. The fact that his garden backed onto an area of marshy land only increased the possibilities, but there was always the fear that it might end up in the wrong hands and be lost to development or intensive farming. His wife saw through the delicate negotiations for the purchase. Once they'd bought it, they began to manage it as a conservation area, working with the Wildlife Trust to ensure it became as appealing as possible to all species. For their son Eddie, who has Down's syndrome, it became a place of calm and inspiration

They trust her to watch the House of Tudor rise… Only she knows it will fall • Heir to the Plantagenets, Margaret Pole, is a rival claimant to the Tudor throne. Buried in marriage to a loyal Tudor supporter, she becomes guardian to Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon • But her destiny is not for a life in the shadows. Tragedy throws Margaret into poverty, yet the king's death restores her to a place at young Henry VIII's court, as a lady in waiting to Queen Katherine • As the Tudor court sours, Margaret has to choose between her allegiance to the increasingly tyrannical King Henry, or to her friend, his abandoned queen. And Margaret is hiding a deadly secret… that a curse was cast on the Tudor line, and she is watching it come to pass

'There is only one bond that I trust: between a woman and her sisters. We never take our eyes off each other. In love and in rivalry, we always think of each other.' • When Katherine of Aragon is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined – with Margaret’s younger sister Mary – to a sisterhood unique in all the world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland and France • United by family loyalties and affections, the three queens find themselves set against each other. Katherine commands an army against Margaret and kills her husband James IV of Scotland. But Margaret’s boy becomes heir to the Tudor throne when Katherine loses her son

An extraordinary exploration of the ancestry of Britain through seven burial sites. By using new advances in genetics and taking us through important archaeological discoveries, Professor Alice Roberts helps us better understand life today • We often think of Britain springing from nowhere with the arrival of the Romans. But in Ancestors, pre-eminent archaeologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons, from burial sites and by using new technology to analyse ancient DNA • Told through seven fascinating burial sites, this groundbreaking prehistory of Britain teaches us more about ourselves and our history: how people came and went and how we came to be on this island. It explores forgotten journeys and memories of migrations long ago, written into genes and preserved in the ground for thousands of years

‘This is a man’s world, Jacquetta, and some women cannot march to the beat of a man’s drum. Do you understand?’ • 1435. Rouen. Jacquetta of Luxembourg is left a wealthy young widow when her husband, the Duke of Bedford, dies. Her only friend in the great household is Richard Woodville, the Duke’s squire, and it is not long before the two become lovers and marry in secret • The Woodvilles return to the Lancaster court, where Jacquetta becomes close friends with young King Henry VI’s new queen. But she can sense a growing threat from the people of England, and the danger of royal rivals. The king slides into a mysterious sleep; Margaret, his queen, turns to untrustworthy favourites for help; and Richard, Duke of York, threatens to overturn the whole kingdom for his rival dynasty, the House of York

When Alice finds herself in the rapidly downward spiral of Alzheimer's Disease she is just fifty years old. A university professor, wife, and mother of three, she still has so much more to do - books to write, places to see, grandchildren to meet. But when she can't remember how to make her famous Christmas pudding, when she gets lost in her own back yard, when she fails to recognise her actress daughter after a superb performance, she comes up with a desperate plan. But can she see it through? Should she see it through? • Losing her yesterdays, living for each day, her short-term memory is hanging on by a couple of frayed threads. But she is still Alice

Google is arguably the most important company in the world today, with such pervasive influence that its name is a verb. The company founded by two Stanford graduate students—Larry Page and Sergey Brin—has become a tech giant known the world over. Since starting with its search engine, Google has moved into mobile phones, computer operating systems, power utilities, self-driving cars, all while remaining the most powerful company in the advertising business • Granted unprecedented access to the company, Levy disclosed that the key to Google’s success in all these businesses lay in its engineering mindset and adoption of certain internet values such as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk-taking. Levy discloses details behind Google’s relationship with China, including how Brin disagreed with his colleagues on the China strategy—and why its social networking initiative failed; the first time Google tried chasing a successful competitor

In 1999, Manchester United completed a unique Treble, winning the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League - but more remarkable than that was how they did it, and the stories behind the historic achievement. Matt Dickinson covered the whole story at the time, and now in 99 compelling chapters brings it all vividly to life • When the season began, Manchester United were up for sale, the club's iconic talisman Eric Cantona had gone, rivals Arsenal were the reigning Double winners, David Beckham was a national hate figure after being sent off during the World Cup, and even manager Alex Ferguson's position was being questioned. Early signs weren't promising, despite record spending to bring in new stars, among them Jaap Stam and Dwight Yorke, but soon things began to change

Shay Bastable is the woman in the middle. She is part of the sandwich generation – caring for her parents and her children, supporting her husband Bruce, holding them all together and caring for them as best she can • Then the arrival of a large orange skip on her mother’s estate sets in motion a cataclysmic series of events which leads to the collapse of Shay’s world. She is forced to put herself first for a change • But in order to move forward with her present, Shay needs to make sense of her past. And so she returns to the little village she grew up in, to uncover the truth about what happened to her when she was younger. And in doing so, she discovers that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to find the only way is up