A riveting story for anyone who has ever looked up at the stars and dreamed of humanity's journey to them, and wondered what it might look when we get there.

Interstellar Vehicle Archimedes has been hurtling through space for more than five generations, an oasis of heat and light in the middle of absolutely nowhere. But now the ageing starship is preparing to brake, for it is arriving at Destination Star: Tau Ceti, the new home for the space-born descendants of the First Crew.

For trainee engineer Ravinder MacLeod, the world he knows is coming to an end. Once Archimedes succumbs to the gravitational pull of the Destination Star and its (hopefully) habitable planet, there will be no going back—or anywhere else. As Braking Day approaches, Ravi finds himself caught between the rigid requirements of the officer class to which he aspires and his blue-collar, ne'er-do-well family. Unfortunately for Ravi, Boz, his brilliant ex-con cousin, seems determined to make his life difficult—not least by her experiments with forbidden technology.

Then Ravi is assigned to routine maintenance deep in the massive engines of the Archimedes, where, alone and out of contact, he comes face to face with something impossible—mind-breakingly impossible.

Plagued by nightmares and visions and worried that his grip on reality is slipping, Ravi turns to Boz for help. Their search for answers takes them to the jagged place where the ship's future intersects with its long past. For not everyone is excited to be reaching journey's end and the ghosts of the First Crew may not have been fully laid to rest.

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BRAKING DAY by Adam Oyebanji, read by Ariyan Kassam - audiobook extract

Listen to an excerpt of Tim Berners-Lee's THIS IS FOR EVERYONE, read award-winning comedian, actor, presenter and director, Sir Stephen Fry. It also includes a bonus conversation between the author and narrator.

“Passionately presented, Weaving the Web is an insider’s look at one of the most influential phenomena in today's society.” —AudioFile on Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web

Perhaps the most influential inventor of the modern world, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a different kind of technologist. Born in the same year as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, he famously distributed his invention, the World Wide Web, for no commercial reward. Its widespread adoption changed everything—transforming humanity into the first digital species. Through the web, we live, work, dream, quarrel, and connect.

In this intimate memoir, Berners-Lee tells the story of his iconic invention, exploring how it launched a new era of creativity and collaboration while unleashing powerful forces that imperil truth and privacy and polarize public debate. With his trademark humor and candor, he recounts how he arrived at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a young engineer, and soon came up with the astonishing idea of adding hyperlinks to the then-nascent Internet. His goal was to unleash a wave of creativity and collaboration for the benefit of all—a goal he’s pursued to this day.

Peppered with rich anecdotes and amusing reflections, This Is for Everyone is a gripping, in-the-room account of the rise of the digital world. As the rapid development of artificial intelligence brings new risks and possibilities, Berners-Lee also offers a crucial guide to the decisions ahead—and shows how our digital lives can be reengineered for the sake of human flourishing rather than profit or for power.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This Is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee, audiobook excerpt

Inspired by the Japanese concept of kiku—a more engaged, empathetic style of listening—a sociolinguistics researcher and writer offers a ground-breaking guide to more intentional and meaningful communication. 

No other life form turns noise into sound, sound into language, then language into understanding quite the way we humans do when we listen. As a sociolinguist who grew up in different places with very different languages, Haru Yamada has always been fascinated with the way people navigate their day listening to language systems that code the world in such dramatically different ways. And it was as Haru was recovering in the ICU from an accident that had inflicted a permanent hearing disability when she rediscovered the extraordinary benefit found in the science of listening—the critical intelligence we need to learn and grow and get better.  

Now, Haru Yamada offers a practical guide to more effective listening as a perceptive, creative exercise. We don’t just listen to what people say and don’t say, we reconstruct what someone else is saying and doing and meaning and feeling. Listening is a skill that requires our physical ear and brain power and the effort of our creative mind and social heart to remix what we hear from others and recreate it within ourselves. Kiku will allow you to harness the vital energy of listening to connect, sustain, and enhance the relationships you have with your friends, families, and professional teams.

Kiku By Haru Yamada, Read By Jacqui Bardelang

Take a trip back to your favorite video store with this in-depth journey through the highs and lows of 80s cinema—with profiles of hundreds of films—and how Hollywood studios around the globe reflected a period of cultural change.

The movies were flying blind in 1980. “New Hollywood” was over and the era of auteur-driven, personal films that had defined moviemaking since the late ‘60s came to a symbolic end with Heaven’s Gate (1980), replaced by a new world of multiplex blockbusters supported by massive marketing campaigns. But beyond the high-school comedies and hardbody action films came a new wave of cinematic excitement—an era defined by Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Purple Rain, When Harry Met Sally, E.T., and Top Gun, each of which are now classics for a new generation of nostalgic movie lovers. The decade saw works that uniquely captured an era of cultural and technological change, from new indie auteurs to the highs and lows of animation, an emergent LGBTQ+ cinema, the last days of the Cold War, and the explosive impact of MTV. With wit and authority, author John Malahy provides fresh insight about the films, filmmakers, and stars who illuminated each of the exciting new facets of Hollywood throughout the decade. 

Illustrated with more than 200 full-color photos, Rewinding the ’80s is a lively, intelligent, and immersive look at an indelible moment in modern history. 

Rewinding The ’80s By John Malahy, Read By Michael James Bell

The ultimate guide to digital marketing and advertising – from one of the most influential digital marketers in the world, Alex Schultz, CMO of Meta.

“Alex is one of a small handful of people that I can say without his work, our community would not have connected more than 2 billion people around the world.” – Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta

“Few people understand marketing and growth better than Alex.” – Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify

"Growth isn’t chance – it’s science, and Alex Schultz is its genius.” – John A. List, author of The Voltage Effect and The Why Axis

“Alex is the person I go to when I have a really hard growth question.” – Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI

Growth is good. But how do you achieve growth for your business in the digital age?

Now, more than ever, there are a myriad of ways to achieve growth by marketing your business, large or small, using the tools available on the internet. There are any number of different channels and platforms, and a vast array of tools and mechanisms to advertise to your potential customers. How do you decide which is the best for your product or service?
 
The answers are right here, thanks to Alex Schultz, the chief marketing officer of META. Alex’s unparalleled expertise and experience is crystalised in this essential bible for digital marketing. He guides readers through the key principles for maximizing the impact of your marketing budget – whether you are working for a global corporation or running your own start-up. From understanding channels, to testing creative, to measuring incremental gains – Click Here is the book you need to read if you want to grow your business.

Click Here By Alex Schultz

Adapted from Clint Smith's #1 New York Times bestselling and universally acclaimed How the Word Is Passed, this must-read narrative takes readers to historical sites across America, exploring the legacy of slavery to help readers make sense of our nation's past and present, and be better stewards of their own future.

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads young readers through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—offering an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to school, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods (like downtown Manhattan) on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved people has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, this adaptation of Clint Smith’s #1 bestselling, award-winning work of nonfiction offers kids a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country, and shows how they can reckon with the past and present to become better stewards of their future.

How the Word Is Passed (Adapted for Young Readers) By Clint Smith

AN INSTANT #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

She knows the taste of death. He’ll stoke her hunger for it.

Sarai doesn’t know why someone tried to kill her four years ago, but she does know that her case was closed without justice. Hellbent on vengeance, she returns to the scene of the crime as a Petitor, a prosecutor who can magically detect lies, and is assigned to work with Tetrarch Kadra. Ice-cold and perennially sadistic, Kadra is the most vicious of the four judges who rule the land—and the prime suspect in a string of deaths identical to Sarai’s attempted murder.
 
Certain of his guilt, Sarai begins a double life: solving cases with Kadra by day and plotting his ruin by night. But Kadra is charming and there’s something alluring about the wrath he wields against the city’s corruption. So when the evidence she finds embroils her in a deadly political battle, Sarai must also fight against her attraction to Kadra—because despite his growing hold on her heart, his voice matches the only memory she has of her assailant…
 
A dazzling Ancient Rome-inspired romantasy debut, This Monster of Mine is a bloodbath of manipulation, deception, and forbidden love.

This Monster of Mine By Shalini Abeysekara, Read By Felixe Forde

Disruption is the most powerful force of change in our lifetime. 
 
Every day we are confronted with...

…sudden pivots at our workplace and in the job market
…rule-changing technology such as Artificial Intelligence.
…unexpected crises and a culture of chaos.
…the sinking feeling that we are losing control of our lives.

This is the book about taking back control.
It’s easy to follow and easy to turn into lifelong habits. 
It has been thoroughly researched and examined.
Simply put, Disrupt Everything works.

One question.
Are you ready to Disrupt Everything and take control of your future?

Disrupt Everything—and Win By James Patterson & Patrick Leddin

Read By: Avery Caris, Katharine Chin, Matt Mercurio, Chase Brown, Marni Penning & Jordan Stephanie Gray

​"A deliciously dark and viciously sexy romance. You will want to devour Jordan Gray's stunning paranormal debut. But beware, this book bites back." –Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Once Upon a Broken Heart

Crescent City meets Fourth Wing in this fast-paced and romantic debut, in which a teenage girl must survive ruthless werewolves, a glittering court, and deadly politics to exact revenge on the monsters who destroyed her.
 
After a vicious werewolf attack on the night of her seventeenth birthday party, Vanessa Hart loses everything she loves in a split second. Her best friend, her father, and even her home.
 
Bitten and imprisoned without explanation, Vanessa endures an agonizing transformation into the very beast that maimed her, and her captors make it clear she cannot escape: she will either swear her life to the Wolf Queen’s Court, or she will die.

With no other choice, Vanessa joins their enchanted Castle Severi—where flowering vines grow through the walls, gifts are bestowed by the stars, and a claw can break through skin as easily as silk—but she hasn’t forgotten what they stole from her. 
 
Vanessa still seeks vengeance, scheming in the shadows even as she finds herself mesmerized by the golden prince Sinclair Severi, who threatens to steal her heart though he is promised to her nemesis. And by his brooding, disgraced cousin, Calix, whose smoldering gaze hides even darker secrets. Immersed in the magic of their whimsical yet cruel society, Vanessa soon learns not all is as it seems.
 
The Court is at war, and she may simply be a pawn in its lethal game.

For Fans of:
Forbidden Romance
Enemies to Lovers
Werewolves
Paranormal Romance

Bitten By Jordan Stephanie Gray

Ciao! Enter the endearing world of Piccolo, a problem-solver whose optimism, boundless enthusiasm, and love of gelato inspires his animal friend community.

Piccolo the stylish shrew is a list maker. On his list are all the favorite places he is eager to visit.  As his day begins he runs into his pal Mr. Rosso who needs help carrying his artwork to the museum. Piccolo can’t believe his luck: the museum is on his list of favorite places! In no time at all, Piccolo is helping all his friends solve problems as he zips around the city on his scooter. But with so many ways to lend a hand, Piccolo might not have time to visit the one place on his list he loves the most.  

Full of adventure, culture, and some tasty hazelnut gelato, this endearing tale of friendship and teamwork proves that helping others is the most powerful triumph of all.

Piccolo By Dan Yaccarino, Read By Susan Vinciotti Bonito

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN meets THE VEGETARIAN in this chilly and chilling epistolary novel of four characters locked in a frightening cycle of vengeance and comeuppance.

Mira is a desperate young woman, hired by a wealthy single mother to tutor her lonesome son, Yuchan. But Mira is not who she presents herself to be; she is haunted by the death of her own family and motivated by the dark pulse of vengeance. Yuchan was cruel to Mira’s mother. A kind of cruelty she can’t ever forgive.
 
And then there is Jiwon, the boy’s mother, a bad mother, Mira thinks—or so Jiwon tells herself she must not be.
 
But as Mira spends more time in the family’s sprawling home, she begins to suspect Yuchan is not the culprit she’s after. Someone else in the family has been pulling the strings. Someone with a deviant plan she can’t begin to imagine.
 
Structured around four different letters and journal entries: Mira's, Jiwon's reply, Yuchan's younger brother's diary entry and, finally, Mira's own written recollection. Each new section brings us deeper into a web of cruelty, consequence, and closer to the truth.

Petty Lies By Sulmi Bak, Read By Greta Jung

Quercus is a young, vibrant, internationally successful and award-winning publisher of fiction (including Stieg Larsson), non-fiction and children's books.

BRAKING DAY by Adam Oyebanji, read by Ariyan Kassam - audiobook extract

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