julie10's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Updated with the latest archaeological research new chapters on the most influential yet widely unrecognised people of the British isles, In Search of the Dark Ages illuminates the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest of 1066.

In this new edition, Michael Wood vividly conjures some of the most important people in British history such as Hadrian, a Libyan refugee from the Arab conquests and arguably the most important person of African origin in British history, to Queen Boadicea, the leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans.

Here too, warts and all, are… show more.

Foreshadowing his later detailed accounts of the Soviet prison-camp system, Solzhenitsyn's classic portrayal of life in the gulag is all the more powerful for being slighter and more personal than those later monumental volumes. Continuing the tradition of the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn is fully worthy of them in narrative power and moral authority. His greatest work.

***AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER***
*Longlisted for the BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION*

'Astounding on every page. John Vaillant is one of the great poetic chroniclers of the natural world' David Wallace-Wells

'No book feels timelier than John Vaillant's Fire Weather . . . an adrenaline-soaked nightmare that is impossible to put down' Cal Flyn, The Times

A gripping account of this century's most intense urban fire, and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between humanity and fire's fierce energy.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned… show more.