FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE
Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf?
In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper’s defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars.
The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf’s works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One’s Own.
Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what’s great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a “substitute for living” because she was “forbidden to scamper on the grass”. Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read

Biographies & Memoirs

WOOLF, VIRGINIA

Arts & Literature

TLS Books

WHAT MAKES A HERO? WHO BETTER TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION THAN LEE CHILD…
‘It’s Lee Child. Why would you not read it?’ Karin Slaughter
‘I don't know another author so skilled at making me turn the page’ The Times
In his first work of nonfiction, the creator of the multimillion-selling Jack Reacher series explores the endurance of heroes from Achilles to Bond, showing us how this age-old myth is a fundamental part of what makes us human. He demonstrates how hero stories continue to shape our world – arguing that we need them now more than ever.
From the Stone Age to the Greek Tragedies, from Shakespeare to Robin Hood, we have always had our heroes. The hero is at the centre of formative myths in every culture and persists to this day in world-conquering books, films and TV shows. But why do these characters continue to inspire us, and why are they so central to storytelling?
Scalpel-sharp on the roots of storytelling and enlightening on the history and science of myth, The Hero is essential reading for anyone trying to write or understand fiction. Child teaches us how these stories still shape our minds and behaviour in an increasingly confusing modern world, and with his trademark concision and wit, demonstrates that however civilised we get, we’ll always need heroes.

The Hero

History

Child,Lee

Europe

THE ENDURING MYTH THAT MAKES US HUMAN What makes a hero? Who better to answer that question than Lee Child... 'It's Lee Child.&nbsp;Why would you&nbsp;not&nbsp;read it?' Karin Slaughter 'I don't know another author so&nbsp;skilled&nbsp;at making me turn the page' The Times In his first work of nonfiction, the creator of the multimillion-selling Jack Reacher series explores the endurance of heroes from Achilles to Bond, showing us how this age-old myth is a fundamental part of what makes us human. He demonstrates how hero stories continue to shape our world - arguing that we need them now more than ever. From the Stone Age to the Greek Tragedies, from Shakespeare to Robin Hood, we have always had our heroes. The hero is at the centre of formative myths in every culture and persists to this day in world-conquering books, films and TV shows. But why do these characters continue to inspire us, and why are they so central to storytelling? Scalpel-sharp on the roots of storytelling and enlightening on the history and science of myth, The Hero is essential reading for anyone trying to write or understand fiction. Child teaches us how these stories still shape our minds and behaviour in an increasingly confusing modern world, and with his trademark concision and wit, demonstrates that however civilised we get, we'll always need heroes.

Ancient Civilizations

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE 
Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? 
In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper’s defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars. 
The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf’s works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One’s Own. 
Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what’s great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a “substitute for living” because she was “forbidden to scamper on the grass”. Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.

Join the art critic Ben Eastham on a private tour of an extraordinary museum. Let him walk you through a building constructed from memory and filled with a series of bewildering art works, while he delivers a guide comprised of personal experience, professional expertise and sympathy. In this stunningly original book, an introduction to contemporary art is combined with the author's own memories and reflections on what art means. With the help of a cast of interfering security guards, pretentious curators, sceptical visitors, angry protestors and elusive ghosts, Eastham proposes that the art of today offers a way of understanding our increasingly strange and complex times.&nbsp; Eastham doesn't&nbsp;ask you to like the artworks in his imaginary&nbsp;museum, but offers the tools for you to formulate and express your&nbsp;own opinion of them.&nbsp;He argues that art should be judged by the feelings it provokes and the&nbsp;conversations it generates: in talking about art, we learn to talk about ourselves and the world in which we live.

The Imaginary Museum: A Personal Tour of Contemporary Art featuring ghosts, nudity and disagreements (Tls Books)

Eastham, Ben

Reference

The bestselling author and historian Lisa Hilton picks up the mythical 'City of Ladies' where the medieval writer Christine de Pisan left off, continuing a conversation about gender and greatness that began more than six hundred years ago. In 1405 Christine de Pisan took up the pen to defend her maligned sex. Her book, The City of Ladies, was built around preserving women's reputations from the slights and misunderstandings of history. In it the author is visited by three spirits - Justice, Rectitude and Reason - who guide her in sifting through countless lives, in search of worthy citizens. &nbsp; Over 600 years later, the historian and novelist Lisa Hilton picks up the book and promptly falls asleep, only to be visited by three great women from history: Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great. And they aren't happy. Having found themselves barred from the original 'City of Ladies', they want to know why. And isn't it time, they ask, for a new author to take up the pen? &nbsp; What follows is a reassessment of the past, in which deeds and reputations, rumours and reality are held up to the light, and history is wrested back from the distortions of misogyny.

Sex and the City of Ladies: Rewriting History with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great

Hilton, Lisa

Community & Culture

Jews Don’t Count

How identity politics failed one particular identity. 
‘That rarest of things, an apparent ‘must read’ that turns out to be actual must read. Brilliant stuff.’ ADAM KAY 
‘a masterpiece.’STEPHEN FRY 
Jews Don’t Count is a book for people who consider themselves on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you.It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel’s contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of close reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes, Baddiel argues that those who think of themselves as on the right side of history have often ignored the history of anti-Semitism. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority: and why they should.

Humor & Entertainment

Baddiel, David

Humor

DAVID BADDIEL

Religion & Spirituality

'I cannot help but see the bodies of my near ancestors in the current caravans of desperate souls fleeing from place to place, chased by famine, war and toxins. Ideas honed in slavery - of the otherness, the boorishness, the inferiority of thy neighbour - have continued to travel through American society.' The story of slavery in America is not over. It lives on in how we speak to one another, in how we treat one another, in how our societies are organised. In Giving a Damn, the legal scholar Patricia Williams finds that when you begin to unpick current debates around immigration, freedom of speech, the culture wars and wall-building, beneath them lies the unexamined history of enslavement in the West. Our ability to dehumanize one another can be traced all the way from the plantation to the US President's Twitter account. Williams begins in the American South with Gone With the Wind (still the second most popular book in the USA after the Bible), that nostalgic tale full of the myths of the Southern belle, Southern culture, 'good food and good manners'. The scene is seductive, from a distance. How nice it is to paper over the obliging slavery at the novel's core, and enjoy the wisteria-covered plantations, now the venue for weddings. But Williams's maternal great-grandmother was a slave, her great-grandfather a slave-owner, and papering over has left us in a world that has never been more segregated, incarcerated or separated from each other. Williams wants to know which ideas brought the richest and most diverse nation on the planet to the brink of resurgent, violent division and what this means for the rest of the world. And she finds that most of those ideas began in slavery.

Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone with the Wind

Literature & Fiction

Williams, Patricia

History & Criticism

A memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves that looks at the creation of eight piano pieces. 'A wonderfully sensitive and probing meditation on the writing of words and music' Rolf Hind, composer and pianist What lies behind the creation of a piece of music? Does it spring fully formed from a composer's mind, or take shape in the recesses of the brain, revealing itself in stages over time? Is the creative act deliberate or happenstance? An inspired vision or the result of practice? Will Eaves, author and musician, shares his experience of writing eight new piano pieces after many years away from the keyboard. Some of the music is found in old notebooks and teenage enthusiasms, some of it is caught on the wing - a response to the resurgence of the natural world during COVID lockdown. None of it is what he is meant to be doing. But then not all artistic interests are primary or professional interests. Sometimes it's the second-string activities, the diversions, that bring work - and life - into focus. The Point of Distraction is a unique account of music-making that embraces Bach, film, jazz, literature, neuroscience and the mystery of will power in its search for meaning. At its heart is a love of skill, an openness to self-doubt, and a belief that we are all more than our declared aims.

The Point of Distraction

Eaves, Will

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the TLS Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by TLS Books

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the TLS Books publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read

The Hero

The Hero

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read

The Imaginary Museum: A Personal Tour of Contemporary Art featuring ghosts, nudity and disagreements (Tls Books)

Sex and the City of Ladies: Rewriting History with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great

Jews Don’t Count

Jews Don’t Count

Giving A Damn: Racism, Romance and Gone with the Wind

The Point of Distraction