Whether you believe in one god, many gods, or no god at all, this is a book to challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions and here she takes on a subject even more immense - God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, he narrates the history of religion as one long and remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. This innate desire to humanise God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. But we bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature - our compassion and thirst for justice - but all that is bad in it - greed, bigotry, violence. All the qualities inform our religions, cultures and governments and more than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanising impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Chapters include Adam and Eve in Eden, The Lord of the Beasts, The Face in the Tree, Spears into Ploughs, Lofty Persons and The High God. The book is an appeal to stop foisting our human compulsions upon the divine and in that truth lies the key to a more mature, more peaceful and more primal form of spirituality. 300pp, illus. Remainder mark.

Join Milly-Molly-Mandy as she goes excavating, learns to ride a horse and cooks her very own toffee, has American visitors, runs an errand and finds a parcel. Nine short chapters for young readers aged 4-8 with illustrations. 116 page paperback.

Join Milly-Molly-Mandy as she goes to the blacksmith's wedding, takes care of Dum-dum the Duck, has a new dress, finds a train, discovers a surprise plant, and even goes sledging in the snow. Whatever she's up to you're sure to have fun with Milly-Molly-Mandy and her best friends Little-Friend-Susan and Billy Blunt. 170pp, paperback. Ages 4-8, large print and line art.

Milly-Molly-Mandy is always ready for an adventure and here she takes her first ever trip to the seaside, gets stuck in a tree, makes some new friends, gets up early, goes to a concert, has her photo taken, goes to the pictures, goes for a picnic, gets locked in, sees her mother go away, finds a nest and more. 188pp, paperback. Ages 4-8, large print and line art.

With a padded cover and appealing watercolour and line art illustrations here is a special storybook to relax little children's minds and bodies and sooth their brain's chemical response to anxiety. When young children have bad dreams their whole routine and yours may become troubled. Resisting bedtime can be tricky and the book is designed to harness a child's imagination to work through a psychological grounding technique of being in the moment and understanding that they are safe. It encourages resilience and belief in their own strength to cope with bad dreams and by reading the book together your child will feel listened to and understood and safe and realise that you can resolve worries together. 'Little Knight, you are bold as the brave knights of old, but I have a secret for you. Though the stories don't tell, knights had bad dreams as well, and they couldn't sleep sometimes, too. Those knights, they were strong, they faced dragons all day long...' Pink, red, orange and blue, dragons peep out from behind trees and breath fire on the little male and female Knight characters, sometimes three or four to a page across starry skies and into the bedroom where there is the cat, the bookcase and comfy quilt. Count one, two, three sounds far and near. 'Or a place you can hide, and shut out the outside, with someone who loves you so much.' 26 pages, 20cm square, apologies for sticker, designed for ages 3-6 years.

The book asks who was John Lewis? Born into poverty, he was orphaned at the age of seven when his father died in a Somerset workhouse. Dreaming of a better life, the young man travelled to London at the start of what would become a retail revolution. From early years as a draper's apprentice, we see how Lewis's first pokey little business opened on Oxford Street in 1864, and expanded as an emerging middle class embraced the department stores as a recreational experience. Award-winning biographer Victoria Glendinning captures the toxic relationships that unfolded between Lewis and his two sons Spedan and Oswald, as they collided over the future of their retail empire. Their worst moments included emotional blackmail, face-slapping and a kidnapping, and much litigation between father and both sons. Behind the glass windows and displays of soft furnishings, she reveals the eccentricities of the family whose relationships became blighted by conflicts of epic proportions as their wealth bloomed. Yet the family never broke up, and Spedan's vision of a Partnership model to act as an ethical corrective and foster a community of happier, more productive workers was eventually realised and survives to this day and is now much copied in business as a model. This brilliant group biography has riveting details of this rags-to-riches story and a tempestuous family saga, all unfolding against the dramatic social and political worlds of 19th century London. The book concludes with an assessment of the position John Lewis holds in British sensibilities, and whether John Lewis and institutions like it have a place in our future. She also writes about the 157-year-old commercial enterprise famous for affordable haberdashery, wedding-list glassware, and more recently producing rather cute Christmas TV commercials. 16 pages of photos including colour and one of Spedan's radical new flagship store Peter Jones, now a listed building. Plus colour reproductions of original advertising on the endpapers, 338pp.

'Pioneers of alcohol-based comedy' - The Sunday Times, this pair of award-winning alcohol experts are also historians and write and perform together. Their motto is drink less, drink better, and their almanac is sub-titled 'Adventurous Drinks and Eccentric Tales for Every Day of the Year.' As Aristophanes once said 'Quick, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.' That's just one of 366 (29th February is free) entries in this eclectic, elbow-bending anthology of discerning drinks and fascinating and unusual facts. Other stories include a pair of whisky highballs for 'National Giraffe Day', a South African sparkling wine served at the inauguration of both Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, an Alpine elixir inspired by a chap who eats aeroplanes, and a gin cocktail created in honour of someone who sewed monkey's testicles onto the face of a Frenchman. The pair know that alcohol is a fickle fellow that can flip from faithful friend to fearsome foe in the space of a few sips. The 1st January marks the fact that Bass (of the Pale Ale) Triangle registered the first ever trademark in 1876 and 2nd January the most famous bookseller Erika Roe unclasped her bra and ran on to the rugby pitch while England was playing Australia. The pair are drinking a pint of Naked Ladies from Twickenham Fine Ales, a brewery situated less than a mile from the stadium. The birth of Isaac Newton, the death of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Gibson Flying V guitar patented (1958) is celebrated with a Gibson Martini. For each there is a little potted history plus of course the recipe, ingredients and how best to serve with garnishes, using a cocktail shaker, crushed ice, strainer etc. Firsts include steps on the Moon (communion wine used by Buzz Aldrin) and the first episode of Mad Men released in 2007 celebrating that Don Draper drank - a lot - with Hamm's Beer, an American cult classic, now owned by Coors. 272pp, stylish design.

Matisse's late collage, The Snail, is one of the most striking exhibits at Tate Modern, where its colourful roulade of shapes encapsulates the snail's slow movement. Other works from Matisse's late period include the Blue Nudes, whose simplified shapes are perfectly designed to express motion and vibrant life. This short introduction from the Tate Gallery starts with Matisse's early work and development from being a close follower of Cezanne to his position as a leading figure of early 20th century modernism. He was a printmaker and sculptor, but is best known as a painter. The dark palette of Matisse's early still lifes show the dominant influence of Cezanne, but in The Dinner Table of 1898 a figure breaks the stillness and looks forward to later work. The brash colour of the Fauves is seen in the iconic Woman with a Hat from 1905 and bright interiors such as The Pink Studio and Harmony in Red. At the same time as these groundbreaking works he produced the simplified dancing figures of Dance II, which anticipate the late collages in style. The restrained elegance of the 1913 Portrait of Madame Matisse demonstrates a change in palette from the earlier reds and bright blues to sombre shades of greenish grey, which nevertheless add to his stature as one of the 20th century's great colourists. Cubism is an intermittent influence, fired by his friendship with Picasso, and the 1935 canvas Large Reclining Nude, with huge limbs lying on a blue checked cloth, gestures towards Picasso's style, but Matisse could never quite be defined within any movement. 80pp, softback, colour reproductions.

'Combining the sensibilities of a Joseph Conrad or a Cormac McCarthy with the poetic intensity of an Emily Dickinson, this rich, raw, and powerful seascape by Paul Lynch throws the sea's storms and the sea's light into the darkest corners of human consciousness. An astonishing achievement.' - Jane Urquhart. With its echoes of Greek mythology, the pages sing in this powerful new novel from the author of Grace. When fishermen Bolivar and Hector set sail from their South American village, they soon find themselves cast adrift in the Pacific Ocean by a sudden storm. As the days pass and no rescue materialises, the two men must come to terms with their environment and with each other if they are to survive. Part survival story, part fearless existential parable, the novel is a meditation on what it means to be a man, a friend, a father and a sinner in our fallen world, from a master of lyrical prose. 181pp, paperback, apologies for sticker.

The wonder horse Tiberius, tipped for future greatness, is being kept literally under wraps in a Lincolnshire stable by his bemused owner Davenant, who is powerless to prevent the flamboyant arch-chancer Mr Happerton from manoeuvring him into bankruptcy. But Happerton lacks the readies to purchase the horse, and his desperation takes him into marriage with an inscrutable red-haired heiress Rebecca Gresham, who he often thinks resembles that calculating and shrewish heroine with the same name, Becky Sharp of the best-selling novel Vanity Fair. Happerton is slightly afraid of Rebecca and is completely unable to tell whether she supports him in his shady endeavours. In any case, Rebecca's father disapproves of flashy Mr Happerton, so will Rebecca be able to talk him into a loan? Happerton finds himself returning to the associates of his past life, including his disreputable sidekick Captain Raff, the ill-assorted safebreakers Lythgoe and Pardew and eventually his theatrical former mistress Rosa. Meanwhile, up in Lincolnshire, the young governess Miss Ellington takes charge of Davenant's strange daughter Evie, with unexpected results. As Derby Day approaches, everyone's life is turned upside down. And will Tiberius win? A great read with a superbly created Victorian underworld, brilliantly juxtaposing high and low life. 405pp, paperback.