The author became famous for his documentary series Walking With Elephants on Channel 4 TV. His book comes at a critical time. 50 years ago, Africa was home to just over 1.3 million elephants, but by 1990 the number had halved. Meanwhile in the span of a lifetime, the human population has more than doubled. This book explores the rapid decline of one of the world's favourite animals. Filled with stories from his own time spent travelling with elephants in Africa, and documenting their migration for his TV series, the book is a passionate wake-up call for this endangered species we take for granted and to help halt their extinction and the measures required. Chapters include Ancestors and Evolution, Friends and Relations, A Curious Mind, Poaching, Ivory and Trade, Taking Trophies, Habitat Loss and A World Without. Filled with facts, stories and history. 260pp, paperback with 16 pages of mostly colour photos.

Sub-titled 'The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean', more than a business book, this is the primer for anyone fed up with the meanness of much of society and looking for inspiration to do better. Bodanis makes chilling parallels between our era and the 1930s and chapters on the lives of contemporaries: Goebbels and F. D. Roosevelt are gripping to read or the example of Captain Bligh from Mutiny of the Bounty who was a model of good captaincy with excellent relations with his volunteer crew until he snapped when the pressure got too high. Bodanis reveals how it was fairness, applied with skill, that led the Empire State Building to be constructed in barely a year, and how the same techniques brought a quiet English debutante to become an acclaimed jungle guerrilla fighter. The ten vivid profiles feature pilots, presidents, and even a producer of Game of Thrones - we see that you can succeed without being a bully and that simple fair decency can prevail. 321pp, illustrated paperback.

By the bestselling author of over 20 historical novels, this is the third in her stunning Eleanor of Aquitaine trilogy. Picking up any of her novels, you enjoy the beautifully strong characters and a real feel for time and place. England 1176 and imprisoned by her powerful husband King Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England, refuses to let him bully her into submission, even as he forces her away from her children and her birth right. Freed only by his death, Eleanor becomes dowager Queen of England, but the competition for land and power which Henry stirred up among his sons has intensified into a dangerous rivalry. Eleanor will need all her courage and fortitude as she crosses the Alps in winter to bring Richard his bride, and travels medieval Europe to ransom her beloved son. But her indomitable spirit will be tested to its limits as she attempts to keep the peace between her warring sons and find a place in the centres of power for her daughters. The life of the most powerful woman in medieval Europe, once shrouded in mystery, is now revealed by the careful research and evocative storytelling of Elizabeth Chadwick. 488pp paperback with family tree and maps.

In a Soviet prison camp near Murmansk is an old man, bowed but not broken, identified only by a number. Were his name known his fellow inmates would kill him, for this old man is Stepan Povin, former KGB General, now disgraced but kept alive for the sake of the secret that he has retained through two years of interrogation. His secret is the final link in a chain, the completion of which would make his former masters very happy indeed - a secret which draws British Intelligence ever closer to the camp in the Arctic Circle. For fans of the genre and authors such as John le Carré and Robert Harris, the novel offers great insight into the USSR and we are delighted to have this 2022 reprint of the 1985 original. 378pp, paperback.

A companion to The Fledglings code 91808, this is John Harris's gripping First World War novel for fans of Clive Cussler. To swing the tide of war you must take to the air once again. It was 1916 and the First World War still had two years to run. Martin Falconer, at 18 an experienced pilot with service in France to his credit, was kicking his heels in England, awaiting another posting to the Front. Throughout the spring he watched the progress of the war, especially the war in the air, acknowledging to himself the Germans' superiority. Their machines were better, and they had produced the war's best-known hero of the air, the Red Baron. British machines were poor, morale was low, and the odds were stacked against them. Finally at the beginning of April Martin was sent again to France, but this was the month that became known as Bloody April, when a pilot's life expectancy was two weeks, and Martin found himself in a unit demoralised and ill-managed. Harris's sombre picture of Britain at war is as compelling as only the truth can be. 283pp in facsimile reprint of the 1973 original. Fairly large print.

'Gripping, belongs to the same shelf as Gorky Park.' - Newsday. Stepan Povin, the KGB's Chief of Foreign Intelligence, is the West's most prized intelligence agent. For years he has been passing secrets from the heart of the KGB, but his position in the Lubyanka has come under threat from within. He wants out, and is seeking asylum in the West. In exchange he has a stunning piece of information to offer - the Soviets are about to capture a sophisticated American spy plane that is so crucial to America's defence she will risk nuclear war to keep its secrets safe. This disclosure is a warning of the insane bid by Kremlin hawks to hijack the American AWACS, triggering a US first strike and plunging the globe into nuclear chaos. Combining breathless high adventure and stunning insight into the Intelligence world, this can be read alone and is volume two of the trilogy and we have the companion title Nocturne for the General code 91813. 391pp, paperback reprint of the 1983 original.

The film The Seven Year Itch precipitated Marilyn into her stratospheric status as a sex symbol, but according to this author, a lifelong Marilyn fan, it was also paradoxically the film that gave Marilyn the confidence to assert herself against the studio system and to establish herself as a businesswoman with a keen interest in contracts and finance. By the time she made Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Marilyn was bored of her dumb blonde persona and seems to have married baseball legend Joe DiMaggio in order to get out of starring in The Girl in Pink Tights. When she landed The Seven Year Itch everything changed. The film fatally damaged her relationship with her second husband DiMaggio, who was unable to cope with the iconic image of Marilyn with her skirts blowing up around her. This was in spite of the fact that in her early career as a model Marilyn had posed for nude photographs, dividing opinion then and now as to whether this was a bold assertive act by a woman who needed to make her own living or a regrettable capitulation to a male agenda. Subsequent shows like There's No Business Like Show Business still failed to satisfy Marilyn, who let it be known she would like to star in films based on Dostoevsky. Abuse of women was widespread in the film industry and in 1955 she left her contract with 20th century Fox to start her own production company. At this time she also became involved with the Actors' Studio which taught Method acting, immersing yourself in every detail of a character, and the differences in their approach was at the root of the conflict between Marilyn and Laurence Olivier when they starred together in 1956 in The Sleeping Prince. 302pp, photos in black and white and colour.

In 2007 Steven Hall published The Raw Shark Texts, a book universally praised and credited with being the start of a new literary genre, "slipstream". Quite why it took the Granta Best Young British Novelist 14 years to make his triumphant return is known only to him, but Maxwell's Demon, a powerful and unusual text that "reads like a deluge" has been well worth the wait. It centres around the plight of Thomas Quinn from Hull, a failed novelist who is eking out a living writing short stories and audio scripts for others, while his wife is working on a remote island on the other side of the world. Both bills and washing up are piling up and the world seems to be rushing headlong into imminent collapse, then he receives a voicemail from his father Stanley, a man who has been dead for seven years. Thomas's relationship with his father, a world-famous writer, had always been troubled, not least because Stanley favoured his assistant/acolyte Andrew Black over his own son. Black went on to write a million-seller book but then completely disappeared and, as strange things begin to happen in his life, Thomas cannot help but wonder whether it is Black who is manipulating his world from behind the scenes, especially when a manuscript of Maxwell's Demon, apparently Black's second book, lands in his lap... Truly brilliant, this wildly entertaining and brain-teasing mystery looks behind the mask of order we place on our world when things loom chaotic and out of our control - a literary masterpiece and a joy to read. 339pp.

For children aged 3-7, this retelling of the story of Red Riding Hood by the legendary children's author Beatrix Potter is a gorgeous read. It is beautifully complemented with full-page colour illustrations by Helen Oxenbury, acclaimed illustrator of the modern children's classic We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Unlike the authors of some versions, Potter makes no attempt to disguise the fact that the story does not end well for Red Riding Hood and her Grandma, but in her foreword to the volume, Oxenbury explains that she has tried to offer an alternative, happier ending in her final illustration, where the woodcutters are running after the escaping fox who is far too fat to get away. The villainous fox is in many ways the star of the story with his gleaming eyes and malevolently scheming expression, and Oxenbury describes how she really enjoyed bringing out the humour in his wickedness. Potter's own stories are rooted in the English countryside, and these illustrations bring out the beauty of the path which "led over hill and dale, through golden meadow sunshine, and under the flickering, leafy shadows of the birch trees." Red Riding Hood is pictured waist high in a meadow of poppies and cow parsley, then in the shadows of the evening sunshine as she reaches her destination. 46pp, beautifully illustrated in colour.

Themed round the allure of alcohol, these 27 short stories range from the grisly to the completely hilarious and are a wonderful read. Dorothy Parker's "You were perfectly fine" shows a young woman reassuring her boyfriend that he didn't make a complete fool of himself when paralytically drunk, culminating in her expressions of delight at his marriage proposal and leaving the reader, together with the young man himself, to guess whether the proposal really happened. Edgar Allen Poe's classic story "The Cask of Amontillado" is a dark and horrific tale of revenge. An extract from Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim depicts the scene where Jim is the weekend guest of his boss and is appalled to wake up surrounded by burnt sheets, deducing that he must have fallen asleep with a lit cigarette. Samuel Beckett's "Ding Dong" is the tale of his friend Belacqua's progress through the watering holes of Dublin, culminating in his extraordinary encounter with a mesmerising female beggar in purple. "Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest" by P. G. Wodehouse shows the Master Fixer in superb form, getting rid of Aunt Agatha's embarrassing son Motty and doing a deal with Bertie regarding a regrettably pink tie. P.G. Wodehouse and Kingsley Amis; Charles Jackson and Jean Rhys chronicle liquor-soaked epiphanies; while John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, and Robert Coover set their characters afloat on surreal, soul-revealing adventures. Other writers include Charles Dickens, Alice Munro, Penelope Lively, Doris Lessing, Damon Runyon, Roald Dahl, and every story is a gem. 393pp, Everyman Pocket Classic. Remainder mark.