Showing results by publisher "Fourth Estate" in All Categories

Genetic engineering expert Dr Alina Chan and renowned science writer Matt Ridley examine the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, using their formidable skills to scrutinise arguments and rigorously analyse the sprawling data. Viral is a fascinating account that takes in pangolins, horseshoe bats, internet sleuths and misleading scientific papers. It details the evidence and investigates hypotheses for the virus origin, chief among them a potential laboratory leak or a natural spillover.

Unhappy with his programmed job of dentistry and inspired by a love of classic movies, Jared sets out on a bold mission: to use the power of his burgeoning feelings to forever change the world for him and all his kind. Unfortunately, Jared intends to do this by writing his own movie and things do not proceed according to plan....

After her grandmother died, Hadley Freeman travelled to her apartment to try and make sense of a woman she’d never really known. Sala Glass was a European expat in America – defiantly clinging to her French influences, famously reserved, fashionable to the end – yet to Hadley much of her life remained a mystery. Sala’s experience of surviving one of the most tumultuous periods in modern history was never spoken about.

In November 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors, and now faces 55 years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day. The Lasting Harm is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome.

For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight - or the headlines. Even as Demi was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. Inside Out is a story of survival, success, and surrender - a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s at once ordinary and iconic life.

Marguerite Demers is 24 when she leaves Paris for the sleepy southern village of Saint-Sulpice, to take up a job as a live-in nurse. Her charge is Jerome Lanvier, once one of the most powerful men in the village, and now dying alone in his large and secluded house, surrounded by rambling gardens. Manipulative and tyrannical, Jerome has scared away all his previous nurses.

Look at the green organism across the room or through the window: the potted plant, or the grass, or a tree. Think how a life spent constantly growing yet rooted in a single spot comes with tremendous challenges. To meet them, plants have come up with some of the most creative methods for surviving of any living thing, us included. Many are so ingenious that they seem nearly impossible. There is no doubt that plants are important: plants, or their green precursors the blue-green algae and algae themselves, have produced all the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere, allowing animals to evolve.

Clinical psychology Dr Meg Jay sounds the alarm about a problem which has reached epidemic proportions: the over-prescription of antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs to young people who are in many cases going through normal developmental challenges. Psychologist, Dr Meg Jay makes the point that our twenties are the most challenging time of life and why over-medicating isn’t the answer to the mental health problems facing young people. She goes onto advise how young people can develop the skills needed to navigate work, love, friendship, mental health, and more during that decade and beyond.

Clean begins with an inescapable fact: a girl has died. Told by Estela, a maid to a wealthy, middle class family who speaks to us from a locked room, we hear of her plight and the circumstances that led to this moment. As we enter into her account of her daily existence, we see how her apparently simple life begins to sour, but would that drive her to the unthinkable? Disturbing and profound, Clean explores domestic work, class and violence, against the backdrop of Chile’s changing political landscape. This is one of the most daring and compelling thrillers in international literature.

June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin. Four months earlier. Harriet is a young maid newly employed at Finton Hall. Fleeing the drudgery of an unwanted engagement in the small village where she grew up, Harriet is entranced by the grand country hall; she is entranced too by her glamorous mistress Clara Gethin, whose unearthly singing voice floats through the house. But Clara, though captivating, is erratic.

In Jake, Marisa has found everything she’s ever wanted. Then their new lodger, Kate, arrives. Something about Kate isn’t right. Is it the way she looks at Marisa’s boyfriend? Sits too close on the sofa? Constantly asks about the baby they are trying for? Or is it all just in Marisa’s head? After all, that’s what her Jake keeps telling her, and she trusts him - doesn’t she? But Marisa knows something is wrong. That the woman sleeping in their house will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Marisa just doesn’t know why.

From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx—whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth—comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon.

Italy is exhausted. Tired of the political class. Tired of the inept moderates and the agonising machinations of a democracy that no longer seems to be working. While the leaders of the country have sat idly in the safety of parliament, achieving nothing, one man on the outside has risen to the top. Like an animal, he can smell that change is coming. He is Benito Mussolini.

A writer takes residence in the illustrious but decaying Grand Hotel Europa, to think about where things went wrong with Clio, with whom he fell in love in Genoa and moved to Venice. He reconstructs a compelling story of love in times of mass tourism, about their trips to Malta, Palmaria, Portovenere and the Cinque Terre and their thrilling search for the last painting of Caravaggio. Meanwhile, he becomes fascinated by the mysteries of Grand Hotel Europe and gets more and more involved with the memorable characters who inhabit it, and who seem to come from a more elegant time.

In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together, with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit.

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. It is innovation that will shape the 21st century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike. Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan.

This is a story of a London you won’t find in any guidebooks. This is a story about what it’s like to exist in the moment, about boys too eager to become men, growing up in the hidden war zones of big cities - and the girls trying to make it their own way. This is a story of reputations made and lost, of violence and vengeance - and never counting the cost. This is a story of concrete towers and blank-eyed windows, of endless nights in police stations and prison cells, of brotherhood and betrayal.

Countries die. Sometimes it’s murder, sometimes it’s by accident, and sometimes it’s because they were so ludicrous they didn’t deserve to exist in the first place. Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either ‘got too greedy’ or ‘Napoleon turned up’. Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence. This is an atlas of nations that fell off the map.

From the bestselling author of ‘Mum, What’s Wrong with You?’ comes a witty, compelling, honest and reassuring guide to living a magnificent midlife. Tackling everything from empty nest, career reinvention, sex, marriage, brain fog, burnout, perimenopause and menopause this laugh-out-loud memoir is a pathfinder for women whose messy midlife rage caught them by surprise. With advice from experts, celebrities and personal stories, the book will help women feel less alone as they embrace this liberating and transformational new stage of life.

A worldwide best seller, translated into more than 12 languages, The Female Eunuch is a landmark in the history of the women’s movement. Drawing liberally from history, literature and popular culture, past and present, Germaine Greer’s searing examination of women’s oppression is at once an important social commentary and a passionately argued masterpiece of polemic. Probably the most famous, most widely read book on feminism ever.