Light History

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime... One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal...

In August 1969, two teenage Ojibwe cousins, Sher and Kris, leave their Northern Minnesota reservation for the lights of Minneapolis. The girls arrive in the city with only $12, their grandfather's WWII pack, two stainless steel cups, some face makeup, gum, and a lighter. But it's the ancestral connections they are also carrying—to the land and trees, to their family and culture, to love and loss—that shape their journey most. As they search for work, they cross paths with a gay Jewish boy, homeless White and Indian women, and men on the prowl for runaways.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of First Light by Geoffrey Wellum, read by Andrew Brooke. Two months before the outbreak of the Second World War, eighteen-year-old Geoffrey Wellum becomes a fighter pilot with the RAF... Desperate to get in the air, he makes it through basic training to...

When the Lights Went Out tells the story of a moment in the 1987 World Junior Championship that forever changed the lives of the players involved, and ignited a debate that ….

There was entertainment at the Republican Gala on Sunday night. The climax was a full marching band of bagpipers. They must have been hired for the week since one kept hearing them on the following days, and at all odd times, heard them even in my hotel room at four am for a few were marching in the streets of San Francisco, sounding through the night, giving off the barbaric evocation of the Scots, all valor, wrath, firmitude, and treachery - the wild complete treachery of the Scots finding its way into the sound of the pipes.

Dublin, 1907. A young actress begins an affair with an older man. Outspoken and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a Catholic girl from the slums of Dublin, dreaming of stardom in America. Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius. Their affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is quarrelsome...

NOMINATED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE November 1944. A German rocket strikes London, and five young lives are atomised in an instant. November 1944. That rocket never lands. A single second in time is altered, and five young lives go on - to experience all the unimaginable changes of the twentieth...

Brought to you by Penguin. Dancing by the Light of the Moon, a collection of poetry to last you a lifetime - poems that will bring you joy, solace, celebration and love for every occasion Includes an updated chapter of poems to bring you hope and happiness this year A POEM CAN . . . Comfort ·...

Jon Savage's oral history of Joy Division is the last word on the band that ended with the suicide of Ian Curtis in Macclesfield on May 18, 1980. It weaves together interviews conducted by the author, but never used in the making of the film Joy Division, which told the story of the band in their own words, as well as those of their peers, collaborators, and contemporaries.  

A talk by Terence McKenna about how our global culture is preparing to depart for the stars, so we must begin to pack for the trip. He begins with a discussion of botanical dimensions of folk medicine which are lost in pharmacology and how this is being uncovered by the New Age archaic revival. McKenna envisions an end to the current age, which has consisted of eons of boredom. He goes on to discuss the growing wonder of the universe as presented by leading astronomers Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan.

The Charge of the Light Brigade is the most famous British cavalry charge in history, possibly also eclipsing the renown of any other mounted attack conducted by the armed forces of other nations in the general imagination. This cavalry action is certainly remembered far more vividly than the 1854 Battle of Balaclava during which it occurred, and even the wider Crimean War that led to the battle.

Brought to you by Penguin. This rich and enjoyable book by the acclaimed author of Japan Story explores the many ways in which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia...

In little more than a century of cinema - Birth of a Nation was 100 years old in 2015 - our sense of what a film director is, or should be, has shifted in fascinating ways. A director was once a functionary; then an important but not decisive part of an industrial process; then accepted as the person who was and should be in charge, because he was an artist and a hero. But the world has changed. 

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. 

Bloomsbury presents First Light written and read by Emma Chapman. ‘Illuminating and entertaining’ The Washington Post Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe’s history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to visualising the shadow of a black hole...

Bloomsbury presents Stay in the Light by A.M. Shine, read by Jacqueline Milne. From critically acclaimed Irish horror writer A.M. Shine, the sequel to The Watchers, now adapted into a major motion picture produced by M. Night Shyamalan. YOU MAY HAVE ESCAPED... BUT YOU'LL NEVER BE FREE. After her...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, charting how—and why—he confronted secession, threats to democracy, and the tragedy of slavery to expand the possibilities of America. “Meacham has given us the Lincoln for...

'Your book is the "really good book. Just one" that Roger Butler would have wanted' - Sir Ian McKellen 'Miraculous. The Light of Day reclaims a forgotten hero . . . I couldn't put it down' - Will Tosh 'Sir, we are homosexuals . . .' So began the letter penned by Roger Butler and sent to several...

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer told the story of the man who built the bomb. The Light of a Thousand Suns tells the story he couldn't see—the grandmother who became a shadow on stone, the doctor who crawled through the ruins searching for his wife, the children who played in radioactive snow, and the soldiers who watched their own skeletons through closed eyelids.

Listen to Beacon Lights of History, Volume Five with a movie-style soundtrack and amplify your audiobook experience. Volume Five continues the commentary on world history begun in the first four volumes. This volume looks at some of the main religious figures of the Middle Ages, as well as social issues like the Crusades and the feudal system.