Books published by publisher Benn Books/Doubleday

On the eve of Granny Hazel's burial in the back garden, a stranger in his time machine visits five-year-old Edward with an odd request. Set against a backdrop of rural isolation, 'Half Sick of Shadows' is a tale of childhood wonder, familial dysfunction, poetry, theoretical physics and how men of vivid imagination get their ideas. A dark, dazzling, tragi-comic tale of childhood wonder, time-travelling poets and theoretical physics - joint winner of the inaugural Terry Pratchett Prize.

In this title, over 150 of the world's leading scientists and thinkers offer their choice of the ideas, strategies and arguments that will help all of us understand our world, and its future, better. It includes contributions from: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Pinker, Daniel Dennett, Clay Shirky, Daniel Goleman, Sam Harris, Lee Smolin, Matt Ridley, Mark Henderson, David Rowan, Sir Martin Rees, Craig Venter, Brian Eno, Jaron Lanier and David Brooks ...among others. With his organisation Edge.org, the literary agent and all-purpose intellectual impresario John Brockman has brought together the most influential thinkers of our age. Every year he sets them a question, this year that question was: What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit? Their answers are collected in this book and explore philosophy, psychology, economics, and other disciplines - and all share one aim: to provide the most reliable ways of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be human behaviour, corporate behaviour, the fate of the planet, or the future of the universe.

This diabolically clever, mercilessly phrased volley of epigrams - alphabetized and documented with a profusion of apocryphal quotations - pointedly defines man's most sacred absurdities and punctures his most comfortably pompous habits of thought (Habit, n. A shackle for the free). The collection, which H. L. Mencken declared contained "some of the most gorgeous witticisms in the English language," began in a weekly paper in 1881 and ran to 1906, in which year it was published in book form; it did not, however, appear under the name The Devil's Dictionary for another five years, since that title was at first thought to be lacking in reverence. The work is addressed, the author said, to all those who "prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang."

Jon Krakauer's literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America's fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief. Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five "plural wives," several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents. Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism's violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism.