In this, his first volume of original verse since the award-winning Landing Light, Don Paterson is found writing at his most memorable and direct. In an assembly of masterful lyrics and monologues, he conjures a series of fables and charms that serve both to expose us to the unsettling forces within the world and simultaneously offer some protection against them. Whether outwardly elemental in their address, or more personal in their direction, these poems – to the rain and the sea, to his young sons or beloved friends – never shy from their inquiry into truth and lie, embracing everything in scope from the rangy narrative to the tiny renku.

“Rain”, which includes the winner of this year’s Forward Prize for the Best Individual Poem and an extended elegy for the poet Michael Donaghy, is Don Paterson’s most intimate and manifest collection to date.

Did you hear about the scarecrow that won the Nobel Prize? He was outstanding in his field. What kind of cheese can hide a horse? Mascarpone. What about the red ship and the purple ship that collided at sea? Over one hundred sailors were marooned.

Did you hear about the paranoid vegetarian? He always feared the wurst. A blonde Essex girl walked into a bar with an Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman, and started to change the lightbulb. The barman asked, ‘Is this some kind of joke?’.

This is the third in the bestselling series of hilarious joke books – packed full of every kind of joke to make you laugh until your sides split. From elephants to mothers-in-law, priests to chickens, ‘knock knock’ to ‘doctor, doctor’ and much more besides, “A Man Walks into a Bar 3″ contains over 2,500 great new gags. Even Queen Victoria would be amused.

Already famous throughout Europe for his theories of planetary motion and gravity, Isaac Newton decided to take on the job of running the Royal Mint. And there, Newton became drawn into a battle with William Chaloner, the most skilful of counterfeiters, a man who not only got away with faking His Majesty’s coins (a crime that the law equated with treason), but was trying to take over the Mint itself. But Chaloner had no idea who he was taking on.

Newton pursued his enemy with the cold, implacable logic that he brought to his scientific research. Set against the backdrop of early eighteenth-century London with its sewers running down the middle of the streets, its fetid rivers, its packed houses, smoke and fog, its industries and its great port, this dark tale of obsession and revenge transforms our image of Britain’s greatest scientist.

Why can’t you light a candle in a spaceship? What books are bad for you? Is nature natural? Every year the Oxford and Cambridge’s learned academics pose such curious conundrums to potential students to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the clever from both of them. Deftly exploring the twisting paths your mind can take when you’re really made to think , “Do You Think You’re Clever?” provides dazzling answers to over 60 of these infamously perplexing problems. John Farndon takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride from philosophy to physics, literature to logarithms – considering why the pole vaulting world record will never exceed 6.5m, whether there are too many people in the world, how to reduce crime through architecture, and much more. How would you stand up against Oxbridge’s sharpist minds? “Do You Think You’re Clever” is a sparkling tour amid the heights of intellectual abstract thought. Imbibe slowly and give your neural networks the workout they crave.

A fun, challenging adventure for young children with a picture puzzle to solve on every double page. When Katy and Tim are invited to the Puzzle Holiday Park, they know they’re in for a fun-packed day. There’s seaside and circus fun to be had, along with a splash pool and a big funfair. Wonderful and diverting…just what you want on holiday.