New Release Books by Adam Roberts

Alma is a private detective in a near-future England, a country desperately trying to tempt people away from the delights of Shine, the immersive successor to the internet. But most people are happy to spend their lives plugged in, and the country is decaying. Alma's partner is ill, and has to be treated without fail every 4 hours, a task that only Alma can do. If she misses the 5 minute window her lover will die. She is one of the few not to access the Shine. So when Alma is called to an automated car factory to be shown an impossible death and finds herself caught up in a political coup, she knows that getting too deep may leave her unable to get home. What follows is a fast-paced Hitchcockian thriller as Alma evades arrest, digs into the conspiracy, and tries to work out how on earth a dead body appeared in the boot of a freshly-made car in a fully-automated factory.

Young Forktongue Davy has visions; epilepsy, his Ma calls it. He's barely able to help around the family farm. But something about the lad is attracting attention: the menacing stranger who might be the angel of death himself; the women-only community at Wycombe; Daniel, sent by the mysterious Guz. They all want Davy for their own reasons. But what use can he be to anyone? He has visions of flight, but how can flight ever be possible in this shattered world? A simple farmboy, caught up in events beyond his power to control-but his visions may be the key to the future.

Gathered together for the first time from a major publisher - a collection of short stories by Adam Roberts. Unique twisted visions from the edges and the centre of the SF genres. Stories that carry Adam Roberts' trademark elegance of style and restless enquiry of the genre he loves so much. Acclaimed stories, some that have appeared in magazines, some in anthologies, some appearing for the first time. Stories to make you think, to make you laugh, to make you wonder, to make you uneasy. Stories that ask questions, stories that sow mysteries. But always stories that entertain.

Acclaimed speculative fiction author Adam Roberts' first poetry collection is a startling new translation of Vergil's Ecologues.

The historical novel meets science fiction and horror in this gripping tale set in the Lake District.

Learn to cook from the best chefs in America Some people say you can only learn to cook by doing. So Adam Roberts, creator of the award-winning blog The Amateur Gourmet, set out to cook in 50 of America's best kitchens to figure out how any average Joe or Jane can cook like a seasoned pro. From Alice Waters's garden to José Andrés's home kitchen, it was a journey peppered with rock-star chefs and dedicated home cooks unified by a common passion, one that Roberts understands deeply and transfers to the reader with flair, thoughtfulness, and good humor: a love and appreciation of cooking. Roberts adapts recipes from Hugh Acheson, Lidia Bastianich, Roy Choi, Harold Dieterle, Sara Moulton, and more. The culmination of that journey is a cookbook filled with lessons, tips, and tricks from the most admired chefs in America, including how to properly dress a salad, bake a no-fail piecrust, make light and airy pasta, and stir-fry in a wok, plus how to improve your knife skills, eliminate wasteful food practices, and create recipes of your very own. Most important, Roberts has adapted 150 of the chefs' signature recipes into totally doable dishes for the home cook. Now anyone can learn to cook like a pro!

There are few things in life more delicious, satisfying and universally loved than a plate of glistening, slow-cooked rack of ribs. Ribs is the ultimate collection of the very best recipes, tips and techniques from barbecue aficionado Adam Roberts. Roberts walks you through the big, bold flavors for all levels of expertise with all you need to know about different rib types, marinades, rubs and cooking methods for both indoor and outdoor kitchens.

In contrast to the common perception that the United Nations is, or should become, a system of collective security, this paper advances the proposition that the UN Security Council embodies a necessarily selective approach. Analysis of its record since 1945 suggests that the Council cannot address all security threats effectively. The reasons for this include not only the veto power of the five permanent members, but also the selectivity of all UN member states: their unwillingness to provide forces for peacekeeping or other purposes except on a case-by-case basis, and their reluctance to involve the Council in certain conflicts to which they are parties, or which they perceive as distant, complex and resistant to outside involvement. The Council�s selectivity is generally seen as a problem, even a threat to its legitimacy. Yet selectivity, which is rooted in prudence and in the UN Charter itself, has some virtues. Acknowledging the necessary limitations within which the Security Council operates, this paper evaluates the Council�s achievements in tackling the problem of war since 1945. In doing so, it sheds light on the division of labour among the Council, regional security bodies and states, and offers a pioneering contribution to public and governmental understanding of the UN�s past, present and future roles.

WINNER OF THE BSFA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL Jack Glass is the murderer. We know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged. Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, JACK GLASS is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain and JACK GLASS has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits and comes with liberal doses of sly humour. Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challanges notions of crime, punishment, power and freedom. It is an extraordinary novel.

In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair, hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain ... The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. A year later a young woman arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation.

Solaris Rising 1.5 continues the exciting new series of SF anthologies from Solaris and editor Ian Whates, with an exclusive ebook! An anthology of nine short stories from some of the most exciting names in science fiction today. From both sides of the Atlantic – and further afield – these nine great writers offer you everything from a mystery about the nature of the universe to an inexplicable transmission to everyone on Earth, and from engineered giant spiders to Venetian palaces in space. So settle in, and enjoy yet more proof of the extraordinary breadth and depth of contemporary SF. Featuring Adam Roberts, Aliette de Bodard, Gareth L. Powell, Mike Resnick, Sarah Lotz, Phillip Vine, Tanith Lee, Paul Cornell, Paul di Filippo.

Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle is a groundbreaking book by the "godfather of nonviolent resistance." In nearly 1,000 entries, the Dictionary defines those ideologies, political systems, strategies, methods, and concepts that form the core of nonviolent action as it has occurred throughout history and across the globe, providing much-needed clarification of language that is often mired in confusion.

India dreams of a glorious future: to be a great power with global influence. And that may soon be within its reach - it has a young, dynamic and increasingly skilled population, a large and fast-growing economy and, as a democracy, its rise is welcomed by the West. But, as Adam Roberts shows here, India must overcome equally large challenges. Travelling from Kashmir to Kerala, he gathers evidence of a changing nation, as India seeks to shape its relationships with China, Pakistan and America, resolve the legacy of colonialism and improve the health and education of its citizens. Drawing on years of on-the-ground research as the Economist's South Asia Bureau Chief, and interviews with everyone from rickshaw drivers to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is essential reading for anyone who asks what the future holds for an immense and globally important nation.

Adam Roberts turns his attention to answering the Fermi Paradox with a taut and claustrophobic tale that echoes John Carpenter's The Thing. Two men while away the days in an Antarctic research station. Tensions between them build as they argue over a love-letter one of them has received. One is practical and open. The other surly, superior and obsessed with reading one book - by the philosopher Kant. As a storm brews and they lose contact with the outside world they debate Kant, reality and the emptiness of the universe. They come to hate each other, and they learn that they are not alone.

This book is the definitive critical history of science fiction. The 2006 first edition of this work traced the development of the genre from Ancient Greece and the European Reformation through to the end of the 20th century. This new 2nd edition has been revised thoroughly and very significantly expanded. An all-new final chapter discusses 21st-century science fiction, and there is new material in every chapter: a wealth of new readings and original research. The author’s groundbreaking thesis that science fiction is born out of the 17th-century Reformation is here bolstered with a wide range of new supporting material and many hundreds of 17th- and 18th-century science fiction texts, some of which have never been discussed before. The account of 19th-century science fiction has been expanded, and the various chapters tracing the twentieth-century bring in more writing by women, and science fiction in other media including cinema, TV, comics, fan-culture and other modes.

From distant planets to space-borne combat, from desperate attempts to win a race to the last hope of a beleaguered world, fifteen stories of Military SF and space opera, written to celebrate the 10th anniversary of independent publisher NewCon Press 1. Introduction 2. The Last Tank Commander - Allen Stroud 3. Between Nine and Eleven - Adam Roberts 4. Taking Flight - Una McCormack 5. The 10 Second War - Michael Brookes 6. Decommissioned - Tade Thompson 7. Another Day in Paradise - Amy duBoff 8. Round Trip - Robert Sharp 9. Arm Every Woman - Nik Abnett 10. Hill 435 - Tim C. Taylor 11. The Wolf, The Goat, and the Cabbage - Janet Edwards 12. Pickaxes and Shovels - Christopher Nuttall 13. The Gun - Ian Whates 14. Tactics for Optimal Outcomes in Negotiations with Wergen Ambassadors - Mercurio D Rivera 15. The Story of the Ten - Jo Zebedee

An award winning author in his own right, Adam Roberts makes no concessions when appraising the work of others. His reviews are honest, forthright, and never timid. Following the success of Sibilant Fricative (Steel Quill Books, 2014), Adam now takes on the daunting task of providing an overview of the science fiction and fantasy produced during 2014. As ever, he pulls no punches, and Rave and Let Die features nearly 100 reviews, packed with the sort of insight, wit, and honesty that characterised the first volume. One thing the author never loses sight of is the need to entertain. What the Critics have said of Sibilant Fricative: "Sibilant Fricative is undoubtedly one of the finest collections of essays that genre criticism has ever produced." - Jonathan McCalmont, BSFA Vector magazine ..".the essay on the "Two Hobbits" is worth the entry ticket alone, and there is so much more entertainment within... Erudite, entertaining, intelligent collection of essays and reviews." - The Bristol Book Blog "Adam Roberts makes everything wonderful. If he wrote non-fiction about drying paint, I would still be the first in line to read it." - Jared Shurin of Pornokitsch.

Adam Roberts' new novel is a terrifying vision of a near future war - a civil war that tears the UK apart as new technologies allow the world's first truly democratic army to take on the British army and wrest control from the powers that be. Taking advances in modern communication and the new eagerness for power from the bottom upwards, Adam Roberts has produced a novel that is at once an exciting war novel and a philosophical examination of war and democracy. It shows one of the UK's most exciting and innovative literary voices working at the height of his powers and investing SF with literary significance that is its due.

Lizbreath Salamander is young and beautiful. Her scales have an iridescent sheen, her wings arch proudly, her breath has a tang of sulfur. And on her back a tattoo of a mythical creature: a girl. But when Lizbreath is drawn into a dark conspiracy she will have to rely on more than her beauty and her vicious claws the size of sabres ... A dragon has disappeared, one of a secretive clan. As Lizbreath delves deeper into their history she realises that these dragons will do anything to defend their secrets. Welcome to the world of The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo. A world of gloomy Nordic dragons leading lives uncannily like our own (despite their size, despite the need for extensive fireproofing of home furnishings), a world of money hoarded, a world of darkness and corruption. A world where people are the fantasy.

Two narrators tell the story of the simmering tensions between their two communities as they travel out to a new planet, colonise it, then destroy themselves when the tensions turn into outright war. Adam Roberts is a new writer completely in command of the SF genre. This is a novel that is at once entertaining and philosophical. The attitudes and prejudices of its characters are subtlety drawn and ring completely true despite the alien circumstances they find themselves in. The grasp of science and its impact on people is instinctive. But above all it is the epic and colourful world building that marks SALT out - the planet Salt rivals Dune in its desolation and is a suitably biblical setting for a novel that is powered by the corrupting influence of imperfectly remembered religions on distant societies. From the early scenes set on a colony ship towed by a massive ice meteorite, to the description of a planet covered in sodium chloride, to the chilling narrative of a world sliding into its first war, this is a novel from a writer who shouts star quality.

Sprung from a prison in the centre of a star, the universe's last criminal is employed to kill the population of a planet. It is a crime that will tear apart an interstellar utopia. Keeping ahead of detection and preparing the crime, the killer voyages to numerous worlds and hones the instincts required for murder. And wonders who is behind the contract. Roberts' new novel is an extraordinary fusing of ideas, exotic locations, personal drama and an enquiry into the nature of crime in a society that thinks it has forgotten how to commit it.

It is 1848 and the British Empire has grown rich exploiting Lilliputian slaves - the finesse of their working allowing unheard of feats of minature engineering; even Babbage's computing device has been made to work. But now the French have formed a regiment of previously peaceful Brobdingnagian giants and invasion looms. In a world where humanity is both smaller and larger than it once was, love and hate loom large. Mankind discovers itself at the centre of scale. Lilliputians are twelve times smaller than us but there are those twelve times smaller than them, and twelve times smaller again and so on. And the scale of being goes up from Swift's giants also ... Adam Roberts has written both a rip roaring 19th century adventure, a love story and a thought-provoking pre-atomic SF novel about our place in the universe.

THE LAND OF THE HEADLESS is set in a far future where mankind has taken his religious dogma and the divsions that result from it out into space. On a planet where society is shaped by a strict adherance to the word of God as laid out in the Old Testament and Quran a poet is accused of the rape of a woman. Found guilty he must face the punishment laid down in the Good Book; beheading. Beheaded, he is fitted with a neck valve, ordinator and basic sensory equipment and sent out into the world. But he bears a terrible and very visible stigma. the only way he can make a living is to join the army and serve in the war against the neighbouring planet. And plan his revenge against the man he believes is really guilty. LAND OF THE HEADLESS is a searing satire of religious fundamentalism, a novel of love and war and a study of self-delusion. It is an elegantly written, thought-provoking and unique SF novel.

THE SELLAMILLION is NOT a parody of Tolkien's THE SILMARILLION. That would be pointless because although all Tolkien fans have a copy, only three of them have read past page 40. It is, however, a parody of all that Tolkien created as he worked on LORD OF THE RINGS. The history of the elderly days. Early missing drafts of LORD OF THE RINGS. A correspondence between the author and publisher on whether it should be a Bellybutton Stud of Doom rather than a Ring of Power. An experimental version of LOTR as if written by Dr Seuss. That sort of thing. It'll be funny. Possibly hilarious. The author's told us it will be. Promised even. And he did write THE SODDIT. And that was quite funny.

Humanity Among The Stars What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars? Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us fourteen new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field. The fourteen startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds and Peter Watts.

Adam Roberts' The Soddit was a Sunday Times bestseller and sold 150,000 copies. But what happened to the Soddit after his adventures, and after his account of them was published ...?

It is 1958 and France's first nuclear submarine, Plongeur, leaves port for the first of its sea trials. On board, gathered together for the first time, one of the Navy's most experienced captains and a tiny skeleton crew of sailors, engineers and scientists. The Plongeur makes her first dive and goes down, and down and down... Out of control, the submarine plummets to a depth where the pressure will crush her hull, killing everyone on board, and beyond. The pressure builds, the hull protests, the crew prepare for death, the boat reaches the bottom of the sea and finds... nothing. Her final dive continues, the pressure begins to relent, but the depth gauge is useless. They have gone miles down. Hundreds of miles, thousands... And so it goes on. And on board the crew succumb to madness, betrayal, religious mania and murder. Has the Plongeur left the limits of our world and gone elsewhere? Contains 33 full-page pen and ink illustrations by acclaimed artist Mahendra Singh, who previously illustrated an edition of THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK. Adam Roberts and Mahendra Singh have revisited Jules Verne's classic SF novel, and together they have come up with a unique vision.

Gradisil is a multi-generational story of murder, betrayal and revenge. It is told through the eyes of three characters and against a background where mankinds rush into space has faded away leaving individual pioneers to force their way independently into space after the collapse of the big government space agencies. They ride up into space on the lines of electromagnetic force that flower into space from earth like the mighty Yggradisil - the earth tree of Norse myth. Leaving their weight behind they still carry a cargo of enmities and hatreds. Roberts has a unique approach to SF and is one of the genre's premier stylists. This is one of his most original novels yet.

"Adam Roberts makes everything wonderful. If he wrote non-fiction about drying paint, I would still be the first in line to read it." - Jared Shurin, Pornokitsch. An award winning author in his own right, Adam Roberts makes no concessions when appraising the work of others. His reviews are honest, forthright, and never timid. In Sibilant Fricative Adam considers a broad spectrum of speculative fiction, from fantasy to science fiction, from literature to films. The book opens with insightful consideration of Philip K Dick's oeuvre followed by Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and closes with a volume-by-volume analysis of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time opus. Along the way we stop off for a review by text among other amusements - one thing the author never loses sight of is the need to entertain. "Titan is one of the blandest pieces of fiction I have come across in four decades of reading novels. If the Campbell shortlist is a high-class curry restaurant of delicious, spicy and stimulating food, then Titan is a single slice of white bread and margarine on a white plate under the neon light of a truck drivers' cafe." on Titan by Ben Bova "Let me see if I can boil down Crossroads of Twilight's 700-pages for you. Drivel. There you go." on Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan"

"Irregularity is incredible, 'a webwork of reference, inspiration, inference and opposition' which investigates the place of the imagination in an era on the very edge of enlightenment" - Tor.com "There is just so much to appreciate and enjoy.... fourteen individual, impeccably formed, visions of literary minds. I'm pleased to confirm that each and every one them, and the tales they have to tell, are most definitely worthy of your time." - The Eloquent Page "Clever, subversive and just so much fun" - A Fantastical Librarian "One of the best short story anthologies I've ever read, executed with an incredible amount of cleverness. Huge achievement." - Under the Radar --- During the Age of Reason, the world's greatest minds named, measured and catalogued the world around them. They brought order and discipline to the universe. Except where they didn't. Irregularity collects fourteen original stories from extraordinary literary voices, each featuring someone - or something - that refused to obey the dictates of reason: Darwin's other voyage, the secret names of spiders, the assassination of Isaac Newton and an utterly impossible book. --- Contents include: "Fairchild's Folly" by Tiffani Angus "A Game Proposition" by Rose Biggin "A Woman Out of Time" by Kim Curran "The Heart of Aris Kindt" by Richard de Nooy "Footprint" by Archie Black "An Experiment in the Formulae of Thought" by Simon Guerrier "Irregularity" by Nick Harkaway "Circulation" by Roger Luckhurst "The Voyage of the Basset" by Claire North "The Assassination of Isaac Newton by the Coward Robert Boyle" by Adam Roberts "Animalia Paradoxa" by Henrietta Rose-Innes "The Last Escapement" by James Smythe "The Darkness" by M. Suddain "The Spiders of Stockholm" by E. J. Swift Fom John Harrison to Ada Lovelace, Isaac Newton to Emilie du Chatelet, these stories showcase the Age of Reason in a very different light. Irregularity also contains an afterword by Sophie Waring and Richard Dunn, Head of Science and Technology at Royal Museums Greenwich. Irregularity is illustrated by Gary Northfield, inspired by paintings provided by the National Maritime Museum. The cover shows "Resolution," artwork by Howard Hardiman. Irregularity is published to coincide with the Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition at the Royal Maritime Museum, part of Longitude Season - a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Longitude Act.

Adam Roberts' fourth novel is his most ambitious yet. In a feat of extraordinary world building he creates a universe where a breathable atmosphere extends out between the planets, where aristocrats cruise interstellar space in biplanes and skywhals make mysterious distant orbits. Then, with bravura plotting, he undermines our own notions of reality and leaves the reader unsure which universe to believe in. Gaining a reputation as one of the UK's leading SF stylists and masters of the high-concept, Roberts, shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke award with his debut novel SALT, confirms his extraordinary potential with POLYSTOM.

Can't live without English Football? This is the perfect item for you! This is a great collection of English Football 2021 themed search words for the true football lover. The book features amazing trivia from the world of football on every page. Why is it a must-see? The book contains information and search words from three English Leagues: the Premier League, the Championship and the League One. On each page you will find amazing trivia and interesting facts from the world of English Football. The book is divided into 8 different categories of words to search for. From Footballers to Club Mascots, Club Nicknames, Referees and much more. Your knowledge will increase significantly! The large print and instructions make everything easy and clear. The additional " Legends " section will make you go back in time and remember the play of such great players as Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer, Andrew Cole and many more! Satisfaction guaranteed! I am sure you and your child will enjoy the book. However, if you want to return it we will give you your money back no questions asked. Table of Contest: Premier League - Teams Championship - Teams League One - Teams Arsenal Aston Villa Brighton & Hove Albion Burnley Chelsea Crystal Palace Everton Fulham Leeds Leicester Liverpool Manchester City Manchester United Newcastle Shiefield United Southampton Tottenham West Bromwich Albion West Ham United Wolverhampton Coaches Premier League Stadiums Championship Stadiums League One Stadiums Football Mascots Nicknames Referee Legends Scroll to the top of this page and click the Add to Cart button.