Kennedy Connor

This book came out of a life-changing episode of "perfect storm" dimensions. As a 65-year-old man, life as I had known it became a force-10 gale. My career had crashed, my marriage of 27 years had ended suddenly, and I was nearly broke. AA was no longer the help it had been for me - no longer the flotation device or life preserver tossed to a victim who had washed overboard. Instead, it offered virtually no solutions at all - because I had finally outgrown it - and according to AA, you're not supposed to do that.

Colin, a newly divorced lecturer of critical theory, wants to spice up his life. He attempts to learn Russian, gives online dating a go, and even entertains the idea of becoming an alcoholic - but nothing sticks. So when two young women he’s never met before ask him to party, he ignores the red flags and climbs into their car. Almost as quickly as they pull away from the curb, Colin learns they’re not headed to a party: they’re headed to an abandoned building in Detroit to discuss the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the glittering, surreal heart of 21st-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship far subtler than 20th century strains, that is rapidly rising to challenge the West.

An intimate friend of Adolf Hitler’s who turned against him during the Nazi rise to power delves into the character of one of history’s most evil dictators. Of American and German parentage, Ernst Hanfstaengl graduated from Harvard and ran the family business in New York for a dozen years before returning to Germany in 1921. By chance he heard a then little-known Adolf Hitler speaking in a Munich beer hall and, mesmerized by his extraordinary oratorical power, was convinced the man would some day come to power. As Hitler’s fanatical theories and ideas hardened, however, he surrounded himself with rabid extremists...

Doris Lessing broke the rules. Born in Iran and raised in Rhodesia, she moved to Britain with little more than an unpublished novel in her suitcase. Once an ardent Communist, she distanced herself from the movement long before it's attraction faded for others. Always prolific, Lessing continued to explore uncharted territory with her series of science-fiction novels. Based on numerous interviews and sources, this book is a timely portrait of a fascinating woman.

One of the most extraordinary, imaginative and ambitious novels of the century: a history of the evolution of humankind over the next 2 billion years. Among all science fiction writers Olaf Stapledon stands alone for the sheer scope and ambition of his work. First published in 1930, Last and First Men is full of pioneering speculations about evolution, terraforming, genetic engineering and many other subjects.