One summer, just after the Great War, Tom Birkin, a demobbed soldier, arrives in the village of Oxgodby. He has been invited to uncover and restore a medieval wall painting in the local church. At the same time, Charles Moon - a fellow damaged survivor of the war - has been asked to locate the grave of a village ancestor.

This elegant deluxe slipcased edition of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour, features a beautifully decorated text and includes as a bonus the complete text of Tolkien’s acclaimed lecture on Sir Gawain.

Why are we here? What's the point of existence? For those who are unsatisfied by the answers of traditional religion, and equally by the lack of answers from atheism, Philip Goff opens up a path between the two. He argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of intelligent life.

Set in the First World War, this book concerns a group of British officers on the front line and opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new eighteen-year-old officer fresh out of English public school, joins the besieged company of his friend and cricketing hero Stanhope, and finds him dramatically changed.

When his fist album was released in 1967, the author was already well known in his native Canada as a poet and novelist, and in the United States as the writer behind Judy Collins' popular recording of 'Suzanne'. This book includes lyrics from that album, together with many of his classics, such as 'Suzanne', 'Joan of Arc' and 'The Chelsea Hotel'.

Heinz Rein was an influential German novelist writing before and after the Second World War. He became a major figure in the 'rubble literature' period and his famous novel Berlin Finale, published in 1947, was one of the first bestsellers in the tumultuous German rebuilding period. He abandoned East Germany for the West in the 1950s.

One of the philosophers of the nineteenth century, believed that human action is determined not by reason but by 'will' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This title includes his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women, suicide, books and many other themes.

As the possibility of life spreading beyond Earth becomes more tangible, renowned physicist and futurist Kaku presents a sense of what shape this experience will probably take, considering recent developments in nanotechnology and biotechnology.

Serhii Plokhy is Professor of History at Harvard University and a leading authority on Eastern Europe whose previous books include Lost Kingdom, The Gates of Europe and The Last Empire. At the time of the Chernobyl explosion he lived behind the Iron Curtain less than 500 kilometres downstream of the damaged reactor.