Louis Theroux's hilarious and thought-provoking journey through weird AmericaFor ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about off-beat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he revisits America and the people who have most fascinated him to try to discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they believe, and to find out what has happened to them since he last saw them. Along the way Louis thinks about what drives him to spend so much time among weird people, and considers whether he's learned anything about himself in the course of ten years working with them. Has he manipulated the people he's interviewed, or have they manipulated him? From his Las Vegas base, Louis revisits the assorted dreamers and outlaws who have been his TV feeding ground. Attempting to understand a little about himself and the workings of his own mind, Louis considers questions such as: What is the difference between pathology and 'normal' weirdness? Is there something particularly weird about Americans? What does it mean to be weird, or 'to be yourself'? And do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us?

Come round to Louis Theroux’s house, where the much-loved documentary-maker finds himself in unexpected danger . . . Louis’s latest TV series about weirdness – the one involving the American far right, home-grown jihadis, and SoundCloud rappers – has been unexpectedly derailed by the onset of a global pandemic. Now he finds himself locked down in a location even more full of pitfalls, surprises and hostile objects of inquiry: his own home. Theroux the Keyhole is the candidly honest and hilarious diary of a man attempting to navigate the perils of work and family life, locked down in Covid World with his wife, two teenagers and a Youtube-addict fiver year-old. Why is his wife so intolerant of his obsession with Joe Wicks’s daily workouts? Can he reinvent himself as a podcast host? Why has the internet gone nuts for his old journalistic compadre Joe Exotic? And will his teenage sons ever see him as anything other than ‘cringe’? This is Louis at his insightful best, as month-by-month he documents his year of unforeseen new challenges - and wonders why it took a pandemic for him to learn that what really matters in life is right in front of him.

For readers of All the Missing Girls and You Will Know Me, Impossible Causes is a gripping, claustrophobic thriller about isolation, power, and the lies that fester when witnesses stay silent. For seven months of the year, the remote island of Lark is fogbound, cut off completely from the mainland. Three strangers arrive before the mists fall: Ben Hailey, a charismatic teacher looking to make his mark, teenager Viola Kendrick, and her mother, both seeking a place to hide from unspeakable tragedy. As the winter fog sets in, the presence of the newcomers looms large in this tight-knit community. They watch as their women fall under the teacher's spell. And they watch as their daughters draw the mysterious Viola into their circle. The girls begin to meet furtively at night, dancing further and further away from the religious traditions that have held Lark together for generations. But when a body is found one morning at the girls' meeting place, high up among the sacred stones of Lark, faith turns instantly to suspicion and fear. For the island is weighted with its own dark secrets, and now it is time for them to come into the light. Eerie and menacing, timely and moving, Impossible Causes is an unputdownable thriller that examines the consequences of silence kept at young women's expense.

A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK ‘An affectionate and revealing account ... Funny, sad, real, rueful.’ The Times ‘Warm, rambling and self-aware’ Guardian The long-awaited, rambling, tender, and very funny memoir from Adam Buxton

The arrival of a meteorite in a small Finnish town causes chaos and crime in this poignant, chilling and hilarious thriller, by the international bestselling author of The Rabbit Factor and The Man Who Died – MAJOR MOVIE coming soon to Netflix! `With moral dilemmas, plenty of action, and the author's trademark mixture of humour and melancholy, this is Tuomainen's best yet ́ Guardian `Scandinavia's answer to Carl Hiaasen delivers another hectically silly crime caper involving a military chaplain, a suicidal rally driver and a very expensive meteorite ́ The Times `Finnish criminal chucklemeister Tuomainen is channelling Carl Hiaasen in this hilarious novel ́ Sunday Times ***The Times BOOK OF THE YEAR*** ***Shortlisted for the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award*** ***Shortlisted for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger*** ***WINNER of the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Fiction*** _________________ A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland, when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel. But Joel has a lot more on his mind than simply protecting the riches that have apparently rained down from heaven. His wife has just revealed that she is pregnant. Unfortunately, Joel has strong reason to think the baby isn't his. As Joel tries to fend off repeated and bungled attempts to steal the meteorite, he must also come to terms with his own situation, and discover who the father of the baby really is. Transporting the reader to the culture, landscape and mores of northern Finland Little Siberia is both a crime novel and a hilarious, blacker-than-black comedy about faith and disbelief, love and death, and what to do when bolts from the blue – both literal and figurative – turn your life upside down. _________________ `Tuomainen is the funniest writer in Europe ́ The Times `By no means Nordic noir of the familiar variety, this is eccentric, humorous fare, reminiscent of nothing so much as a Coen Brothers movie ́ Financial Times `Tuomainen continues to carve out his own niche in the chilly tundras of northern Finland in this poignant, gripping and hilarious tale ́ Daily Express `While the plots of many Nordic noir writers are turning ever more grim, Finland's Antti Tuomainen opts these days for a wittier, lighter touch ... quite the ride ́ Observer `The biting cold of Northern Finland is only matched by the cutting dark wit and compelling plot on this must-read crime novel ́ Denzil Meyrick `A brilliantly inventive and gloriously funny novel from Finland's greatest export ́ MJ Arlidge `Told in a darkly funny, deadpan style ... The result is a rollercoaster read ́ Guardian `Right up there with the best ́ TLS `Through it all, Tuomainen maintains his singular tone, which mixes black humour with genuine, sometimes biting, sympathy for desperate people, provided that none take their needfulness too far ... Little Siberia is a gripping thriller whose complications pile to precarious, intoxicating heights ́ Foreword Reviews `Tuomainen also persuades readers how hard life makes it to do the right thing in a universe that too often feels like a profound personal insult. Fans of Scandinavian noir will relish this one ́ Publishers Weekly `You don't expect to laugh when you're reading about terrible crimes, but that's what you'll do when you pick up one of Tuomainen's decidedly quirky thrillers ́ New York Times ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A stunning gardening book full of inspiration, tips and advice

Novelist and critic Alexander Theroux analyzes the pop song. National Book Award nominee, critic and one of America’s least compromising satirists, Alexander Theroux takes a comprehensive look at the colorful language of pop lyrics and the realm of rock music in general in The Grammar of Rock: silly song titles; maddening instrumentals; shrieking divas; clunker lines; the worst (and best) songs ever written; geniuses of the art; movie stars who should never have raised their voice in song but who were too shameless to refuse a mic; and the excesses of awful Christmas recordings. Praising (and critiquing) the gems of lyricists both highbrow and low, Theroux does due reverence to classic word-masters like Ira Gershwin, Jimmy Van Heusen, Cole Porter, and Sammy Cahn, lyricists as diverse as Hank Williams, Buck Ram, the Moody Blues, and Randy Newman, Dylan and the Beatles, of course, and more outré ones like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Patti Smith, the Fall (even Ghostface Killa), but he considers stupid rhymes, as well ― nonsense lyrics, chop logic, the uses and abuses of irony, country music macho, verbal howlers, how voices sound alike and why, and much more. In a way that no one else has ever done, with his usual encyclopedic insights into the state of the modern lyric, Theroux focuses on the state of language ― the power of words and the nature of syntax ― in The Grammar of Rock. He analyzes its assaults on listeners’ impulses by investigating singers’ styles, pondering illogical lunacies in lyrics, and deconstructing the nature of diction and presentation in the language. This is that rare book of discernment and probing wit (and not exclusively one that is a critical defense of quality) that positively evaluates the very nature of a pop song, and why one over another has an effect on the listener.

TRAVEL WRITING. After a decade of making documentaries about offbeat characters on the fringes of US society, Louis had the urge to return to America and track down the people who most fascinated him. It would be a reunion tour, but this time without the cameras and the sense of performance being filmed inevitably brings. It would allow him to get closer to people, to discover what really motivated them, what they believed in, and what had happened to the assorted dreamers, outlaws and eccentrics since he last saw them. On a journey that took him to the porn sets of Los Angeles, among the UFO contactees of Arizona, and up to far Northern Idaho for a festive get-together of leading neo-Nazis, he asked what 'weird people' have to tell us about our own secret natures.

Jonathan Sterne shows that understanding the historical meaning of the MP3, the world's most common format for recorded audio, involves rethinking the place of digital technologies in the broader universe of twentieth-century communication history.