India Uniform Nine (Hardback)

Secrets From Inside a Covert Customs Unit

Mark Perlstrom

An eye-opening account from inside an ultra-secret Customs unit

Mark Perlstrom is no stranger to money laundering, drug smuggling and crooked firms.

In the late 1980s he started working for HM Customs and was quickly thrown in the deep end, joining Operation C-Chase, an undercover investigation that penetrated Pablo Escobar's mighty Medellin cartel, brought down the corrupt BCCI bank and stopped London's gangs from moving their ill-gotten gains around the capital.

As part of the Uniforms – the new, secret, anti-money-laundering squad – high-speed car chases, bugging homes and spying on targets was day-to-day business.

Told by a true insider and revealing never-before-told-secrets of the industry, India Uniform Nine lays bare the intense rivalry between crime-fighting organisations and how that leads to corruption, chaos and some scarcely believable antics in the covert world. And how Mark's own operation was nearly scuppered by a US Customs bungle.

Mark Perlstrom joined the civil service in 1983, starting in the Ministry of Defence and moving to HM Customs. This is his first book. Douglas Wight is an author, ghostwriter and journalist. His recent titles include Son of Escobar, Against My Will and Amazon number 1-bestseller The Bad Room.

The Newlyweds (Hardback)

Young People Fighting for Love in the New India

Mansi Choksi

'Staggeringly good… Much like Lisa Taddeo's Three Women, it reads more like a novel than a piece of non-fiction… it does what all great writing should – it puts us into the world of someone else, so completely that days later I find myself missing the couples and wondering how their stories end' Marianne Power, The Times

'A profound book on the politics of love, of couples who brave everything and everyone to be together. Told with warmth, truth and humanity, Mansi Choksi's The Newlyweds is an extraordinary look at what it takes to be together in modern India' Nikesh Shukla

'Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand youth in India today – or for anyone who believes in the galactic powers of love to change history, personal and political' Suketu Mehta

What would you risk for love?

Twenty-first century India is a culture on fast forward, a society which is changing at breakneck speed, where two out of every three people are under the age of thirty-five. These young men and women grew up with the internet, smartphones and social media. But when it comes to love, the weight of thousands of years of tradition cannot so easily be set aside.

An extraordinary work of reportage, The Newlyweds is a portrait of modern India told through the stories of three young couples, who defy their families to pursue love. The lesbian couple forced to flee for a chance at a life together. The Hindu woman and Muslim man who must escape under the cover of night after being harassed by a violent mob. And the couple from different castes who know the terrible risk they run by marrying.

Writing with great insight and humanity, Mansi Choksi examines the true cost of modern love in an ancient culture. It is a book that will change the way readers think about love, freedom and hope.

Mansi Choksi is a writer based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Mumbai, India. The Newlyweds is her first book.

How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon (Hardback)

The Story of the Nineteenth-Century Innovators Who Forged the Future

Iwan Rhys Morus

'[An] insightful analysis of 19th-century futurism … Morus's account is as much a cautionary tale as a flag-waving celebration.' – DUNCAN BELL, NEW STATESMAN

'[How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon] rattles thrillingly through such developments as the Transatlantic telegraph cable, the steam locomotive and electric power and recalls the excitable predictions of the fiction of the time.' KATY GUEST, THE GUARDIAN

'Excellent … A terrific insight into why the Victorian era was a golden age of engineering.' – NICK SMITH, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE

By the end of the Victorian era, the world had changed irrevocably. The speed of the technological development brought about between 1800 and 1900 was completely unprecedented in human history. And as the Victorians looked to the skies and beyond as the next frontier to be explored and conquered, they were inventing, shaping and moulding the very idea of the future.

To get us to this future, the Victorians created a new way of ordering and transforming nature, built on grand designs and the mass-mobilisation of the resources of Empire – and they revolutionised science in the process.

In this rich and absorbing book, distinguished historian of science Iwan Rhys Morus tells the story of how this future was made. From Charles Babbage's dream of mechanising mathematics to Isambard Kingdom Brunel's tunnel beneath the Thames, from George Cayley's fantasies of powered flight to Nikola Tesla's visions of an electrical world, this is a story of towering personalities, clashing ambitions, furious rivalries and conflicting cultures – a vibrant tapestry of remarkable lives that transformed the world and ultimately took us to the Moon.

IWAN RHYS MORUS is professor of history at Aberystwyth University. He has published widely on the history of science, with titles including Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century (Icon, 2017), Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (Icon, 2019) and the Oxford Illustrated History of Science. He lives in Aberystwyth, Wales.

The Far Land (Hardback)

200 Years of Murder, Mania and Mutiny in the South Pacific

Brandon Presser

'The Far Land swells in the cause and effect of actions of passion. Brandon Presser's fascinating narrative of the relentless consequences of the Bounty mutineers asks: were they brave or damned? They lived so very troubled ever after. You can't make this stuff up!' TOM HANKS

'The Far Land hits a lot of my pleasure centers: remote islands, then-and-now non-fiction, historical mysteries and forthright travelogues. The first night I started reading, I dreamed about Pitcairn Island.' MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD, 2021 Booker Prize shortlisted and 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction shortlisted author of Great Circle

**WINNER OF THE 2022 LOWELL THOMAS TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD**

A THRILLING TALE OF POWER, OBSESSION AND BETRAYAL AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the South Pacific and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the era: the whereabouts of a band of fugitives who, after seizing their vessel, had disappeared into the night with their Tahitian companions.

Seven generations later, the island is still inhabited by descendants of the original mutineers, marooned like modern castaways.

In 2018, Brandon Presser went to live among its families; two clans bound by circumstance and secrets. There, he pieced together Pitcairn's full story: an operatic saga that holds all visitors in its mortal clutch – even the author.

Told through vivid historical and personal narrative, The Far Land goes beyond the infamous mutiny on the Bounty, offering an unprecedented glimpse at life on the fringes of civilization, and how, perhaps, it's not so different from our own.

Brandon Presser is a travel writer and 'rough-and-tough adventurer' (Entertainment Weekly). His writing has been featured in numerous publications including Bloomberg, Harper's Bazaar, Condé Nast Traveler and Lonely Planet.