Book shelf

Book shelf

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Image (cropped) by Jessica Ruscello under CC0 1.0 licence

Explore a selection of publications by alumni and academics, and books with a link to the University or Cambridge

To have your book considered for inclusion, please submit your publication's details

Please note: to have your book considered for inclusion, its publication date must be either upcoming or it must have been published during the current calendar year. Unfortunately, we cannot include any details of books published prior to the current year.

The Rules

The Rules

Tracy Darnton (née Hobbs, Jesus 1986)

Amber’s an expert when it comes to staying hidden – she’s been trained her whole life for it. But what happens when the person you’re hiding from taught you everything you know?

When a letter from her dad arrives, Amber knows she’s got to move – and fast. He’s managed to find her and she knows he’ll stop at nothing to draw her back into his extreme prepper way of life. Now the Rules she’s spent so long trying to escape are the ones keeping her safe. But for how long?

The Age of Ageing Better? A Manifesto For Our Future

The Age of Ageing Better? A Manifesto For Our Future

Anna Dixon (Trinity Hall 1991)

The Age of Ageing Better? takes a radically different view of what our ageing society means. Dr Anna Dixon turns the misleading and depressing narrative of burden and massive extra cost of people living longer on its head and shows how our society could thrive if we started thinking differently.

Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Postwar Global Role

Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Postwar Global Role

Adrian Brettle (Pembroke 1991)

My book explores the Confederacy’s expansionist plans during the American Civil War and will break much new ground in placing the Confederacy, and the war in a broader sense, within a transnational context. It aims to describe what happened and what arguments were in play as to the Confederate future.

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book

James Raven (Clare 1978)

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book reveals the history of books in all their various forms, from the ancient world to the digital present.

The Lonely Century

The Lonely Century: Coming Together in a World that's Pulling Apart

Noreena Hertz

Even before a global pandemic introduced us to terms like social distancing, loneliness was well on its way to becoming the defining condition of the twenty-first century.

Combining a decade of research with first-hand reporting, Noreena Hertz takes us from ‘renting a friend’ in New York to Belgian far right festivals replete with face-painting and bouncy castles, from elderly women knitting bonnets for their robot caregivers in Japan to isolated remote workers in London during lockdown.

The Big Book of Wisdom

The Big Book of Wisdom

Larry Culliford (St Catharine's 1968)

The Big Book of Wisdom describes how to grow through adversity towards maturity, and so make an enduring personal contribution towards a safer, more peaceful, cleaner, happier world. Appealing uniquely to both spiritual and secular-minded people, combining scientific findings with logical and intuitive reasoning, this short book takes engaged readers are taken on a fulfilling journey towards wisdom by looking at: What is it? Why we need it... And how to get it. If short, why 'big'? Because there are ideas here for everyone that cover more or less everything.

Matisse: The Books

Matisse: The Books

Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Queens' 1982)

Generously illustrated with archival images and new photography, Matisse: The Books offers an unprecedented insight into the experience of reading – and looking at – Matisse’s books and brings new clarity to a controversial period in the artist’s life.

A Throne Of Swans

A Throne Of Swans

Katharine (Sidney Sussex 1989) and Elizabeth Corr

The first part of a new YA fantasy duology, loosely inspired by Swan Lake.

When her father dies just before her eighteenth birthday, Aderyn inherites the role of Protector of Atratys, a dominion in a kingdom where nobles can transform into birds. Aderyn's ancestral bird is a swan. But she has not been able to transform for years, not since witnessing the brutal death of her mother. Aderyn must venture into the malevolent heart of the Citadel in order to seek the truth about the attack that killed her mother and to fight for the land she has vowed to protect.

The Butchers

The Butchers

Ruth Gilligan (Caius 2006)

A feminist, folkloric murder mystery set in the Irish borderlands during the 1996 BSE crisis.

A photograph is hung on a gallery wall for the very first time since it was taken two decades before. It shows a slaughter house in rural Ireland, a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, a meat hook suspended from the ceiling - and, from its sharp point, the lifeless body of a man hanging by his feet.

Somerville's War

Somerville's War

Andrew Duncan (Trinity Hall 1971)

The strange brigadier who hardly speaks... Leo, his feisty pilot daughter... Labrador, the vengeful Pole... Henry Dunning-Green, Leo's boring suitor... Adrian Russell, the treacherous master spy... ... All linked by SOE Somerville, the top secret Second World War finishing school for spies on England's south coast, and its local community: A melting pot of intrigue and counter-intrigue. A fast-unfolding, untold tale of deception, betrayal and romance leading to a tense life-or-death climax in occupied France. Many of the events actually took place.

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