THE EXTREMIST MIND by Nafees Hamid

THE EXTREMIST MIND weaves together personal memoir with evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, political economics, and anthropological fieldwork with jihadists, white nationalists, QAnon devotees to explain how people develop and act on extremist beliefs.

THE EXTREMIST MIND:
What It Says About Human Nature and the Modern World
by Dr Nafees Hamid
Bloomsbury UK, 2026
(via Northbank Talent Management)

We’ve all been exposed to extremist, populist, and conspiratorial narratives and yet most of us roll our eyes at it or laugh it off. What causes some small minority of people to take these narratives seriously? What causes an even smaller percentage of that population to actually act on those narratives? Why do some even give their lives based on those ideas? And, most importantly, what can we do to stop people from committing political violence?

Cognitive scientist Nafees Hamid has travelled the world meeting members of ISIS, Hezbollah, NeoNazis, QAnon, and a variety of other violent and divisive movements. He has interviewed, surveyed, conducted psychology experiments with them and is one of the few people to have scanned their brains. The book details Nafees’s experiences going out into the field to find the subjects: from escaping an ISIS recruiter; to realising his research assistant had gradually been radicalised right under his nose; to a former flatmate who turned to QAnon during the pandemic, challenging Nafees to put into practice everything he had learned in order to de-program his friend.

Dr Nafees Hamid is a Cognitive Scientist of extremism, conspiracy theories, and political violence. In his current role at King’s College London, he co-leads a multi-nation research project which explores the role of trauma and mental health on pathways to peace versus violence in fragile and conflict affected states.

GIRL ON WARD A de Christie Newport

Gripping historical thriller – perfect for all fans of Kate Morton and Hannah Kent.

GIRL ON WARD A
by Christie Newport
Storm Publishing, June 2024
(via Northbank Talent Management)

In 1995, journalist Olive Brown receives a threatening letter hinting at her connection to a dark past in an asylum in 1952. With a controlling and abusive husband and two young daughters to protect, Olive decides to investigate the matter herself to avoid jeopardizing her career.

Meanwhile, in 1952, Martha Littler is a pregnant teenager hiding her condition from her abusive parents. After giving birth, Martha’s baby is taken away by her parents, and she is admitted to Wynwarden Asylum, where she befriends fellow patient Lizzie. They discover the horrifying truth about the abusive treatments and atrocities happening within the asylum. As bodies begin to appear, Martha tries to seek the truth – whilst being torn between saving her sister and finding her baby.

The lives of Olive and Martha are linked in ways they could never imagine. As they begin to uncover the hidden pasts of those closest to them, there are deadly consequences.

Christie Newport is a mixed-heritage writer living in Northumberland. Since developing a rare illness as a child, Christie found reading and creating stories to be an escape. In recent years Christie has taken her writing seriously, honing her skills through courses and various brilliant opportunities. Writing crime and psychological thrillers set in her home city is her passion.

THE HOUSE IN THE WATER de Victoria Darke

May Day House sits, imposing and crumbling, on its own island in the Thames.

THE HOUSE IN THE WATER
by Victoria Darke
Boldwood Books, Summer 2024
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Only accessible by boat, the house has been sitting empty for two decades. It wasn’t always empty, of course. It’s a house that’s brimming with history. During WW2, it hosted hundreds of recuperating wounded soldiers. And now, there are the ghosts – staring out at those who sail past its windows.

In the autumn of 2013, and Philip and Meredith Holland are the proud new owners of May Day House. Following a string of tragedies, the couple have moved to the area in search of a new start. But all is not what it seems in this friendly, close-knit neighbourhood. Will shadows from the past darken their new-found happiness?

Victoria Darke is the pen name for Faber Academy graduate Victoria Scott. She has a degree in English from King’s College, London and a Postgraduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from City University, London. She lives near London with her husband and two children, and works as a freelance journalist, media trainer and journalism tutor.

LOVING ME AFTER WE de Ginger Dean

A breakup can feel like the end of the world—but what if it could also serve as the start of a better you?

LOVING ME AFTER WE
The Essential Guide to Healing, Growing, and Thriving After a Toxic Relationship
by Ginger Dean
Flatiron, July 2024
(via Writers House)

This radical question is at the heart of celebrated psychotherapist Ginger Dean’s teachings. Dean, who specializes in helping women overcome heartbreak, knows all too well that often in our search for love and acceptance, we can find ourselves repeating dysfunctional patterns with new partners. In her essential debut, LOVING ME AFTER WE, Dean argues that not only is it possible to break this cycle, but that doing so will set you on a crucial path to healing and self discovery.

Through personal anecdotes, practical guidance, and a little bit of tough love, Ginger brings her wisdom and empathy to any reader who is ready to join the revolution of women healing their hearts so they can start the best love affair they’ve ever known—with themselves. And, of course, loving ourselves first is the key to finding healthy, fulfilling, and passionate love in our future partnerships.

For anyone looking to heal their heart, rediscover themselves, and find renewed peace and passion in their life, LOVING ME AFTER WE is here to help.

Ginger Dean is a psychotherapist and founder of Loving Me After We. Her specialty is helping women overcome heartbreak, increase self-love and confidence after a toxic relationship so they can become the best version of themselves.

SEARCHES de Vauhini Vara

From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection.

SEARCHES
by Vauhini Vara
Pantheon, April 2025
(via Writers House)

When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?

Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with these questions. In 2021, she asked a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.

The experience, revealing both the power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies have influenced her understanding of herself and the world around her, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter, to asking ChatGPT for writing advice. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral AI experiment that started it all. SEARCHES illuminates how technological capitalism is both shaping and exploiting human existence, while proposing that by harnessing the collective creativity that makes humans unique, we might imagine a freer, more empowered relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.

“Vara’s essays are beautifully written and profoundly researched, but what sets them apart is their profound vulnerability. Her use of experimental forms . . . pushes the limits of the genre without ever compromising her circumspective, confessional approach. An original essay collection about loss, technology, morality, and identity.” —Kirkus, starred

“SEARCHES picks up where Vauhini Vara’s impressive first novel, The Immortal King Rao, left off; this new book deepens, complicates, and amplifies her ongoing investigation into the nature of artificial intelligence, especially in relationship to the human body, mortality, sorrow, and grief. Blessedly free of cant or posture and extremely knowledgeable about (and acutely conscious of its complicity in) the networks it’s mapping, Searches is Vara’s best and most compelling book yet.” —David Shields, author of Reality Hunger

“I cannot imagine a better guide through the infuriating, labyrinthine underworld of technology than Vauhini Vara. SEARCHES is so many things—heart-stoppingly sad, a formal high-wire act, a wise and funny and thoughtful encyclopedia of our modern age—but most of all it is a book about human relationships: how imperfectly we made this thing that connects us, and how we might use this thing to re-meet ourselves and each other.” —Carmen Maria Machado

Vauhini Vara is the author of This is Salvaged, named a notable book of 2023 by Publisher’s Weekly, The New Yorker and others, and The Immortal King Rao, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She is also a journalist, writing for Wired and others, and an editor, most recently at The New York Times Magazine.