Book shelf

Book shelf

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

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Please note: to have your book considered for inclusion, its publication date must be either upcoming or it must have been published during the last 12 months. Unfortunately, we cannot include any details of books published prior to this time.

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The Body in the Graveyard

Stephen Hudson (Downing 1974)

A light-hearted, cosy "crime whodunit" set in the world of comprehensive schools. 

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Barton the College Cat

Patrick Whitby Russell (Wolfson 2020)

Barton, a handsome tabby cat, lives at Wulfstan College, in an ancient university town in the East of England. While his hunting days may be long behind him, Barton still loves college life. He gets strokes and attention from the students and extra rations from all the college feasts! However, one fateful day, a new President - who hates cats - comes to Wulfstan. What will Barton do?

This children's book for 6/7 year olds will also be of interest to current and former members of Cambridge University who will recognise the picture of college life painted here.

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An Idyllic Childhood in Troubled Times

Geoff Squire (Downing 1955)

A memoir of Branscombe 1934-1953. Having reached 90, with the 80th anniversary of VE Day coming up next May, I’ve been writing about my early life in the beautiful village of Branscombe on the coast of East Devon - a village often regarded as an example of the rural idyll.

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Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind: In Pursuit of Remarkable Mushrooms

Richard Fortey (King's 1965)

Richard Fortey, FRS, OBE, has pursued a distinguished career in Palaeontology, but has been a devoted field mycologist since childhood. Drawing on decades of exploring the world of fungi, he shares the richness of this extraordinarily diverse kingdom in his latest book. Through special selected examples, he explores and explains their various and under appreciated roles in the world's ecology.

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Hard Drive

Paul Stephenson (Darwin 1998)

When his partner suddenly died, life changed utterly for Paul Stephenson. 'Hard Drive' is the outcome of his revisiting a world he thought he knew, but which had been upended. In poems that are affectionate, self-examining, sometimes funny and often surprised by grief in the oddest corners, the poet takes us through rooms, routines, and rituals of bereavement, the memory of love, a shared life and separation.

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Sizar

Susan Grossey (Murray Edwards 1984)

In the spring of 1826, ex-soldier Gregory Hardiman is settling into civilian life as an ostler and university constable in Cambridge. When an undergraduate is found hanged in his rooms at St Clement’s College, the Master asks Gregory to find out what could have driven the seemingly happy young man to take such a drastic step. A second death at the same college suggests something altogether more sinister, and Gregory sets out to discover whether a love of illegal gambling on horse races could lie at the heart of the tragedies.

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Whimwondery: An Alphabetarium of Useful Nonsense Inventions

Daniel J. T. McKay (Peterhouse 2017)

Whimwondery is the academic study of the magickal properties of elemental curiosity and its two sub-particles – whimsy and wonder. For, as perhaps you have felt yourself deep down in your gizzards, in every spark of curiosity, every maddening ponderation, every look of bafflement and inquisitive squint, is power beyond reckoning. Though not, as has been discovered, entirely beyond the capacities of our imaginations.

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From Madrid to Heaven

Leslie Croxford (Selwyn 1963)

'From Madrid to Heaven' is a collection of fourteen short stories by Leslie Croxford. Centred on Madrid, they reach across to Lisbon and over the Mediterranean to Tangier. Characters meet the unexpected in a timespan ranging from the fall of dictators to the surge in trans-Mediterranean migration. The reader is taken with them to surprising edges of experience where, finding nothing seems possible, everything suddenly becomes possible.

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Language and Life - Reflections of an English Teacher

P R Brown (St John's 1972)

'Language and Life' is an anthology of articles dealing with aspects of the teaching of English as a foreign language, but it is under-pined by the motto of the book: 'To say, as I have been tempted to say, that language is human life, is incorrect, but to say that language is a part of human life is a profound and widely misconceived understatement'.

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The Four Ages of Death and Other Stories

Guy Riddihough (King's 1984)

'The Four Ages of Death and Other Stories' — a collection of three novellas and one novelette — examines how catastrophic weather events, the tragedy of living forever, the future of the war on terrorism, and being judged by a non-human entity reveal who we are.

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Fatally Inferior

Lyn Squire (Emmanuel 1968)

In 'Fatally Inferior' award-winning author Lyn Squire delivers another gripping, period mystery. When a member of Charles Darwin’s household goes missing and a former maid dies in childbirth (or so it seems), reluctant detective Dunston Burnett is thrust into a twisted web of deception, revenge, and murder.

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Goya’s Caprichos in Nineteenth-Century France: Politics of the Grotesque

Paula Fayos Pérez (Magdalene 2015)

The impact of Goya’s oeuvre and particularly of the Caprichos (1799) on nineteenth-century French art was immense, long-lasting and multifaceted. Whereas in Spain Goya was associated with the work he produced as a court painter, in France he became known as the author of the Caprichos, interpreted by the Romantics as a lampoon of late eighteenth-century Spain.

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Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From – and the Science-Backed Method to Unravel Them

Anu Gupta (Queens' 2007)

Imagine a world without bias. A world where all human beings can truly be just as they are and unleash their full potential. Take a moment to imagine how you feel in such a world—not what you think about it, or whether you believe it’s possible, but how you feel. This is the proposition that opens 'Breaking Bias'. It’s your invitation to embark on a journey that will radically change your experience and show you how you, in turn, can help reshape our world.

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Murder in Constantinople

A.E. Goldin (Trinity 2016)

A gripping, immersive historical murder mystery in which a wayward boy from London's East End is pulled into the hunt for a serial killer on the eve of the Crimean War.

London, 1854. Twenty-one-year-old Ben Canaan attracts trouble wherever he goes. His father wants him to be a good Jewish son, working for the family business on Whitechapel Road, but Ben and his friends, the 'Good-for-Nothings', just want adventure.

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El perro de la nostalgia

Pablo Lopez Navarro (Clare 2021)

'El perro de la nostalgia' is my second poetry book. It includes around 50 poems that talk about romance, love, time and breakups. My style has been shaped by the Latin American Boom and follows the style of Mario Benedetti, Jaime Sabines, and Julio Cortazar, among others.

The great theme of the book is time, which is an impassable cell where we submit to the shortness of happiness and the longing for what is gone. Ontologically, the human being will always be incomplete and this book of poems is punctual in pointing out the nature of our being.

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Finding Light in the Darkness - New Edition

Jon Key (Sidney Sussex 1993)

Whether you are part of a team or a leader of an organisation or business, this book is intended to help you reflect on the lessons from the pandemic. The lessons apply to future challenges and crises, including climate change.

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Undeliverable Letters, Unreachable Galaxies - Or, The Man in the Old Bowler Hat

P R Brown (St John's 1972)

The author of these dystopian 'letters' would have us imagine that the unbridled development of Artificial Intelligence, and man's consequent moral and intellectual decline, together with disastrous climatic change and imminent global nuclear war, have all conspired to plunge humanity into chaos and irreversible destruction.

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Exit, Pursued by Death

Keira Willis (Queens' 2008)

The thrilling second instalment in the 'Tib Street Ballroom' series coming October 2024.

Welcome back to the Ballroom...

Manchester, 1987

The Ballroom - an obscure police department on Tib Street known for using unconventional methods to solve cold cases - is once again thrust into a spine-chilling investigation.

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Tib Street Ballroom

Keira Willis (Queens' 2008)

How do you solve an unsolvable murder? Ask the victim...

In January 1986, newly engaged Marnie Driscoll is found dead in her parents' kitchen. With no witnesses, it seems as though the circumstances of her death will remain a mystery.

Six months later, high-flying Detective Inspector Andrew Joyce's career takes an unexpected detour when he finds himself unwillingly transferred to an obscure department within Greater Manchester Police, known as the Ballroom.

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Five Generations at Work: How we win together, for good

Rebecca Robins (Murray Edwards 1991) & Patrick Dunne

For the first time in history, we have up to five generations at work. The problem is that we have been having the wrong conversation about generations, caught up in a divisive discourse fuelled by stereotypes and silos. In the context of a world in flux and polycrisis, our diversity is a powerful force multiplier for good, if we debunk the stereotypes and know how to unlock it.

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