Eight days   three gold medals 
 three world records  one amazing reputation firmly established. Usain Bolt's life  and the world of sport  would never be quite the same again.

16 August 2008  Beijing, China  the Bird's Nest stadium  91,000 spectators and an unimaginably huge global television audience  the final of the men's 100 metres at the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

The crack of the starter's pistol triggers thousands of camera flash bulbs  and precisely 9.69 seconds later a young Jamaican streaks across the finishing line to claim the gold medal and his destiny.

Four days later Bolt claims the 200 metres gold, setting a new world record of 19.30 into the bargain, the night before his 22nd birthday. Then on 22nd August he leads the Jamaican team to more glory in the 4 x 100 metres relay final, in yet another world record time.

Since those heady days of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, Usain Bolt has lowered both the 100 metres and 200 metres world records once again  to a barely believable 9.58 and 19.19 seconds respectively.

At a stroke the Jamaican has become the greatest sports star in the world.

9.58 is Usain Bolt's story so far, in his own words.

It's about a skinny kid from the parish of Trelawny, where they harvest the best yams in the world. It's about growing up playing cricket and football in the warm Jamaican sun, then discovering that he could run fast, very fast. It's about family, friends and the laid-back Jamaican culture. It's about Auntie Lillian's pork and dumplings and Dad's grocery store in the sleepy village of Sherwood Content. It's about what makes Bolt tick, where he gets his motivation and where he takes his inspiration. It's about the highs and the lows, the dedication and sacrifices required to get to the top. It's about fast food, partying, dancehall music, fast cars and that lightning bolt pose. It's about radiating sport's biggest smile. This is the story of the fastest man on the planet.

At the beginning of the 1650s, England was in ruins  wrecked by plague and civil war. Yet shimmering on the horizon was a vision of paradise: Willoughbyland.

Ever since Sir Walter Ralegh set out in 1595 to claim the Beautiful Empire of Guiana for the English crown  and to find the legendary city of El Dorado  adventurers had struggled against the fierce jungle of the Wild Coast in search of their fortune.

Now, in the lush landscape between the great Amazon and Orinoco rivers, a group of Cavaliers, expelled by Oliver Cromwell, had established a new colony named after its founder  Sir Francis Willoughby.

This is the untold story of Willoughbylands spectacular rise and fall, set at a pivotal moment in British and world history. Here are the indigenous Indian kings and their people, both friend and foe to the new arrivals. Here is Fifth Baron Willoughby himself, like his colony a mass of contradictory extremes. And here is Aphra Behn  later one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration stage  sent to spy on a man with whom she will fall in love, transforming the fate of this entire enterprise.

In the blissfully warm and fragrant air, these adventurers and exiles found a land of unimaginable freedom and natural beauty. Yet, as planters and traders followed explorers, and mercenaries and soldiers followed political dissidents, it would become a place of terror and cruelty, of sugar and slavery. As Matthew Parker reveals, the history of Willoughbyland is a microcosm of the history of empire, its heady attractions and fatal dangers.

'This is a miracle of a book' George Lamming

'Compelling. Stuart Hall's story is the story of an age' Owen Jones

'Sometimes I feel I was the last colonial'

This is the story, in his own words, of the extraordinary life of Stuart Hall: writer, thinker and one of the leading intellectual lights of his age. Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, then still a British colony, Hall found himself caught between two worlds: the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, who, in their habits and ambitions, measured themselves against the white planter elite; and working-class and peasant Jamaica, neglected and grindingly poor, though rich in culture, music and history. But as colonial rule was challenged, things began to change in Jamaica and across the world.

When, in 1951, a scholarship took him across the Atlantic to Oxford University, Hall encountered other Caribbean writers and thinkers, from Sam Selvon and George Lamming to V. S. Naipaul. He also forged friendships with the likes of Raymond Williams and E. P. Thompson, with whom he worked in the formidable political movement, the New Left, and developed his groundbreaking ideas on cultural theory. Familiar Stranger takes us to the heart of Hall's struggle in post-war England: that of building a home and a life in a country where, rapidly, radically, the social landscape was transforming, and urgent new questions of race, class and identity were coming to light.

Told with passion and wisdom, this is a story of how the forces of history shape who we are.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

For the first time, Curtis 50 Cent Jackson opens up about his amazing comebackfrom tragic personal loss to thriving businessman and cables highest-paid executivein this unique self-help guide, his first since his blockbuster New York Times bestseller The 50th Law.

In his early twenties Curtis Jackson, known as 50 Cent rose to the heights of fame and power in the cutthroat music business. A decade ago the multi-platinum selling rap artist decided to pivot. His ability to adapt to change was demonstrated when he became the executive producer and star of Power, a high-octane, gripping crime drama centered around a drug kingpins family. The series quickly became appointment television, leading to Jackson inking a four-year, $150 million contract with the Starz networkthe most lucrative deal in premium cable history.

Now, in his most personal book, Jackson shakes up the self-help category with his unique, cutting-edge lessons and hard-earned advice on embracing change. Where The 50th Law tells readers fear nothing and you shall succeed, Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter builds on this message, combining it with Jacksons street smarts and hard-learned corporate savvy to help readers successfully achieve their own comebackand to learn to flow with the changes that disrupt their own lives.

THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Completely fascinating, authoritative and intriguing' William Boyd

'The big bang of Bond books... Beautiful, brilliant' Tony Parsons
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Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond.

From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye - the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica's north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here.

Fleming adored the Jamaica he had discovered, at the time an imperial backwater that seemed unchanged from the glory days of the empire. Amid its stunning natural beauty, the austerity and decline of post-war Britain could be forgotten. For Fleming, Jamaica offered the perfect mixture of British old-fashioned conservatism and imperial values, alongside the dangerous and sensual: the same curious combination that made his novels so appealing, and successful. The spirit of the island - its exotic beauty, its unpredictability, its melancholy, its love of exaggeration and gothic melodrama - infuses his writing.

Fleming threw himself into the island's hedonistic Jet Set party scene: Hollywood giants, and the cream of British aristocracy, the theatre, literary society and the secret services spent their time here drinking and bed-hopping. But while the whites partied, Jamaican blacks were rising up to demand respect and self-government. And as the imperial hero James Bond - projecting British power across the world - became ever more anachronistic and fantastical, so his popularity soared.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Ian's family, his Jamaican lover Blanche Blackwell and many other islanders, Goldeneye is a beautifully written, revealing and original exploration of a crucially important part of Ian Fleming's life and work.