If you're looking for nonfiction with a literary sensibility and a historical bent, the books highlighted by the annual Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize are a great place to start. British historian Susan Brigden, author of Thomas Wyatt: The Heart's Forest and one of the prize's judges, talks us through the 2024 shortlist — from war and revolution to the splendours of Mughal India and Monet's garden at Giverny.

"All the best stories are true" runs the tagline of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the UK's pre-eminent nonfiction book award. This year, to celebrate the prize's 25th birthday, a panel of judges picked out books for a winner of winners award, making for an excellent collection of nonfiction books from the last quarter of a century, as Five Books editor Sophie Roell explains.

Central Asia's history is rarely a focus for students in the West, but its flourishing cities and great thinkers once made it one of the world's most dynamic and important regions. Frederick Starr, a leading expert on Central Asia and author of a number of books about it, talks us through the highlights of an area that was so much more than just a stopping place on the ancient Silk Roads.

From the origins of sex to the effects of social media, from the invention of the wheel to the race against climate change, Five Books editor Sophie Roell gives an overview of the new nonfiction books appearing in January, February and March of 2024.

If you're looking for compelling stories that also happen to be true, the UK's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction is a great place to start. Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times, talks us through the six brilliant books that made the 2023 shortlist, from a gripping account of a 2016 firestorm in Alberta to the shadow the Cultural Revolution continues to cast over today's China. Read more nonfiction book recommendations on Five Books

We have much to learn from the lives of women who came before us, says Dorothy Byrne, the British TV journalist and producer who is now president of a women's college at the University of Cambridge. She recommends five of her favourite memoirs, all by women and notable for their searing truthfulness about everyday life.

Wonderful as it would be to climb Mount Everest or row across the Atlantic, not all of us will get the chance to go on an epic adventure. But that doesn't mean we can't go exploring. Alastair Humphreys, the British adventurer, explains the concept of 'local adventure' and recommends books that give a feel for what it's about and why it's worth pursuing.

The Scottish Highlands are known for the stark splendour of the landscape and the bellowing of the stags. They have inspired many classic works of poetry and nature writing, says Annie Worsley—the author of a memoir set on Scotland's rugged north west coast. Here, she recommends five books on the Scottish Highlands that portray the people and their place.

A war correspondent's job is to be as close to the front line as possible and to provide as unbiased an account of a conflict as they can, explains the veteran journalist James MacManus. Here he selects five of the best books by war correspondents and explains why memories of that lifestyle now offer him literary inspiration.

Hallucinations can be strange, alarming, even sometimes exciting. They affect the mentally ill and the chemically altered, but also those suffering from migraine, Parkinson's, and even grief. Researcher Ben Alderson-Day talks us through this odd phenomenon as he selects five of the best book on hallucination.