An astonishing undercover investigation into the paranoid and misogynistic subcultures of the manosphere, by the Orwell Prize-longlisted author of Hired James Bloodworth.

Rarely has there seemed a more confusing time to be a man. This uncertainty has spawned an array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the 'manosphere', as men search for new forms of belonging.

In Lost Boys, acclaimed journalist James delves into these worlds and asks: what does their emergence say about Western society? Why are so many men susceptible to the sinister beliefs these groups promote? And what can we do about their pernicious encroachment upon our social and political spheres?

Along the way, he enlists in a bootcamp for 'alpha males', dissects cultural figures including Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, and accompanies modern day Hugh Hefners as they broadcast their jet-set lifestyles to millions of followers.

Combining compulsive memoir with powerful reporting, Lost Boys is an essential guide to the contradictions in contemporary masculinity. (Atlantic Books)

James meets Jack at Palm Court Brasserie in Covent Garden.

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London, 2012. Johnny Voghel is stuck. He has a dead-end job at a small university and a wilting relationship and is grieving the death of his parents. When his half-brother Lawrence returns to the old family home from Chicago after a period of estrangement, Johnny decides to do everything he can to win back his affection. It’s a quest he pursues with the help of Lawrence’s childhood sweetheart and a pair of mysterious and seductive students adrift in the city during the height of Olympics fever.

A generational saga that takes place over a fortnight, and a comedy about confusion and loss, The Boys follows Johnny as he revisits old grievances, cultivates new friendships – and tries to take control of his fate.

Leo meets Jack at Jincheng Alley on New Oxford Street.

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Our society tells us over and over that if we're going to achieve anything, we'd better do it while we're young. We fixate on stories of prodigies; we put our children in piano lessons or language classes as toddlers, hoping to give them the best shot at success we can.

As for ourselves, too many people feel it's too late to change the course of their own lives. Whether we are at the start of our careers and sense we're on the wrong path, or feeling unsettled in our late or middle years, we all wonder how we can reinvent ourselves? Is it too late? This book by Henry Oliver has answers. Late bloomers - individuals who experience significant success later in life - offer lessons for people who feel frustrated.

This book encourages people to think about themselves as potential late bloomers and to discover and encourage and advocate for late blooming in others. After all, it's never too late to discover our hidden talents and our accomplish our goals - the road to success is never as straightforward as we are lead to believe. Julia Child didn't discover that she loved to cook until she was thirty-seven. Vera Wang started her design business at forty.

And Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment in his sixties. This inspiring, passionate book combines wonderful story-telling with fascinating new research, to shift expectations around our life trajectories. You'll discover a range of blueprints for self-reinvention, pairing the newest insights from psychology and neuroscience with late bloomers' remarkable life stories.

Henry meets Jack at Ye Olde Chesire Cheese on Fleet Street.

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