Welcome 2025: Six new international nonfiction titles that tell different stories about our lives

Three Wild Dogs (and the truth), Markus Zusak

What happens when the Zusaks open their family home to three big, wild, pound-hardened dogs – Reuben, a wolf at your door with a hacksaw; Archer, blond, beautiful, deadly; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm?

The answer can only be chaos: there are street fights, park fights, public shaming, property trashing, bodily injuries, stomach pumping, purest comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that needs to be seen to be believed…not to mention the odd police visit at some ungodly hour of the morning.

There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love – and the joy and recognition of family.

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, Liz Pelly

Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes the reader to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalised, and autoplayed.

Building on her years of reporting on streaming, music journalist Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the…

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