A searing short novel, built of the interlocking fates of a badger-baiter and a disconsolate farmer, unfolding in a stark rural setting where man, animal, land and weather are at loggerheads.
"By turns brutal and tender (equally devastating, mind you), this portrayal of grief and memory eked out in the desperate space between the soil and the lowering sky is taut and spare and full of affecting and surprising images and observations." - Thomas
"Brilliantly alive; a profound, powerful and utterly absorbing portrayal of a subterranean rural world." - Guardian
"When the author purchased a second-hand set of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, he discovered, scribbled in the margin, notes from the original owner (a young boy), and in one of the books were pages from his diary. He decided he must track this boy down, who would now be a young man. The book tells this story with heart-aching candidness as we share the life of the author and the personal difficulties that he faces as he pursues his quest." - Peter
A vital diagnosis of the current recession, and a useful guide to the new wave of theorists (Zizek, Graeber, Harvey, Jameson, &c). Clear, important and well written.
"Playful and unfailingly lucid." - The Nation
"Nimble, clear, and brave. The book is for anyone who cares about historical necessity, the crisis of capitalism, and our fate." - Rachel Kushner
Ordinary people in an isolated community outwitted the Nazis and saved the lives of 3500 Jews.
"A story resonant in our age ... a grand narrative ... a book to cherish and recommend." - Thomas Keneally
A collection of thoughtful, absorbing essays about many aspects of modern design.
"A tale about the mystery of the self, the power of books, and how truth and fiction can inextricably intermingle. Captivating." - Library Journal
"When a Tom Rachman novel lands in the bookstores, I stop living and breathing to devour it. It’s hard to think of anyone who has a better grasp on the world we live in (and I mean, like, the entire planet) and can write about it with such entertainment and panache." - Gary Shteyngart
From the author of The Imperfectionists.
Deep in his dreams, Jim finds a lion to help him when he needs help most. Hoban's life-affirming story of illness overcome meets its perfect match in Deacon's extraordinary illustrations and graphic sequences. A wonderful book! Deacon and Hoban paired up for Hoban's last book, the astounding Soonchild.
"Hoban is the best sort of genius." - Patrick Ness
Excellent recipes, clear instructions and explanations. Delicious and approachable food! Earns its place on the shelf beside Ottolenghi and Tamimi's Jerusalem.
You will like to look at this clip.
Robyn Kahukiwa, Emily Karaka, Kura Te Waru Rewiri, Saffronn Te Ratana, Star Gossage. What are the foundations upon which these five painters explore their art? An important book.
Meet the artists here.
A darkly fanciful take on the Houdini legend by the author of The 'Cellist of Sarajevo.
"Fascinating. A brilliant novel, and one that virtually demands multiple readings to pick up all the subtleties." - Publishers Week
"Glorious" - Robert Macfarlane
Being a psychologist gives you unique insight into the breadth and depth of ordinary people's experiences. These stories are gripping, poignant and full of black humour.
A novel based on the 1865 Otahuhu murders, drawing on the author's own ancestors' experiences.
"Vivid and engrossing, a novel about the brutal truths of our history, the shadowy secrets of our unwritten story." - Paula Morris
An interview with Rosetta Allan here (she writes in bed).
When writers can't find the right words, they make them up.
"Thoroughly enjoyable." - Washington Post
In 1982 Nina Stibbe, a 20-year-old from Leicester, moved to London to work as a nanny for a very particular family. It was a perfect match: Nina had no idea how to cook, look after children or do anything much; and the family were delighted by her lack of skills.
"I adored this book and could quote from it forever." - Nick Hornby
"Funny and sharp: no book this year has made me laugh more." -John Lanchester, Guardian
"An unassuming comic genius." - Independent
A funny, furious tale about two thirtysomething women whose hedonistic existence is placed in jeopardy.
"I wish I had written this book ... Withnail with girls!" - Caitlin Moran
"Brutally funny and heartfelt. I loved it." - Lauren Beukes
"Like a riotous, careening night out, full of bellowing laughter and absurd details, this is a book you'll be talking about for years to come. It marks Unsworth as a tremendous talent." - Guardian
A wolf has lost nearly everything on his journey to the zoo, including an eye and his beloved pack. A boy too has lost much and seen many terrible things. They stand eye to eye on either side of the wolf's enclosure and, slowly, each makes his own extraordinary story known to the other.
An attractive new edition of this remarkable book.
"Simply beautiful." - Michael Morpurgo
"A brilliantly told story about a significant six months in eleven-year-old Olivia's life - it should be sold with a large box of tissues!" - Jacqueline Wilson
There is a war against expertise in our society. Surely, Collins argues, science should serve as an example to ordinary citizens of how to think and act, and not the other way round.
The definitive account of the New Zealand air crews' role in the invasion of Europe in 1944 to the fall of Berlin the following year.
A troubled story about the loneliness and despair of an Indian family whose American dream turns sour.
"Outstanding. Every page is alive and surprising, proof of his huge, unique talent." - David Sedaris
"Quietly powerful and compelling. A tender, lyrical book about love, loss and starting over." -Meg Rosoff
Winner of the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children's Fiction."Diana Sweeney gives Tom a believable voice: innocent, headstrong, anxious but determined…this strong debut will resonate with young people and adults alike." - Books+Publishing
"A surprising little book, written by Alexander McCall Smith - when does that man ever sleep! Smith has written about a poet who is a favourite of mine, W.H.Auden. The author has said it's a self-help book for people who don't like self-help books. Be that as it may, I found it fascinating and illuminating." - Jan
War is coming to Bronze Age Greece. Many challenges face the young Odysseus, not the least of them being the challenges of love.
The sequel to Murder at Mykenai.
"Silverstein writes with keen reportorial objectivity but also understandable skepticism about the frighteningly tyrannical hold that oil has on the free (and not-so-free) world. The book's revelations make Wall Street corruption seem tame by comparison." - Kirkus Reviews
Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto, and thence to the Plaszow concentration camp. How did he survive? This is the only memoir from a child saved by having their name added to Oskar Schindler's famous 'list'.
When life feels like it’s fracturing, how do you find a way to feel whole? At fifteen, Clover is finding the going tougher than she expected. Her life is close to being derailed on the rocky terrain of family, friendship, first love, acts of defiance and a planet on the brink of environmental disaster.
From the 1950s: "Figure Problems," "Good Grooming," "What to Wear Where" - lots of fun! This book was the inspiration for teen author Maya Van Wagenen's remarkable memoir Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek.
Ten tips from Maya here.
There's been a murder, but the police don't care. It was only a homeless old man after all. Kieran cares. It's a good job Kieran's a master of observation and knows all the detective tricks of the trade. But being a detective is difficult when you're Kieran Woods. When you're amazing at drawing but terrible at fitting in.
This ambitious book is aimed at a new generation of architects who take technology for granted but seek to understand the principles of what makes a building meaningful and enduring.
At 23, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the literary agent for J.D. Salinger. Poignant and keenly observed, My Salinger Year is a memoir about literary New York in the late 1990s.
John Calder, the most independent of independent publishers, draws on his own experience, and that of Barney Rosset (Grove Press) and Maurice Girodias (Olympia Press), to write about the challenges of being a publisher in the 1950s and 1960s, censorship and political persecution, and the problems faced by such writers as Beckett, Burroughs, Trocchi and Miller to have their work accepted and recognized.
"A clever history of capital and its speculators, and the enduring ability of money to ruin siociety." - Guardian
Lincoln Green has a double to do all the things he doesn't want to do. That can only lead to trouble...
Cool book trailer here (complete with backwards-walking horse!).
"A terrific achievement." - Independent
Maud is losing her memory - can she find out the truth?
"Elizabeth is Missing will stir and shake you: an investigation into a seventy-year-old crime, through the eyes of the most likeably unreliable of narrators. But the real mystery at its compassionate core is the fragmentation of the human mind." - Emma Donoghue
"Both a gripping detective yarn and a haunting depiction of mental illness, but also more poignant and blackly comic than you might expect from that description." - Observer
"Dark, witty ... brilliantly dramatizes the human craving for approval and strong leadership and the lengths we'll go to satisfy it." - Kazuo Ishiguro, Observer
"Painfully funny, wonderfully vivid, truly menacing." - Daily Telegraph
125 Gower Street, 1882: Sidney Grice once had a reputation as London's most perspicacious personal detective. But since his last case led an innocent men to the gallows, business has been light. Listless and depressed, Grice has taken to lying in the bath for hours. Usually a voracious reader, he will pick up neither book nor newspaper. He has not even gathered the strength to re-insert his glass eye. His ward, March Middleton, has been left to dine alone. At last an investigation draws them to an eerie house in Kew, and the mysterious Baroness Foskett...
Follows The Mangle Street Murders.
"One of the most delightful and original new novels of the year... a series that could well become a cult." - Daily Mail
