In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a traumatic event. He tries - and fails - to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape.When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over.But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether?
"Kafka rewritten by David Mitchell. This may well be the best thing you'll read all year." - Guardian
Maresi came to the Red Abbey when she was 13, in the Hunger Winter. Before then, she had only heard rumours of its existence in secret folk tales. In a world where girls aren't allowed to learn or do as they please, an island inhabited solely by women sounded like a fantasy. But now Maresi is here, and she knows it is real. She is safe. Then one day Jai, tangled fair hair, clothes stiff with dirt, scars on her back, arrives on a ship. She has fled to the island to escape terrible danger and unimaginable cruelty. And the men who hurt her will stop at nothing to find her. Now the women and girls of the Red Abbey must use all their powers and ancient knowledge to combat the forces that wish to destroy them. And Maresi, haunted by her own nightmares, must confront her very deepest, darkest fears. A wonderful Finnish feminist YA fantasy! Recommended.
Bibliophiles' barn finds! For every antiquarian or rare treasure found in possibly the last place you'd expect it to be waiting, how many are never found? It is probably time to start poking about.
>> A copy of the rare upside-down edition of The Origin of the Species was discovered in an op shop by someone wearing white gloves.
Twenty tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Montefiore's chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire-building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence and wild extravagance, and peopled by a cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy, from Queen Victoria to Lenin. Another gripping history from this fine writer.
Take a trip through the zoo with this irrepressible pigeon, as she preens and poses alongside all the animals, right up to the sharp teeth of a grumpy lion...
"This is a bird book. If you open out the flaps, it looks like a bird! I can say elephant too. Oh no! The lion is scary! And the kangaroo is going to jump down and eat the people! I want to be a butterfly, so I can fly in the air and poop on people. How can I be a butterfly?" - Bryony (4)
Archie Barrington was a leading New Zealand pacifist during World War II. Incarcerated in Mount Crawford Prison for his beliefs in 1941, he kept an illicit diary, scrawled in the margins of books. Many years later his son John happened across the diary and painstakingly reconstructed it. Barrington vividly and compellingly recorded the squalid, rundown conditions, monotonous and exhausting labour, the intense cold from which there was little protection, and the strategies he and his fellow pacifists adopted to enable them to cope with prison life. What were Barrington and his like doing in prison, when similar expressions of dissent would almost certainly have been ignored in Australia or Britain? Why was New Zealand, with its egalitarian reputation, so intolerant and punitive?
A bespoke shed in an Urban backyard, surrounded by pots of plants and flowers, serves as an isle of peace for its owner, Wendy. By the Waterside, Mary has built a beach hut on the coast, perched on stilts with a view out to the sea. Hidden away, in an enchanting wilderness in Norfolk, UK, is Janet and Sue's Secret Garden. Here, there are three sheds: an old summerhouse full of light; a hide nestled in the bushes for watching the local wildlife; and a renovated wagon used as a base for recording their wildlife observations. In Portland, Oregon, Polly uses her inland boathouse as a Creative space for writing. From yurts to Airstreams, beach huts to bothies, the huts and hideaways have one thing in common--they are all inspirational spaces created by women, for women.
A novel tracing the fates of three lovers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the challenges they face readjusting to life after an earthquake devastates their city.
"Luminous. Leger writes beautifully and with an immense humanity. He renders Haiti in all of its stupendous beautiful tortured complexity. A stand-out novel." - Junot Diaz
Visit the ancient black walnut tree on the edge of the Ashdown Forest that became Pooh's house, go deep into the pine trees to find Poohsticks Bridge, and climb up to the top of the enchanted Galleons Lap, where Pooh says goodbye to Christopher Robin. Discover how Milne's childhood connection with nature and his role as a father influenced his famous stories, and how his close collaboration with illustrator E. H. Shepard brought those stories to life.
An intimate photographic journal of designers' and artists' homes and work spaces from around the world, including Mumbai, Beirut, Marrakech, Reykjavik, Mexico City and Amsterdam.
Something is going on in the forest. The animals are troubled. But no one dares make a statement to the police. Detective Gordon and his assistant Buffy must investigate! It is a complicated case. The two police officers split the workload: Buffy questions the suspects, while Gordon stays in bed to think. Who is the culprit?
Stina does not like the cold. In fact, she will go to any length to avoid it. Even in summer she will never go out without tights and socks that cover her knees. When the Icelandic winter comes she retreats inside, and invents ingenious devices to protect her from the slightest chill. The temperature drops further and Stina finally succumbs to the lure of her feather duvet and falls into a deep and dreamless sleep from which she is woken by a pounding at her door - two children tumble in blown by the icy wind and Stina learns that nothing can keep you as warm as friendship. A very lovely book!
Louis de Bernières' poetry collection includes poems he has written about love and desire throughout his life, under the influence, it seems, of everybody from the classical Persian poets, to Neruda, to Quintus Smyrnaeus, to Brian Patten; sometimes passionate and romantic, sometimes cynical and angry.
Gillian seems to have it all - she is beautiful, successful, and securely married. But one night, after an argument with her husband, their car crashes on a wet road, and everything is lost. When she wakes in the hospital, she is a widow with a ruined face and no way back to the person she thought she was. It is only when she begins to piece together the painful shards of her present existence and revisit a relationship from her past that she is able to glimpse the freedom that might come with her loss.
"A brilliant, bruising tale of shattered lives." - Independent
When Wood put his foot on the Silk Road in Afghanistan he found himself walking the entire length of the Himalayas.
>> Onto the scree; onto the screen.
"There is something special about literature that addresses our innermost sexual and amatory selves. Gay stories offer us vindication, fellowship, validation and a sense of shared identity that we need now as much as ever." - Stephen Fry (in the foreword to this anthology)
A wide-ranging selection, including work by Patrick Gale, Damon Galgut, Neil Bartlett, Felice Picano and Joseph Olshan.
Is cultural sensitivity preventing us from taking action to protect individual women and girls? How can change be brought about, and the practice eliminated?
Alfred Kropp is an ordinary kid with an ordinary life - until he steals the legendary sword of King Arthur and mistakenly delivers it into the wrong hands... (In other words: EXCITING).
A photographic showcase of tribal cultures from around the globe, presented as an antidote to globalisation.
When an Italian-Canadian immigrant's harsh but intriguing past catches up with him, his sceptical daughter Sophie rattles family skeletons in her quest to discover the truth about her father, his affair with a Romanian trapeze artist and a mysterious New Zealander claiming to be his son.
Ben Robson can't remember a time before he had the box, with its three mischief-making demon occupants: smelly, cantankerous Orf, manically destructive Kartofel, and fat, slobbering greedy-guts Djinn. When Ben was a kid it was fun, and he enjoyed their company. Now he's twelve they're nothing but trouble.Then one day Ben has an angelic visitor who tells him that he can be rid of the box forever if he sends it back to hell. There's only one catch - the box has other plans...
[Is this a parable of cell-phone addiction?]
The gripping sequel to Red Queen! If there's one thing Mare Barrow knows, it's that she's different. Mare's blood is red - the colour of common folk - but her Silver ability, the power to control lightning, has turned her into a weapon that the royal court tries to control. The crown calls her an impossibility, a fake, but as she makes her escape from the prince and friend who betrayed her, Mare uncovers something startling: she is not the only one of her kind. Pursued by the Silver king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red and Silver fighters to join in the struggle against her oppressors. But Mare finds herself on a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat. Will she shatter under the weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?
"A moody and mysterious tale. Drury has forged an entrancing form of midwestern paranormal noir. Deadpan wit, cosmic melancholy, characters both ethereal and down-and-dirty, predicaments a Beckett character would accept as inevitable, and a porous divide between the living and the dead add up to a delectably unnerving outlaw fairy tale." - Donna Seaman
