Trigger Warning: Short fictions and disturbances by Neil Gaiman       $38.00
A typically astounding collection of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry, ranging from a never-before-read American Gods story to rubbings of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Who, and beyond (far beyond).

Letters to Poseidon by Cees Nooteboom       $39.99
Ostensible addressed to the god of the sea, these passages use the minutiae of Nooteboom's life to gently interrogate the wider issues of existence. 
"This is a sparkling little book, filled with wonder. Nooteboom is an immensely civilised and civilising writer, rich in curiosity and armed with a dazzling literary style." - Spectator
>> Nooteboom in conversation with A.S. Byatt. 

 The Torch by Peter Twohig       $35.00 
Melbourne, 1960: Mrs Blayney and her twelve year old son live in South Richmond. At least, they did, until their house burnt down. The prime suspect - one Keith Aloysius Gonzaga Kavanagh, also aged 12 - has mysteriously disappeared. Our narrator, the Blayney kid, sets off on a covert mission to find young Keith, who he dubs 'Flame Boy', to save him from the irate locals - not to mention his mother - who want to see him put away. Flame Boy has not only made himself scarce, but he's done so with a very important briefcase of secrets... 
"Not since The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has there been such a compelling child narrator." - Herald Sun

The Conch Trumpet by David Eggleton       $27.00
The latest dynamic collection from the "court jester/philosopher/lyricist, a kind of male Cassandra, roving warningly from primeval swampland to gritty cityscape to the information and disinformation cybercloud."

 The Wicked Tricks of Till Owlyglass by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Fritz Wegner        $18.00
The most famous German trickster has been around for 500 years causing trouble. Very amusing!

Alice and the Fly by James Rice          $35.00
A shy young man, whose life is controlled by his phobias and obsessions, attaches himself to a young woman who inadvertently appears to acknowledge his humanity.
"The great strength of Alice and the Fly lies in its wickedly satirical portrayal of a world in which everyone tries to cover up the emptiness of their existence by means of 'metaphorical phantoms'. Rice's writing is fuelled by a powerful sense of empathy, even for those whose aspirations he so expertly ridicules. For all the bleakness it portrays, Alice and the Fly is an oddly uplifting novel." - Guardian

 The Cat's Out of the Bag: Truth and lies about cats by Max Cryer      $27.99
With his customary erudition and panache, Max Cryer surveys the feline imprint in our language, folklore and culture. Read this book with a cat on your lap.

 Sound Man: A life recording hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces... by Glyn Johns      $39.99
... and The Beatles, The Clash, Bob Dylan, Joan Armatrading and Ryan Adams. Johns was present at the pivotal musical moments of the sixties and is a natural raconteur.

 Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart by Helen Harris         $29.99
When her son's and daughter-in-law's marriage founders, Sylvia steps in to secure what she sees as the interests of her infant grandson. 
"One of those rare novels that makes you brood on its characters in the intervals when you are not reading, and wonder what is happening to them. I can’t think of anyone better – at describing just how irritating everyone can be." - Observer

 Half a Creature from the Sea: A life in stories by David Almond        $25.00
"Stories on the page are so beautifully neat. All that lovely black print; those lovely straight lines and paragraphs and pages. But stories are living things, creatures that move and grow in the imaginations of writer and reader. They must be solid and touchable, like the land, and must have fluid half-known depths, like the sea. These stories take place in a real world - but in fiction, real worlds merge with dreamed worlds. Real people walk with ghosts and figments. Earthly truth goes hand-in-hand with watery lies." - David Almond

 Tell Me a Picture: Adventures in looking at art by Quentin Blake       $28.00
A new edition of this fun introduction to serious art. A wonderful book.

Robert Desnoiseau by Jean Claude Gautrand    $139.99
A wide selection of images from one of the most celebrated exponents of 1950s 'humanist' photography, including his memorable portrayals of Parisian life.

 The End of Power: From boardrooms to battlefields and churches to states; Why being in charge isn't what it used to be by Moses Naim      $39.99
Apparently, power is shifting, dispersing and decaying. The establishment is getting desperate. Change is coming. 

 The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis       $39.99
 “A love story, a thriller, a family saga, a historical novel, and a political analysis of America’s tragic misadventures abroad. The novel yokes the narrative drive of the best Graham Greene and le Carré to the rhetorical force and moral rigor of Faulkner. Bob Shacochis has written what may well be the last Great American Novel. What other American writer has put as much heart into his creations, as much drive, as much history?” — Los Angeles Review of Books

 H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald         $27.00
Costa Book of the Year. Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Wonderful book. Now in paperback. 
"This is a beautifully observed account of grief and our affinity with nature." - Sarah

Red Notice: How I became Putin's No.1 enemy by Bill Browder     $38.00
Browder's lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death by  police after testifying against the Russian Interior Ministry. Browder peels back the lid of the farcical show trial and describes gangsterism at the highest (and lowest) levels of Russian authority.

Experimental Homebrewing: Mad science in the pursuit of great beer by Drew Beechum and Denny Conn      $45.00
When most brewers think of an experimental beer, odd creations come to mind. And sure, in this book you can learn how to brew with ingredients like bacon, chanterelle mushrooms, defatted cacao nibs, and peanut butter powder. However, experimental homebrewing is more than that. It's about making good beer - the best beer, in fact.

Kippenberger by Angelika Taschen      $89.99
Martin Kippenberger's restless forms of expression made him one of the most complex artists of the 1980s and 1990s. His oeuvre played various media off against one another in an output so prolific that it verged on the inflationary. 

Murder that Wasn't: The case of George Gwaze by Felicity Goodyear-Smith     $35.00
George Gwaze was twice charged and twice acquitted of the rape and murder of his ten-year-old adopted niece, Charlene Makaza, who suffered from HIV. This book, by a forensic physician, examines medical, scientific and court records and shows how preconceptions can distort the interpretation of evidence. 

 Armageddon Outta Here: The world of 'Skulduggery Pleasant' by Derek Landy        $17.99
One amazing new novella, three gripping new stories AND an exclusive chapter from the final book. Lap it up.

Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi      $37.00
After 13 years, Mohamedou Ould Slahi is still being held without trial by the US at Guantanamo. His disturbing account of rendition, torture and systematic abuse has finally been declassified. Upsetting and important.
>> Read the manuscript and hear celebrities read from the diary.

The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan      $36.99
A soldier returning home to western Scotland from the war in Afghanistan bears the vast impact of his experiences, which brings to light his grandmother's hitherto secret past.
"Like its two main characters, this impressive novel has a double life, moving with imaginative daring between war and art, photography and fiction, and memory and secrets." - Hermione Lee, Guardian
"A lean yet rich story built of small and crucial moments in memories and reality across three generations. It's remarkable how much human territory O’Hagan explores and illuminates with a restrained style that also helps drive the novel along." - Kirkus Reviews
>> "Afghanistan is our Vietnam."         >> Read an extract here.

Man of Secrets: The private life of Donald McLean by Matthew Wright      $40.00
McLean's aims and methods as Land Purchase Commissioner and as Native Secretary, and his inability to disentangle his personal interests from his professional responsibilities, made him an catalyst for the Anglo-Maori Wars. Why did he act the way he did?

The House in Smyrna by Tatiana Salem Levy        $35.00
A woman suffering from a mysterious illness accepts a challenge from her grandfather: to take the key to the house where he grew up - in the Turkish city of Smyrna - and try to open the door. As she embarks on this pilgrimage, she begins to write of her progress. This writing soon becomes an exploration of her family's legacy of displacement, from Turkey to Brazil to Portugal and back to Brazil, and an attempt to understand her place in it.
"Levy’s writing is a joy. Her prose is rich, filled with a sense of the vividness and generosity of an author’s available inspirations: the clamour of the senses, the restless truths of the body, the turns and consolations and perils of thought, the wonders of both beauty and ugliness and the meaning and architecture of words themselves." - A.L. Kennedy

On Immunity: An inoculation by Eula Biss       $37.00
When Eula Biss became a mother, she stepped into a new world of fear: fear of the government, the medical establishment, the contents of her child's air, food, mattress and vaccines. In this bold, fascinating book, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our conception of immunity, and its implications for the individual and the social body. Weaving her personal experiences with an exploration of classical and contemporary literature, Biss considers what vaccines, and the debate around them, mean for her own child, her immediate community and the wider world. Interesting.

Get In Trouble by Kelly Link      $37.00
"Kelly Link is inimitable. Her stories are like nothing else, dark yet sparkling with her unique brand of fairy dust, wonderfully strange but still familiar and real. Get in Trouble is filled with pocket universes, each tale containing so much more than its length might suggest and crackling with the unexpected: the most marvelous kind of trouble to get in." - Erin Morgenstern (author of The Night Circus)
>> Interview in The New York Times.

Useful by Debra Oswald       $40.00
Sullivan Moss is useless. Once a charming underachiever, he's now such a loser that he can't even commit suicide properly. After a life of regrets, Sully wants to do one useful thing: he wants to donate a kidney to a stranger. But, as he scrambles over the hurdles to become a donor, he almost accidentally forges a new life for himself.

The Seventh Day by Yu Hua      $37.00
Yang Fei is late for his own cremation and so wanders the afterworld, pondering how he lost his life and what he lost with it. Yu Hua has a lot to say about life in modern China, and a great deal of humour and whimsy too.

Mobile Library by David Whitehouse         $34.99
12-year-old Bobby is assembling an archive on his dead mother. After a beating from his abusive father, his friend's mother helps him to run away by stealing a mobile library van and driving him towards Scotland and freedom. The books that fill the van provide other avenues of escape and discovery. A madcap adventure for bibliophiles.  

Granta 130: India: New stories, mainly true      $29.99
A powerful curiosity is the hallmark of new kind of Indian writing: important questions about the country's past and present have found their expression in different forms of non-fiction story-telling that twenty years ago tended to be the preserve of writers from the west. Biography, memoir, narrative history, reportage, the travel account: all these forms now have their interesting and original practitioners in India. In this Granta issue they tackle questions ranging from rape in village India to scandal in Mumbai clubs. And there is room, of course, for the best of India's fiction.

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman        $24.99
Irene works in the library of a secret society founded to preserve the literary texts of alternate worlds. When she is sent to obtain a copy of Grimms' fairy tales, she finds the volume missing and other desperados on its trail.
"It’s a breath of fresh air to discover a fantastical world that defies easy provenance and brings something new to the genre.With a satisfyingly complex plot, The Invisible Library is a book in which to wallow." - Guardian

The Dogs by Allan Stratton      $23.00
"Out of the corner of my eye, I catch something moving by the barn. When I look, it disappears. Wait, There it is again, at the cornfield. Some movement, some thing. Mom and I have been on the run for years. Every time he catches up with us, we move to a new place and start over. But this place is different."
"Painful and powerful in equal measure - as it should be. An extraordinary literary achievement." - Michael Morpurgo

Blueprint for Revolution: How to use rice pudding, Lego men and other non-violent techniques to galvanise communities, overthrow dictators or simply change the world by Srdja Popovic and Matthew Miller      $35.00
In 2000, Belgrade rock kid Srdja Popovic found himself one of the unexpected leaders of the student movement Otpor! that overthrew dictator Slobodan Milosevic and established democracy in Serbia - all by avoiding violence and opting for something far more powerful: a sense of humour. In this inspiring and entertaining guide for would-be activists, he tells his story and those of other 'ordinary revolutionaries' who have created real social change using non-violent techniques. Whether rice pudding qualifies as non-violent is a moot point, though.

A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, war and a ruined house in France by Miranda Richmond Mouillot      $40.00
After surviving World War II by escaping the Nazi occupation, the author's grandparents, Anna and Armand, bought an old stone house in a remote, picturesque village in the south of France. Five years later, Anna packed her bags and walked out on Armand, taking the typewriter and their children. The two never saw or spoke to each other again. To discover the roots of this embittered and entrenched silence, the author put her other plans on hold and moved to the old stone house, now a crumbling ruin, where she immersed herself in letters and archival materials, and slowly teasing stories out of her reticent, and declining, grandparents. Along the way she finds a new life for herself.

Dirty Chick: Adventures of an unlikely farmer by Antonia Murphy       $40.00
Swapping deadlines for feeding times, traffic jams for homemade cheese, Murphy transplanted her husband and children from the US to a small farm near Whangarei. In this hilarious account of rural life, she exposes the dirty truth behind the agrarian dream: farming is really a world of slaughter, maggots and menopausal hens.

Hook, Line and Singer: A sing-along book by Cerys Matthews      $29.99
Toss your screens away and gather round to sing old favourites and new from this lovely book! Where do you like to sing?
"The best book I've seen for years. Maybe the most useful book I've ever read." - Jools Holland

The Brain's Way of Healing: remarkable discoveries and recoveries from the frontiers of neuroplasticity by Norman Doidge      $45.00
Using actual case studies, Doidge shows how the discoveries outlined in his previous book, The Brain That Changes Itself, have effected transformations in multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and dementia.

The Last Pulse by Anson Cameron          $38.00
A man and his eight-year-old daughter blow up a dam in Queensland and, in a stolen boat, ride the released waters down what used to be the Darling River, encountering "the vast hoard of mirrors and horrors that is country life".
"Vibrantly witty and scathing in its social analysis." - Sydney Morning Herald

Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole: Extraordinary journeys into the human brain by Allan Ropper and B.D. Burrell       $36.99
"This peek inside the sick brain, by a foremost neurologist, helps readers truly appreciate how calamities like brain tumours, stroke, Parkinson's, seizures and other diseases affect us. His stories are sometimes painful, sometimes heart-warming, but invariably tremendously illuminating." - Elizabeth Loftus
"Medical writing at its best." - V.M. Ramachandran

I'll Have What She's Having: My adventures in celebrity dieting by Rebecca Harrington     $22.00
Rebecca Harrington leaves no cabbage soup unstirred in her wickedly funny, wildly absurd quest to diet like the stars. Elizabeth Taylor mixed cottage cheese and sour cream; Madonna subsisted on 'sea vegetables' and Marilyn Monroe drank raw eggs whipped with warm milk. Where there is a Hollywood starlet offering nutritional advice, there is a diet Rebecca Harrington is willing to try. Facing a harrowing mix of fainting spells, pimples and salmonella, Harrington tracks down illegal haggis to imitate Pippa Middleton, paces her apartment until the wee hours drinking ten Diet Cokes a la Karl Lagerfeld, and attempts something forbiddingly known as the 'Salt Water Flush' to channel her inner Beyonce.

Soulprint by Megan Miranda        $19.99
Alina Chase has spent her entire life in confinement. With the science of soul-printing now a reality, she is 'protected' for her own safety - and the safety of others - because her soul has done terrible things ...or so she's told. When Alina finally breaks out of prison, helped by a group of people with unclear motives, she begins to uncover clues left by her past life that only she can decipher. And she may not be as innocent as she once believed. Can Alina change her future, or is she fated to repeat her past and face the consequences?

Clade by James Bradley            $40.00
An urgent novel casting a family forward through a century of projected ecological and social instability. How will we cope?

Woman's Consciousness, Man's World by Sheila Rowbotham      $28.00
From its publication in 1973, this ground-breaking and hugely influential work has defined debates on women's oppression and consciousness, and on the connections between socialism and feminism. Examining feminist consciousness from various vantage points - social, sexual, cultural and economic - Sheila Rowbotham identifies the social conditions under which it developed, showing how the roles women take on within the capitalist economy have shaped ideas about family and sexuality.

The Walking Whales: From land to water in eight million years by J.G.M. 'Hans' Thewissen        $65.00
We can better understand why whales live as they do by seeking to understand their land-lubbing ancestors.

Just Mercy: A story of justice and redemption by Bryan Stevenson       $40.00
"Bryan Stevenson is America's young Nelson Mandela, a brilliant lawyer fighting with courage and conviction to guarantee justice for all." - Desmond Tutu

For the Forest of a Bird by Sue Salisa         $23.00
'I want to tell you that he's coming home...and it's going to be like it was before he went away, before everything broke apart.' Nella waits for the swallows by the creek each spring. It's a secret vigil she's followed ever since her father left. This year she's going to take him with her ...but can we ever return to the way things were? A YA novel about love and the things you can and can't change.

An Ecology of World Literature, From antiquity to the present day by Alexander Beecroft      $49.99
What is a literature? How do literatures of different countries interact with each other? In this ground-breaking study, Alexander Beecroft develops a new way of thinking about world literature. Drawing on a series of examples and case studies, the book ranges from ancient epic to contemporary fiction. Beecroft identifies a series of literary ecologies, from small-scale societies to the planet as a whole, within which literary texts are produced and circulated. An Ecology of World Literature places in dialogue scholarship on ancient and modern, western and non-western texts, producing new and unexpected demands for literary study.

The Anti-Social Family by Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh        $28.00
Although family values are frequently lamented for being in decline, our society continues to be structured around the nuclear family. This book (first published in 1982 but still challenging today) dissects the network of household, kinship and sexual relations that constitute the family form in advanced capitalist societies, and explores the personal and social needs that the family promises to meet but more often denies, and proposes moral and political practices that go beyond the family to more egalitarian caring alternatives.

Griffith Review 47: Looking west          $35.00
What is it about The West (the west of anywhere)? Tim Winton, Shaun Tan and others cast their eyes and push their pens into Western Australia.

Watercoloured 2
The second issue of this Nelson journal of cultural criticism, art criticism, political criticism and some other sorts of criticism, is available FREE from the shop (and from several other places).
Contributions from Danny Knox, Mic Dover, Fiona Johnstone, John Roughan, Elli Yates, and Gabriel Adams and Nicholas Haig.

 

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter        $29.99
In an attempt to save himself Matt Prior may end up destroying everything he cares about... A funny novel from the author of Beautiful Ruins.
"It made me laugh more than any other book this year." - Nick Hornby

Tove Jansson: Work and love by Tuula Karjalainen       $49.99
An illustrated biography revealing the life of the multifaceted, complex writer and artist best known and loved around the world for her Moomin series (we can't recommend them highly enough!).

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs      $35.00
A collection of some of Bangs' best pieces, from music hagiographies to excoriating reviews.
"Bangs was one of the best writers ever to appear on newsprint. When he died, American culture lost one its most astute, ornery, funniest and most soulful observers." - New York Times
"A superb collection: wild and funny and unpredictable. Lester Bangs was a great writer who happened to write about rock 'n' roll." - Rolling Stone .

Nunslinger by Stark Holborn         $29.99
At once a quintessential Western and a Western like no other, Nunslinger, is the tale of Sister Thomas Josephine, a nun who, falsely accused of murder, goes on the run through the American West and into the teeth of the Civil War, all the while chased by a man who has become dangerously obsessed with her.
"Witty and atmospheric, with a cliffhanger every few chapters, Nunslinger is thrilling stuff, even if - as I used to think - westerns aren't really your thing. I galloped through the book in one bumpy sitting." - The Observer
>> Who is Stark Holborn?

Chasing the Scream: The first and last days of the war on drugs by Johann Hari       $37.00
Drugs were first made illegal a century ago. This hard-hitting, myth-busting history shows that the 'war' on drugs has very different motives and results from the ones promulgated in the media.
"Wonderful." - Noam Chomsky
"Thrilling." - Naomi Klein

Akademie X: Lessons in life + art edited by Lisa Gabrielle Mark     $70.00
A wonderfully interesting (and instructive) assembly of wisdom from 36 legendary artists, critics and tutors, giving technical advice, assignments (some of which will take five minutes to complete, others five years), tips for avoiding creative ruts (including suggestions for mind-expanding materials to read, watch or listen to), principles of careful looking, advice on the daily practice of art (how to balance time alone in the studio with building an artistic community), career pointers (how to prepare for a studio visit from a curator or gallerist) and personal anecdotes. These lessons offer the reader a set of tools for thinking, seeing and living as an artist.

Octopus! The most mysterious creature in the sea by Katherine Harmon Courage      $29.99
Ancient, strange, intelligent. This book reveals that the oldest known octopus lived before the first dinosaurs; that two thirds of an octopus’s brain capacity is spread throughout its arms, meaning each literally has a mind of its own; and that it can change colours within milliseconds to camouflage itself, yet appears to be colourblind.

The Game of Lines by Herve Tullet        $17.00
We have a range of new titles from the ever-popular Tullet, perfect for preschoolers.

Mr Bones by Paul Theroux      $37.00
A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

The Bletchley Girls: The secret history of the women behind WW2's biggest code-breaking operation by Tessa Dunlop        $39.99
Interesting first-hand accounts of the secret operation that is estimated to have shortened the war by two years, and of re-entry to the civilian world retaining that secret.
>> Meet some 'Bletchley girls' here.

The King in the North: The life and times of Oswald of Northumbria by Max Adams       $29.99
A revealing portrait of Britain in the Dark Ages and a resuscitation of an outstanding early English monarch.

The Light of Truth: Writings of an anti-lynching crusader by Ida B. Wells        $35.00
Wells was a leader in the early civil rights movement in the United States, a suffragist, journalist and sociologist.

Banksy in New York by Ray Mock         $59.99
A day-by-day account of Banksy's 2013 New York residency, chronicling works that include 'Sirens of the Lambs' and the Central Park stand at which original works by Banksy were sold for only $60. Mock's work captures not only Banksy's artwork but the reactions of the public and media frenzies that often accompanied it.

There Will Be Lies by Nick Lake       $25.00
If the person who keeps you safe also tells you lies, who can you trust? Shelby's mother has always kept her safe. Too safe. When Shelby gets hit by a car, the lies upon which her life is built begin to unravel.

The Eight Curious Cases of Inspector Zhang by Stephen Leather      $25.00
Eight locked-room mysteries for the Singaporean Sherlock.