Set in Virginia in the 1960s, this is a screwball all-out assault on the nuclear family, personal identity, desire and human relations.
"Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know. You might not want to believe this, but her sentences and stories are so strong and convincing that you'll have no choice." - Jonathan Franzen
>> Many words in The New Yorker.
The 1928 Ravat-Wonder team from New Zealand and Australia were the first English-speaking team to ride the Tour de France. They weren't expected to finish, but stadiums filled with Frenchmen eager to call their names. The Invisible Mile is a re-imagining of the tour from inside the peloton, where the test of endurance, for one young New Zealander, becomes a psychological journey into the chaos of the War a decade earlier. Riding on the alternating highs of cocaine and opium, victory and defeat, the rider's mind is increasingly fixed on his family's past. As he nears the battlefields of the north and his last, invisible mile, the trauma of exertion and disputed guilt cast strange shadows on his story, and onlookers congregate about him waiting for revelation.
Our favourite self-obsessed little hamster is back! Hamster really wants to go on a trip, but the preparations don't quite go as expected, and, what's worse, other people have other ideas!
A delightfully wry book for all ages.
The writer was 19 years old when she and her two sisters decided - on the toss of a coin - to embark on a voyage on the S.S. Hinemoa to the Sub-Antarctic Islands of New Zealand, visiting places where few women had ventured before. Lillie, Ethel and Fannie were experienced sailors who appear to have enjoyed a freedom unusual in their era. The poorly spelled but enchanting account of this trip is recorded in a charmingly illustrated diary which offers an insight into the lives of this trio of young adventurers who fearlessly faced the challenges of freezing southern latitudes with little more to protect them than high spirits. Delightful.
A skinny boy in the 1950s collectivist work team, "with the superhuman ability to suffer and a superhuman degree of sensitivity represents the soul of my entire fictional output. Not one of all the fictional characters I've created since then is as close to my soul as he is." - Mo Yan, 2012 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
A collection of essays and memoir pieces on the topic of reading, in particular what it means for writers to be readers and how that has shaped their life.
If you've just read the gripping Anglo-Indian mystery The Strangler Vine you won't be able to wait to read what happens to Jeremiah Blake and William Avery after they return to London. Luckily you won't have to: When the police refuse to investigate a series of bizarre murders in the printing district of Victorian London, Blake and Avery take it upon themselves to investigate. Carter is a notable historian, and her novels give wonderful historical texture, as well as being finely wrought mysteries.
Cutting edge curator Obrist has been recording his conversations with leading practitioners for decades. This book includes David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Rem Koolhaas, and Oscar Niemeyer.
"Mr. Obrist has established himself as the unofficial secretary of the contemporary art world. The way we might read Vasari for primary information on the Italian Renaissance, people will be looking at the archive of Hans Ulrich's interviews to construct the art history of this era." - New York Observer
"Simon Mawer, who wrote one of my favourite modern novels, the brilliant The Glass Room. His last novel was The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, which told of the wartime exploits of Marian Sutro, whose character was based on some of the women who were parachuted into occupied France. That book ended rather inconclusively, but now I understand why, because his latest begins with Marian's escape from Ravensbruck and her return home, trying to adapt to the strange normality of post-war England. It isn't long before shadowy figures from her past tempt her to enter the confusing espionage world of the cold war, and the plot and writing are reminiscent of Le Carre at his best." - Jan
An exchange between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with a training in literary studies. Arabella Kurtz and J. M. Coetzee consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both their approaches is a concern with stories.
A man is walking down a country lane. A woman, cycling towards him, swerves to avoid a dog. On that moment, their future hinges. There are three possible outcomes, three small decisions that could determine the rest of their life. Eva and Jim are nineteen and students at Cambridge when their paths first cross in 1958. And then there is David, Eva's then lover, an ambitious actor who loves Eva deeply. The Versions of Us follows the three different courses their lives could take following this first meeting. An exploration both of the nature of love and of the vagaries of life.
When Lucy, Elena, and Michael receive their summer reading list, they are excited to see To Kill A Mockingbird included. But not everyone in their class shares the same enthusiasm, so they hatch a plot to get the entire town talking about the book. They have daring plans, including re-shelving copies of the book in bookshops so that people think they are missing, and starting a website committed to "destroying the mockingbird". All the hullabaloo starts to direct more people to the book. But soon, their exploits start to spin out of control and they unwittingly start a mini revolution in the name of books.
How did the West turn success into defeat? How did a bunch of farmers and religious students defeat an international military complex? The entire fiasco has been devastating for what was already a poor and disorganised country.
Clark Houseman is a rare books dealer, beloved by both collectors and The Faith - the immensely powerful local church, and one of his biggest clients. Beloved, that is, until he is blown up by the city's third bomb in less than twenty-four hours. As Clark hovers on the brink of death first on the scene are detectives Sinclair and Alvarez who are under pressure to close the case. Amid a vortex of conspiracy theories and local politics, their investigation unearths a web of intrigue surrounding The Faith and its secretive dealings. With time running out, the detectives start to wonder if there could be more to the mild-mannered, bookish Clark Houseman than first thought...
A fascinating, poetic, urgent portrait of this very misunderstood city through an account of the author's emergence from grief and his attempts to overcome his fear of driving in the city. This takes the form of an awakening, both personal and political, 'interior' and 'exterior', to the meaning and responsibilities of home, and to the very real social, criminal and political ills that beset the city.
A charting of friendship, obsession and love, set in rural Ireland, Dublin and New York.
"Richly nuanced and utterly absorbing" - The Guardian
When they first arrived, they came quietly and stealthily as if they tip-toed into the world when we were all looking the other way. Ade loves living at the top of a tower block. From his window, he feels like he can see the whole world stretching out beneath him. His mum doesn't really like looking outside - but it's going outside that she hates. She's happier sleeping all day inside their tower, where it's safe. But one day, other tower blocks on the estate start falling down around them and strange, menacing plants begin to appear. Now their tower isn't safe anymore. Ade and his mum are trapped and there's no way out ...
Audrey's father taught her that to stay human in the modern world, she had to build a moat around herself; a moat of books and music, philosophy and dreams. A moat that makes Audrey different from the echoes: sophisticated, emotionless machines, built to resemble humans and to work for human masters. Daniel is an echo - but he's not like the others. He feels a connection with Audrey; a feeling Daniel knows he was never designed to have, and cannot explain. And when Audrey is placed in terrible danger, he's determined to save her. A thrilling new book from the author of The Humans.
Despite being a desk-job Classics major who couldn't tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver, the author changed career and here tells the story of becoming a carpenter. Writing with infectious curiosity, MacLaughlin describes the joys and frustrations of making things by hand, reveals the challenges of working as a woman in an occupation that is over 99 percent male, and explains how manual labor has changed the way she sees the world.
"A well-researched, considerate and almost affectionate biography." - The New York Times
>> Ian McEwan remembers John Updike.
Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families. There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naive mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth.
"Hyperactive and hilarious." - Independent
The lion at the little French zoo is a favourite of all the townspeople. Every day they stop by to feed him tidbits and say, "Bonjour, Happy Lion". Naturally, when the lion finds his door open, he decides it would only be proper to visit all his friendly neighbours in return. But, wait - sacre bleu! - why is everyone fleeing in terror? Louise Fatio's timeless tale about friendship still sparkles and Roger Duvoisin's illustrations are as engaging as ever in this 50th Anniversary edition.
>> Another Duvoisin favourite reissued: Petunia!
A misfit man finds a misfit dog. One day a savage act forces them to abandon the precarious life they've established together, and take to the road. A beautifully written, tender, empathetic, devastating portrait of loneliness, loss and friendship.
"A heart-breaking read from a major new talent." - Independent
Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. In a tradition going back to Plato, Timothy Williamson uses a fictional conversation to explore questions about truth and falsity, and knowledge and belief. Is truth always relative to a point of view? Is every opinion fallible?
Tin is looking after his little sister Nickel one afternoon when she grabs hold of a balloon and floats away! Tin and his dog Zinc set off in hot pursuit as she floats towards the big city. Can they rescue Nickel before she goes too far?
From a violent domestic background, Peg blitzed her way through balls and masquerades creating scandals and gossip wherever she went, leaving dukes, barristers and lieutenants stranded in her wake. Her memoirs were published in the eighteenth century and created a new genre. She wrote not merely to reveal herself but to expose the shoddy behaviour of others and her account of her life. In this book, Julie Peakman brings her subject and the world through which she moved to glorious, bawdy life.
Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes-ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes posits that corruption is a cause rather than a result of instability.
First published in 1926, and long out-of-print, Brereton's account of the Battle of the Suez Canal on 3 February 1915; Gallipoli as it related to the Landing at Anzac, and the Second Battle of Krithia at Cape Helles (where the author received a serious head wound); and the Western Front, including First Somme in September 1916, with the q2th (Nelson) Company of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion is now available in this lavish illustrated edition.
Fairyland is a dynamic and beguiling place, one that permits the most striking explorations of gender, suffering, love, family, and the travails of identity. This anthology brings together stories by Thackeray, Oscar Wilde, Ford Madox Ford, Rudyard Kipling, George MacDonald, Juliana Ewing, Mary De Morgan, and Andrew Lang and others to show the vibrancy and variety of the form and its ability to reflect both period and universal concerns.
"The unity of Oates' stories in this collection resides in their confrontation with aging and death, with the various ways life winds down and ends, and with the darker side of our human nature." - Roanoke Times
A thriller examining the grey line between genius and madness. Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of commercial success most authors only dream about, with twenty-eight mystery novels to his name. He has a loving wife, three grown children, and is well-known in his small New Jersey town for his generosity. But Andrew's hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym Jack of Spades, he had penned another string of novels - dark, violent, masochistic tales of murder, lust and madness. When a court order arrives accusing him of plagarism, Rush fears his secret may be exposed.
With over 70 entertaining and thought-provoking list topics ranging from the quintessential (favourite books by genre, authors to explore) to the lovably idiosyncratic (favourite reading spots, books to skip), this illustrated journal will serve as a unique reading log for bibliophiles. Especially recommended by Holly!
Gower Street: 1883. March Middleton is the neice of London's greatest (and most curmudgeonly) personal detective, Sidney Grice. March has just discovered a wealthy long-lost relative she never knew she had. When this newest family member meets with a horrible death, March is in the frame for murder - and only Sidney Grice can prove her innocence. Grice agrees to investigate (for his usual fee) but warns that he is not entirely convinced of her innocence. If he were in her position, he might have been tempted. But the more he uncovers, the more all the clues point to Grice himself...
And have you read The Mangle Street Murders yet?
Bored with her little brother Pog's childish games, Dindy decides that she's finally grown-up enough for a real adventure. While her mother is sleeping and the servants are busy, she takes Pog deep into the tea gardens, a place they are never supposed to go alone. Terrified by a wild animals and snubbed by the local children, Dindy starts to realize how little she really knows about India, even though it's the only place she's ever called home.
How do you make something out of nothing?
>> Ziggy played guitar.
Granny has been telling fairy tales for as long as Elsa can remember. In the beginning they were only to make Elsa go to sleep, but lately the stories have another dimension as well - something Elsa can't quite put her finger on. When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologising to people she has hurt, it marks the beginning of Elsa's greatest adventure. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones - but also to the truth about fairytales and about a grandmother like no other. From the author of A Man Called Ove.
It has been called the Tour de France's 'Hollywood climb', and there is no doubt that Alpe d'Huez has played a starring role in cycling's history since its first encounter with the sport back in 1952 when the legendary Fausto Coppi triumphed on the summit. Re-introduced to the Tour in 1976, Alpe d'Huez has risen to mythical status, thanks initially to a string of victories by riders from Holland, whose exploits attracted tens of thousands of their compatriots to the climb, which has become known as 'Dutch mountain'. A snaking 13.8-kilometre ascent rising up through 21 numbered hairpins at an average gradient of 7.8%, this is the climb on which every great rider wants to win.
"Brilliant and unflinching on obsession, on desperation, on the stuff of how people are capable of being to each other. Andersson writes smart, sharp-eyed, and often witheringly funny prose; nobody gets out of this situation with their pride, or their public persona, intact. Which is what makes it such addictive reading." - Belinda McKeown (author of Tender)
New Zealand’s remarkable indigenous biodiversity is fragile and it’s in crisis. Our economic institutions promote biodiversity loss by not accounting for environmental costs and our laws and policies are unable to prevent the resulting ongoing losses. The design and implementation of policy and programmes that safeguard ecosystems require both an understanding of political, economic and social factors influencing biodiversity protection and a foundation based on established ecological principles.
On the bleak, windswept moors of northern England, a small religious cult has cut itself off from society, believing they have found meaning in a purposeless world. Led by their prophet Nathaniel, they eagerly await the end times. But when the prophet brings in a new recruit, Stephanie, along with her rebellious daughter Judith, the group's delicate dynamic is disturbed. Judith is determined to escape, but her feelings are complicated by a growing friendship with another of the children, the naive and trusting Moses, who has never experienced the outside world.
Dubbed 'brainbox' by his peers and 'weirdo' by his sister, Kevin Dwyer is a middle-aged forensic accountant who has never had a real friend, other than his eight-year-old nephew Patrick. When Kevin joins the Clifton Heights Sports Club trivia competition as a one-man team, and convincingly wins the first round, he is headhunted by the other contestants. But Kevin would prefer to be on his own. That is, until he meets Maggie Taylor, a Latin teacher and movie buff who's good at her job but unlucky in love (just how unlucky?).
From tangling wool with two sticks, knitting has changed and developed and grown, and is now draped over the leading edges of fashion and art, as well as becoming a rallying point for human values in a modern world.
>> Saturday 13th is World Knit in Public Day!
The globalisation of English comes at the cost of regional variety. This book arrays some treasures indeed.
Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her posh Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds herself transported back to South Jersey where things remain largely unchanged from her unhappy childhood. In need of saving herself, she sets out to find and resurrect a beloved high school English teacher who has retired after a horrific event in the classroom. Will a sassy nun, an ex-heroin addict, a metal-head little boy, and her hoarder mother help or hurt her chances in this bid for renewed hope in the human race?
Delightful (even if you don't like dogs much).
