Baxter in a box! A lavish slip-cased four-volume set containing over a million words: reviews, essays, lectures, journal articles, drafts and rough notes, meditations, fables, stories, a short novel, interviews, letters to the editor, correspondence with friends and critics, and diary entries, covering Baxter’s entire career.
>> The Road to Jerusalem.
A detective needs a language almost as much as a language needs a detective. Vladislavic invites readers to do some detective work of their own. Each story can be read as just that - a story - or you can dig a little deeper. Take a closer look, examine the artefact from all angles, and consider the clues and patterns concealed within. Whether skewering extreme marketing techniques or constructing dystopian parallel universes; whether mourning a mother's loss or tracing a translator's on-stage breakdown, Vladislavic's inquisitions will make you question your own language - how it defines you, and how it undoes you.
"I'm half way through and enjoying this. To read is to be a kind of detective." - Thomas
Gromov is merely a forgotten writer of Soviet propagandist novels. But he has left behind his Books and the powers they impart - the Fury to tear enemies limb from limb, the Memory of a perfect childhood, the Strength to overcome all fear of death. These books transform believers from senile to lucid, cowardly to brave, weak to strong. Soon, Libraries of readers start to emerge, waging war on one another to seize precious copies of the Books and terrible consequences ensue. Trapped in the middle of this world inhabited by society's outcasts - the decrepit, the heartbroken, the abandoned, the abused - is the young and unremarkable Alexei. Everything will change when he inherits a Book of Memory, and therefore becomes... a Librarian.
"Powerful, disturbing, and at the same time, uplifting." - Vzgliad
"Uncompromising, bizarre and desperate." - Gazeta
"Words can be more dangerous than machine-guns." - Proza
"When we were visiting the Auckland Art Gallery recently we were stunned and intrigued by the wall-length moving projection by Lisa Reihana. Based on some 18th century wallpaper but animated with living actors, the work makes subtle yet provocative comment on early intercultural relations in the Pacific (and by extension, the relations that followed). This lavish book includes scenes from the work, portraits of the participants, and ten essays exploring the importance and resonance of the work." - Thomas
>> See here (there is a link to the video).
A researcher sits in the archive of the British Psychoanalytic Society in London, examining fragile pieces of paper, small notebooks, and diaries. A writer in Berlin finds himself haunted by the city's socialist-era buildings, and by their designer. Each begins to sketch the historical figure at the heart of his fixation. The two novellas about their lives form an incomplete history of Europe's 20th century: its wars, its politics and thought. They explore two complementary attitudes to the world: the psychoanalyst's absorption in the continuing impact the world has on us, and the communist's efforts to build something new in the midst of it all.
In 2013, there were over 66,000 more women between the ages of 25-49 living in New Zealand than there were men. This so-called 'man drought' is a hot topic for journalists and academics alike, who comment on how the situation might affect New Zealand women's chances of finding love. Yet they rarely stop to ask more than a handful of women whether they're actually bothered by this lack of men. Hannah August integrates interview material, statistics, science and cultural commentary in order to demonstrate why we need to talk differently about the 'man drought'.
Welcome to the museum! Here you will find a collection of objects from ancient civilisations. Objects of beauty, objects of functionality, objects of war, objects of life, and objects of death and burial. As you wander from room to room, explore the magnificence of what civilisations have left behind over thousands of years of human history. In the same beautiful large-format series as Animalium!
A novel of quietness and place. Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII - where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus - and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven.
"Heart-rending and heart-warming. A Whole Life, for all its gentleness, is a very powerful book." -Jim Crace
A little boy takes a boat made of newspaper out for a rainy-day adventure. The boy and his boat dance in the downpour and play in the puddles, but when the boy sends his boat floating down a gutter stream, it quickly gets away from him. So of course the little boy goes on the hunt for his beloved boat - and when the rain lets up, he finds himself on a new adventure altogether. A really beautiful wordless picture book.
Antibiotics add, on average, twenty years to our lives. For over seventy years, since the manufacture of penicillin in 1943, we have survived extraordinary operations and life-threatening infections. We are so familiar with these wonder drugs that we take them for granted. The truth is that we have been abusing them: as patients, as doctors, as travellers, in our food. No new class of antibacterial has been discovered for twenty six years and the bugs are fighting back. If we do not take responsibility now, in a few decades we may start dying from the most commonplace of operations and ailments that can today be treated easily.
In the vast Kazakh steppes of the crumbling Soviet Empire, Alyosha has finished his army service and is promised a gift from his deaf commander: an eternal tooth. As he waits for it in the infirmary, he agrees to help out a medical officer, and they set out on a journey to the kingdom of the dead. Oleg Pavlov's kaleidoscope tale is peopled with soldiers and prisoners, hobos and refugees, and mice that steal medicines.
"Pavlov imbues his world with a very particular flavour: the mixture of tragedy, absurdity and black comedy that runs in the veins of Russian literature as far back as the work of Nikolai Gogol." - Marcel Theroux
"The bottom-line question is: what actions in this time period are truly vital, and will we take them?" Our climate is changing, in ways that will have long-term impacts for us and for our children. Yet still we fail to take meaningful action. Why? When will it be too late?
A thoughtful and tender book from the author of Liar and Spy and When You Reach Me. Back in year five, Bridge, Tabitha and Emily made a pact. Never to fight, ever. Now, two years later, they're still best friends, but other things are changing. Bridge meets Sherm, and is soon excited and confused by her new, strange feelings. And when Emily starts texting pictures of herself to Patrick, Bridge and Tab find themselves complicit in a naive plan that quickly spirals out of control. And while the three friends navigate the challenges of their changing friendship, another story - of betrayal and remorse - keeps you guessing.
In these stories, glistening icebergs float above urban horizons; a burning stag runs wild through the city; the ruins of industry emerge unsteadily from the sea; and the abandoned generations in a decayed space-elevator look not up at the stars but down at the Earth.
"The equal of David Mitchell or Zadie Smith." - Scotland on Sunday
"One of the most interesting and promising writers to appear in the last few years in any genre." - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
"His wit dazzles, his humour is lively, and the pure vitality of his imagination is astonishing." - Ursula K. LeGuin, Guardian
Born in Berlin in 1931 to Jewish parents, the eight-year-old Auerbach was sent to England in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime. His parents stayed behind and died in a concentration camp in 1943. Now in his eighties, Auerbach is still producing his distinctly sculptural paintings.
>> Some pictures at the Tate.
"Death destroys a man but the idea of it saves him." - E.M. Forster. The Black Mirror takes death as an external viewpoint from which we may see our lives more clearly. Raymond Tallis looks back on his world from the standpoint of his future corpse. He reflects on the senses that opened up his late world, the elements they reveal, the distances, divisions and intimacies of space, the multifarious activities that occupied his days, his possessions, his utterances, his relationship to others, the extinguished flame that was his self, his journey towards the end, and his after-life either side of the grave.
An inventive graphic novel charting the rise and fall of Egret Bindings, once the most prestigious firm of bookbinders in London. In 1910 brothers Guy and Victor Egret took on an ambitious commission: a deluxe, jewelled binding of a collection of poems, A Moonless Land. It proved to be a moment of hubris. The work triggers their ruin, watched by the disapproving spirit of their father, Garrison Egret. A darkly humorous tale of sibling rivalry and creative one-upmanship.
Jacob Little is in trouble - existential trouble. Over ten years, he has tried out such a range of identities that he has lost all sense of who he is. Convinced that only his ex-lover Solace can help, Jacob sets off for her Scottish hometown, only to get caught up in the lives of four people with their own issues: his self-deluding landlady, a teenager looking for a grand romance, an old watchmaker obsessed with time and a young girl who believes she's a boy. Each sees Jacob in a different light. For each, he is a catalyst. But where does that leave him?
'A Guide to Berlin' is the name of a short story written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1925. It is unusual in that it concerns everyday objects, not monuments: the 'guide' consists of small noticed details and random visions recorded on an inconsequential winter's day in the Berlin of the 20s. In this contemporary novel, A Guide to Berlin, six strangers to the city meet over their interest in Vladimir Nabokov's work. They enter a kind of informal narrative contract to offer up 'speak-memories' to each other. Each shares stories of their past and forms friendships and relationships within their international circle. The city of Berlin transfixes them all, but in deeply personal and distinctive ways, so that although there is a net of affiliations and shared images, the city is different for each of them.
A little bubbly, a little bitter, a little absurd, and echoing with the sound of laughter, these poem-songs have shaggy tales to tell.
Schubert's Winterreise is at the same time one of the most powerful and one of the most enigmatic masterpieces in Western music. Bostridge - one of the work's most renowned interpreters - focusses on the context, resonance and personal significance of a work which is a landmark in the history of Lieder. Drawing equally on his experience of performing this work (he has performed it more than a hundred times), on his musical knowledge and on his training as a scholar, Bostridge unpicks the enigmas and subtle meaning of each of the 24 songs to explore for us the world Schubert inhabited, bringing the work and its world alive for connoisseurs and new listeners alike.
>> Bostridge's Winter Journey.
A comic literary mystery from the Man Booker shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. Following the death of Rima's father, she goes to stay with her godmother Addison, a wildly successful, albeit eccentric, mystery writer. Addison's beach house seems the place to make sense of Rima's loss, yet she is soon caught up in a mystery of her own. Who stole a small and highly valuable object from Addison's kitchen? Why is Rima corresponding with an obsessive fan, using someone else's family name? Most importantly: what exactly was the relationship between Addison and Rima's father, and why did Addison name a murderer after him in one of her novels?
"A magnificently sweeping world history that takes us from the people of Oceania and concludes with the container. In contrast to most books on maritime history, the majority of The Sea and Civilization covers the history of the world before Columbus sailed the ocean blue and at least as much of the narrative focuses on Asia as it does on Europe." - Daily Telegraph
"Without doubt, the most comprehensive maritime history ever produced." - The Times
"A brilliantly researched and ambitious affirmation of the sea and civilisation." - Philip Hoare
A fascinating investigation of the impact of technology on our lives and mental capacities, distilled in the case of a driver who killed two people when texting and driving.
Humans have always been fascinated by the possibility of being invisible. Invisibility runs through our folk lore, literature and art, and its potential is revealing of our innermost secrets and desires. This book encompasses the myths and morals of Plato, the occult obsessions of the Middle Ages, the trickeries and illusions of stage magic, the auras and ethers of Victorian physics, military strategies to camouflage armies and ships and the discovery of invisibly small worlds. From the medieval to the cutting-edge, fairy tales to telecommunications, from beliefs about the supernatural to the discovery of dark energy, Philip Ball reveals the universe of the invisible. How would you act if you were invisible?
If you like poisonings, betrayals, mutilations, murders and flesh-eating farmyard animals, keep reading...In this gripping follow-up to Percy Jackson and the Greek Gods, demigod Percy Jackson tells the stories of twelve of the original Greek heroes in all their gory, bloodthirsty glory. Want to know who cut off Medusa's head? Which hero was raised by a she-bear? Who tamed Pegasus, the winged horse?
As the goldfish tumbles downwards he glimpses many lives, many stories...
Poignant.
On the way to plumb the deepest point in Earth's oceans, the Marianas Trench, Caden Bosch, a brilliant high school student begins to show some very odd behaviour.
"A brilliant journey across the dark sea of the mind; frightening, sensitive, and powerful. Simply extraordinary." - Laurie Halse Anderson
This endlessly browsable book is both a history of jazz music and of graphic design.
Is there a link between the brutal murders of a mother and her teenage daughter and a series of murders in which the victims had the letter A carved into their foreheads? It's complicated.
"The grand master of this dark genre." - Weekend Australian
>>> Come along to A Morning with Michael Robotham! Hear the author talk about this book and about his writing life. Meet the author and have your book signed. Thursday 27 August, 10:30-12:00. Elma Turner Library (Halifax Street). This is a free event but you'll need a ticket from us.
Zot lives in a world without colour - no green grass, no blue sky, no yellow sun and no red flowers. From his lonely mountaintop, he gazes at Earth, sparkling with brilliant colour, and thinks it must be a very happy place. He sets off to steal some of that happiness for himself.
Justine thought she knew who she was, until an anonymous caller seemed to know better...
"One of the great unmissables of this genre - intelligent, classy and with a wonderfully Gothic imagination." - The Times
"Tension, thy name is Hannah." - Independent
The smell of lavender at a roadside picnic, waiting for the Tour de France to race past. The Pacific Ocean view from the 10,000-foot summit of Hawaii's Haleakala volcanic crater (after 5 hours of uphill riding). A fresh Fat Tire ale hitting your lips at the new Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. These, and a wide-ranging variety of other experiences, all rooted to a specific location or event, comprise 'The Cyclist's Bucket List'.
Boosted by digital design and manufacturing possibilities, a rising global group of independent makers is making this crossover of furniture and architecture one of the hottest and most innovative fields of design.
Andy and Terry's amazing 65-Storey Treehouse now has a pet-grooming salon, a birthday room where it's always your birthday (even when it's not), a room full of exploding eyeballs, a lollipop shop, a quicksand pit, an ant farm, a time machine and Tree-NN: a 24-hour-a-day TV news centre keeping you up to date with all the latest treehouse news, current events and gossip. Well, what are you waiting for? Come on up!
When George Mottershead moved to the village of Upton-by-Chester in 1930 to realise his dream of opening a zoo without bars, his four-year-old daughter June had no idea how extraordinary her life would become. Soon her best friend was a chimpanzee called Mary, lion cubs and parrots were vying for her attention in the kitchen, and finding a bear tucked up in bed was no more unusual than talking to a tapir about granny's lemon curd.
Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone and his men held off fierce Turkish counter-attacks on Chunuk Bair for nearly two days before being killed by a shell from a British warship.
On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries. The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved. And the second is a baby elephant. As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both his last case and his new ward than he thought.
When Laperouse leaves France in the Spring of 1785 with two ships under his command, he knows that he sails with the full backing of the French government. This is to be a voyage of scientific and geographical discovery - but every person on board has their own hopes, ambitions and dreams. As the ships move across vast distances in their journey of nearly four years, the different characters step forward and invite us into their world.
Stanley and Vera, academically precocious but awkward teenagers, form a bond when they tie for first place in the National Spelling Bee. Though their mothers have big plans for them - Stanley will become a senator, Vera a mathematics professor - neither wants to follow these pre-determined paths. So Stanley hatches a plan to marry Vera in a sham wedding for the financial freedom to pursue his one true love: crossword puzzle construction. In enlisting Vera to marry him, he neglects one variable: she's secretly in love with him, a fact that dooms his plan to disaster.
When Lola's grandmother Loretta takes her to Siena, Italy, for the summer, Lola learns of her family's history of heartbreak and adventure, stretching back to the Second World War. In 1945, Loretta's nickname was 'The Daredevil' due to her fearless competing in the town's famous Palio horse races - until war broke out and led to sadness and loss for Loretta. Lola jumps at the chance to enter the modern-day Palio on a beautiful horse called Nico - can she win, in honour of her beloved grandmother? And solve a mystery that will bring happiness and hope to Loretta?
Tom Ellison was the "Mr Rugby" of his era, a tremendous player who captained the All Blacks in 1893 (the first Maori to do so), captained, coached and selected teams, developed the role of the wing-forward which was to give New Zealand an enduring advantage and wrote one of the first instructional books on rugby.
I don't know why we find this collection of vintage posters (1930s-1970s) exhorting safety in almost every sphere of life so funny, but we've been chortling away every since this book came in. The potential for misfortune is everywhere!
