Eliza travels to Sydney to deal with the estate of her Aunt Dodge, and finds Maxine, a hitherto unknown cousin, occupying Dodge’s apartment. When legal complications derail plans to live it up on their inheritance, the women’s lives become consumed by absurd attempts to deal with Australian tax law, as well their own mounting boredom and squalor.
"Dodge Rose is a stealth reappraisal of narrative technique. Cox has created in Max one of the most extraordinary narrative voices I’ve read this year." - Joanna Walsh
"Dodge Rose is a Modernist novel, reminiscent of Beckett and Joyce, with all the tropes (or trappings, depending on your perspective) of this novel form (expect a lack of punctuation, missing capitals and some stream of consciousness). Ultimately, it is the clues that the author drops for us that give the full picture. This is a novel that tells a history of Australia, its colonial past, an indigenous story (without ever mentioning the word ‘aboriginal’) that reveals a tale of social class, your origins and how this shapes your place in the world." - Stella
>> Listen to Stella reviewing the book on RNZ National.
An evocative novel that bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the Golden Age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated Australian art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth. In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted to the Guild of St. Luke in Holland as a master painter, the first woman to be so honoured. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain-a haunting winter scene, 'At the Edge of a Wood', which hangs over the Manhattan bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibition of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive...
Bill Nelson steps into John Coltrane's body and wears it around. He is a turtle disappearing into the sea. He plumbs the depths of business jargon. He takes singing lessons in Berhampore. He takes his grandfather roller skating. These poems test our understanding of understanding.
The full inside story of the detection of gravitational waves at LIGO, one of the most ambitious feats in scientific history. In 1916 Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves: miniscule ripples in the very fabric of spacetime generated by unfathomably powerful events. If such vibrations could somehow be recorded, we could observe our universe for the first time through sound: the hissing of the Big Bang, the whale-like tunes of collapsing stars, the low tones of merging galaxies, the drumbeat of two black holes collapsing into one.
"What makes the book most rewarding is Levin’s exquisite prose, which bears the mark of a first-rate writer: an acute critical mind haloed with a generosity of spirit." - New York Times
Gornick becomes a flaneur, walking the streets of New York and using the city to think about her aloneness, anxiety and desires.
"She does what the best memoirists do, taking life as it is lived into another register, distilling it onto the page, "riding the tide" of life, not to a destination, but towards understanding, despite it all, something of the tangled actuality of existence before it passes us by." -Sydney Morning Herald
>> Gornick talks with Kim Hill, RNZ National, Saturday 7 May, 10:05AM
Tiger is fast asleep, but oh dear! She's lying completely in the way. Just how will the animals get past without waking her up?
Whenever rain falls, our countryside changes. Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed. Beautifully written nature writing.
Gustavo 'Turnpike' Sanchez is a man with a mission: he is planning to replace every last one of his unsightly teeth. Studying auctioneering under Grandmaster Oklahoma and the famous country singer Leroy Van Dyke, Highway travels the world, amassing his collection of 'collectibles' and perfecting his own specialty: the allegoric auction. In his quest for a perfect set of pearly whites, he finds unusual ways to raise the funds, culminating in the sale of the jewels of his collection: the teeth of the 'notorious infamous' - Plato, Petrarch, Chesterton, Virginia Woolf et al.
"A remarkable story about stories." - Frieze
>> An interview!
>> Ortberg introduces her book.
Find inspiration for no-fuss, flavoursome classics, from the kitchens of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to the Middle East and beyond.
>> Are these the 100 best Jews referred to in the title?
>> Song (with an acknowledgement to Evelyn Rose).
Hellsmouth, an indomitable thoroughbred filly, runs for the glory of the Forge family, one of Kentucky's oldest and most powerful dynasties. Henry Forge has partnered with his daughter, Henrietta, in an endeavour of raw obsession: to breed the next superhorse. But when Allmon Shaughnessy, an ambitious young black man, comes to work on their farm after a stint in prison, the violence of the Forges' history and the exigencies of appetite are brought starkly into view.
"C.E. Morgan has delivered a masterpiece. Rich, deep, and ambitious, this book is, by any standard, a Great American Novel." - Philipp Meyer
A madcap new novel from the author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared!!! It's always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in south Stockholm, it's particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven. Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own business, and preferably not get murdered. Johanna Kjellander, temporarily resident in room eight, is a priest without a vocation, and, as of last week, without a parish. But right now she has two things at her disposal: an envelope containing five thousand kronor, and an excellent idea.
March 30th 1924. It is Mothering Sunday. How will Jane Fairchild, orphan and housemaid, occupy her time when she has no mother to visit? How, shaped by the events of this never to be forgotten day, will her future unfold?
"With a clear focus on the possibilities of the short form, Graham Swift achieves a delicate harmony between the cool detachment of the narrative voice and the intensity of emotion conveyed on every page. This is a rare read indeed." - Spectator
"Mothering Sunday is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives - the parallel stories - we can never know. It may just be Swift's best novel yet." - Observer "Mothering Sunday is bathed in light; and even when tragedy strikes, it blazes irresistibly. Swift's small fiction feels like a masterpiece." - Guardian
Intrigued by stories of a son given away by Mao and his then-wife during the Long March, and mystified by the 'official' explanation of the boy's fate (Whereabouts unknown - No further information available), Loseby sets out alone across China in search of answers. Tracing Mao's own revolutionary journey, the author encounters the extraordinary realities of a new revolution, one that is transforming an ancient culture into a modern economic powerhouse. At the heart of the journey is the hunt for an elusive truth about a brutal and traumatic time in the nation's still raw history. Who was that abandoned boy? Might he still be alive? Would he even want to be found?
Sār: The essence of Indian design by Swapnaa Tamhane $110.00
The
Indian subcontinent is an amalgamation of peoples, cultures, languages
and philosophies. Throughout history Indian culture has been subject to
myriad different influences, from the Mughal empire to the British Raj
to the now globalized nation in transition. This is a wonderful book!
Kevin Barry on Cork, 'as intimate and homicidal as a little Marseille'; Lucy Caldwell imagining forbidden first love in Belfast; an exclusive extract of Colm Toibin's next novel, about growing up in the shadow of a famous father; fiction from Emma Donaghue about Victorian Ireland's miraculous fasting girls; and Sara Baume describing the wild allure and threat of the rural landscape.
What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Fascinated by the experience, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Is aloneness necessary to creativity? Is connectedness an impediment to cultural innovation?
100 amazing gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free recipes to nourish you from breakfast to dinner and beyond.
First impressions are everything. They dictate whether something stands out, how we engage with it, whether we buy it, and how strongly we feel. This is especially true when it comes to design. And design is all around us, secretly shaping our world in ways we rarely recognise. Except if you yourself are a designer, like Chip Kidd.
>> Design done.
"All credit to Hare for giving us his shabbiness as well as his triumphs. By the time he brought down the curtain I had come to understand what a vibrant force he has been for wringing excellence out of people, including himself. The Blue Touch Paper is an engrossing dive into the passions, the disappointments, the quarrels and the elation of a great professional trying to get something done." - New York Times
"An invigorating memoir, an elegantly unvarnished tale." - Guardian
“Frank, moving, and beguiling, The Blue Touch Paper is the fascinating story of becoming a writer in the 1960s and 70s when Britain was changing even faster than the author.”—Joan Didion
From a taxi ride in present-day Bangkok, to eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1980s Kuala Lumpur, to his grandfathers' treacherous boat journeys to mainland China in the 1920s, Aw weaves together stories of insiders and outsiders, images from rural villages to megacity nightclubs and voices in a dizzying variety of dialects and slangs.
Cesarini attempts to deny that Nazi anti-Jewish policy was ‘systematic, consistent or even premeditated’, but rather erratic, local and spontaneous. He also attempts to counter Hannah Arendt's observations of 'the banality of evil'.
It is time to envisage the future, without fear, as a landscape to be won through human striving and expression. Contributors include Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Maria Tumarkin, Anthony Funnel, Margaret Simons, Tony Birch, Don Henry, Ashley Hay, Leah Kaminsky, Graeme Davison, Tony Davis and Jane Gleeson-White.
"A muscular examination of dislocation and disempowerment among the lives of Australian youths on the edge of mainstream society. Musa's blending of poetry and prose is refreshing. His descriptions, polished by his own ventures into hip-hop and songwriting, are at once tender, beautiful, gritty and raw. It is his voice, lyrical and incendiary, that will rise and soar." - The Guardian
"This stunning debut novel has such swaggering exuberance that it will make most other fiction you read this year seem criminally dull. You have been warned." - Irvine Welsh
"A person who has suffered in the way that James Rhodes has suffered, and has struggled to cope with the consequences of his suffering in the way that he has struggled, has the right to tell the world about it. And there is a corresponding public interest in others being able to listen to his life story in all its searing detail." - The Supreme Court
"You might expect James Rhodes to have been crushed by his experiences. On the contrary I don't think I've ever read an autobiography which is this exuberant, this full of life, this addictively readable." - Mark Haddon
"A poet once said great books help you to live your life. They also help you survive your ruin, and James Rhodes's Instrumental is a masterpiece of creative endurance. His passion is his programme, his heart is his true instrument, and you might not read a more moral or more loving book this decade." - Andrew O'Hagan
"Anyone can play Chopin." - Bach
Childhood, adolescence and your early twenties are times wrought with insecurity and self-doubt. Your search for your place in the world can seem daunting. Focusing on the strengths and challenges of being introverted, Susan Cain follows up her ground-breaking book Quiet.
Twelve-year-old Daisy has just died in a car crash. But in a twist of fate, and through a heavenly bureaucratic mistake, Daisy ends up not where she is supposed to be - but in the body of a dog. Daisy may now be inhabiting a dog's body, but inside she is still very much Daisy, and is as bouncy, loyal, positive and energetic as she ever was. Daisy's only thought is to somehow be reunited with her parents, who she knows will be missing her. This is how she meets Pip, a boy who is homeless and on his own journey, and a lasting, tender friendship between boy and dog/girl is formed.
The mostly never-before-published images in Schapiro's rare collection present a glimpse into the intimacy that Schapiro and Bowie shared during their time together in 1974. Bowie and Schapiro kidded and laughed about shooting a series of close-up portraits on a putrid green background because they felt it was the worst possible background colour for a magazine, and so they did on this lark - with the image eventually becoming a People magazine cover.
>> 1974.
>> Also 1974 (a year of changes). This book documents that transition.
>> What does Neil Perry think of New Zealand?
Freddie is an ordinary boy who joins the circus one day. He can't believe his luck as he is asked to understudy some of the acts. But is he brave enough to go into the lions' cage?
One minute, 11-year-old Carmen is watching her hippy mum put curlers in for the first time, the next she is being dragged with her sister through LA airport with her mother muttering about 'the patriarchy' under her breath. The three of them board a plane that takes them to Peru, next door to the Chile from which the family had fled after Pinochet's coup. Eight days after landing in Lima, and still perplexed by their mother's disguises and lies, they're off again, on a bus bound they know not where. They are then to spend most of the next decade, the 1980s, moving from dictatorship to dictatorship, evading capture, torture and peril at every turn. It is no way to spend your teenage years, until, overnight, it becomes the way Carmen herself chooses.
>> Challenging Latino stereotypes.
He won more road cycling championships than any other New Zealander, before or since. Watson's most interesting claim to fame, however, was racing in the grueling 1928 Tour de France, and finishing in 28th position. That year the course consisted of 5377 kilometres of gravel, sealed and cobbled roads. Only a quarter of the field managed to finish. If you've read The Invisible Mile, you'll want to read this!
Maths-whizz Alice has already solved a mystery or two. Persuaded by wannabe sidekick Sammy to investigate a scientist's disappearance, she's soon entangled in her trickiest case yet. Dr Learner is reputed to have invented an invisibility suit, but is whacky science really to blame for his vanishing?
60 percent of the earth's land surface-will soon face alarming gaps between available water and the growing demand for it. Without action, food prices will rise, economic growth will slow, and political instability is likely to follow. In Israel this problem is nothing new. Even with 60 percent of its country made up of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also had an abundance of water and supplies its neighbours. How has this been done? What can the rest of the world learn from it?
Birds - they're not just a feathered face! Jennifer Ackerman presents the latest research on bird intelligence and reveals that birds are much, much smarter than we ever supposed. Bird brains, it turns out, are mostly made of sophisticated information processing systems that work in much the same way as our own cerebral cortices. Whether it's making complex navigations, singing in regional accents, or joking around with humans, birds are capable of high-level abstract thinking, problem-solving, remembering, learning by example, recognising faces, and even conversing in a meaningful way - all with brains so tiny each would fit inside a walnut.
You never know when there might be a gorilla around. Gorillas can be hard to spot, because they are masters of disguise and really good at hiding. Gorillas often have jobs where they get to wear masks - that's why so many gorillas are surgeons, astronauts, scuba divers, and ninjas.
A charismatic, well-respected doctor by day, Tim Elliott's father became a roaring madman at night.
erusalem, 1920: in an already fractured city, eleven-year-old Prudence feels the tension rising as her architect father launches an ambitious - and wildly eccentric - plan to redesign the Holy City by importing English parks to the desert. Prue, known as the 'little witness', eavesdrops underneath the tables of tearooms and behind the curtains of the dance-halls of the city's elite, watching everything but rarely being watched herself. Around her, British colonials, exiled Armenians and German officials rub shoulders as they line up the pieces in a political game: a game destined to lead to disaster. When Prue's father employs a British pilot, William Harrington, to take aerial photographs of the city, Prue is uncomfortably aware of the attraction that sparks between him and Eleanora, the English wife of a famous Jerusalem photographer. And, after Harrington learns that Eleanora's husband is a nationalist, intent on removing the British, those sparks are fanned dangerously into a flame. Years later, in 1937, Prue is an artist living a reclusive life by the sea with her young son, when Harrington pays her a surprise visit.
Little tired Raju keeps asking, "When can we go home again?" and, each time, his mummy replies, "Soon".
Pictures of men with books all over New York.
>> It began with this Instagram account.
