Hensher's most ambitious novel yet has just been longlisted for the Booker. Three narrative legs (a woman in a third-century desert settlement on the fringes of the Roman empire, an artist studying at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, and a young man attempting to establish a gay bookshop in 1970s London) move together as a compelling whole.
"A performance of extraordinary flair and majesty from a writer who seems capable of anything." - Guardian
"Daring, funny, ingeniously observed and humming with revolutionary ideas." - Daily Mail
A stunning set of stories set in a small town in rural Ireland where the young live hard and wear the scars.
"Colin Barrett's sentences are lyrical and tough and smart, but there is something more here that makes him a really good writer. What seems to be about sorrow and foreboding turns into an adventure, instead, in the tender art of the unexpected." - Anne Enright
"Incredible. Human violence, beauty, brilliance of language - this book reminds you of the massive things you can do in short fiction." - Evie Wyld
"Exciting and stylistically adventurous." -- Colm Toibin Irish Times
A profound and beautiful account of three lives operating in the shadow of catastrophe: the death following a brain tumour of Coutts' husband, the art critic Tom Lubbock.
"Startlingly beautiful and inspiring. The Iceberg is a book about death, certainly, but it’s also about survival. The miracle here is not only in Coutts coming through such an ordeal, but in finding the wherewithal to observe it, unpick its complex psychology, and commit it to paper. This is human trauma, profoundly and beautifully told." - Independent
"Intimate and unflinching - this is a stunning record." - Guardian
>> Read an extract.
Or, rather, getting what you didn't know you wanted.
A delightful digressive essay written to celebrate the importance of independent bookshops. From the author of The Etymologicon and The Elements of Eloquence.
Pick one up from the counter when you next come in!
"An atmospheric novel about a man given shelter by strangers. What makes this novel truly remarkable is its unique vision, its skilful and sophisticated characterisations, and the creation, without unseemly effects, of an atmosphere that will haunt readers long after the final page." - John Burnside, Guardian
"A marvellous novel in which Kafka meets Miss Marple." - Telegraph
Her third collection of poems.
"I’d like to think that opening this book to read is like standing at the mouth of a cave, or a river, or a grave, with a candle in your hand." – Hinemoana Baker
Giuseppe Santamaria $39.99
A striking photographic collection showcasing the street styles of the modern man.
>> Blog here.
Matthew the mouse lives in a dreary corner of a dusty attic. But a trip to the museum helps him to see his surroundings in a new light. With brush in paw, Matthew sets out to paint "the shapes and colours of joy". A delightful book by a master illustrator.
>>Here's someone to read you the story.
A former army sergeant captures US conflict down the generations in a gripping memoir of hallucinatory intensity.
"Brilliant and beautiful. It surely ranks with the best war memoirs I've ever encountered - a human, heartbreaking and expertly crafted work of literature." - Tim O'Brien (author of The Things They Carried)
Shaolan's stunningly designed book Chineasy is a natty, fascinating guide to reading Chinese characters based on their basic components. Now there are postcards!
>> Have a look at the Chineasy website.
An insidious web of secrets and lies is cast across the pages of this Hammer thriller from the author of Vernon God Little.
"Hell is other people." - Jean-Paul Sartre
What if the Berlin Wall never fell?
"A superb alt-timeline thriller that recalls Robert Harris's Fatherland." - Financial Times
Cochrane has long been a dissenting and original voice in New Zealand poetry and fiction. This volume collects works originally published in very limited editions, his early novella 'Quest Clinic' and more recent stories.
>>Here he is at home.
When every inch of land has been conquered, when every place has been mapped, what is left to explore? This issue of Granta goes into the American wild, metaphorical and real. Vital writing from Andrew Motion, Martin Amis, Thomas McGuane, Melinda Moustakis, Adam Nicolson, Mona Simpson, Claire Vaye Watkins, Callan Wink and others.
"A knockout of a debut novel. Thorpe's worldly, rambunctious, feminist, morally interrogative prose style galvanizes every episode with smart, almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb wonder, and, of course, further tragic events." - Elle
Unique insights from the Danish biker-turned-Islamist-militant-turned-spy.
>>Here's an interview.
a knockout of a debut novel . . . Her worldly, rambunctious, feminist,
morally interrogative prose style galvanizes every episode with smart,
almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb
wonder, and, of course, further tragic events - See more at:
http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/rufi-thorpe/the-girls-from-corona-del-mar-9780091954208.aspx#sthash.PMlHLJmt.dpuf
a
knockout of a debut novel . . . Her worldly, rambunctious, feminist,
morally interrogative prose style galvanizes every episode with smart,
almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb
wonder, and, of course, further tragic events." - Elle - See more at:
http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/rufi-thorpe/the-girls-from-corona-del-mar-9780091954208.aspx#sthash.PMlHLJmt.dpuf
"This is not a fairytale. This is a story about how sex and money and power police our dreams." This book is both a radical critique and a call to arms.
"Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. Laurie Penny's "dissection of modern feminism" is a rollercoaster of a book, taking in poverty and prejudice, rioting and mutiny, slut-shaming and cybersexism." - Guardian
What happens if (when?) our technology rises against us and threatens to usurp our dominance? Have we made our machines too like us?
These stories explore the worst possibilities.
"Nominally a history of the hot air balloon, Falling Upwards is really a history of hope and fantasy - and the quixotic characters who disobeyed that most fundamental laws of physics and gave humans flight." - New Republic
"A wonderful book, beautifully written." - Jan
Now in paperback!
Exciting stories, serious issues, great writing!
If you haven't seen this see this now.
The violent history of postwar Croatia, from 1945 until the turn of the millennium, created three generations of dislocated people.
This novel “examines lives bruised and twisted by history, like weather-beaten trees that nevertheless manage to produce the sweetest fruit." - New York Times
The
dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers
can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent
of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive read, grounded in a realism
which, depicted through a child’s eyes – with that hint of a child’s
surreal perception – gathers together violence, humour and love in a
most believable way." - Scotland on Sunday - See more at:
http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/lisa-odonnell/closed-doors-9780099559160.aspx#sthash.78NWiZHR.dpuf
"The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room . A compulsive read, grounded in a realism which, depicted through a child’s eyes – with that hint of a child’s surreal perception – gathers together violence, humour and love in a most believable way." - Scotland on SundayThe author won the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize for The Death of Bees.
