A girl repeatedly chops her boyfriend in half but, while her 'other half' multiplies, she is still not satisfied. Love transforms a mother working down the chippie into Elvis. Clary's father puts antlers on stuffed rabbits to make jackalopes, but when her mother walks out on them, Clary has to help her father if they are to survive.
"I've just started reading this. Readman's stories are as savage and precisely thrown as the finest nail-bombs, full of diamond-headed nails." - Thomas
>> Turn this up at home (the author has compiled this week's only playlist).
Beyond the colonial city of Essenwald lies the Vorrh, the forest which sucks souls and wipes minds. There, a writer heads out on a giddy mission to experience otherness, fallen angels observe humanity from afar, and two hunters - one carrying a bow carved from his lover, the other a charmed Lee-Enfield rifle - fight to the end. Thousands of miles away, famed photographer Eadweard Muybridge attempts to capture the ultimate truth, as rifle heiress Sarah Winchester erects a house to protect her from the spirits of her gun's victims. This is a fantastically original mind-warping novel, related, if to anything at all, to the work of China Mieville, J.G. Ballard, Thomas Pynchon and Alasdair Gray.
"One of the most original works of visionary fiction since Mervyn Peake. The novel is written in good, muscular language as original as its imagery; it contains paragraphs and observations you continually want to quote. For all its page-turning story, it is a poet’s novel, a serious piece of writing." - The Guardian
"In a not-too-distant future (especially considering current conditions), the American South West is dry and dying. Years of drought have forced people west to the Colorado River, where duelling city-states fight over water rights and refugees crowd the streets of the dying cities.
From the author of The Windup Girl.
"This is an amazing read; a finely crafted thriller mixed with a cautionary eco-tale and it is scarily plausible." - Lucy
When Nick and Graham set out rabbit shooting one August day neither of them realise their lives are about to change forever. They spot a couple of suspected cannabis growers on their land. Each fires in warning and one grower is killed. But who fired the fatal shot? And how far will each man go to prove himself not guilty? What are the pressures that come to bear on their friendship?
U has been commissioned to write a report on the operation of a control mechanism so vast and subtle is cannot be isolated from society itself. Is disaffection is just an extension of the status quo into new territory?
"Smart, shimmering and thought-provoking. McCarthy isn't a frustrated cultural theorist who must content himself with writing novels; he's a born novelist, a pretty fantastic one, who has figured out a way to make cultural theory funny, scary and suspenseful - in other words, compulsively readable." - The New York Times
>> This is amazing.
An outstanding photographic record of The New Zealand Dance Company at work in the studio on projects including Shona McCullagh's 'Rotunda'. John McDermott's 90 images are complemented by an introductory essay from dancer and choreographer Michael Parmenter
Rene's twin brother Theo lies unconscious in hospital after a freak accident left him with massively disrupted brain function. There is hope though. An experimental procedure - risky, scientifically exciting and ethically questionable - could allow him to gain a new life. But what life, and at what cost? Only Rene can give the required consent. And now he must face that difficult decision. First there is the question of Rene's capacity to make that decision. This is where the real story begins. What if memory can be transplanted? Beckett's immensely readable YA book grapples with some tectonic philosophical issues.
From Christchurch to China, from mattress manufacture to Burmese medicine, these true stories explore one man's experience with the exotic and the mundane. The Mermaid Boy explores new ways to write about love, travel, and home.
"These strange, fetching yarns of outsiders, losers and other average New Zealanders read like fiction, with their artful crafting of unlikely events – there’s a slow boat to China, a kid in a mermaid suit, and a dildo on a doorknob in a dingy flat in Christchurch. It’s non-fiction as murky realism, and it’s down low, observational, fun." - Steve Braunias
Barnes' interest in painting is a rich vein through his novels, and his essays are keenly written and illuminating, not only of the works and artists themselves but of the relationship between a work of art and the internal and external worlds of the viewer. Fully illustrated throughout, this book contains essays on essays on Gericault, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour, Cezanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Braque, Magritte, Oldenburg, Howard Hodgkin and Lucian Freud.
Paul Dukach is heir apparent at Purcell & Stern, one of the last independent publishing houses in New York. Though things are shaky in the age of conglomerates and digital, Paul remains obsessed by one dazzling writer: poet Ida Perkins, whose outsize life and audacious verse have shaped America's contemporary literary landscape, and whose longtime publisher - also her cousin and erstwhile lover - happens to be Homer's biggest rival. When Paul at last meets Ida at her secluded Venetian palazzo, she entrusts him with her greatest secret - one that will change their lives forever. Enriched by juicy details from a quintessential insider, Muse is a love letter to the people who write, sell - and, above all, read - the books that shape our lives.
A hugely assured and deeply textured novel set on the 1839-41 cusp of the Opium Wars. Full of historical detail and diverse characters, and revealing British colonial machinations in India and beyond, Ghosh brings his stunning 'Ibis' trilogy (which also includes River of Smoke and Sea of Poppies) trilogy to a close.
A wryly witty deconstruction of tips for aspiring writers, told in vignettes by a self-absorbed narrator who fails to observe the world around her.
A coffee-length book to announce the launch of the Faber Modern Classics series (watch this space).
Mickey Donnelly is smart, which isn't a good thing in his part of town. Despite having a dog called Killer and being in love with the girl next door, everyone calls him 'gay'. It doesn't help that his best friend is his little sister, Wee Maggie, and that everyone knows he loves his Ma more than anything in the world. He doesn't think much of his older brother Paddy and really doesn't like his Da. He dreams of going to America, taking Wee Maggie and Ma with him, to get them away from Belfast and Da. Mickey realises it's all down to him. He has to protect Ma from herself. And sometimes, you have to be a bad boy to be a good son.
"A vivid, poignant and thrilling tale of troubled boyhood, The Good Son is a lot better than good - it's outstanding." - Toby Litt
"A work of genius from a splendid writer." - Robert Olen Butler
From war-torn Yugoslavia in the 1990s to damaged afterlives in the US, this book is a trace of human capacities to harm and to heal.
"This is a powerful book. Novic does not shy away from the cruel nature of war, she depicts trauma pitch-perfect (it is obvious that she has done her research well) and gets inside of the heads of the damaged, the revengeful and the lost. While this is a brutal read in parts, it is also a testament to parental love, to bravery, to resistance and resilience." - Stella
What did Karen Joy Fowler write before she wrote the Booker shortlisted We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves? Based on real historical figures, San Francisco in the gilded age is brought vibrantly to life in this entertaining, evocative and sinister novel.
"Fowler recreates a lost world so thrillingly, with such intelligence, trickery and art, that when you at last put the book down and look up from the page it all seems to linger, shimmering, around you, like the residue of a marvellous dream." - Michael Chabon
"Fowler's prose is full of shimmering melancholy, and a ruminative irony that brings her characters and their world alive in the most unexpected ways - reading Sister Noon is like staring at early portrait photographs until the eyes begin to shine and your head is filled with voices that urge you to recall that these vanished lives, and your own, are stranger than you allow. A dazzling book." - Jonathan Lethem
Katherine Mansfield filled the first half of her 'Urewera Notebook' during a 1907 camping tour of the central North Island, shortly before she left New Zealand forever. Her camping notes offer a rare insight into her attitude to her life at the time, and her country of birth, not in retrospective fiction but as a 19-year-old still living in the colony. This edition, with full notes and commentary, challenges the debate that has focused on Mansfield's happiness or dissatisfaction throughout her last year in New Zealand to reveal a young writer closely observing aspects of a country hitherto beyond her experience and forming a complex critique of her colonial homeland.
1935. Norfolk. War is looming in Great Britain and the sprawling country estate of Alderberen Hall is shadowed by suspicion and paranoia. Thirteen-year-old Delphine Venner is determined to uncover the secrets of the Hall's elite society, which has taken in her gullible mother and unstable father. As she explores the house and discovers the secret network of hidden passages that thread through the estate, Delphine uncovers a world more dark and threatening than she ever imagined. With the help of head gamekeeper Mr Garforth, Delphine must learn the bloody lessons of war and find the soldier within herself in time to battle the deadly forces amassing in the woods...
"That Clare has a poet’s eye and ear is apparent throughout: quite aside from the pleasures of story, the prose is frequently a delight." - The Guardian
Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century's greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Seba (1665-1736) was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals. plants and insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned careful and often scenic illustrations of every specimen.
When the porcelain dolls start turning up on Selina's doorstep, she knows it's a bad sign. Shortly afterwards she embarks on an ill-judged affair with a celebrity TV chef. Both events, and the lies and untold truths at their heart, precipitate a spectacular fall from grace for high-flying graphic artist, Selina. Enter Smith: the sister who saved Selina once before. But this time Smith's life is complicated by a small boy called Ragnar, and she's almost too late. Freegard's novel is a beguiling urban tale that moves from the hills of Brooklyn, Wellington, to the streets of Iceland via Takaka.
"I am not made of concrete, no. I am not made of sand.
Nor of light, nor air, nor the sound that rain makes
as it splashes on the upturned leaves of my forest home.
Have you seen my feathers? How the colours glint
in the dappled light. Have you heard my call? Oh I am king
of all I see. Hear me, hear me. This tree, mine. This whole
forest, mine."
The poems in The Glass Rooster explore the spaces inhabited by humans and other creatures – not just natural ecosystems like deserts or the alpine zone, but cities and outer space.
Discover the flavours of true Scandinavian cuisine with the delicious beetroot carpaccio with goat's cheese and minted pea relish; move on to grander feasts such as flaked salmon burgers with mayonnaise, pickled cucumber and fresh horseradish or beef with spiced wine sauce, kale and turnip; not forgetting the classics such as Swedish meatballs, Danish smorrebrod, pickled herrings and gooey cinnamon buns.
"There is a river outside my window. Where will it take me?" So begins an imaginary journey from the city to the sea. From factories to farmlands, motorways to forest, each new landscape is explored in this beautiful picture book.
“An engrossing literary mystery. Refracting the vivid, villainous life of Louisianne Villars through letters, memoirs, and the recreations of a biographer, Prose coaxes into kaleidoscopic view both a tortured human being and bohemian Paris before and during the Nazi occupation. She cleverly exploits the vain, self-serving nature of memory itself.” — Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
“Prose’s latest book goes further in destroying the concept of a single truth than Rashomon. It’s also an uproarious portrait of Paris from the mid-twenties to the Second World War. Prose has always been adept at slaying sacred cows; in this book, she pretty much machine-guns them.” — Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
In a city ravaged by crime and corruption, 13-year-old orphan Caw's only friends are the murder of crows he has lived with since his parents flung him from their house aged only five. A jailbreak at the prison forces him into contact with other humans - particularly a girl called Lydia, who is attacked by the escaped prisoners and is saved by Caw. Caw realises that these escaped prisoners have more in common with him than he'd like: they too are Ferals - humans able to communicate with and control an animal species - and they want to bring their evil master, The Spinning Man, back from the Land of the Dead.
More New Zealand soldiers were killed or taken prisoner during Operation Crusader in 1941, which aimed to drive German and Italian troops from eastern Libya, than in any other campaign fought by the Division during World War II.
On the last day of 1979, sisters Gilly and Marina and their little brother Davy are running wild with all the other children at a remote campsite on a beautiful Northland beach. While the adults party, the children's games grow more reckless. Over the next seven years, the Duggan family tries to forget the tragic events of that night. But 1987 is the year that blows everything apart. A death in the family creates seismic shifts in loyalty.
Do you remember when you had opinions and were bursting to express them? Do you remember losing track of time when conversing? Do you remember the thrill of finding out more about a person you were interested in the opinions of? If your life could do with more of this sort of thing, this book is for you. With Olivia Fane's suggestions to start you off, you'll soon be conversing with all sorts of people about all sorts of things.
In 1988, Lydia Bradey became the first woman to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen. She made the ascent alone - her team members having abandoned her on the mountain - and to date she is the only New Zealander to have made an oxygen-free ascent. Her climb was a truly remarkable achievement but also an internationally controversial one. Co-written with Laurence Fearnley.
What happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse?
"Meticulously researched, Gordon's account catalogues every juicy detail and eccentricity amassed over a century. A rigorous, authoritative account of a 20th century enigma." - Publishers Weekly
Tom Barnes, was parachuted behind enemy lines in Greece along with small team to undertake sabotage operations against the German and Italian occupation forces. Their mission was to blow up a bridge and cut Rommel's supply lines to North Africa, where the battle of El Alamein was about to begin, but this was only the start of a lengthy and dangerous clandestine mission...
From the modernist elegance of Coco Chanel to Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's punk-fuelled pirates, the appeal of nautical dress has cut a sartorial swathe for over two centuries. But how did garments such as the blue and white fisherman's top and peacoat cross over from uniform and workwear into fashionable dress? In Nautical Chic, fashion historian Amber Jane Butchart traces the relationship between maritime dress and the fashionable wardrobe.
A war hero who refused to fight, students who stood up to Hitler, a ship that sailed into a nuclear test zone, a whole town which practiced nonviolence. Peace Warriors tells the stories of people who chose non-violent resistance in times of conflict - stories of young men and women from New Zealand and around the world.
"A compelling, empowering book, which is both an absorbing read and an affirmation of human decency. I'm usually reluctant to use the word 'inspiring', but these stories of courage, endurance and fidelity from all around the world totally deserve that accolade." - David Hill
When she was 26 the author submitted to a series of tests to determine why she had always had trouble judging time and space. These tests revealed that her brain (literally) had a large hole in it. This kind of aberration is a feast for neurologists, but is also the core of a very human story.
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.
"Uprooted has everything I love: a great heroine, new takes on old myths and legends, and surprising twists and turns. A delight." - Cassandra Clare
"The magic in Uprooted, with its realistic moral dimension, is so vividly believable that it seems you could work the spells." - Ursula K. Le Guin
"Uprooted is enchanting, in every sense of that fine old word. A story that looks unflinchingly at the strangling roots of hurt and revenge." - Robin Hobb
"Wild, thrilling, and deeply, darkly magical. An instant classic." - Lev Grossman
"We left for home, had a tiffin, and went to our rooms for a lie-off, having arranged to go for a good walk when the heat of the day was over. We had our tea, and at 5 pm got into the trap. We drove along Tanglin Road, into Stephens Road, and along Bukit Timah Road to the junction of Cluny Road, and there we dismissed the syce. We thought it a curious fact that no-one was playing tennis,a nd there was not a soul to be seen on the garrison golf course. You can imagine our horror when we found that the 5th Light Infantry had broken out in open mutiny and had been in Tanglin that afternoon, and were even then supposed to be marching on Singapore!'
An exploration of Vincent O'Sullivan as critic, editor, essayist, librettist, Mansfield scholar, novelist, poet and short story writer.
"He was here again last night, the man with the dead eyes. He was in my room and in my head." There are not many things Nick Mallory knows for sure. He knows there was a car crash. He knows he is in hospital. And he knows he feels furious with his father. What he doesn't know is why. As his memories start to return, Nick finds himself caught in a net of secrets and lies - where truth and perception collide and heroes and villains are not easy to tell apart.
When Ava's impaired brother Fred is arrested following the disappearance of a young boy, she feels compelled to find out what really happened and to protect and explain her brother. The strings she pulls at stretch far back into their childhood and it becomes very unclear just where guilt lies.
This book seeks to rehabilitate the concept of scientific truth from the morass of post-modern relativism which represents science as a socially constructed doxa.
"Finally I realised that I had been practising for this job every time I wrote a quatrain. I had spent all this time - the greater part of a lifetime - preparing my instruments." - Clive James on what he considers his life's work
Nordicana: 100 icons of Scandi culture and Nordic cool by Kajsa Kinsella $29.99
What is it that is so desirable about Scandinavian culture? Think of this as a catalogue!
"Judy Blume isn’t just revered, she’s revolutionary. In her first novel for adults in 17 years, she uses her own young life as source material, revisiting a time when three planes crashed over eight weeks in her hometown, during an indelible period of history — the beginning of the 1950s, just as the glossy suburban dream of picket fences and safe conformity jutted up against unrelenting Cold War paranoia." -The New York Times
The young ladies of Hertfordshire are dropping like flies. Miss Elizabeth Bennet could not be more pleased when the famous London detective, Mr Sherlock Darcy, makes it his business to solve the mystery of three young ladies' deaths - not least because he shares her suspicion that so many deaths must be more than mere accident. None of them suspect what their names suggest: they are the literary progeny of Jane Austen and Arthur Conan Doyle!
Linda Eastman made her name as a rock and roll photographer at a Rolling Stones concert in 1966. She photographed many bands, stars, when photographing 'Swinging Sixties' London, she ended up marrying Paul McCartney. She continued to photograph during their 30-year marriage, and the full range and extent of work is now revealed in this large-format book.
Reading about it is the next best thing. Let food-lover and Paris expert Jane Paech show you around the city's mille-feuille of history and culture, with its tempting pastry and chocolate shops on every corner. You'll visit both legendary and little-known cafes, restaurants and patisseries of Paris, and see museums, art galleries, gardens, markets and other interesting places.
Baughan's poetry was some of the first to break through Victorian convention and engage directly with the new land of New Zealand. This book contains a selection of her most enduring poems, stories and non-fiction writing, including an indictment of the colony's retrograde penal system.
“Melbourne comes to life in this engrossing novel, with its varied cast of characters, whip-smart dialogue and intimate sense of place. Leap is contemporary, immediate, fast-paced, but also tender and reflective – a rare achievement.” — Lisa Gorton
How have mathematics developed alongside our increasingly complicated attempts to make sense of the world?
Author Omid Jaffari's earliest childhood memories revolve around the kitchen and garden of his grandmother's house in northern Tehran, where he remembers eating unripe cherries and juicy pomegranates and breathing in the scent of rosewater. Later, settling with his family in New Zealand as a young boy, he learned to become a chef then took his skills abroad to the UK where he worked at London's world-renowned River Cafe, with Ruth Rogers and the late Rose Gray. It was here that he honed his skills and his palate and started dreaming of the culinary possibilities of the freshest, raw food.
'We were all propagandists; the only differences were our goals.' Looking for respite from her crumbling marriage and determined to stop a coal seam gas mine near her Sydney home, filmmaker Anna Broinowski finds wisdom and inspiration in the strangest of places: North Korea. Guided by the late Dear Leader Kim Jong Il's manifesto The Cinema and Directing, Broinowski, in a world first, travels to Pyongyang to collaborate with North Korea's top directors, composers and movie stars to make her anti-fracking propaganda film.
>> Broinowski's very unusual documentary, Aim High in Creation, is available from United Video, Nelson.
Award-winning photographer Steve McCurry's celebration of coffee-growing communities around the world, from the foothills of the Andes and the South American rain forest to the slopes of Kilimanjaro and the Jungles of Vietnam.
Toad looks silly in his swimsuit. Will he come out of the water? When he loses a button, his friend Frog helps him search. Will they find it? Will Toad ever get a letter in his mailbox? Frog and Toad are best friends. With this book they'll be your best friends, too.
"I hugely admire and envy Arnold Lobel - he is my hero." - Julia Donaldson
Former editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar recalls her time in Paris - falling in love, finding herself, and being initiated into the world of high fashion.
Capricious mistresses, low pay, no job security, gruelling physical labour.
A deep and disturbing meditation on the roots of American gun violence, this book explores the fine line between heroism and savagery, and just how far a parent can be held accountable for the actions of a child.
The gripping tale of the Arctic Thirty, a group of Greenpeace activists who endured a hundred days in a Murmansk isolation jail after protesting Gazprom oil extraction practices in the Arctic.
"A gripping story of tremendous courage, that reads like a thriller." - Naomi Klein
A tower of giraffes, a drove of pigs, a romp of otters. The names of the animal groups portrayed here are as intriguing as the illustrations: a sophisticated yet-accessible, fun and very recognisable mix of pen and ink, watercolour and fabric collage.
To celebrate the renowned composer and ethnomusicologist Jack Body's 70th birthday, this book contains more than 120 contributions of memories, photos, paintings, art and music from friends and colleagues such as Vincent Ward, Slamet A Sjukur, Geoff Chapple, Martin Lodge, Tan Dun, Charles Te Ahukaramu Royal, Gao Ping, Ian Wedde, Gareth Farr, Budi Putra, Jose Evangelista and Richard Nunns.
>> Three transcriptions.
"Although a lot of books have appeared in recent years about food cultures and foodways, none have analysed how personal nostalgia and food politics are intertwined, sometimes in mutual support of one another (local heirloom tomatoes) and sometimes in conflict (green Jell-O salad anyone?). Jordan is perfectly situated to examine the emotion work and emotion play we lavish on what we grow, seek, and put into our mouths. This is an important book." - Wendy Griswold
Will sixteen-year-old competitive swimmer Lucy overcome her fear of water following the drowning of her surfer brother?
Carolyn McCurdie hails from the deep south and her poems are made at the hem of a mother's checked tablecloth, the rim of a rain-starved garden and the raw edges of a southern landscape where the elements collide with myth.
Bryan Walpert - a poet who arrived here from the United States a decade ago - writes of what it's been like to be an observer or 'birdwatcher' in a land whose physical and cultural geographies he is still learning to name.
An Elvis Costello lookalike and the son of a local crime boss, Jon is weighed down with the burden of his filial responsibilities. But on his way to the casino to launder a briefcase of his father's cash, he catches sight of the dark beauty of gambling junkie, Justine. With her on his arm, pursued by his father's hitmen and a relentless 70s soundtrack, Jon finds the strength to fight back against a life that's lost its shine. A startling work of poetry.
