Patricia Grace's first novel in ten years! Uprooted from his privileged European life and sent to New Zealand to sort himself out, twenty-one-year-old Daniel pieces together the history of his Maori family. As his relatives revisit their past, Daniel learns of a remarkable love story between his Maori grandmother Oriwia and his Japanese grandfather Chappy. The more Daniel hears about his deceased grandfather, the more intriguing and elusive Chappy becomes. Grace explores racial intolerance, cross-cultural conflicts and the universal desire to belong in this story spanning several decades and several continents against the backdrop of a changing New Zealand.
One of Korea's foremost living authors entwines an old myth - of an abandoned princess travelling to the ends of the earth to find the elixir of life, which will bring peace to the souls of the dead - with the ethereal and haunting backdrop of the modern world.
"Hwang Sok-Yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in Asia today." - Kenzaburo Oe
The sea has flooded the earth, and the majority of the population live on the water. North lives on a circus boat and is a bear-keeper. Callanish lives alone in her house in the middle of the ocean. She is a gracekeeper, a tender of the graves of those who die at sea. What draws these two towards one another, and what will happen when they meet?
"In luscious, vivid prose, Logan brings to mind Angela Carter, or Atwood or Winterson at their best" - Independent
"This was a great read and well written, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed." - Peter
An interesting and lovely book, packed with period botanical illustrations.
"With humor, wit and compassion, Mark Laird presents human-biological life in and around the garden: the charm of natural creatures, the heartbreak of weather, the thrill of the bloom. His manuscript is a monumental achievement in its command of historical data. He has unleashed archival material from diverse sources never brought to bear on the complex world of eighteenth-century gardens and landscapes."-Therese O'Malley
The epic conclusion to the fictional trilogy (which began with The Secret Life of James Cook and was followed by James Cook's New World) based on the life and expeditions of Captain James Cook. The year is 1775. Captain James Cook is 47 years old and the toast of the Admiralty, the Royal Society and the English public after his triumphant second world voyage. His wife, Elizabeth, pregnant with their sixth child, relishes the fact that her now-famous husband is home for good. But James cannot resist the call of the sea. Offered the chance to discover a long-sought passage from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic, he accepts the challenge.
The story of citrus runs through the history of Italy like a golden thread, and by combining travel writing with history, recipes, horticulture and art, Helena Attlee takes the reader on a unique and rich journey through Italy's cultural, moral, culinary and political past.
When a king and a queen promise to marry their daughter to the man who can show them the most wonderful thing in the world, suitors descend on the palace bearing gifts. Roses, jewels and exotic birds; dancing girls, wind machines and mythical beasts - but nothing feels quite right. But then a shy, young man, who isn't a suitor at all, steps forward... Angela Barrett's illustrations are absolutely exquisite.
Four people's lives change following their encounters with each other and with the English rural landscape.
"Her level gaze, crisp prose and sharp insight make her a fresh and valuable voice in both fiction and nature writing." - Guardian
"The novel is as much a hymn to the ancient life-force of nature as it is a reminder of the underlying fragility of our busy modern world." - Independent
Shot down on his first RAF mission, James Hunter spends his war in a German prison camp. The other captives busy themselves planning escapes, but James dedicates himself to a study of the redstarts nesting just beyond the camp boundaries. Rose, James's young wife, is spending her war in a cottage in Sussex. She'd hardly known James before he went away and can barely engage with his letters, which talk of nothing but birds. Now she has fallen in love with someone else - Toby, a young pilot home on sick leave.
“The Evening Chorus is a poised, lyrical novel about the griefs of war, written with poetic intensity of observation. It resonates afterwards. I read it with pleasure.” —Helen Dunmore
Death is the one subject we will all confront; it touches our families, our homes, our hearts. And yet we have grown used to denying its existence, treating it as an enemy to be beaten back with medical advances. What led us to this point - what drove us to sanitize death and make it foreign and unfamiliar? Schillace surveys diverse attitudes and customs related to death through history and across the world and asks, How can we make our lives better by thinking differently of death?
"This book leads to thought-provoking criticism of current art historical approaches to Maori art and constitutes probably the first sustained critique of the modern development of Maori art from an authentic Maori point of view." - Roger Neich
Thomas Morland Hocken (1836-1910) arrived in Dunedin in 1862, aged 26. Throughout his busy life as a medical practitioner he amassed books, manuscripts, sketches, maps and photographs of early New Zealand. He bequeathed his collection to the University of Otago, and the library named after him (which is currently in the care of the author of this book) has continued to accumulate important material and support scholarship.
A comprehensive and well-illustrated survey of the movement that sought to end all movements. Dada was a hugely fertile assault on all received values, both artistic and social.
"We shall not have succeeded in destroying everything unless we destroy even the ruins, and the only possible way of doing this is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-constructed buildings." - Ubu (protodada)
Pearce advances the theory that dominant species should be allowed to dominate when and where they can, and to overturn established conservation ideologies. Is diversity an overprized, even sentimentalised, phenomenon? Provocative.
"An engaging and erudite work that argues persuasively for the continued relevance of curating for the arts and wider society. His book is about the curator's role as a maker of exhibitions, a task that involves tracing hidden connections between artworks and forging untrammelled routes across culture in search of new ways of experiencing art; new ways of looking at the world around us." - Independent
"One of the most colourful figures in the artworld today. Hans Ulrich Obrist is not so much a curator as a human whirlwind." - Guardian
Vallerosa is every tourist's dream - a tiny, picturesque country surrounded by lush valleys and verdant mountains; a place sheltered from modern life and the rampant march of capitalism. But in isolation, the locals have grown cranky, unfulfilled and disaffected. In the Presidential Palace hostile Americans, wise to the country's financial potential, are circling like sharks ...Can the town be fixed? Can the local bar owners be reconciled? Can an unlikely visitor be the agent of change and rejuvenation this broken idyll is crying out for?
You live in Eden. You are a member of the Family, one of 532 descendants of Angela and Tommy. You shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees. Beyond the forest lie the treeless mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it.You will break the laws of Eden, shatter the Family and change history. You will be the first to abandon hope, the first to abandon the old ways, the first to kill another, the first to venture in to the Dark, and the first to discover the truth about Eden. Winner of the 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
"Stunning. A beautiful evocation of a totally alien world." - Sunday Times
Thousands of years after the escaping cataclysm, the descendants of earthlings return to the planet and encounter the descendants of those who remained.
"If the moon ever disintegrates, causing Earth to become a fiery hellscape for several thousand years, and we can select only a few hundred humans to entrust with the survival and repropagation of the species, I vote for Neal Stephenson to be one of those humans. There’s just no way he wouldn’t do a good job, you know what I mean? Or, at the very least, an astoundingly thorough job. Seveneves would be a great way to pass the time while waiting for the end of the world." - Charles Yu, The New York Times
A boy is seriously ill in hospital, and fearful of the operation that may or may not save his life. A nurse tells him he must find in his dreams his animal ‘finder’, which will protect him and bring him back from wherever his illness and the doctors take him.
"Hoban’s poetic story of illness overcome has been captured and extended by Deacon’s powerful and imaginative illustrations, which construct a picture of a young mind grappling at the deepest level with incomprehensible forces." - Thomas
Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and - let's be honest - somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy. And scientists are only just discovering quite how much it has to offer; new research shows that gut bacteria can play a role in everything from obesity and allergies to Alzheimer's.
Australia in 1977. Whitlam is about to lose the federal election, and things will never be the same again. Radicals have become conservatives, idealism is giving way to realism, relationships are falling apart, and Michael is finally coming to accept that he will never be a rock and roll musician.
"Carroll transmutes the grey facts of daily life into light and luminous art." - The Australian
The decline of home ownership has struck at the heart of the New Zealand dream. Perhaps it is time for a new dream.
A selection of personable accounts of this diverse country and the diverse people who live here. Grzelewski (Trout Bohemia, Going to Extremes) is always a pleasure to read, and in this book he takes us stargazing in the clear night skies of the Mackenzie Country, flying remote mail routes, hunting for gold in the back country, shaping clay with potters, cycling forest trails, sledding with snow dogs, swimming with dolphins, and wondering at whales.
From a childhood as a newt fancier, observer and collector, Kerridge has broadened and deepened his interests to encompass not only reptiles but our relationship to nature in a general sense. This book, part natural history guide to reptiles, part passionate nature writing, part memoir, helps us not only to experience the world as a reptile might but also to experience the world differently as humans.
"The narrower the aperture, the greater the depth of field. The best of Lydia Davis’s stories are little more than a detail or an image or a wry observation presented without a misplaced word or superfluous comma, precise enough to suggest that great slabs of life hinge about her words, without these slabs being fiction as such." - Thomas
The 2013 Man Booker International Prize winner's latest collection is now in paperback.
Why is Dad building himself a pair of wings and studying the birds to see how they fly?
"Enchantingly funny and subversive." - The Times
German designer and educator, Otl Aicher, was a pioneer of twentieth century graphic design, renowned for creating visual identities for numerous corporations (including Lufthansa, FSB, and ERCO) and his work on symbol systems. Aicher, inspired by his design system for the Munich Olympics in 1972, worked for over twenty years to create a completely visual language and is often referred to as the "father of modern pictograms."
$34.99
How can we be enthralled by the fashion world, and at the same time appalled by the politics and practices of the garment industry? This book questions why we have such a love/hate relationship with fashion. Guiding us through the major figures and brands of today's fashion system, Dress Code shows how they shape us and in turn why we love to be shaped by them.
A delicate, nuanced book, full of subtle observation, about a Bengali boy who spends his summer holidays at his uncle's house in Calcutta.
"Every fiction must create an illusion of reality; and Chaudhuri's novels succeed in doing so to an impressive degree. He has such a tender intimacy with the world and the people who inhabit it." - New York Review of Books
"Chaudhuri's languorous, elliptical, beautiful prose is impressively impossible to put in any category at all." - Salman Rushdie
This beautiful book draws on new research to explore Diaghilev's life, work and cultural milieu. It pulls together the music, pictures, costumes, archives and art of the Ballets Russes to illustrate Diaghilev's working process. Picasso, Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Bakst, Goncharova, Matisse, Chanel, Prokofiev, Man Ray and Cocteau all worked with Diaghilev - their work is discussed and illustrated here.
"General Johnstone tried to compliment us on our 'work' but was cut up too much when he heard of our losses. He was visibly affected. We marched to Mametz Wood and there Col. Plugge also tried to address us but he could not control his feelings either. We went into the trenches with 804 men. Came out with 201. Our casualties for the two stints were 603. Plugge was far too cut up to say a word about it. We camped in the woods for the night..." Onesimus William Howe served in the Auckland Infantry Regiment. His unit was the first to hit the beach at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli. This is his account of the carnage.
Three children are spending their summer on a wild Scottish island. Fraser is desperate for adventure; Hayley is fed up she's even there; while Dunny spends his days staring out to sea. He hasn't said a word in years. But everything changes with the discovery of two bodies on the beach: a whale and a man. Fraser and Hayley see a mystery-adventure to be solved, but Dunny is inconsolable. And in the end, it will take someone who listens to the sea to put it right.
Winner of The Times Children's Fiction Award, 2014.
Sumptuously produced by the Victoria & Albert Museum, this is possibly the best book yet on Art Deco. The style redolent of the flapper girl, the luxury ocean liner, Hollywood film and the skyscraper came to epitomize the glamour, luxury and hedonism of the Jazz Age. It burst on to the world stage at the 1925 Exposition internationale des art decoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris, and quickly swept across the globe.
A novel exploring how events of the past linger and affect the present.
"Hunter’s skilful layering of past and present has created a work of great power. The World Before Us is a sensitive and melancholy meditation on life, death and the potency of the past that lingers on in the memory." - Guardian
Life isn't going terribly well for Derrick; he's become severely overweight, his only friend has turned on him, he's hopelessly in love with a girl way out of his league, and it's all because of his sister. Her depression, and its grip on his family, is tearing his life apart.
Don't wait for it just to happen! Your home could be filled with romantically worn objects and furniture, faded colours and comfortablised elegance.
Deception! Murder! Lost manuscripts! Hidden corpses! Mystery! (obviously). A gothic tale of intrigue set in Victorian England.
"Palliser has clearly immersed himself in Wilkie Collins and M.R. James. The Unburied is much more, however, than clever literary mimicry; not only a gripping story but a thoughtful meditation on metaphysics, history and human passions." - Guardian
The story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: "Godfather of the Kremlin" Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protege who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminium.
It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry. Now in paperback!
Innovation doesn't come from individuals but from the flow of information. How can that pattern be mapped and shaped?
A Colombian writer is witness to a murder which will mark him forever. A woman sits alone in her house, waiting for her husband to return, while he lies in another woman's bed twenty kilometers away. Set mainly in the starkly beautiful landscape of Belgium's Ardennes, these stories have been compared to Maupassant, Chekhov, John Cheever and Antonio Tabucchi.
Not long after Aliya's family escapes Afghanistan for Britain, her brother is accused of a bomb attack. Aliya is sure of his innocence, but when plumber's son Dan finds a gun in their bathroom, what's she to think? Dan has his own reasons for staying silent: he's worried the gun might have something to do with his dad. Thrown together by chance, they set out to uncover a tangled and twisted truth.
While visiting her father in hospital, 13-year-old Isla meets Harry, the first boy to understand her and her love of the outdoors. But Harry is ill, and as his health fails, Isla is determined to help him. Together they watch a lone swan struggling to fly on the lake outside Harry's window. Isla believes that if she can help the swan, she can help Harry. And in doing so, she embarks upon a magical journey of her own.
When Somalia's vicious civil war hit Mogadishu, 15-year-old Abdi Aden fled to Kenya. So began the life of a refugee: his hardships led him to Romania, Germany, and finally to Australia. His account of a determination to keep alive and find a home is a monument to the great human capital in stateless people.
One in five migrants to New Zealand to 1920 came from Scotland, but from what areas and for what reasons, and where did they settle? This ground-breaking study gives important perspectives on a common but largely untold story.
Our lives are shaped not so much by the choices we make but my the choices we have. Who shapes those choices?
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