A traumatised Dalmatian immigrant, Olga, arrives in New Zealand after WWII from the refugee camps of Egypt. Her fraught relationship with her mother and the choices Olga makes isolate her from her family. It is not until she meets the much younger and vulnerable Samoan immigrant, Pualele, that Olga finds someone who might understand her.
An obsessive bibliophile makes the acquaintance of Proust's brother and begins a decades-long accumulation of the writer's personal effects, culminating in the ratty otter-lined overcoat that Marcel spread over himself when he wrote. Fascinating.
"Proust's Overcoat is just my style." - Patti Smith
While in a Russian-administered holding camp in Poland in 1945, Levi was asked to provide a report on living conditions in Auschwitz. Published the following year, it was then forgotten, and has until now remained unknown to a wider public. Dating from the weeks immediately after the war, Auschwitz Report details the authors' harrowing deportation to Auschwitz, and how those who disembarked from the train were selected for work or extermination. As well as being a searing narrative of everyday life in the camp, and the organization and working of the gas chambers, it constitutes Levi's first lucid attempts to come to terms with the raw horror of events that would drive him to write his other works.
A teenage girl pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home.
"Honest and funny, dark and painful, We Are Pirates reads like the result of a nightmarish mating experiment between Joseph Heller and Captain Jack Sparrow. It's the strangest, most brilliant offering yet from the mind behind Lemony Snicket." - Neil Gaiman
"Daniel Handler turns whimsy into wisdom and the fantastic into the great. He is, of course, a genius." - Lorrie Moore
The new novel from the author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.
How far do you need to travel to know yourself? In 1975, a black child is mysteriously born to white parents. Falling in with a secretive group of puppeteers and scientists, he is soon forced to confront the true nature of his identity. His story rapidly becomes entangled with events stretching from Belgrade in a time of siege to arctic Norway, from pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia to modern-day Congo. It takes in quantum physics, forgotten history, puppetry and human experience.
A novel taut with foreboding, misled innocence and a heartbreakingly damaged psyche.
"That McCleen is a writer of exceptional gifts is beyond doubt. Her prose can soar in moments of breathtaking beauty, most particularly when she turns a poet’s eye on the landscape, though a minor criticism is that there’s a surfeit of these passages. But she writes equally viscerally about her narrator’s emotional terrain, depicting claustrophobia, shame and terror so painfully it makes your skin itch." - Guardian
Stories of the uncanny and the unexpected, exploring bereavement and betrayal, closely guarded secrets and common gossip, long-overdue endings and decidedly strange beginnings.
"Salley Vickers sees with a clear eye and writes with a light hand - she knows how the world works. She is a presence worth cherishing." - Philip Pullman
What is real? What is fantasy? What is insanity? A woman convinced she is descended from faeries, and obsessed with her ex-partner and his wife, writes him letters and a blog filled with longing, anger, threats and bitterness.
"The narrator may be unreliable, but the stories she tells, as well as her own, are infinitely appealing." - Kirkus Reviews
>> The author on the radio.
An exciting survey of over 300 products showcasing the latest developments in green design, interviews with designers about green practice, and a consideration of the properties and applications of sustainable materials.
Criminals are often the earliest, and most innovative, adopters and adapters of technology. Today's criminals are stealing identities, draining online bank-accounts and wiping out computer servers. It's disturbingly easy to activate baby cam monitors to spy on families, pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt, and thieves are analyzing your social media in order to determine the best time for a home invasion. Meanwhile, 3D printers produce AK-47s, terrorists can download the recipe for the Ebola virus, and drug cartels are building drones.
The fourth part of Knausgaard's astoundingly compelling struggle to burst the novel form by over-packing it with detail. His omnivorous "autobiography" began with A Death in the Family, and treats the meaningful and the meaningless with equal penetration, placing it somewhere between Proust and reality television.
"Perhaps the most important literary enterprise of our times." - Guardian
"Even when I was bored I was interested." - James Wood
Look inside an ambulance, police car, fire engine, rescue helicopter, lifeboat and more to find out their inner workings. With over 40 flaps to lift!
In 1998 McLeod served as a United Nations Military Observer, monitoring the fraught Angolan peace process. Achieving peace in that war-wracked country proved elusive, and the violence and bloodshed he experienced affected him deeply. It has taken a long time for John to be able to tell his story, which graphically reveals the disturbing realities of modern peacekeeping - and its far-reaching impact on those at the front line.
Does the language need to relax a bit to flourish? This book will either excite you or drive you mad.
When teenager Mikey Malone gets sucked through a wormhole into this parallel world, he discovers a power-crazed corporation is planning to use Earth as a dumping ground for an uncontrollable poisonous algae. It's a race against time for Mikey and his rebel friends to stop the ruthless tyrants from getting their way.
What happens if you shut Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Polidori and Claire Clairmont in a villa on Lake Geneva for the summer? The string of Romantic masterworks (including Frankenstein) is just one of the results...
Mt John University Observatory was founded in 1965 at Lake Tekapo in the Mackenzie Basin to take advantage of the favourable conditions for astronomy. Telescopes were installed, and in 1981 a lighting ordinance helped protect the site from light pollution. Mt John is both a research observatory and a mecca for stargazing astro-tourists.
25 design case-studies drawn from the 25 year history of the leading design consultancy.
Kelly has applied a verbal vacuum cleaner to every corner of current New Zealand usage, spoken, printed, txtd, shouted, muttered or tweeted.
The cartoonist, author and science columnist looks back over eighty years of eventful life, and shares his diaries and sketchbooks.
