New books to hit the spot


TOUCHDOWN is a weekly selection of outstanding new titles: books either anticipated or surprising, just out of the carton! Follow the links for more information, to purchase these books or to have them put aside for you.

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24 July 2015


http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/884075-TheNewSorrowsofYoungW-9781782270942
The New Sorrows of Young W. by Ulrich Plenzdorf       $28.00
Edgar W, teenage dropout, unrequited lover, unrecognized genius - and dead - tells the story of his brief, spectacular life. It is the story of how he rebels against the petty rules of communist East Germany to live in an abandoned summer house, with just a tape recorder and a battered copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther for company.
"A story of epic force and human intensity." - Die Welt
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/880009-MadnessInCivilization-9780500252123
Madness in Civilization: A cultural history of insanity by Andrew Scull        $65.00 
A stupendously ambitious and fascinatingly successful survey of the ways in which madness has been seen, and the 'mad' treated (in both the ameliorative and non-ameliorative (and often abusive) senses). Scull's scope is as long and broad as history itself - is madness the excluded face of civilisation? 
>> Scull on madness and meaning
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/865729-HappyAretheHappy-9780099587323
 Happy are the Happy by Yasmina Reza        $26.00
1 novel. 18 people. 18 lives. Infinite combinations: families and friends, colleagues and patients, lovers and mourners. But sometimes a crowd is the loneliest place to be...
"Excels in exploring the roots of unhappiness. Reza skilfully peels away the veneer of life to reveal the secrets seething within." - Guardian
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914294-Thrown-9780241207277
 Thrown by Kerry Howley      $38.00
In this darkly funny work of literary reportage, narrated by an excitable, semi-fictionalized graduate student named Kit, a bookish young woman insinuates herself into the lives of two cage fighters - one a young prodigy, the other an aging journeyman. Kerry Howley follows these men for three years through the bloody world of mixed martial arts as they starve themselves, break bones, fail their families and form new ones in the quest to rise from remote Midwestern fairgrounds to packed Vegas arenas.
"Compulsively readable." - New York Times
"The most fascinating book I've read this year. The precision of Howley's prose reminds me of Joan Didion or David Foster Wallace." - Time
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914295-TheThrillingAdventuresofLovelaceandBabbageTheMostlyTrueStoryoftheFirstComputer-9780141981512
 The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (mostly) true story of the first computer by Sydney Padua          $39.99
Meet two of Victorian London's greatest geniuses: Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron; mathematician, gambler, and proto-programmer, whose writings contained the first ever appearance of general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. And Charles Babbage, eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it. But what if things had been different? What is they did build the Difference Engine? A very amusing graphic novel.  
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/886503-WalkingAway-9780571298358
Walking Away by Simon Armitage         $36.99
Not content with walking the Pennine Way as a modern day troubadour, an experience recounted in his bestseller and prize-wining Walking Home, the restless poet has followed up that journey with a walk of the same distance but through the very opposite terrain and direction far from home. In Walking Away Simon Armitage swaps the moorland uplands of the north for the coastal fringes of Britain's south west, once again giving readings every night, but this time through Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, taking poetry into distant communities and tourist hot-spots, busking his way from start to finish.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914266-WaroftheEncyclopaedists-9780241146804
War of the Encyclopaedists by Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite        $37.00
"As bizarre, hilarious and devastating as the past decade. Simultaneously a coming-of-age story, a war story, and a story of the disaffected millennial generation for whom the war hardly happened at all." - Phil Klay, author of Redeployment 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914296-TheNewSpymastersInsideEspionagefromtheColdWartoGlobalTerror-9780670917402
 The New Spymasters: Inside espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror by Stephen Grey         $55.00
The spying game is changing, but the need for walking, talking sources who gather secret information has never been more acute.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/906942-GoSetAWatchmanCD-9781846574375
 Go Set a Watchman (Audio book) by Harper Lee, read by Reese Witherspoon       $50.00
The CD of the publishing phenomenon of the year. 
Read it yourself
>> Here's Chapter One.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/962614?barcode=0958222487&title=WaimaramaSanctuaryMosses
 Waimarama Sanctuary Mosses by Bill & Nancy Malcolm and Jim Shevrock         $32.00
Nelson's Waimarama Sanctuary is a replica of an ancient New Zealand landscape. The wealth of species is even richer than it appears - mosses grow nearly everywhere: on soil, rock, bark and leaves, and even in water. Very well observed and illustrated.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/913322-EventheDeadAQuirkeMystery-9780241197349
Even the Dead by Benjamin Black        $38.00
Every web has a spider sitting at the centre of it. Pathologist Quirke is back working in the city morgue, watching over Dublin's dead. When a body is found in a burnt-out car, Quirke is called in to verify the apparent suicide of an up-and-coming civil servant. But Quirke can't shake a suspicion of foul play.The only witness has vanished, every trace of her wiped away. Piecing together her disappearance, Quirke finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of Dublin's elite - secret societies and high church politics, corrupt politicians and men with money to lose. John Banville writes as Benjamin Black.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/884041?barcode=9780571311705&title=ActorsAnonymous
 Actors Anonymous by James Franco      $23.00
Inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous's 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Actors Anonymous mixes memoir and invention in an examination of celebrity, acting and the making of fiction. Actor/director Franco turns his 'James Franco' persona inside out while providing a fascinating meditation on his art, along with tales of excess. "Hollywood has always been a private club," he writes. "I open the gates. I say welcome. I say, Look inside."
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/954509-BetweentheWorldandMe-9781925240702
 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates       $38.00
A father tells his sone what it means to be black in America. 
 "A beautiful, lyrical call for consciousness in the face of racial discrimination in America. Between the World and Me is an exhortation against blindness. Coates wants to push us to see the delusions we’ve been feeding ourselves and insist we struggle through the Dream, that false narrative of America’s history, by reckoning with its ugliness." - Guardian
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914595-TheWhisperingSwarm-9781473213319
 The Whispering Storm by Michael Moorcock        $35.00
London just after the war, a city desperately trying to get back on its feet. A young boy, Michael Moorcock, is about to discover a world of magic and wonder. Between his first tentative approaches to adulthood - a job on Fleet Street, the first stirrings of his interest in writing - and a chance encounter with a mysterious Carmelite Friar, we see a version of Moorcock's life that is simultaneously a biography and a story. Mixing elements of his real life with his adventures in a parallel London peopled with highwaywomen, musketeers and magicians, this is Moorcock's first full novel in ten years.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/886513-HavelALife-9780857898524
 Havel: A life by Michael Zantovsky      $28.00
The definitive biography of the playwright who, after years of political dissidency, became President of the Czech Republic is now in paperback. 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/876505-TheSpysSontheTrueStoryoftheHighest-RankingCIAOfficerEverConvictedofEspionageandtheSonHeTrainedtoSpyforRussia-9781925106657
 The Spy's Son: The true story of the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage and the son he trained to spy for Russia by Bryan Denson        $37.00
Fascinating - the story of Jim and Nathan Nicholson.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/913334-BaghdadCityofPeaceCityofBlood-9780141047102
 Baghdad: City of peace, city of blood by Justin Marozzi        $29.99
 Over thirteen centuries, Baghdad has enjoyed both cultural and commercial pre-eminence, boasting artistic and intellectual sophistication and an economy once the envy of the world. It was here, in the time of the Caliphs, that the Thousand and One Nights were set. Yet it has also been a city of great hardships, beset by epidemics, famines, floods, and numerous foreign invasions which have brought terrible bloodshed. This is the first history of the city in English for almost 80 years.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914287-CommonPeopleTheHistoryofanEnglishFamily-9780141039862
 Common People: The history of an English family by Alison Light       $29.99
 Beginning with her grandparents, Alison Light moves between the present and the past, in a series of journeys over two centuries, across Britain and beyond. Common People is a family history but also a new kind of public history, following the lives of the migrants who travelled the country looking for work. Shortlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize. 
 "This book is a substantial achievement: its combination of scholarship and intelligence is, you may well think, the best monument you could have to all those she has rescued from time's oblivion." - Financial Times 
 "A remarkable achievement. Common People should become a classic." - Margaret Drabble
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/911837?barcode=9781783295401&title=ADarkerShadeofMagic
 A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab          $19.99
Most people only know one London - but what if there were several? Kell is one of the last Travelers - magicians with a rare ability to travel between parallel Londons. There's Grey London, dirty and crowded and without magic, home to the mad king George III. There's Red London, where life and magic are revered. Then, White London, ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne. And, once upon a time, there was Black London...
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/912225-TheCrossingMyJourneytotheShatteredHeartofSyria-9781846044878
 The Crossing: My journey to the shattered heart of Syria by Samar Yazbek        $39.99
Insight into the impact of civil war on the people of Syria. 
Winner of the PEN Pinter Prize.
>> here.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914282?barcode=9781846147784&title=TheFlyTrap
The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjoberg       $26.00
Now in paperback!
"Swedish entomologist Sjoberg has a close affinity with the island on which he lives, most specifically its hoverflies, about which he is an expert. Island life, specialisation, and happiness are all themes of this book. In essence it is an exploration of the art of mastery, containing observations of nature that reflect the writer’s inner self. This is a book with strong imagery and ideas that I mentally keep returning to." - Sarah
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/910865-OutCametheSunOvercomingtheLegacyofMentalIllnessAddictionandSuicideinMyFamily-9781941393239
 Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the legacy of mental illness, addiction and suicide in my family by Mariel Hemingway        $45.00
By the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway (who epitomised the family characteristics Mariel has struggled to overcome).