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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7 August 2015

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/912203?barcode=9781846558351&title=Wind%2FPinball%3ATwoEarlyNovels
Wind / Pinball: Two early novels by Haruki Murakami          $39.99
"If you're the sort of guy who raids the refrigerators of silent kitchens at three o'clock in the morning, you can only write accordingly. That's who I am."
Murakami's first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball have, until now, never been available in English outside Japan. 
 "Which other author can remind you simultaneously of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and J.K. Rowling, not merely within the same chapter but on the same page?" - Independent
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/915977-GenerationAJohnMurrayOriginal-9781473614833
Generation by Paula McGrath       $38.00
"If you read this book expecting any of the things often associated with Irish writing, you’re in for a shock. What the characters nearly all have in common is a burning sense of disappointment and rage. If this sounds miserable to read, it isn’t. The voices are beautifully woven together, and the prose has a weight and resonance way beyond the book’s slender length. The general sense is of stark clarity and poetic compression. Think Raymond Carver, not James Joyce." - Sunday Tinmes
"Ambitious and sensitive." - Irish Independent 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914279?barcode=9781846147685&title=LandscapesofCommunism-AHistoryThroughBuildings
Landscapes of Communism: A history through buildings by Owen Hatherley         $55.00
 During the twentieth century, Communism took power in Eastern Europe and remade the city in its own image. Ransacking the urban planning of Haussmann's Paris, and imperial Vienna, Berlin and St Petersburg, Communism set out to transform everyday life, its sweeping boulevards, epic high-rise and vast housing estates an emphatic declaration of a non-capitalist idea. Now, the regimes that built them are long gone, but from Warsaw to Berlin, Moscow to post-Revolution Kiev, the buildings, their most obvious legacy, remain.
"In the craven world of architectural criticism Hatherley is that rarest of things: a brave, incisive, elegant and erudite writer, whose books dissect the contemporary built environment to reveal the political fantasies and social realities it embodies." - Will Self
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/920673-GenerationKitchen-9781877578922
 Generation Kitchen by Richard Reeve       $27.00
Much sought after by oil companies, generation kitchens are sites where geological forces have combined to create conditions for oil production. Richard Reeve's brooding and observant poetry meditates on the intrigues of fossil fuel companies and ecological despoliation, but also on personal rites of passage on relationships, deaths, the turn of the seasons. But, beyond the geopolitical framework, beyond the anthropocene moment, the landscape endures.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/915979-AnAccountoftheDeclineoftheGreatAukAccordingtoOneWhoSawitAJohnMurrayOriginal-9781473610859
An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to one who saw it by Jessie Greengrass         $38.00
"The stories in this impressive and unusual debut collection chronicle the lives of the lonely and the estranged. That a tone of philosophical melancholy hangs over Greengrass’s writing is partly due to her restrained and formal style, but partly her subject matter, too, and the way in which her protagonists are often looking back to make sense of their pasts or living in the subjunctive, in parallel worlds of wishes and dreams. This is a highly original collection from a distinctive new voice in fiction." - Independent
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914230-AnAstronautsLife-9781922147929
 An Astronaut's Life by Sonja Dechian        $37.00
Wry stories speaking to our deepest yearning for connection and the inevitability of our isolation.
"Dechian’s prose is scrupulously clear, privileging precision in her language over poetics. Many of her characters are disaffected and unwilling to confront the cruel realities of their lives. The situations she writes about are strenuously unusual and this strangeness results in an oddly affecting humour. An Astronaut’s Life announces the arrival of a deeply original voice. Story by story we learn the rules for navigating Dechian’s fictional landscapes and are drawn deeper into the curious mysteries of her stories." - The Australian
>> "What role do you think fiction plays in responding to the modern world?"
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/563913?barcode=9781851688951&title=FromEternitytoHere%3ATheQuestfortheUltimateTheoryofTime
 From Eternity to Here: The quest for the ultimate theory of time by Sean Carroll          $23.00
You can't unscramble an egg and you can't remember the future. But what if time doesn't (or didn't!) always go in the same direction? Carroll's paradigm-shifting research suggests that other universes experience time running in the opposite direction to our own. Exploring subjects from entropy and quantum mechanics to time travel and the meaning of life, Carroll presents a dazzling new view of how we came to exist. What happened before the big bang?
From the author of the Royal Society Winton Prize-winning The Particle at the End of the Universe
>> Have a look at the short list for this year's Royal Society Winton Prize.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/910689-AHangingatCinderBottom-9780008104818
 A Hanging at Cinder Bottom by Glenn Taylor      $33.00
From the author of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and set in the boom years of the West Virginia coalmining industry, this is an epic story of personal ambition, exile and return, and a grand heist. Keystone, West Virginia, 1910. In the hot August rain the townspeople gather to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. At the gallows are none other than poker player, Abe Baach, and his lover, the madam of the town's brothel, one Goldie Toothman. Abe split town seven years prior and has been playing cards up and down the coast ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father's saloon in shambles - and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family's past, does the real swindle begin.
"A galloping, defiant epic, a virtuoso performance, vigorous and sincere, located squarely in the tradition of Twain, Faulkner and McCullers." - Guardian

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/913333?barcode=9780141047782&title=TenCitiesThatMadeanEmpire
 Ten Cities that Made an Empire by Tristram Hunt       $29.99
"A grand history of the British empire, this is a book about ideas, for all that it is rich in architectural description, economic fact and colourful anecdote. It is well-written, cleverly constructed and beautifully balanced." - Spectator  
"Ingenious and timely. Hunt skilfully constructs his itinerary to provide a lively and cliche-busting survey of imperial history. He uses the urban lens to terrific effect." - Maya Jasanoff, Guardian  
"An original and inventive approach to tackling empire. This is a book which is experienced through the life on the streets, in the buildings and across the physical layout of large urban centres, where jostled men and women of different races and creeds. It is a work of great ambition. Impressive." - Kwasi Kwarteng, Standpoint
Now in paperback!
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/912890?barcode=9780300213195&title=LatestReadings%3ACliveJames
 Latest Readings by Clive James        $39.99
Suffering from terminal leukemia, this is James's valediction to his lifelong engagement with the written word.

http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/887190-Paris-9783832732523
 Paris: Photographs by Serge Ramelli           $140.00
Come and have a look at this book!
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/914122-ShadowsoftheMasterStarofDeltora1-9781742990620
Shadows of the Master ('Star of Deltora' #1) by Emily Rodda       $12.00
A new series from the author of 'Deltora Quest'! Britta has always wanted to be a trader like her father, sailing the nine seas and bringing precious cargo home to Del harbour. Her dreams seemed safe until her fathers quest to find the fabled Staff of Tier ended in blood and horror. Now his shamed family is in hiding, and his ship, the Star of Deltora, belongs to the powerful Rosalyn fleet. But Britta's ambition burns as fiercely as ever.When she suddenly gets the chance to win back her future she knows she has to take it whatever the cost. She has no idea that shadows from a distant, haunted isle are watching her every move.
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/912199-ImTravellingAlone-9780857522511
 I'm Travelling Alone by Samuel Bjork          $38.00
 "One is tempted to call it a textbook on the modern crime novel. This is how it should be done." - Folkebladet (Denmark)
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/919517?barcode=9781784753054&title=Scout%2CAtticus%26Boo%3AACelebrationoftoKillaMockingbird
 Scout Atticus and Book: A celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird by Mary McDonagh Murphy         $27.00
 Examines the impact of To Kill a Mockingbird on individual lives and on a society. 
http://www.pageandblackmore.co.nz/products/911509-CircusMirandus-9781910002575
 Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley       $18.00
 Micah's beloved grandfather is gravely sick, but all is not lost. Years ago, his grandfather visited a mysterious circus where he was promised a miracle by a man who could bend light. But who is this stranger, will he keep his promise, and does the magical Circus Mirandus really exist?

We've just received a shipment of exciting books on all manner of art techniques, at greatly reduced prices (and for a limited time only)! Come into the shop and have a look!