Unicorn: The poetry by Angela Carter $27.99
Critic and historian Rosemary Hill has collected Carter's published verse from 1963-1971, a period in which Carter began to explore the themes that dominated her later work: magic, the reworking of myths and their darker sides, and the overturning of literary and social conventions. With imagery at times startling in its violence and disconcerting in its presentation of sexuality, Unicorn provides compelling insight into the formation of a remarkable imagination.
A beautifully written memoir, interspersed with photographs and Palasti's achingly evocative poetry, telling of her Hungarian childhood and the impact on World War 2.
>> Come to the launch on Thursday 10 December, 5:30, at the Free House Yurt (Collingwood Street)! Miles and Margaret Jackson will be performing.
>> Born in Budapest.
Sheehan suspended his fine photographic eye from a drone and travelled the country to produce this unique book of low-level aerial shots of landscape and buildings, both well-known and surprising. This is New Zealand as never seen before.
At the turn of the twentieth century, students returning from abroad introduced Beethoven to China. The composer's perseverance in the face of adversity and his musical genius resonated in a nation searching for a way forward. Beethoven remained a durable part of Chinese life in the decades that followed, becoming an icon to intellectuals, music fans and party cadres alike, playing a role in major historical events from the May Fourth Movement to the normalisation of US-China relations.
Food eaten far from your kitchen needn’t weary your tastebuds. This useful book shows how to plan and prepare light-weight, delicious food using simple cooking methods. You’ll use it in your kitchen too.
For fifteen years, the recalcitrant Miss Shepherd lived in her broken-down van on Alan Bennett's driveway in Camden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. Bennett, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord, never under the illusion that his impulse was purely charitable.
>> Now Bennett's play has been made into a film!
Robert Penn cut down an ash tree to see how many things could be made from it. After all, ash is the tree we have made the greatest and most varied use of over the course of human history. Journeying from Wales across Europe and Ireland to the USA, Robert finds that the ancient skills and knowledge of the properties of ash, developed over millennia making wheels and arrows, furniture and baseball bats, are far from dead. The book chronicles how the urge to understand and appreciate trees still runs through us all like grain through wood.
You definitely need this book. You may never use it to chop, stack or dry wood (though, after reading it, you may), but you will be fascinated with the descriptions and fine illustrations of particular tasks done particularly well (an awareness that is wholly transferable to any sphere of endeavour).
>> And are these axemen?
Max Adams explores Britain's lost early medieval past by walking its paths and exploring its lasting imprint on valley, hill and field. From York to Whitby, from London to Sutton Hoo, from Edinburgh to Anglesey and from Hadrian's Wall to Loch Tay, each of his ten walk narratives form both free-standing chapters and parts of a wider portrait of a Britain of fort and fyrd, crypt and crannog, church and causeway, holy well and memorial stone.
“The Art of Excavation is an exciting project by a voice much needed in the New Zealand literary landscape — Pasifika, female, informed academically and culturally, with an eye capable of sighting and microscoping wide-ranging, important historical and social affairs.” - Siobhan Harvey
Longlisted for Poetry in the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards
Mason contends that capitalism, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new. At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value; and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership - in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Are we heading towards a more equal society?
>> Is it time to panic?
A climate-crisis book which offers a new - and controversial - solution: geoengineering, and which delivers a rich, deep history of climate change, and the science and politics that underpin it.
"One of the most important and provocative books I've read in years. The Planet Remade is essential for policy makers, environmentalists, skeptics and anyone else who prefers their views on climate change to be based on evidence, rather than rhetoric." - Hari Kunzru
"The young Aucklander's first novel set abroad. It's easy to see why Hollywood snapped up the incomplete manuscript. Tense and gritty, lean prose, wry humour." - Listener '100 Best Books of 2015'
In response to 9/11 Western governments have decided that the rule of law and human rights are often too costly or just inconvenient. Shami Chakrabarti explores why our fundamental rights and freedoms are in fact indispensable. She shows, too, the unprecedented pressures those rights are under today. Drawing on her own work in high-profile campaigns, from privacy laws to anti-terror legislation, Chakrabarti shows the threats to our democratic institutions and why our rights are paramount in upholding democracy.
"Probably the most effective public affairs lobbyist of the past 20 years." - David Aaronovitch, The Times.
"The most dangerous woman in Britain." - The Sun
Searching for the origins of family life, Pryor explores the first nine thousand years of life in Britain, from the retreat of the glaciers to the Romans departure. Tracing the settlement of domestic communities, he shows how archaeology enables us to reconstruct the evolution of habits, traditions and customs. But this, too, is Francis Pryor's own story: of his passion for unearthing our past, from Yorkshire to the west country, Lincolnshire to Wales, digging in freezing winters, arid summers, mud and hurricanes, through frustrated journeys and euphoric discoveries. Now in paperback!
Night falls, the portcullis rises in the moonlight, and young Billy starts his first night as a prison guard. But this is no ordinary prison. There are haunted cells that can't be used, whispers and cries in the night... and the dreaded Witch Well. Billy is warned to stay away from the prisoner down in the Witch Well. But who could it be? What prisoner could be so frightening? Billy is about to find out.
Without an A, the beast is best. Without a W, a witch has an itch!
"A playful celebration of language not as a dry, mathematical exercise in letter-organisation but as a living organism, in which letters make meaning through a vast mesh of metaphorical associations driven by the imagination - the very faculty that is the hallmark of children's minds." - Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
>> A Void (a lipogramic novel without an E) be Georges Perec.
The gripping sequel to the gripping The Mechanical (featured in our Christmas catalogue). Get both!
"The Mechanical is rare feat - a spy novel combined with a steampunk thriller. Tregellis has written one of the most intriguing and terrifying books of the year." - Lucy
Churchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a black Othello in the nineteenth century, the poet-artist Rossetti trying to capture on canvas what he couldn't possess in life, a surgeon-artist making studies of wounded faces brought in from the Battle of the Somme; a naked John Lennon five hours before his death. What does history look like reflected in the faces of those it acts upon?
>> One day we might get to watch the TV series.
A new edition of this best-selling tramping guide, with excellent new illustrations.
The imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America: Mustafa al-Zamori, called Estebanico. The slave of a Spanish conquistador, Estebanico sails for the Americas with his master, Dorantes, as part of a danger-laden expedition to Florida. Within a year, Estebanico is one of only four crew members to survive. As he journeys across America with his Spanish companions, the Old World roles of slave and master fall away, and Estebanico remakes himself as an equal, a healer, and a remarkable storyteller.
Long-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
"Tremendous - one of the finest historical novels I've encountered. It rings with thunder!" - Gary Shteyngart
Treating Scotland as eight distinct regions, this book describes the 'cultural terroir' of the country's fifty greatest distilleries; the ingredients, practices and traditions that result in such an exquisite range of whiskies. The photographs capture the texture of the surrounding landscapes and communities through the changing seasons, as well as providing portraits of the craftsmen who work there, and the buildings themselves.
In 1900, aged twenty and travelling from Havana to Europe, Margarita Johnson met and fell in love with the dashing gold prospector Charles Lumb. Her father disapproved, and after three years of secret postcards, the couple eloped to London. Cut out of her father's will, Margarita was never welcomed again in Havana. Margarita treasured her postcards from Charles, her family and friends, who wrote from England America and Europe. They remained with her until she died in 1959. Years later they were found by her granddaughter, tucked away in a cubby hole, and are here seen for the first time.
What happens when two shy children meet at a very crowded pool? Dive in to find out! Friendship and imagination have no bounds.
The most prolific and most famous Victorian architect.
The landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 represents a defining moment, not only for Australia and New Zealand, but also for Turkey. However a detailed account of the landing from the Turkish perspective has, until now, not been published.
J. Barry Ferguson is the quintessential example of the caption, "New Zealand boy done good in New York". His first claim to fame may have been as Wellington's number one square dance caller in 1951, and his first floral business was on Hereford Street in Christchurch, but it was on Fifth Avenue that he really made his name as a creator of floral installations.
The Art of the Novel by Nicholas Royle $39.99
Inspiration and exercises for the fictionally inclined.
Choose your seasonal gifts and summer reading from our catalogue. Copies of the printed edition are available from the shop, or mailed upon request.
>> Come to an evening of civilised shopping. Have a glass of wine, browse our Christmas stock and get your present-shopping done whilst maintaining a relaxed state. We look forward to seeing you: Wednesday 9 December until 8pm.
