Do two young girls have the power to change the world? Maria, raised by powerful older women, lives in a remote village in Burgundy, where she discovers her gift of clairvoyance, of healing and of communicating with nature. Hundreds of miles away in Italy, Clara discovers her musical genius and is sent from the countryside to Rome to nurture her extraordinary abilities. Who are the mysterious elves? Will they succeed in training the girls for their higher purpose in the face of an impending war? An intriguing, idiosyncratic book from the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
"Barbery explores the mystical connections between nature, art and the human heart with vividness and clarity." - New York Times
>> It's elves who are elegant now.
An exploration of love, inspiration and memory shaped around the events of Cave’s 2014 tour of North America, this book began life scribbled on airline sick bags during the 22-city tour. It soon grew into a restless full-length contemporary epic.
>> "Stopping is the why of work."
>> What is your favourite Nick Cave song?
It's the 1980s in Lagos de Moreno - a town where there are more cows than people, and more priests than cows - and a poor family is struggling to get by. The father, a school teacher, insists on practising and teaching the art of the insult, while the mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas to serve to their numerous progeny: Aristotle, Orestes, Archilochus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor and Pollux. The family witnesses a revolt against the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its umpteenth electoral fraud. This political upheaval is only the beginning of Orestes' adventures and his uproarious crusade against the boredom of rustic life and the tyranny of his older brother...
"Piles absurdity upon improbability with gleeful abandon." - Guardian
Fourteen-year-old Lucia makes her way through the world with only a book, a Zippo lighter, and a pocket full of stolen licorice. Expelled from school, again, she spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother in The Home. When Lucia discovers a secret Arson Club, she will do anything to be a part of it.
"Lucia belongs with all the great child truth tellers: David Copperfield, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield. I loved her and I loved the book, every page of it." - Peter Heller
"Ball is a genius who hits all of the right notes." - Chicago Tribune
The debut novel of the 2015 Man Booker Prize Winner (for A Brief History of Seven Killings).
Jamaica, 1957. On a day beginning with a bad omen - black vultures, known locally as John Crows, crash through the local church windows - a handsome and charismatic stranger drags the village preacher from his pulpit and takes over both church and congregation. Promising vengeance and damnation, he wastes no time delivering both, and in doing so starts a power struggle that sets the village of Gibbeah on a path to destruction.
Clara is a normal 12-year-old girl, until a scary encounter with an unusually large black cat changes her life for ever. With the help of her Aunt Isa, she is introduced to her astounding true nature: as a Wildwitch, she can learn to communicate with animals, and harness the magical power of the natural world around her. But before Clara can get to grips with her newfound abilities, she is confronted with a powerful enemy. Her experiences force her to grow up faster than she had expected, and she learns that, in the wild world, she will have to learn to fight as well as flee.
We need to rethink the collective mechanisms of politics. The surge of riotous crowd action in recent years shows a grassroots need for effective and concerted collective structures, in other words: parties; parties that are organs for the beliefs and passions of the people and effect change.
It's 1942, and the tiny farming town of Featherston is about to receive hundreds of Japanese soldiers into its prisoner-of-war camp. Ewen, whose dad is a guard there, can't stop wondering about the enemy just down the road. Some say the captives are evil and cruel and should be treated harshly - or shot. But when Ewen and his friends ride out to the camp to peep through the barbed wire, the POWs just seem like ...well, people. Then a new group from a captured warship arrives and the mood in the camp darkens. Guards and inmates begin to clash. As tension builds the boys are told to stay away. But on 25 February 1943, Ewen and his friends are there at the moment the storm breaks.
Magrit lives in an abandoned cemetery with her friend and advisor, Master Puppet, whom she built from bones and bits of graveyard junk. She is as forgotten as the tiny graveyard world that surrounds her. One night as Magrit and Master Puppet sit atop of their crumbling chapel, a passing stork drops a baby into the graveyard. Defying Master Puppet's demands that the baby be disposed of, and taking no heed of his dire warnings, Magrit decides to raise the baby herself. She gives him a name: Bugrat. Magrit loves Bugrat like a brother, friend and son all rolled into one. But Master Puppet and the newly discovered skeleton girl know all too well what will happen when Bugrat grows up - that the truth about them all will be revealed. Something Magrit refuses to face.
Roman thought he'd found the perfect opportunity to rebel. He may have been wrong. Waking strapped to a set of parallel bars in a richly appointed sitting room, he begins a conversation with a masked man which will change his life. His world has been a facade - one which the mysterious Brahma is about to tear away... A post-modern satirical novel of cults, politics, banking and "reality" from the Russian beyond-the-edge author of the mind-changing Omon Ra and The Yellow Arrow .
>> Is/was Victor Pelevin the first post-Soviet writer?
"By imagining his way into the lives of the creatures he discovers in the course of this memoir about his move to a Yorkshire town and the edgeland around it, journalist Rob Cowen uncovers a story more interesting than his ostensible subject." - Kirsty Gunn, Guardian
“Sensitive, thoughtful and poetic.” - Michael Palin
A set of stimulating narrative essays on the effects of place upon experience. Whether wandering the familiar streets of her neighbourhood, revisiting the landmarks of her past, or getting lost in a foreign city, Valeria Luiselli plots a unique and exhilarating course that traces unexpected pathways between diverse ideas and reveals the world from a fresh perspective. Here, we follow Luiselli as she cycles around Mexico City, shares a cigarette with the night porter in her Harlem apartment, and hunts down a poet's tomb in Venice.
"An astonishing new literary talent." - Telegraph
In the heart of Mexico City a woman, trapped in a house and a marriage she can neither fully inhabit nor abandon, thinks about her past.She has decided to write a novel about her days at a publishing house in New York; about the strangers who became lovers and the poets and ghosts who once lived in her neighbourhood. In particular, one of the obsessions of her youth - Gilberto Owen - an obscure Mexican poet of the 1920s, a marginal figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a busker on Manhattan's subway platforms, a friend and an enemy of Federico Garcia Lorca.
"Spare, strange and beautiful." - Telegraph
Ludwig Unger's life held such promise. His parents were artists and, from an early age, his own musical genius had marked him out for a stellar career in the world's concert halls. In his mother's imagination, Ludwig is already on the way to surpassing her most ambitious dreams for him. But in reality, and for now, he's playing in local cocktail bars and the two of them are living alone in a storm-lashed clifftop cottage in East Anglia. As the forceful winter seas bash away at the coastline, and Ludwig plunks away at the piano, he begins to tell a woman his story: a story of beauty and decay, of a child's faith and parental betrayal, and of the importance, in the end, of self-sacrifice.
When Frankie Hermans emerges from a coma after 200 days, he knows his life is never going to be the same again. For a start, he can't talk, he can't walk and it's a struggle even to wield a pen. And then there's Joe Speedboat - a boy who arrived in the sleepy village of Lomark like a blazing comet and who's been stirring things up ever since. Whether setting off bombs, racing mopeds or building a bi-plane, Joe has the touch of a magician and the spirit of a daredevil. He also sees a use for Frankie's good right arm beyond writing: as a champion arm-wrestler Frankie will be strong enough to impress his friends, and maybe even win the favour of the gorgeous, golden-haired girl who has them all in a spin. Full of vitality, verve and chutzpah, Joe Speedboat tells the fast-paced story of an unlikely friendship between two boys, and of their lightning dash towards adulthood.
Are puddings Britain's culinary gift to the world? Puddings, savoury and sweet, have been a source of nourishment and delight since the days of the Roman occupation, and probably even before then. Ysewijn faithfully recreates recipes from historical cookery texts and updates them for today's kitchens and ingredients: savoury puddings such as Scottish haggis or humble beef pudding, traditional sweet and savoury pies, pastries, jellies, ices, flummeries, junkets, jam roly-poly and, of course, Christmas pudding.
"A truly wonderful thing of beauty, a very tasty masterpiece!" - Jamie Oliver
"I'm not brave enough to be Captain Starfish," whispered Alfie. A beautiful book about an anxious child's realisation that it is OK to not want to be noticed.
Roy is a conman living in a leafy English suburb, about to pull off the final coup of his career. He is going to meet and woo a beautiful woman and slip away with her life savings. But who is he and what has he had to do to survive a life of lies? Who has had to pay the price of this deceit?
A fun collection of Martin Parr's food pictures, which documents the simple notion that 'we are what we eat'. Finding our what people actually eat is quite depressing.
>> Look! Real food!
Jeremy O'Keefe, a middle-aged Professor of History, returns to his native New York after a decade teaching at Oxford, hoping to reconnect with his daughter and rebuild the life he left behind. He settles into the rhythm of a too-empty life, long evenings alone after a day teaching students he barely knows. Then a strange encounter with a young man who presumes an acquaintance he doesn't remember and a series of disconcerting events leave him with a growing conviction that he is being watched. The pale young man keeps appearing, a haunting figure lingers outside his apartment at night, and then mysterious packages begin to arrive. As his grip on reality seems to shift and turn, Jeremy struggles to know whether he can believe what he is experiencing, or whether his mind is in the grip of an irrational obsession.
A few months before the 2010 midterm elections, Newt Gingrich described the socialist infiltration of American government and media as "even more disturbing than the threats from foreign terrorists." From Tom Paine to Bernie Sanders, socialism has a long American history.
Including Peter Pomerantsev on Ukraine's 'Propagandaland', Peregrine Hodgson on post-traumatic stress following his experience of war in Afghanistan, Philip O'Ceallaigh on the Communist destruction of old Bucharest, and Rachel Cusk on silence as a familial weapon of war.
A rallying call for our times - a collection of her sharpest articles and new pieces of equal acuity.
Recipes celebrating the pleasures of sourcing, cooking and sharing seasonal food.
"One of the most memorable works of fiction of 2015, now in small format, The Buried Giant is an extended meditation on the nature and ambivalent power of memory. For Ishiguro, memory, as well as making identity and sustained intention possible, is the mechanism by which personal and collective trauma forces itself upon the present and upon which further harm is predicated. Ishiguro, never one to write the same book twice, has written an unusual, thoughtful and deeply involving book." - Thomas
The friendship of a Chinese Canadian and an Afghani American help both women survive the rigours ofn life in the 1950s.
"I lost count of how many times I was caught off-guard by the poignancy of this novel. Every page pits hope against despair. Every page screams, fight for your dreams, you are lost without them. This story of motherhood and friendship, anchored by two extraordinary heroines, will stay with me for a long time." - Khaled Hosseini
Remember Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson the Miracles, Diana Ross the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson 5, and the Temptations? This is the definitive, authorised visual history of the Detroit-based independent record company which became a style unto itself, a prolific production line of suave, sassy and sophisticated music through the sixties, seventies and eighties. Featuring photography of treasures gathered from the archives, this landmark publication also captures the graphic and design iconography which underpinned Motown's extraordinary creativity.
>> Not the best lip-synching (1965).
Moving in parallel with his better-known figurative work, Mapplethorpe's flower studies show a similar obsession with form and surface, and with resonance and response. This is an exquisitely produced book. Very desirable.
Gofton visits New Zealand's high-country and rural homesteads, bringing their stories, recipes and baking secrets together in a new book based on programmes from the fifty-year-old Country Calendar television series.
>> Country Calendar, 1974
But she calls herself Phoenix, an 'accelerated woman' - a genetic experiment grown and raised in Manhattan's famous Tower 7, the only home she has ever known. Although she's only two years old, Phoenix has the body and mind of an adult - and powers beyond imagining. Phoenix is an innocent, happy to live quietly in Tower 7, reading voraciously and basking in the love of Saeed, another biologically altered human... Until the night that Saeed witnesses something so terrible that he takes his own life. Devastated, Phoenix begins to search for answers - only to discover that everything that she has ever known is a lie.
>> The author will be at Writers Week.
>> She talks to Kathryn Ryan.
Violinist of genius, and an individualist who didn't mind confronting the establishment, be that the musical or the political establishment.
>> Some gypsy airs.
An unsettling story of consumerism gone mad, MARTians imagines a not-so-distant future where our lives are ruled by the purchases we make. Last girl Zoe Zindleman, numerical ID 009-99-9999, is starting work at AllMART, where "your smile is the AllMART welcome mat". Her living arrangements are equally bleak: she can wait for her home to be foreclosed and stripped of anything valuable now that AnnaMom has moved away, or move to the Warren, an abandoned shopping centre, to live with the other left-behinds. With a handful of other disaffected, forgotten children, Zoe must find her place in a world that has consumed itself beyond redemption.
"Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads. It was necessary for this dark hour to fall, perhaps the darkest in history, to make us realize that freedom is as vital to our soul as breathing to our body." As Europe faced its darkest days, Stefan Zweig was a passionate voice for tolerance, peace and a world without borders. In these ardent essays, speeches and articles, composed before and during the Second World War, one of the twentieth century's greatest writers mounts a defence of European unity against terror and brutality.
"They are not for you but for a later age!" - Ludwig van Beethoven, on his Opus 59 quartets. Beethoven's sixteen string quartets are some of the most extraordinary and challenging pieces of music ever written. Dusinberre, first violinist of the Takács Quartet since 1993, recounts the exhilarating challenge of tackling these pieces.
>> #14.
They called them the Moth Girls because they were attracted to the house. They were drawn to it. Or at least that is what is written in the newspapers that Mandy reads on the anniversary of when her two best friends went missing. Five years have passed since Petra and Tina were determined to explore the dilapidated house on Princess Street. But what started off as a dare ended with the two girls vanishing. As Mandy's memories of the disappearance of her two friends are ignited once again, disturbing details will resurface in her mind.
Entering prison at 27, James struggled to come to terms with the enormity of his crimes and a future without purpose or hope. Then he met Joan, a prison psychologist, who helped him to confront the painful truth of his past, and to understand how it had shaped him from such a young age. Encouraged to read and to educate himself, over the next twenty years Erwin James would go on to receive a BA in History, and become a regular columnist for the Guardian. Speaking to the heart of the human condition, this is a book that offers no excuses - only the need to understand how we become who we become, and shows that it is never too late to change, with the right kind of help.
When Leah Oliphant-Brotheridge and her adopted sister Su go on holiday together to Magaluf to celebrate their A-levels, only Leah returns home. Her successful, swotty sister remains abroad, humiliated and afraid: there is an online video of her, drunkenly performing a sex act in a nightclub. And everyone has seen it. Ruth Oliphant-Brotheridge, mother of the girls, successful court judge, is furious. How could this have happened? How can she bring justice to these men who took advantage of her dutiful, virginal daughter? What role has Leah played in all this? And can Ruth find Su and bring her back home when Su doesn't want to be found?
The cuisines of different cultures are a result of centuries of evolution, finely tuned to our biology and surroundings. Are our health problems largely due to straying from the food of our ancestors?
A fun and instructive guide to the most popular men's hairstyles of the 20th century, including quirky line drawings to achieve the 'total look' and instructions on how to cut each style.
>> One man sports the century's hair.
Apparently, Ernest Hemingway was once given a six-toed cat by an old sea captain, and her distinctive descendants still roam the writer's Florida estate today. The fault driving this profusion of digits lies in a tiny genetic control switch, miles away (in molecular terms) from the gene that 'makes' toes. There are 2.2 metres of DNA inside every one of your cells, encoding roughly 20,000 genes.This is a dynamic, writhing biological library.
Set in an alternate World War II, one where young women are called up to fight alongside men, this is the story of Rio, Jenou, Frangie and Rainy. Four very different women, enlisting in the War effort for very different reasons, who share the very same goal, to bring Hitler’s reign in Europe to an end. But, not everyone believes that these girls should be sharing the front lines. Now Rio and her friends must fight not only to survive, but also prove their courage and ingenuity to enemies and allies alike... From the author of the 'Gone' series.
Becket Rumsey is all at sea. His dad has run away with him and his brother Billy in the middle of the night. And they've left everything behind, including their almost-mum Pearl. Becket has no idea what's going on - it's a mystery. So with the help of Billy and a snail called Brian, Becket sets out on a journey of discovery. It's not plain sailing but then what journeys ever are?
Forensic psychiatrist Natalie King works with victims and perpetrators of violent crime. Women with a history of abuse, mainly. She rides a Ducati a size too big and wears a tank top a size too small. Likes men but doesn't want to keep one. And really needs to stay on her medication. Now she's being stalked. Anonymous notes, threats, strangers loitering outside her house. A hostile former patient? Or someone connected with a current case?
In the late nineteenth century, general housework in the British home was so labour intensive that it required an army of servants to undertake it. Since then, the ways in which we look after our homes may have changed dramatically but the best and simplest of methods from that time still work for us today. From floor to ceiling, and leaving no awkward corner untouched, here are the tricks and techniques that generations once took for granted: how to get rid of water marks or heat rings on polished wood; the antibacterial qualities of simple vinegar; the damp cloth versus the dry duster; and using lemon juice to clear limescale. Combines fascinating 'below-stairs' social history with startling facts and useful tips.
When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes.
"Sad, grotesque, hilarious, breathtaking. The Marauders has its own clear hallmark of quicksilver prose." - The Wall Street Journal
As the Second World War neared its conclusion, Germany was a nation reduced to rubble: 3.6 million German homes had been destroyed leaving 7.5 million people homeless; an apocalyptic landscape of flattened cities and desolate wastelands. In May 1945 Germany surrendered, and Britain, America, Soviet Russia and France set about rebuilding their zones of occupation. Most urgent for the Allies in this divided, defeated country were food, water and sanitation, but from the start they were anxious to provide for the minds as well as the physical needs of the German people. Reconstruction was to be cultural as well as practical: denazification and re-education would be key to future peace and the arts crucial in modelling alternative, less militaristic, ways of life. Germany was to be reborn; its citizens as well as its cities were to be reconstructed; the mindset of the Third Reich was to be obliterated.
Why does the brain sabotage our behaviour? For something supposedly so brilliant and evolutionarily advanced, the human brain is pretty messy, fallible and disorganised.
At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she was the only woman and certainly the only Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian background Muslim woman. With her hijab quickly christened a 'tea cosy' there could not be a more unlikely place on earth for a young Muslim woman to want to be. This is the story of how she got there, where she is going, and how she wants the world to change.
During the 1970s and early 80s, dozens - perhaps hundreds - of Japanese civilians were kidnapped by North Korean commandos and forced to live in 'Invitation Only Zones', high-security detention centres masked as exclusive areas, on the outskirts of Pyongyang. The objective? To brainwash the abductees with the regime's ideology, and train them to Spy on the state's behalf. But the project faltered; when indoctrination failed, the captives were forced to teach North Korean operatives how to pass as Japanese, to help them infiltrate hostile neighbouring nations.
The daughter who nobody wanted learns the truth about the mother she never knew. Cal McGill is a unique investigator and oceanographer who uses his expertise to locate things - and sometimes people - lost or missing at sea. His expertise could unravel the haunting mystery of why, twenty-six years ago on a remote Scottish beach, Megan Bates strode out into the cold ocean and let the waves wash her away. From the author of The Sea Detective.
The new novel from the author of The Girl With the Pearl Earring.
When it comes to apples, James Goodenough “craved them more than whiskey or tobacco or coffee or sex.” His supplier of seeds and saplings, John Chapman (the real-life Johnny Appleseed) provides trees, applejack, and life-saving wisdom for the Goodenough family. After nine years (and five deceased children) in the Black Swamp, John and his wife, Sadie, are at odds, he preferring to grow sweet apples, or “eaters,” she preferring to grow sour apples, or “spitters,” that can be made into cider and applejack. Sadie’s mean streak and taste for alcohol drive the family to a breaking point before the narrative skips ahead to their youngest son Robert’s solo journey across the West.
When Dr Kobi Voight is given a set of old letters by his mother he has no inkling that they will lead him around the world and deep into the tragic past of his family. Within the letters - written in Hebrew and filled with delicate illustrations - lie the reflections of a young Jewish woman, forced to give up her baby daughter while fighting with the Resistance in Berlin. Who is the author, known only as 'Ruby', and what became of her child? And how does a priceless work of art, stolen by the Nazis, form part of the unfolding mystery? The sequel to The Keeper of Secrets.
Who's there? Sometimes animals are the same colour as their surroundings, so that all you can see are their eyes!
To the charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp is a humanitarian crisis; to the Kenyan government, it is a 'nursery for terrorists'; to the western media, it is a dangerous no-go area; but to its half a million residents, it is their last resort.
Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw tries to sleep after yet another soul-destroying Internet date - the low murmuring of her police radio her only solace. Over the airwaves come reports of a missing woman - door ajar, keys and phone left behind, a spatter of blood on the kitchen floor. Manon knows the first 72 hours are critical: you find her, or you look for a body. And as soon as she sees a picture of Edith Hind, a Cambridge post-graduate from a well-connected family, she knows this case will be big.
"It hits the sweet spot between literary and crime fiction." - Erin Kelly
"For those who love their crime fiction rich in psychology, beautifully written and laced with dark humour." - Lucie Whitehouse
Katy has gone. Without her friend, Audrey is thrown off balance: everything she thought she knew, everything she believed was true, is bent out of shape.
"All the rapture and calamity of youth. Jennifer Down is a writer of rare insight and heart." - Carrie Tiffany
Sometimes things are too close to see what they are, but you might like to have a guess!
Mango Allsorts is a girl good at all sorts of things, especially helping a tapir feel at home in a busy city. Bambang is that tapir and he's getting braver every day. Their adventures began in The Not-a-Pig and just go on and on!
England, 1882. Evelyn is bored with society and its expectations. So when her beloved sister, Rose, mysteriously vanishes, she ignores her parents and travels to London to find her, accompanied by the dashing Mr. Kent. But they're not the only ones looking for Rose. The reclusive young gentleman Sebastian Braddock is also searching for her, claiming that both sisters have special healing powers. Evelyn is convinced that Sebastian must be mad, until she discovers that his strange tales of extraordinary people are true and that her sister is in graver danger than she feared. Jane Austen meets X-Men!
140 delicious raw vegan recipes (not exclusively for nudists).
Horseback thieves, drug smugglers, dengue fever, sore feet, no broadband...
>> What fun.
Could your mind be downloaded or replicated in software? What implications would this have?
Plum has lots of favourite things: catching sticks, her bear, her bed - but really LOVE is her absolute favourite thing. What is your favourite thing?
>> Schnitzel with noodles??
