Let’s Co-operate
£4.99This is a book for parents and teachers of c hildren aged between three and twelve. It contains over 200 ideas and activities to promote co-operation and peaceful conflict resolution in young children.
Letter to the Amazon
£8.50Like many of Marina’s essay and poems, ‘Letter to the Amazon’ is addressed to another writer, in this case Natalie Clifford Barney, a wealthy American expatriate in Paris. Though written in 1932, Marina’s letter was in response to what Natalie said about lesbian relationships and motherhood in her 1920 ‘Pensées dune Amazone’ (Thoughts of an Amazon).
Letters to America
£10.99‘D’Aguiar interrogates and reassesses whatever he sees in a poetry that is flexible and fast paced.’ -Charles Bainbridge, The Guardian
The Poetry Book Society Winter 2020 Choice
The fourth Carcanet collection from Guyanese-British poet Fred D’Aguiar.
Liam Wong: After Dark
£35.00An intimate, one-of-a-kind photographic journey that documents Liam Wong’s nocturnal wanderings through the world’s most captivating cities.
In this singular photographic publication, Liam Wong weaves together a series of cinematic images that reveal the people and places, the slivers of life, that inhabit the mysterious space of night-time cities. Through his previous work as a videogame designer, Wong learned that ‘real life is just as potent, bizarre and interesting as things we can imagine’. From Hong Kong and Seoul to London and Edinburgh, After Dark reveals shadowy cityscapes through the eyes of the insomniac artist.
For centuries, artists have found both solace and fruitfulness in solitude. Through sleepless and solitary nights, After Dark explores the phenomenon of loneliness in city life, capturing urban interstices between dusk and dawn: the eerie emptiness of London’s Piccadilly Circus at 4:00 a.m., Seoul’s late-night taxi drivers moving along hushed roads and birds sharing the warmth of a neon sign in Hong Kong’s TSM District – mysterious silhouettes representing lives lived in shadow, portrayed as intricate cinematic visions, all before the sun rises.
Building on the success of his first monograph, TO:KY:OO , Wong widens his lens to capture the night in the world’s most exciting cities. From workers leaving their night shifts to empty streets illuminated by neon signs, Wong charts the hours of darkness as populated scenes become deserted ones. The book’s photography – framed to specific film ratios – is imbued with a cinematic intensity underscored by Wong’s interest in film, while its themes are amplified through specially commissioned Chinese characters that pay homage to the works of celebrated Chinese director Wong Kar Wai.
Life Ceremony
£12.99From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you’ve read before.
An engaged couple falls out over the husband’s dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: ‘A Clean Marriage’, which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.
Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.
Life is a Dream (Eric Bentley’s Dramatic Repertoire)
£5.00Translations of four great Spanish dramas: Calderon de la Barca Life Is a Dream; Miguel de Cervantes Siege of Numantia; Lope de Vega Fuente Ovejuna; Tirso de Molina The Trickster of Seville.
Life on Tour with Bowie
£7.99On 11 January 2016, the world was stunned to wake up to the news that David Bowie had died the day before. A genuine icon, he left behind a body of work among the most important in music history. But only a lucky few were privileged to know the man behind that mystique, and know him well. Sean Mayes was one of them.
In 1978, Sean toured the world with David Bowie, in what was one of the most important periods in the artist’s history. Travelling first class and performing each night with one of the world’s greatest rock stars at the height of his fame was an amazing experience – fortunately, Sean had the foresight to document it.
Life Under Water
£7.95Maura Dooley’s poetry is remarkable for embracing both lyricism and political consciousness, for its fusion of head and heart. These qualities have won her wide acclaim. Helen Dunmore (in Poetry Review) admired her ‘sharp and forceful’ intelligence. Adam Thorpe praised her ability ‘to enact images for complex feelings…Her poems have both great delicacy and an undeniable toughness…she manages to combine detailed domesticity with lyrical beauty, most perfectly in the metaphor of memory ‘ – Literary Review. These poems take in the physical landscape, family and friendship, as well as the transience of both folklore and politics. In part, an attempt to speak of what is submerged, they welcome that ‘splash of cold water to the face’ that tells us we’re alive.
LISTEN
£7.99An anthology of writing and art works that simply respond to the work “listen” – through poems, paintings, photos, stories, songs, gardens and much more – all about listening and the importance of silence.
The artwork and writing in this anthology explore different perspectives on what it means to listen: from listening to music and the environment with one ear to listening to people with the other.
Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio
£8.95‘Poetry can stick up for the weak’ according to Michael Rosen, or it can ‘mock the mighty’; it can ‘glorify our rulers or it can dissect them. You choose.’ In these powerful new poems Rosen is clear about his own choices. Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio is a book about anti-Semitism, racism, Fascism and war, Trump, le Pen, and the Tory assaults on the NHS and education the stupid and the sinister, the ridiculous and the revolting. In his first collection for grown-ups since Don t Mention the Children (2015), Michael Rosen confirms his reputation as the heir to Jacques Prevert, Ivor Cutler and Adrian Mitchell. Few poets writing today can move so effortlessly between childishness and childlike seriousness, or dare to ask, like the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, why the silly emperor is not wearing any clothes.
Literary Lives
£4.99Literary Lives is a book of decidedly unauthorised biographies by the acclaimed caricaturist Edward Sorel, who has long believed, that next to composers, writers are the craziest people in the world. The ten writers he has used to prove this thesis are Norman Mailer, George Eliot, Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lillian Hellman, Leo Tolstoy, Bertolt Brecht, William Butler Yeats, Carl Jung and Ayn Rand. Although these comic strips are clearly meant to amuse, and the facts uncovered are sometimes hard to believe, each and every statement is absolutely true.
Living Through History: Britain 1750-1900
£6.00A study of British history from 1750 to 1900, suitable for project work and for studying medieval topics in detail, which provides text alongside source materials, and also recounts weird and sometimes gory stories behind people and events.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror: The no. 1 Japanese bestseller and Guardian 2021 highlight
£9.99For fans of BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD, fairy tale and magic are weaved together in sparse language that belies a flooring emotional punch.
‘Strange and beautiful. Imagine the offspring of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle with The Virgin Suicides ‘ GUARDIAN
‘ Genuinely affecting. A story of empathy, collaboration and sharing truths’ FINANCIAL TIMES
Translated by Philip Gabriel, a translator of Murakami
_______________________________
Would you share your deepest secrets to save a friend?
In a tranquil neighbourhood of Tokyo, seven teenagers wake to find their bedroom mirrors are shining.
At a single touch, they are pulled from their lonely lives to a wondrous castle filled with winding stairways, watchful portraits and twinkling chandeliers. In this new sanctuary, they are confronted with a set of clues leading to a hidden room where one of them will be granted a wish. But there’s a catch: if they don’t leave the castle by five o’clock, they will be punished.
As time passes, a devastating truth emerges: only those brave enough to share their stories will be saved.
Tender, playful, gripping, LONELY CASTLE IN THE MIRROR is a mesmerizing tale about the importance of reaching out, confronting anxiety and embracing human connection.
Looking Through Letterboxes
£9.95Caroline Bird at first appears to be a traditional story-teller. But the stories she tells are suspended, charged with metaphor, and built upon foundations strangely familiar: fairy tale, fantasy and the sweet-bitter world of romance. The further one reads in her haunted tales, the more remarkable becomes the variety of forms, metres and rhythms she uses, and the clearer their appropriateness. Things are not ever as they seem, and the poems bring us closer to how the world ‘really’ is for this talented teenager. They work metaphorically through our expectations and prejudices, which she rearranges and reanimates (‘with a step/in your dance, a forecast for lightning’), or those that relate to the world of childhood (‘I came to see if you were okay’) where language itself has never quite got a grip. In the poems of Caroline Bird gender politics are starkly redefined, as are the languages with which generations communicate and fail to agree.
Love after Love
£8.99Meet the Ramdin-Chetan family: forged through loneliness, broken by secrets, saved by love.
Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household. Happy in their differences, they build a home together. Home: the place keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world – until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.
Brave and brilliant, steeped in affection, Love After Love offers hope to anyone who has loved and lost and has yet to find their way back.
Love Lessons (Audiobook CDs)
£4.00A superb novel for older readers about forbidden love, from the bestselling, award-winning Jacqueline Wilson.
Fourteen-year-old Prue and her sister Grace have been educated at home by their controlling, super-strict father all their lives. Forced to wear Mum’s odd hand-made garments and forbidden from reading teenage magazines, they know they’re very different to ‘normal’ girls — but when Dad has a stroke and ends up in hospital, unable to move or speak, Prue suddenly discovers what it’s like to have a little freedom.
Sent to a real school for the first time, Prue struggles to fit in. The only person she can talk to is her kindly, young — and handsome — art teacher, Rax. They quickly bond, and Prue feels more and more drawn to him. As her feelings grow stronger, she begins to realise that he might feel the same way about her. But nothing could ever happen between them — could it?
Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud 1939-1954
£65.00Reproductions of the young Lucian Freud’s letters alongside insightful context and commentary reveal the foundations of the artist’s personality and creative practice.
The young Lucian Freud was described by his friend Stephen Spender as ‘totally alive, like something not entirely human, a leprechaun, a changeling child, or, if there is a male opposite, a witch.’ All that magnetism and brilliance is displayed in the letters assembled here. Ranging from schoolboy messages to his parents, through letters and carefully-chosen, often embellished postcards to friends, lovers and confidants, to correspondence with patrons and associates. They are peppered with wit, affection and irreverence.
Alongside rarely seen photographs and Freud’s extraordinary works, each chapter charts Freud’s evolving art alongside intimate accounts of his life. We trace Freud’s early friendships with Stephen Spender, John Craxton, his wild days at art school in East Anglia, and a stint as a merchant seaman. Among the highlights are Freud’s accounts of his first trip to Paris in 1946 and encounters with Picasso, Alexander Calder and Giacometti (who, he thought, looked like Harpo Marx). Equally revealing are letters to and from his first love, Lorna Wishart and second wife, Caroline Blackwood. Among his friends and confidantes were Sonia Orwell and Ann Fleming: remarkable, hitherto unknown letters to both of whom are included. To Ann Fleming he wrote a richly-comic, six-page description of a high society fancy dress ball which took place at Biarritz in 1953. He also went to stay with Ann and her husband Ian in their house in Jamaica, Goldeneye. From there, he sent a stream of letters, plus a telegram to his colleagues at the Slade School of Fine Art (where he was supposed to be teaching): “PLEASE SEND TEN SHEETS GREY GREEN INGRES PAPER”. The volume ends in early 1954 with his inclusion at the age of 31, as one of the artists representing Britain at the Venice Biennale – the high point of his early career.
Co-authored by David Dawson and Martin Gayford, this is the first published collection of Freud’s correspondence, many brought to light for the first time. Reproduced in facsimile alongside reproductions of Freud’s artwork, the letters are linked by a narrative that weaves them into the story of his life and relationships through his formative first three decades. Collectively, they provide a powerful insight into his early life and art.
Love Poems
£6.99Featuring the greatest love poems of all time, this collection brings together poets as diverse as William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Christina Rossetti and Walt Whitman. As each brings their own unique approach to love, marriage and attraction the poems offer both tender tributes to romantic love and passionate exclamations that are sure to provoke an emotional response.
Luck is the Hook
£12.00Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books. Luck is the Hook is her sixth book from Bloodaxe. In these poems, chance plays a part in finding or losing people and places that are loved: a change in the weather, a trick of language, a bomb that misses its mark, six pomegranate seeds eaten by mistake; all these events cast long shadows and raise questions about who is recording them, about believing, not believing, wanting to believe. A knot undone at Loch Lomond snags over Glasgow, a seal swims in the Clyde, a ghost stalks her quarry at a stepped well, an elephant and a cathedral come face to face on the frozen Thames, a return ticket is thrown into the tide of Humber, strangers wash in. Even in an uncertain world, love tangles with luck, flights show up on the radar and technology keeps track of desire. Imtiaz Dharker was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her fifth collection Over the Moon and for her services to poetry.
Mad Hatter, What’s the Matter?
£5.00Once there was a man who made hats, so everybody called him the Hatter…
Major Barbara
£5.00“There are two things necessary to salvation … money and gunpowder”.
Major Barbara, Bernard Shaw’s story of the conversion contest between the arms manufacturer Andrew Undershaft and his daughter, the Salvation Army Major, is a provocative dramatization of the relationship between money, power, and moral purpose. A landmark in the history of British theatre when first produced at the Royal Court in 1905, it remains strikingly relevant today, when recent history has repeatedly highlighted the power of the arms industry in shaping government policy, and globalisation has accentuated the political and ethical issues of social welfare and international capital raised by the play.
Making Music
£14.50Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields:
A history of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields – one of the most celebrated chamber orchestras in he world.
Man in the Dark (Audiobook CDs)
£5.00Read by Paul Auster. Complete and unabridged.
‘I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.‘
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter’s house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget – his wife’s recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall on 9/11, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill’s story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts another hidden story, this time of his own marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus’s death.
Passionate and shocking, political and personal: Man in the Dark is a novel that reflects the consequences of 9/11, that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.
Man With A Seagull On His Head
£8.99Under the intense summer sun on the Essex coast a gull falls from the sky and strikes an unassuming local council worker sitting on the beach below. From that moment on he is obsessed, a crazed visionary repeatedly depicting the scene and the unknown figure within it who filled his view at the moment of impact. The mysterious beauty of his creations draw others to him, but can they lay hold of that which possesses him? And what of his anonymous muse? MAN WITH A SEAGULL ON HIS HEAD is an insightful exploration of art, love and creativity. We follow Ray Eccles and his unlikely muse, their lives becoming intertwined with others as they advance on their bizarre journey through the London art scene. We meet Grace Zoob, an insecure heiress in search of meaning, validation and love; Amanda Parsons, an ambitious girl from the suburbs who suspects there’s more to life than marriage and children but finds herself consumed by both; and Grace’s daughter, Mira, a beautiful, damaged young woman. Five very different lives, linked by a common thread, for all have experienced the true and extraordinary beauty of life, bursting through the veil of daily existence, only to disappear again before it can be fully grasped.
Mandeville
£7.50The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was one of the most popular books of the later Middle Ages. Purporting to describe the circumnavigation of an English knight through Africa, India, and the Middle East in 1322, the narrative is a fantastical collection of sights: seas, islands, phoenixes, pyramids, rocks that enchant ships and apes that contain human souls, interwoven with geographical descriptions that are perfectly accurate. Matthew Francis’s new collection is a sequence of poems that celebrate and give voice to Mandeville, in his own words, caught as he is between physical and symbolic geographies, between a world that is round and one that has Jerusalem at its centre. And all of it narrated in the terse, solitary, conflicted and strangely passionate voice of this medieval Crusoe whose very existence was disputed.
Manifesto: A radically honest and inspirational memoir from the Booker Prize winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
£9.99‘This honest, engaging memoir shares such gems . . . the perfect read for anyone who dreams big’ The Times and Sunday Times , Books of the Year
The powerful, urgent memoir and manifesto on never giving up from Booker prize-winning trailblazer, Bernardine Evaristo
In 2019, Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win the Booker Prize since its inception fifty years earlier – a revolutionary landmark for Britain. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and she made history.
Manifesto is her intimate and fearless account of how she did it. From a childhood steeped in racism from neighbours, priests and even some white members of her own family, to discovering the arts through her local youth theatre; from stuffing her belongings into bin bags, always on the move between temporary homes, to exploring many romantic partners both toxic and loving, male and female, and eventually finding her soulmate; from setting up Britain’s first theatre company for Black women in the eighties to growing into the trailblazing writer, theatre-maker, teacher, mentor and activist we see today – Bernardine charts her rebellion against the mainstream and her life-long commitment to community and creativity. And, through the prism of her extraordinary experiences, she offers vital insights into the nature of race, class, feminism, sexuality and ageing in modern Britain.
Bernardine Evaristo’s life story is a manifesto for courage, integrity, optimism, resourcefulness and tenacity. It’s a manifesto for anyone who has ever stood on the margins, and anyone who wants to make their mark on history. It’s a manifesto for being unstoppable.
‘Raw and emotive . . . a powerful account of how Evaristo got to the top of her game – it’s moving, but there’s also much humour and joy’ Independent
‘Bernardine Evaristo is one of those writers who should be read by everyone, everywhere’Elif Shafak
‘Bernardine Evaristo is one of Britain’s best writers , an iconic and unique voice, filled with warmth, subtlety and humanity. Exceptional’ Nikesh Shukla
Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS
£14.99A national treasure’s journey to the brink and back. ‘Will I wake up?’ ‘There’s a 50:50 chance.’Michael Rosen wasn’t feeling well. Soon he was struggling to breathe, and then he was admitted to hospital, suffering from coronavirus as the nation teetered on the edge of a global pandemic.
What followed was months on the wards: six weeks in an induced coma, and many more weeks of rehab and recovery as the NHS saved Michael’s life, and then got him back on his feet. Throughout Michael’s stay in intensive care, a notebook lay at the end of his bed, where the nurses who cared for him wrote letters of hope and support. Embarking on the long road to recovery, Michael was soon ready to start writing about his near-death experience.
Combining stunning new prose poems by one of Britain’s best loved poets and the moving coronavirus diaries of his nurses, doctors and wife Emma-Louise Williams, this is a beautiful book about love, life and the NHS. Featuring original illustrations by Chris Riddell, each page celebrates the power of community, the importance of kind gestures in dark times, and the indomitable spirits of the people who keep us well.
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
£14.99Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2022
‘Original, memorable, shimmering’ – Sarah Moss
‘Restlessly inventive . . . delicate and persuasive’ – The Guardian
Something gleeful and malevolent is moving in Lia’s body, learning her life from the inside out. A shape-shifter. A disaster tourist. It’s travelling down the banks of her canals. It’s spreading.
When a sudden diagnosis upends Lia’s world, the boundaries between her past and her present begin to collapse. Deeply buried secrets stir awake. As the voice prowling in Lia takes hold of her story, and the landscape around becomes indistinguishable from the one within, Lia and her family are faced with some of the hardest questions of all: how can we move on from the events that have shaped us, when our bodies harbour everything? And what does it mean to die with grace, when you’re simply not ready to let go?
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is a story of coming-of-age at the end of a life. Utterly heart-breaking yet darkly funny, Maddie Mortimer’s astonishing debut is a symphonic journey through one woman’s body: a wild and lyrical celebration of desire, forgiveness, and the darkness within us all.
Marr’s Guitars
£45.00‘Guitars have been the obsession of my life … they’ve been a mission and sometimes a lifeline’ – Johnny Marr
The guitarist’s guitarist, Johnny Marr redefined music for a generation. His ringing arpeggios and chordal innovations helped elevate The Smiths to be one of the most influential and important British bands of all time.
Tracing Marr’s career from his teenage years to his recent work on the Bond soundtrack, Marr’s Guitars showcases the most significant of Marr’s superb collection of electric and acoustic guitars, revealing through them the evolution of his iconic sound and style of playing. Each guitar is identified with a crucial moment, a specific song or a particular sound, and each embodies a key aspect of Marr’s lifelong passion.
Renowned photographer Pat Graham presents each instrument as a full portrait, supported by micro shots highlighting the specific details that make each one unique, while Johnny Marr himself reveals in his accompanying commentary on what tracks and at which shows the guitars were played. Many of the guitars are closely associated with Marr, such as the Rickenbacker 330, the Gibson ES-355 and the Johnny Marr Signature Fender Jaguar. Some were passed down to him, including Nile Rodgers’ Stratocaster, Bryan Ferry’s Roxy Music Hagstrom and Bert Jansch’s Yamaha. Others are guitars once owned by Marr that have since been passed on to the next generation of guitar heroes, including the Stratocaster used by Noel Gallagher on ‘Wonderwall’ and the Gibson Les Paul Goldtop used on In Rainbows by Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien.
Punctuating the photography of the guitars and the accompanying commentary are contextual studio, backstage and onstage shots. Together, they make Marr’s Guitars a unique cultural history of modern music and guitar playing told through the prism of Johnny Marr’s experiences and achievements.
This edition of Marr’s Guitars is a casebound hardback book with printed imitation cloth and is manufactured in the UK.
Mean Time
£9.99In her prize-winning fourth collection, Mean Time, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy dramatizes scenes from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, finding moments of grace or consolation in memory, love and language amid the complexities of life. These are powerful poems of loss, betrayal and desire.
Metallica: The Early Years & The Rise of Metal
£5.00This book shows the birth and rise of the monster known as Metallica and will link the band and the American metal scene with the famed New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement in the UK and metal originators such as Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.
Metallica’s early success was built on strong live performances and fierce thrash metal riffs. With the remarkable passion and drive of drummer/founder Lars Ulrich, Metallica became the biggest American metal band in the world and the legacy of those first four albums lives on to this day. This book tells the story of how that remarkable global triumph started, with interviews with people who were there, saw those early gigs and numerous other eye-witnesses to the incredible story.
This is the first book to explore the early years of Metallica, containing exclusive and original interviews with key players and the journalists that brought Metallica to the UK. Plus, in-depth insights into Metallica’s groundbreaking first four albums and an exploration of the San Fran Bay Area thrash scene of the 1980s