NEW RELEASES (15.11.24)
Build your reading pile, and the reading piles of others!
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A Thousand Feasts: Small moments of joy… A memoir of sorts by Nigel Slater $45
Nigel Slater has always been good company in the kitchen — and in the armchair. His relaxed and personable style, and his depth of understanding of flavours, combinations and processes, make his books enjoyable on many levels — always rewarding but never challenging. a new and exquisitely written collection of notes, memoir, stories and small moments of joy. Slater has always kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman's hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei; recording the small things, events and happenings that give pleasure before they disappear. In A Thousand Feasts he details a soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight. He gives short stories of feasts such as a mango eaten in monsoon rain or a dish of restorative macaroni cheese. This funny and sharply observed collection of the good bits of life, often things that pass many of us by, is utter joy from beginning to end. Nigel hones in on the scent of a bunch of home-grown sweet peas, the sound of water breathing at night in Japan, the occasional 'pfuff' as a tiny avalanche of snow falls from leaves. You will love his company in this nicely presented book. [Hardback]
”Slater is at his best on food and travel: his ability to evoke a culture and a mood (and his food writing by itself does both) is remarkable. He is a purveyor of the good life, simplicity, cosiness and warmth.” — Sunday Times
”Slater's greatest talent is making the ordinary extraordinary, showing us how to revel in a ripe fig or a piece of cheese. He may worry that he sounds trite and that his musings on diminutive pleasures are trivial, that he hasn't answered any of the big questions about the universe, but as I leave I feel grateful for Slater, the god of small things.” —The Times
”I loved this. It is a secular book of hours — thoughts and pleasures beautifully cadenced and generously placed.” —Edmund de Waal
”Nigel Slater has a magical capacity to find beauty in the smallest moments. A nourishing, sustaining book.” —Olivia Laing
Illumipedia: Discover the world with your magic three-colour lens by Carnovsky $45
Illumipedia is a bumper treasury of marvels specially curated from the beloved ‘Illumi’ series, revealing worlds of natural wonder with the signature magic viewing lens. In Illumipedia, discover animals, insects, dinosaurs and the ocean deeps with your three-colour lens as you explore the world and its natural phenomena like never before. Bringing together content from five books in the iconic ‘Illumi’ series, this new treasury spans the best of Nature, Oceans, Bugs and Dinosaurs — across six continents. Each spectacular artwork is really three images in one: use the magic lens to reveal different layers to the environment you're in. Each chapter begins with an introduction to one of six continents: Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America and Australasia & Oceania. In the Nature section, your red lens reveals daytime animals, your blue lens reveals nocturnal animals, and your green lens reveals the environments they live in. In the Oceans section, your red lens reveals fish, your blue lens shows the other creatures that call each ocean home, and your green lens sheds light on underwater seascapes. In the Bugs section, meet insects through your red lens, other creepy-crawlies through your blue lens, and the miniature worlds they inhabit through your green lens. In the Dinosaurs section, witness — what else? — dinosaurs through your red lens, other prehistoric creatures through your blue lens, and long-gone environments through your green lens. From the redwood forests of modern-day North America to the vast, prehistoric expanse of Gondwana, and from the tiniest ant to the blue whale, Illumipedia is a journey through time and around the world to champion nature in all its forms. With updated facts and stats and brand-new artworks from the inimitable Carnovsky, this new instalment designed for the bookshelf is sure to inspire awe and wonder at the natural world. [Large-format hardback]
Crumbs: Cookies and sweets from around the world by Ben Mims $80
The is the best biscuit encyclopedia we have seen — you will be pleased to have it on your kitchen bookshelf. Bake your way around the world with this collection of 300 irresistible, authentic, and delicious biscuit recipes from nearly 100 countries. Whether enjoyed at breakfast, with afternoon tea, on holidays, or as a late-night snack, biscuits are a universally beloved treat. In Crumbs, food writer, recipe developer, and self-confessed baking obsessive Ben Mims takes home cooks on a delicious tour across countries and cultures, presenting a sweet and satisfying guide to crumbly, crunchy, chewy desserts — from Snickerdoodles, Date-Filled Maamoul, and Almond Macaroons to Cardamom Biscuits, Italian Waffle Cookies, and Okinawan Brown Sugar Shortbread. Organised geographically, Crumbs is chock-full of old-world and modern classics, and intriguing local recipes from more than 100 countries. Each begins with a fascinating origin story, followed by clear, step-by-step instructions and notes on regional variations. Beginners will appreciate Mims's introduction to essential equipment, ingredients, and techniques such as shaping, rolling, and slicing, while bakers of all skill levels will find inspiration in the bounty of recipes, each carefully tested and perfected for home kitchens. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, the book features delectable photographs and special icons designating dairy-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan recipes, as well as approachable, easy-to-make options that come together in 30 minutes or less. Recipes include: Chocolate-Glazed Elisenlebkuchen, Danish Pepper and Spice Cookies, Egyptian Stuffed Eid Cookies, Filipino Powdered Milk Shortbreads, French Macarons, Icelandic Gingerbread, Malaysian Milky Cashew Cookies, Nigerian Coconut Macaroon Balls, Pakistani Cumin Seed Cookies, Portuguese Biscoitos, Puerto Rican Guava and Almond Thumbprint Cookies, Rugelach, Spanish Almendrados, Shrewsbury Biscuits, Speculaas, Sri Lankan Crunchy Sugar Cookies, Syrian Sesame and Pistachio Cookies, Thai Rolled Wafer Cookies, Venezuelan Shortbread Cookies, and Welsh Griddled Currant Cookies, plus international variations on wedding cookies, Christmas cookies, and other sweet treats for special celebrations. [Hardback]
”Crumbs is the most well-researched and diverse cookie book I have ever encountered. Traveling through time and across cultures and lands, this is a unique and dynamic investigation of what the small-but-mighty cookie means to different people. Ben Mims has written an instant classic.” —Hetty Lui McKinnon
Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale $30
The new poetry collection from Emma Neale is fascinated by our doubleness. Prompted by the rich implications in a line from Joseph Brodsky — “The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie” —it combines a personal memoir of childhood lies with an exploration of wider social deceptions. From the unwitting tricks our minds play, to the mischievous pinch of literary pastiche; from the corruptions of imperialism or abuse, to the dreams and stories we weave for our own survival, these poems catalogue scenes that seem to suggest our species could be named for its subterfuge as much as for its wisdom. Yet at the core of the collection are also some tenets to hold to: deep bonds of love; the renewal children offer; a hunger for social justice; and the sharp reality that nature presents us with, if we are willing to look. [Paperback]
McGlue by Ottessa Mosfegh $35
Salem, Massachusetts, 1851 — McGlue wakes up in prison, too drunk to be sure of how he got there, or even his own name. They say he killed a man, and that man may have been his best friend. That man may have been his lover. Now, McGlue wants one thing and one thing only — a drink. Because when he is sober he remembers, and McGlue wants to forget. As he is visited by people demanding answers — the authorities, his well-meaning lawyer and his weeping mother — McGlue struggles to bury the memories that haunt him, of a violent childhood, swashbuckling adventures, and the only man who ever loved him. [New hardback edition]
”Wonderful.” —Guardian
”Strange and beautiful.” —LA Times
”A gorgeously sordid story of love and murder on the high seas and in reeky corners of mid-nineteenth-century New York and points North. McGlue is a wonderwork of virtuoso prose and truths that will make you squirm and concur. You're in safe, if sticky hands with an Ottessa Moshfegh story. Everything bulges and reeks in this novella, which feels as if it was written in a permanent state of nausea. The plot spins faster than its main character's head. What elevates this novella are the scalpel-sharp observations about McGlue's nihilism and her prose, which is as distilled as the liquor McGlue necks. It's a wild ride.” —The Times
My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar $45
A novel that tells the story of modern India, through the life of one apparently ordinary man, from the death of Gandhi to the rise of Modi. Jadunath Kunwar's beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. His mother, while pregnant, nearly dies from a cobra bite. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. He meets the sherpa who first summited Everest. He befriends poets and politicians. He becomes a historian. And he has a daughter, Jugnu, a television journalist with a career in the United States — whose perspective sheds its own light on his story. All the while, currents of huge change sweep across India — from Independence to Partition, Gandhi to Modi, the Mahabharata to Somerset Maugham, cholera to COVID — and buffet both Jadu’s and Jugnu's lives. Amitava Kumar's remarkable My Beloved Life explores how we tell stories and write history, how the lives of individuals play out against the background of historical change, and how no single life is without consequence. [Hardback]
”This profound book is full of lives whose beauty lies in the wholeness of their telling.” —Salman Rushdie
”Kumar's late father's life breaks like a slowly cresting wave over the sad and joyful ground of this story. Kumar's beautiful, truthful fiction finds and provides great strength — too late for Kumar's parents, but in good time for his grateful readers.” —James Wood
Violent Faculties by Charlene Elsby $40
After her university department is closed due to budget cuts, a philosophy professor tests the limits of the soul and body by performing dehumanising experiments on unwilling subjects. Violent Faculties follows a philosophy professor influenced by Sade and Bataille. She is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge (does this sound familiar?). She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums. She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls. [Paperback]
"I've never read anything quite like Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties and I suspect I never will again. Part tenure application, part manifesto of sadistic feminism, Elsby's story of a professor pushed to rational excess by administrative powers-that-be reads like an overview of Western philosophy as written by your brilliant and bloodthirsty best friend who happens to be a malignant narcissist. Elsby's voice is daring, original, and wholly uncompromising. Violent Faculties is a work of true transgressive transcendence." —Paula Ashe
"Elsby's voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron." —B.R. Yeager
"Fusing philosophy and horror, Charlene Elsby's Violent Faculties is a masterful tale of human misery and the macabre, a story that transcends its innermost psychosocial experiments and becomes a cautionary tale by way of academic study. Elsby is at the peak of her powers, and this book is her calling card. I can't wait to see what sadistic experiments she has in store for us next." —Michael J. Seidlinger
”A disturbing dissertation on humanity that lures you into its extreme experiment in philosophical flagellation and doesn't dismiss you until the final footnote." —Brian McAuley
Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee $28
Can it possibly matter that we allow two young people to imagine that they love one another when in two days' time they will in any event be parted? It is the summer of 1851 and Charlotte Morrison is on holiday in Germany with her brother and his wife. On the surface, Charlotte is an unmarried aunt with a sparse, unfulfilled life. But beneath that quiet respectability lie unsuspected depths hidden murmurings. On a day trip boating down the Rhine, Charlotte sights a fellow traveller, Edward Newman, who releases the hissing floodwaters of her subconscious. Dark and dangerous, they sweep Charlotte towards the watershed of her life, stretching her imagination to its limit; almost to breaking point. [Paperback with French flaps]
Kia Mau: Resisting colonial fictions by Tina Ngata $25
An excoriation of the decision by the New Zealand government to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the arrival of Captain James Cook and the implications of that decision both for Maori and for the wider global struggle against colonialism. Analysing these thinly veiled celebrations alongside the role of the Doctrine of Discovery while charting Cook’s crime spree of murder, rape and pillage, Ngata urgently calls for a practice ethical remembering that requires unlearning the falsehoods of ‘exploration’ and ‘discovery’ and coming to terms with the horrifying reality of ongoing colonisation. [Paperback]
The Dream of a Tree by Maja Lunde (translated from Norwegian by Diane Oatley) $40
Longyearbyen, 2110: Far to the North, buried deep in the mountains, is a massive vault filled with seeds from every corner of the Earth. Tommy grows up in the brutal landscape of Spitzbergen alongside his two brothers, for whom he would do anything, and his grandmother, the seed keeper of the vault. Life just to the South of the North Pole is demanding, but their tiny community has found its shape. It has been many years since they cut off contact with other countries, and in their isolation, they live in harmony with nature. When Longyearbyen is hit by a disaster, Tommy, his brothers, and his grandmother are among the few survivors. Six lonely people in a deserted landscape, in possession of a treasure the world thought forever lost. At the same time, in a place far, far away, Tao subsists on the memories of her son Wei-Wen, whom she lost twelve years ago. Every day is the same; she is numb with sadness. And she is starving, like the rest of her people, trapped on a barren, impoverished land where countless species have disappeared. But everything changes the day Tao is asked to lead an expedition to the North. The destination is Spitzbergen and its legendary seeds. The Dream of a Tree is a chilling and gripping tale about our responsibility to this planet, both as a species and as individuals. Past, present and future are woven together, and the novel poses questions that our age is striving to answer: How did homo sapiens become the species that changed everything? Do we deserve to be masters of nature? And are we, too, an endangered species? [Paperback]
The Lost Music of the Holocaust: Bringing the music of the camps to the world at last by Francesco Lotoro $40
For more than thirty years Francesco Lotoro, an Italian pianist and composer has been on an odyssey to recover music written by the inmates of Adolf Hitler's concentration camps and the gulags of Stalin's Soviet Union. Between 1933, the year of the opening of the Dachau Lager in Germany, to Stalin's death in 1953 when thousands of Soviet prisoners were released, Lotoro pieces together the human stories of survivors whose only salvation was their love of music. Across three decades of relentless investigation, his findings as captured in Lost Music of the Holocaust are extraordinary and historically important. Lotoro unearthed over eight thousand unpublished works of music, ten thousand documents (microfilms, diaries, notebooks, and recordings on phonographic recordings), as well as locating and interviewing many survivors who in a previous life had been trained musicians and composers. Be it a symphony, an opera, a simple folk song or even a gypsy melody, Lotoro has travelled the globe to track them down. Many pieces were hastily scribbled down ow whatever the composer could find: food wrappings, a vegetable sack and even a train ticket stub. To avoid discover by camp guards, Lotoro even discovered forgotten pieces of code inmates had invented to hide their real meaning - music. In many cases, the composers would be murdered in the gas chambers or worked to death, not knowing whether their music would be heard by the world. Until now. [Paperback]
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich $38
In Argus, North Dakota, a fraught wedding is taking place. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe. Gary thinks Kismet is the answer to all of his problems; Kismet can't even imagine her future, let alone the kind of future Gary might offer. During a clumsy proposal, Kismet misses her chance to say 'no' and so the die is cast. Hugo has been in love with Kismet for years. He has been her friend, confidante and occasionally her lover — and now she is marrying Gary, Hugo is determined to steal her back. Meanwhile Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly truck drives along the highway from the farm to the factories, she tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future — both her daughter's and her own. Starkly beautiful like the landscape it inhabits, this novel is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets. [Paperback]
”Erdrich's achievement is pretty remarkable: a narrative voice with brio and lightness that wends and weaves between modes and moods. It's unpredictable and multifaceted.” —Michael Donkor, Guardian
Ten Birds that Changed the World by Stephen Moss $28
For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art, and poetry. In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and intimate relationship through key species from all seven of the world's continents. From Odin's faithful raven companions to Darwin's finches, and from the wild turkey of the Americas to the emperor penguin as potent symbol of the climate crisis, this is a fascinating, eye-opening, and endlessly engaging work of natural history.
How to Feed the World: A factful guide by Vaclav Smil $40
A myth-busting book about how the world produces and consumes its food and how to do so without killing the planet. Why are some of the world's biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why is food waste a colossal 1,000kcal per person daily, and how can we solve that? Could we all go vegan and be healthy? Should we? How will we feed the ballooning population without killing the planet? How to Feed the World shows how we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. [Paperback]
Everything Must Go: The stories we tell about the end of the world by Dorian Lynsky $40
As Dorian Lynskey writes, "People have been contemplating the end of the world for millennia." In this immersive and compelling cultural history, Lynskey reveals how religious prophecies of the apocalypse were secularised in the early 19th century by Lord Byron and Mary Shelley in a time of dramatic social upheaval and temporary climate change, inciting a long tradition of visions of the end without gods.
With a discerning eye and acerbic wit, Lynskey examines how various doomsday tropes and predictions in literature, art, music, and film have arisen from contemporary anxieties, whether they be comets, pandemics, world wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Y2K, or the climate emergency. Far from being grim, Lynskey guides readers through a rich array of fascinating stories and surprising facts, allowing us to keep company with celebrated works of art and the people who made them, from H.G. Wells, Jack London, W.B. Yeats and J.G. Ballard to The Twilight Zone, Dr. Strangelove, Mad Max and The Terminator. Prescient and original, Everything Must Go is a brilliant, sweeping work of history that provides many astute insights for our times and speaks to our urgent concerns for the future. [Paperback]
”So engagingly plotted and written that it's a pleasure to bask in its constant stream of remarkable titbits and illuminating insights.” —The Guardian
”So enjoyable, that I didn't want it to end — the world, or the book.” —Adam Rutherford