NEW RELEASES (23.2.24)
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Out of Earth by Sheyla Smanioto (translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Laura Garmeson and Sophie Lewis) $45
This remarkable Brazilian novel follows four generations of female characters as they navigate the hardships of life in the parched landscape of the Brazilian sertao. Male figures are peripheral, but are also revealed as the origin of much of the suffering in the novel, generating for the women a kind of exile not only in relation to the land but to their sense of self. This is a ground-breaking feminist work, a bracing modernist fable, of sorts, formally reminiscent of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.
The Grimmelings by Rachael King $25
Thirteen-year-old Ella knows that words are powerful. So she should have known better than to utter a wish and a curse on the same day, even in jest. When the boy she has cursed goes missing, in the same sudden, unexplained way as her father several years earlier, Ella discovers that her family is living in the shadow of a vengeful kelpie, a black horse-like creature. With the help of her beloved pony Magpie, can Ella break the curse of the kelpie and save not just her family, but the whole community?
”Rachael King's The Grimmelings is one of those very rare books that feels like it has always existed, as if the world has been holding space for this story. With wonderfully assured writing, this is Susan Cooper for the next generation. King writes with the utmost respect for her readers, for the story and for language itself. The Grimmelings is a beautifully written story of old magic; uncontainable, unpredictable, wild and true — I could not put it down. And although the phrase is thrown around a lot, this genuinely is a future classic.” —Zana Fraillon
”The Grimmelings is a riveting adventure set on a horse-trekking farm in the lakeside wilds of the South Island of New Zealand, where lonely thirteen-year-old Ella, the granddaughter of a rumoured witch, finds herself the target of an ancient and vengeful water horse. Ella's courage, grief and grit make her a worthy protagonist; the reader cannot help but sympathise with and root for her as she fights to save her family from the saddle of her feisty pony, Magpie. Exquisitely crafted and thrumming with old magic, The Grimmelings wraps the reader like an heirloom quilt, stitched with glittering folklore, mysterious family secrets and the love of horses.” —Rachael Craw
”The Grimmelings is a compelling, lovingly crafted novel about magic, liminal spaces (of several kinds), language and folkloric fusion. Rachael King's characters live and breathe. Her dialogue glitters quietly. She discovers new perspectives in inherited narratives to create a world that is familiar yet unexpected, tense and eerie with flashes of beauty..” —David Mitchell
The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp $40
How long can you run from a lie, if that lie is what your life is founded on? In a near future all identity information is encoded in digital language. Nations know where everyone is, all the time. Not everyone agrees with this constant surveillance, and when the system is hijacked and shut down, all global borders are closed. The world is no longer connected, and there is no back-up plan to establish belonging, ownership or trade. Scarlet Friday, whose job is to correct historical record, is stranded on the wrong side of the globe. Befriended by a stranger, she grabs an old, faded history book and writes her own version over the top — a record of the Great Undoing on the run. But in deciding what truth to tell Scarlet must face her own history. How do we navigate identity when it is all a lie? She must reckon with her past before she can imagine her future.
”For First Nations people, Australia is a nation founded on a lie. But this is not one single amorphous lie, but rather a web of lies that seeks to erase and make invisible First Nations peoples, her/histories and experiences. In her debut novel, The Great Undoing, Bundjalung author Sharlene Allsopp deftly juxtaposes the national and the personal mythscapes that still haunt Australia today. Through the larger-than-life character of Scarlet Friday, Sharlene explores the consequences of living a lie in a nation that refuses to acknowledge its past.” —Jeanine Leane
"Sharlene Allsopp's The Great Undoing is a remarkable book that reaches back into the early 20th century and forwards into the future to examine discontinuities in recorded histories, and the resonances of this within the lives of First Nations people. Allsopp's style is lyrical and almost poetic, even when describing ugliness. The Great Undoing joins the works of authors like Octavia Butler and Claire G Coleman, who use the light of what could be to illuminate what actually is.'“ —Books + Publishing
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova (translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale) $32
With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, postcards, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family managed to survive the last century. Dipping into various forms — essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue and historical documents — Stepanova's In Memory of Memory assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory. New edition.
The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada (translated from Japanese by David Boyd} $33
Beyond the town, there is the factory. Beyond the factory, there is nothing. Within the sprawling industrial complex, three new employees are each assigned a department. There, each must focuses on a specific task: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. As they grow accustomed to the routine and co-workers, their lives become governed by their work — days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while — it could be weeks or years — the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here?
Innards by Magogodi oaMphela Makhene $37
Set in Soweto, the urban heartland of South Africa, Innards tells the intimate stories of everyday black folks processing the savagery of apartheid. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an indelible cast of characters into a breathtaking collection flush with forgiveness, rage, ugliness and beauty. Meet a fake PhD and ex-freedom fighter who remains unbothered by his own duplicity, a girl who goes mute after stumbling upon a burning body, twin siblings nursing a scorching feud, and a woman unravelling under the weight of a brutal encounter with the police. At the heart of this collection of deceit and ambition, appalling violence and transcendent love is the story of slavery, colonization and apartheid, and it shows in intimate detail how South Africans must navigate both the shadows of the recent past and the uncertain opportunities of the promised land.
”A gut punch of a collection...it astonishes as it reveals how malignant political forces can both ravage and vitalize the human spirit.” —New York Times
”An unforgettable debut that hits with all the force of the sun. Complex and breathtaking, Innards is a book haunted by apartheid's monstrous shadow and illuminated by the radiant talent of one of our generation's most original voices. Makhene writes like liberation should feel: transcendently.” —Junot Diaz
I Can Open It For You by Shinsuke Yoshitake $32
Akira has a problem: He is too small to open packages by himself. He still needs grown-ups to help him. But one day, perhaps one day soon, he'll be able to open so many things without anyone's help — and not just packages. When that time comes, he'll make amazing discoveries, help other epople to open things, and maybe even save the day with his new skills. There is so much to look forward to! With humor and wit, acclaimed author-illustrator Shinsuke Yoshitake explores a child's feelings about growing up: the push and pull of relying on parents while striving to learn and do things by yourself. Delightful.
Day by Michael Cunningham $38
April 5th, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, troubled husband and wife, are both a little bit in love with Isabel's younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, has created a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house - and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.
April 5th, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan circle each other warily, communicating mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And beloved Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts - and his secret Instagram life - for company.
April 5th, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family comes together to reckon with a new, very different reality - with what they've learned, what they've lost, and how they might go on.
”Unsparing and tender.” —Colm Tóibín
”A brilliant novel from our most brilliant of writers".” —Colum McCann
Collected Folktales by Alan Garner $23
A superbly told collection of familiar and unfamiliar British folktales from an author who has been breathing them throughout his long life, and drawing from them the inspiration for all his novels.
The Postcard by Anne Berest $40
January 2003. The Berest family receive a mysterious, unsigned postcard. On one side was an image of the Opera Garnier; on the other, the names of their relatives who were killed in Auschwitz: Ephraim, Emma, Noemie and Jacques. Years later, Anne sought to find the truth behind this postcard. She journeys 100 years into the past, tracing the lives of her ancestors from their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris, the war and its aftermath. What emerges is a thrilling and sweeping tale that shatters her certainties about her family, her country, and herself. At once a gripping investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and an enthralling portrait of 20th-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, The Postcard tells the story of a family devastated by the Holocaust and yet somehow restored by love and the power of storytelling.
The Waste Land: A biography of a poem by Mathew Hollis $30
A century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot's masterpiece remains a work of comparative mystery. In this gripping account, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the making of the poem and brings its times vividly to life. He tells the story of the cultural and personal trauma that forged the poem through the interleaved lives of its protagonists — of Ezra Pound, who edited it, of Vivien Eliot, who endured it, and of T. S. Eliot himself whose private torment is woven into the fabric of the work. The result is an unforgettable story of lives passing in opposing directions: Eliot's into redemptive stardom, Vivien's into despair, Pound's into unforgiving darkness. Now in paperback.
The Flow: Rivers, water and wildness by Amy-Jane Beer $25
On New Year's Day 2012, Amy-Jane Beer's beloved friend Kate set out with a group of others to kayak the River Rawthey in Cumbria. Kate never came home, and her death left her devoted family and friends bereft and unmoored. Returning to visit the Rawthey years later, Amy realises how much she misses the connection to the natural world she always felt when on or close to rivers, and so begins a new phase of exploration. The Flow is a book about water, and, like water, it meanders, cascades and percolates through many lives, landscapes and stories. From West Country torrents to Levels and Fens, rocky Welsh canyons, the salmon highways of Scotland and the chalk rivers of the Yorkshire Wolds, Amy-Jane Beer follows springs, streams and rivers to explore tributary themes of wildness and wonder, loss and healing, mythology and history, cyclicity and transformation. Threading together places and voices from across Britain, The Flow is an immersive exploration of our personal and ecological place in nature.
”A true masterpiece; generous, elegant, acute, tender and furious.” —Charles Foster
The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros $24
Would you sacrifice your soul to stop a killer? Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity. Despite the unbearable summer heat, his threadbare clothes, and his constantly empty stomach, Alter still dreams of the day he'll have enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania. But when Alter's best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World's Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by Yakov's dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows. Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter's body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer — before the killer claims them next.
"An achingly rendered exploration of queer desire, grief, and the inexorable scars of the past." —Katy Rose Pool
”With stark, poignant prose and an endearing main character, The City Beautiful is an entrancing and chilling tale that deftly analyzes complex themes of identity and assimilation. One-part historical fantasy, one-part gothic thriller, this genre-blending story has something for everyone." —Kalyn Josephson
KIndred: Recipes, spices and rituals to nourish your kin by Eva Konecsny and Maria Konecsny $55
Sisters Maria and Eva Konecsny, founders of the Gewürzhaus spice stores, know that spices have the power to transform our everyday cooking. They also believe that cooking to feed our kin — whether it's chocolate semolina porridge, tender fennel roast pork or a tray of spiced Christmas cookies — can be a deeply nourishing and connective force in our lives. In Kindred, Maria and Eva take you into their homes to share the spices, seasonal rituals, traditions and recipes from their German heritage that bring their families around the table. Learn how to use spices in simple ways to elevate your cooking and discover key principles for spicing different types of food.