NEW RELEASES
Bold, angry, despairing and very funny, these essays cover everything from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie to Agatha Christie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rails against bras, and pleads for sanity in a world that hardly recognises sanity when it (occasionally) appears.
"Joyously electric." —Guardian
>>Read Thomas's review of Ducks, Newburyport.
A book about books, mostly, and bonfires, clichés, dystopias, failure, happiness, jokes, justice, privilege, publishing, rejection, self-loathing, shoplifting and umbrellas. Writer and reader meet in cafés to talk about books – that’s the plot. There are arguments, spilt coffee, deaths both in life and in fiction, and rain and laughter. Wonderful.
>>Read Thomas's reviews of books by Boyle writing as Jack Robinson.
>>Read Thomas's reviews of books by Boyle writing as Jack Robinson.
After Rita is found dead in a church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her ailing mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.
"Short and stylish. A piercing commentary on mother-daughter relationships, the indignity of bureaucracy, the burdens of caregiving and the impositions of religious dogma on women." —New York Times
"Piñeiro is AWESOME. Her books are dark, have buckets of atmosphere, and they all feel entirely different even though she revisits some of the same issues again and again. She deals with the culture and social structure within gated communities; shows how walling ourselves in seems safer, but actually promotes fear and claustrophobia; she deals with gender roles and prejudice and economic class and long-held secrets that fester." —Book Riot
Humans are changing the world in extremely complex ways, creating a new geological age called the Anthropocene. How do we – as parents, caregivers and as a society – raise our children and dependents in this new world? This book explores ways to ensure the health and wellbeing of the next generations, with a view to encouraging inclusivity and critical discourse at a time of climate crisis, inequality and polarisation. From tikanga Māori and collective care in child-rearing through to new family forms, futures literacy, and shifting economic paradigms and societal structures, Parenting in the Anthropocene is a reflection of both the world we live in and the one we aspire to. Contents: 'Bountiful' — Emily Writes (writer & mother): 'Parenting in the first 1000 days: Moving towards equity' — Amanda Malu (CEO of Whānau Awhina Plunket); 'Stories for the children of the Anthropocene' — Jess Berentson-Shaw (researcher & advocate): 'The future is ours to design and build' — Dr David Galler (intensive care specialist): 'Inheriting climate disruption' — Mia Sutherland (youth climate-change activist); 'When do we talk about childlessness?' — Briohny Doyle (writer & lecturer); 'Reproductive and familial futures in Aotearoa New Zealand' — Nicola Surtees, PhD (academic & former ECE teacher); 'Poipoia te kākano: Nuturing tamariki Māori' — Leonie Pihama (Te tiawa, Waikato, Ngā Māhanga a Tairi); 'Be kind' — Brannavan Gnanalingam (writer & lawyer); 'Futures literacy and youth resilience: Educating for the future' — Amy L. Fletcher, PhD (academic & futurist); 'Are our children capitalism’s succession plan?' — Sacha McMeeking (researcher & commentator); 'Books for challenging times: Children and youngsters' — Terrisa Goldsmith (librarian); 'Books for challenging times: Caregivers' — Jane Keenan (librarian)
Fragoza's collection of stories reside in the domestic surreal, featuring an unusual gathering of Latinx and Chicanx voices from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, and universes beyond. A young woman returns home from college, only to pick up exactly where she left off: a smart girl in a rundown town with no future. A mother reflects on the pain and pleasures of being inexorably consumed by her small daughter, whose penchant for ingesting grandma's letters has extended to taking bites of her actual flesh. A brother and sister watch anxiously as their distraught mother takes an axe to their old furniture, and then to the backyard fence, until finally she attacks the family's beloved lime tree.
"Fragoza's prose, a switchblade of a magical glow, cauterizes as it cuts. In a setting of barren citrus trees, poison-filled balloons, and stuccos haunted by the menace of the past, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You reinvents the sunny noir." —Salvador Plascencia
Clues to prehistoric life lie hidden under the ground, and paleontologists are forever modifying our ideas of the deep past on the basis of new evidence. This lively, gloriously illustrated large-format volume for children is a wonderful introduction not only to the sheer variety and strangeness of creatures that preceded us, but also to the ways in which science is always improving the model it builds of reality and of the past.
Little Starhorodivka, a village of three streets, lies in Ukraine's Grey Zone, the no-man's-land between loyalist and separatist forces. Thanks to the lukewarm war of sporadic violence and constant propaganda that has been dragging on for years, only two residents remain: retired safety inspector turned beekeeper Sergey Sergeyich and Pashka, a 'frenemy' from his schooldays. With little food and no electricity, under ever-present threat of bombardment, Sergeyich's one remaining pleasure is his bees. As spring approaches, he knows he must take them far from the Grey Zone so they can collect their pollen in peace. This simple mission on their behalf introduces him to combatants and civilians on both sides of the battle lines: loyalists, separatists, Russian occupiers and Crimean Tatars. Wherever he goes, Sergeyich's childlike simplicity and strong moral compass disarm everyone he meets. But could these qualities be manipulated to serve an unworthy cause, spelling disaster for him, his bees and his country?
"A latter-day Bulgakov. A Ukrainian Murakami" —Guardian
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez $33
I Remember by Joe Brainard $30
My Life as a Villainess by Laura Lippman $37
Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighbourhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
"The stories walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror, but with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear and in limbo. As terrifying as they are socially conscious, the stories press into the unspoken - fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history - with bracing urgency." —Judges' citation on the book's short-listing for the 2021 International Booker Prize
>>Read Stella's review of Things We Lost in the Fire.
>>Read Stella's review of Things We Lost in the Fire.
First published in the 1970s, Brainard's rigorous list of memories both banal and formative provide not only a nuanced picture of the time and place in which he grew up, but also an intimation of how any idea we have is in fact little more than the bundling of memory statements. Influential and entertaining.
>>I remember watching this.
>>I remember watching this.
Laura Lippman's first job in journalism was a rookie reporter in Waco, Texas. Two decades later she left her first husband, quit the newspaper business, and became a full time novelist. "I had been creating villains on the page for about seven years when I finally became one." Her fiction has always centered on complicated women, paying unique attention to the intricacies of their flaws, their vulnerability, and their empowerment. Now, finally, Lippman has turned her gimlet eye on a new subject: herself.
Elizabeth's mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers. Decades later, Elizabeth came to recognise the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempted a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people.
Baking, desserts and sweets, moving through sic seasons of flowers, berries and fruit. 95 mouth-watering recipes.
Including well-known names and promising newcomers, the contents roam far and wide over a number of subjects, such as Sarah Harpur's irreverent, laugh-aloud essay about death; Siobhan Harvey's potent essay about the memories of an abusive childhood stirred up by current house renovations; and Tan Tuck Ming's essay about technology and how it mediates, enables and impacts intimate relationships. Strong Words #2 also includes the joint winners of the 2019 essay prize: Tobias Buck's 'Exit. Stage Left', which explores issues of prejudice and bias through the experience of someone 'the colour of cotton candy or pink marshmallows', and Nina Mingya Powles' work 'Tender Gardens', exploring Chinese cultural and poetic heritage and how to maintain a sense of home in a foreign land.
>>Strong Words #1.
>>Strong Words #1.
The British poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by fellow writers, including Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon, Walter de la Mare and Marianne Moore. She has since been neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again, all the more since her 150th anniversary in 2019. This is the first comprehensive biography.
Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers $37
Had I Known by Barbara Ehrenreich $25
Princes of the Renaissance by Mary Hollingsworth $70
“Why must there always be ideas? Why is nothing too much to ask for?” demands the narrator of this stomach-turning attack on a world caught in the pincers of capitalism and social media. When a homeless woman is incarcerated and then given a path to 'self-improvement' with the proviso that this is documented on instagram, the corporation involved finds that it has unleashed a faecal maelstrom that threatens to expose the roots of contemporary consumer culture.
"Disturbingly exceptional. A disturbing read, but absolutely convincing." —Guardian
Had I Known gathers together Ehrenreich's most significant articles and excerpts from the last four decades — some of which became the starting point for her bestselling books — from her award-winning article 'Welcome to Cancerland', published shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, to her groundbreaking investigative journalism in 'Nickel and Dimed', which explored living in America on the minimum wage. Issues she identified as far back as the 80s and 90s such as work poverty, rising inequality, the gender divide and medicalised health care, are top of the social and political agenda today. Written with tenderness, humour and incisiveness, Ehrenreich's describes an America of struggle, inequality, racial bias and injustice.
From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart. Thus were their lives defined as much by the waging of war as the nurturing of artistic talent. Mary Hollingsworth charts these developments in a sequence of chronological chapters, each centred on two or three main characters with a cast of minor ones - from Ludovico Sforza of Milan to Isabella d'Este of Mantua, from Pope Paul III to Emperor Charles V, and from the painters Mantegna and Titian to the architect Sansovino and the polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
An urgent call to go beyond anthropocentric conceptions of our world, which Abrams identifies as a recipe for the disaster we are fact approaching, and to recognise out commonality with other species as vital to any sustaining conception of existence.
"I cannot imagine another book that so gently and so persuasively alters how we look at ourselves." —Richard Louv
>>The tumult of vision.
>>The tumult of vision.
This book is intended to help readers to generate realistic and effective ways to make change, with first-hand accounts of success and failure through real-world case studies. Part of a series exploring and promoting citizenship in Aotearoa, Tutira Mai combines ways to identify and analyse issues with information on how to actively engage with them. It also discusses the ethical risks inherent in active citizenship within a New Zealand context. Topics include justice reform, gender in the classroom, environmental care and management, sport and positive social change, taking action on mental health, digital democracy, social entrepreneurship, and direct action, among others.
The children are late for storytime at the library. Ever helpful, Lei the enthusiastic dinosaur can get them there one time! Lei's small head is the only part of him that fits so he must listen through the window. But he gets so excited by the story, he starts to shake the building. Lei's love of stories risks destroying the library until the children decide to take the books outdoors. This library-loving picture book reminds us how it feels to be transported by story.
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