Narrative theme: environmental issues / the natural world

Book SynopsisFire. Flood. Ice. Three natural disasters. Akira, Owen, and Natalie are all swept up in the global effects of climate change, each struggling to survive their individual disasters. But the three kids are more deeply connected than they could ever imagine, in ways that can change the world.

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Book SynopsisAnimals go mad and men die (accidentally and not) at a slaughterhouse in an impoverished, isolated corner of Brazil.In a landscape worthy of Cormac McCarthy, the river runs septic with blood. Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of a cow, then stuns it with a mallet. He does this over and over again, as the stun operator at Senhor Milo’s slaughterhouse: reliable, responsible, quietly dispatching cows and following orders, wherever that may take him. It’s important to calm the cows, especially now that they seem so unsettled: they have begun to run in panic into walls and over cliffs. Bronco Gil, the foreman, thinks it’s a jaguar or a wild boar. Edgar Wilson has other suspicions. But what is certain is that there is something in this desolate corner of Brazil driving men, and animals, to murder and madness. Trade Review"This short sharp shock of a book brings a surprise with every new page...a fresh and spirited report on how civilisation has done nothing to tame humanity’s worst instincts." —The Guardian"Brutal yet gripping, as if Cormac McCarthy penned an anti-meat noir." —Kirkus"Intense and provocative….This goes straight for the jugular." —Publishers Weekly"In Perry’s visceral, understated translation…the narrative unfolds with the compulsiveness of a psychological thriller." —The Times Literary Supplement"Maia’s stark style lends her novella a chilling, detached quality, allowing the violence and viscera to be all the more overwhelming." —Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop"Biblical in scale and language, Of Cattle and Men is a book to squirm beneath; to measure oneself against." —Southwest Review"Of Cattle and Men is an excellent book of many dark, quiet questions." —World Literature Today

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Book Synopsis''I loved this novel''s brain and heart''DAVID MITCHELL, AUTHOR OF CLOUD ATLAS''A first-rate speculative thriller, by turns fascinating, brutal, powerful, and redemptive''JEFF VANDERMEER, AUTHOR OF ANNIHILATIONThere are creatures in the water of Con Dao. To the locals, they''re monsters. To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity. To the team of three sent to study them, a revelation. Their minds are unlike ours. Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting. They can communicate. And they want us to leave. When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn''t pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA - a transnational tech corporation best known for its grouTrade ReviewI loved this novel's brain and heart, its hidden traps, sheer propulsion, ingenious world-building and the purity of its commitment to luminous ideas. * David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS *The Mountain in the Sea is a first-rate speculative thriller, by turns fascinating, brutal, powerful, and redemptive. The book poses profound questions about artificial and nonhuman intelligence, and its answers are tantalizing and provocative. * Jeff VanderMeer, author of ANNIHILATION *Full disclosure: in all my years as a science journalist, I could never quite get my head around the so-called hard problem of consciousness. I could recite the theories, but it wasn't until I read Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea that I truly understood it in my bones. This book has many layers. It has the clothes of a futuristic eco-punk or cyberpunk thriller, the guts of a philosophy seminar and the soul of a religious tract. -- Sally Adee * NEW SCIENTIST *A novel of ideas... [a] cerebral but not self-satisfied book that also features welcome episodes of comic relief and tightly choreographed action... It is successful entertainment as well as a warning.' -- Steven Poole * GUARDIAN, Book of the Day *Ray Nayler has taken on the challenge of a near future that's less certain than ever, and made it gleam - not only with computer terminals and sentry drones (we love those, sure) but also polished coral and cephalopod eyes. From these pages, I got the sense of William Gibson, and Paolo Bacigalupi - and Donna Haraway, and Octavia Butler. This is a planetary science fiction, and a profound new kind of adventure, featuring ? among so many other wonders ? the best villain I've read in years. In the end, the enormity and possibility of this novel's vision shook tears loose. What a ride; what a feeling; what a future. * Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore *A wildly original, gorgeously written, unputdownable gem of a novel. Nayler is one of the most exciting new voices i've read in years. * Blake Crouch, author of DARK MATTER *With a thriller heart and a sci-fi head, The Mountain in the Sea delivers a spooky smart read. Artificial intelligence, nascent animal sentience, murderous flying drones: like the best of Gibson or Atwood, it brings all of the plot without forgetting the bigger questions of consciousness, ecocide, and scientific progress. Truly a one-of-a-kind story. * Kawai Strong Washburn, author of SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS *I came to The Mountain in the Sea for the cephalopds (I love cephalopods) but I stayed for the fascinating meditation on consciousness and personhood. I loved this book. * Ann Leckie *Nayler's debut is in equal parts page-turning near-future thriller and a profound exploration of language, communication and otherness... exhilarating and kaleidoscopic. -- Jay Owens * NEW HUMANIST *The Mountain in the Sea is intelligent, ambitious and thought-provoking. . . For its thoughtful depth, its dealing with big ideas such as the manner and matter of intelligence and communication and its education about the oceans, it is very, very good. -- Mark Yon * SFF WORLD *An action thriller with profound consequences. Groundbreaking stuff. -- Doug Johnstone * THE BIG ISSUE *A high tide of ideas and emotion. A compelling vision of other minds sharing our world - a vision you will long to be true * Stephen Baxter *[A] brilliantly clever and compelling thriller. * PRESS ASSOCIATION syndicated to regional press *Readers of Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds and Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think will delight in an Anthropocene adventure that brings their ideas so vividly to life. -- Richard Lea * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Both a profound meditation on the way human actions are affecting the world we live in... but also a breathless thriller and a perfect example of world building, this is a breakthrough novel which I expect to have a major impact over years to come. -- Maxim Jakubowski * CRIME TIME *This is a tour de force in showing how well fiction can explore society's challenges and problems. It also is a delight that, while asking difficult questions, the author offers some hope for humankind, and redemptive joy in the struggles involved in facing our environmental battles. -- Graeme Gourlay * DIVE MAGAZINE *A hugely accomplished debut. -- Natalie Xenos * CULTUREFLY *Nayler's masterful debut combines fascinating science and well-wrought characters to deliver a deep dive into the nature of intelligent life . . . As entertaining as it is intellectually rigorous, this taut exploration of human - and inhuman - consciousness is a knockout * Publishers Weekly, starred review *Less a science fiction adventure than a meditation on conscioussness and self-awareness, the limitations of human language, and the reasons for those limitation, the novel teaches as it engages * Kirkus Reviews *This compelling debut is impossible to put down, a delightful embroidery of the rush of scientific discovery and the pain of isolation, asking hard questions about what society is and what it means to truly understand another creature * Booklist, starred review *Exceedingly ambitious . . . [This] is a novel that is alert, intelligent, open * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisA PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST'Sweeping and quietly devastating' New York Times'A David and Goliath story for our times' O, the Oprah MagazineSet in the fictional African village of Kosawa, this is the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations are made - and broken. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But it will come at a steep price - one which generation after generation will have to pay.How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community's determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman's willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people's freedom.Trade ReviewSweeping and quietly devastating . . . In Kosawa, Mbue has created a place and a people alive with emotional range . . . Profoundly affecting * * New York Times * *The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthral you, appal you and show you what is possible when a few people stand up and say "this is not right". A masterful novel by a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day -- DAVID EBERSHOFF, New York Times bestselling author of THE DANISH GIRLImbolo Mbue would be a formidable storyteller anywhere, in any language. It's our good luck that she and her stories are American -- JONATHAN FRANZENA David and Goliath story for our times, a riveting tale of how people coming together to make change can topple even the fiercest, best-financed foe * * O, The Oprah Magazine * *How Beautiful We Were goes to the heart of one of the most urgent matters of the day. The highly suspenseful story of an African village's struggle for survival and justice in the face of ruthless American corporate greed is written with remarkable acuity and compassion. Mbue has given us a book with the richness and power of a great contemporary fable, and a heroine for our time -- SIGRID NUNEZ, author of THE FRIEND, winner of the National Book AwardImbolo Mbue's revelatory novel of a fictional African village ruined by Big Oil is a mighty addition to the stacks * * ELLE * *What a beautiful book! I can't tell you how many times I cried for these characters, their place and their story . . . Beautifully written with moving and vivid descriptions, engaging complex characters, interesting plots, and tension so tightly wound that at times I found myself holding my breath -- YVONNE BATTLE-FELTON, author of REMEMBEREDTells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Exploring what happens when the reckless drive for profit comes up against one community's determination to hold onto its ancestral land, it makes for unputdownable reading * * Glamour, Best new novel you won't want to put down * *Imbolo Mbue crafts an aching narrative about greed, community and perseverance * * Time * *A generation of narrative voices, many of them children, shape this sweeping, elegiac story of capitalism, colonialism and boundless greed, reminding us of the myriad ways we fail to make a better world for our children * * Esquire * *

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Book SynopsisNOW A MAJOR GLOBAL NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING JULIA ROBERTS, KEVIN BACON, ETHAN HAWKE AND MAHERSHALA ALI *A THE TIMES #1 BESTSELLER* *THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* *A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER READING PICK 2021* 'Easily the best thing I have read all year' KILEY REID, AUTHOR OF SUCH A FUN AGE 'Intense, incisive, I loved this and have still not quite shaken off the unease' DAVID NICHOLLS 'I was hooked from the opening pages' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'Simply breathtaking . . . An extraordinary book, at once smart, gripping and hallucinatory’ OBSERVER _______ A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a holiday: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter. But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another? _______ FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020 FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2021 A DAILY TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, IRISH TIMES AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR Everyone is talking about LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND 'You will probably need to read it in as close to one sitting as possible’ Sunday Times 'A page-turner taking in themes of isolation, race and class’ Guardian ‘A book that could have been tailor-made for our times’ The Times ‘A literary page-turner that will keep you awake even after it ends’ Mail on Sunday 'An exceptional examination of race and class and what the world looks like when it's ending' Roxane Gay 'A thrilling book - one that will speak to readers who have felt the terror of isolation in these recent months and one that will simultaneously, as great books do, lift them out of it' Vogue 'Explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace' Jenny Offill ‘For the reader, the invisible terror outside in Leave the World Behind echoes the sense of disquiet today in a world convulsed by the pandemic’ Financial Times 'Alam's achievement is to see that his genre's traditional arc, which relies on the idea of aftermath, no longer makes sense. Today, disaster novels call for something different' New Yorker 'Read it with the lights on' Jenna Bush Hager, October Book Club pickTrade ReviewStupendously good . . . Simply breathtaking, full of moments of exquisite recognition, as terrifying and prescient as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road . . . Leave the World Behind is an extraordinary book, at once smart, gripping and hallucinatory . . . When future generations (if that term doesn’t sound over-optimistic at the moment) want to know what it was like to live through the nightmare of 2020, this is the novel they’ll reach for * Observer *Would be resonant and terrifying even in a more normal year . . . In his dazzling prose, his fascination with catastrophe and his apparent ability to portend the future, Alam is a worthy descendant of Don DeLillo . . . You will probably need to read it in as close to one sitting as possible * Sunday Times *A sensation . . . A tense, atmospheric, splendidly written attempt to grapple with impending doom … Even in its infancy, Leave the World Behind was well poised to become the book of an era . . . A striking, unsettling novel * Independent *Without any exaggeration, I can honestly say that I devoured Leave the World Behind, in one greedy, uneasy gulp. It’s a taut page-turner – one that starts out as a smart, knowing, contemporary comedy of manners, but quickly spirals into an apocalyptic nightmare so terrifyingly realistic that it sent shivers down my spine * Daily Telegraph *For the reader, the invisible terror outside in Leave the World Behind echoes the sense of disquiet today in a world convulsed by the pandemic. There are intense parallels between the unreality of life in the Long Island bolt-hole described in the book and lockdown . . . The novel excels in its dissection of modern liberal America and forces the reader to confront the limits of their own heroism in the face of disaster * Financial Times *A book that could have been tailor-made for our times, with its tale of racial tensions and an unnatural disaster . . . It’s a close-up narrative, and its strength lies in the emotional pull . . . There’s something for everyone: that is, to terrify everyone, from parents to nature lovers to hypochondriacs * The Times *A page-turner, taking in themes of isolation, race and class . . . As the author of a book about people trapped inside a house by a huge event, desperate for information, Alam is a curious prophet . . . Alam has an almost anthropological eye for the absurdities of the upper-middle class, for the blindness of white people . . . Leave the World Behind was influenced by Jordan Peele’s film Get Out, apparent in Alam’s acuity on whiteness. But the closest literary comparison could be Shirley Jackson, whose cold, detached voice can be heard in Alam’s narrator when we are shown glimpses of what is happening in the wider world * Guardian *Rumaan Alam creates an atmosphere of dread so convincing and prescient that it stays with the reader long after reading . . . Explores issues of race, class and identity in the face of overwhelming disaster * Irish Times *Alam has built an apocalyptic thriller around a single concept: what would you do if the world was crumbling around you? . . . This novel is catching hold of its readers, and it’s easy to see why . . . A bracing read. The story is crafted with a deft lightness of touch and, at a mere 240 pages, it’s brisk and unfaltering. But it’s the eeriness of the burgeoning apocalypse, and the paralytic inability of the protagonists to help themselves, that will stay with you the longest * Irish Independent *An exacting and dread-inducing story of suspicion, prejudice and hysteria . . . It feels so entwined with the DNA of 2020, capturing the hallucinatory quality which time takes on when stuck inside not knowing what the future holds * Esquire *Once you read this topical and gripping novel, it’s all you’ll want to talk about * Stylist *Rumaan Alam’s elegant novel presents a scenario familiar to many readers of contemporary fiction in 2020: a mass power meltdown . . . Alam controls the tension by almost imperceptible degrees . . . A wonderful novel about the figurative walls we build to keep the world outside * Metro *If the first half can turn a mirror on you, the second half will shatter it . . . Undeniably haunting * New York Times *Poised to be one of the biggest titles of the fall . . . A comedy of manners wrapped inside a tense disaster plot * New York Magazine *A slippery and duplicitous marvel of a novel . . . Leave the World Behind is atmospheric and prescient: its rhythms of comedy alternating with shock and despair mimic so much of the rhythms of life right now . . . A signature novel for this blasted year * NPR *Rarely have I encountered a book so cuttingly prescient about the current emotional atmosphere . . . Alam’s deployment of creepy, inexplicable detail is masterful . . . This is a thrilling book - one that will speak to readers who have felt the terror of isolation in these recent, torturous months and one that will simultaneously, as great books do, lift them out of it * Vogue *Alam has written a genuine literary thriller, one that is also a disturbing window into our precarious age * Independent *The fall's biggest novel * Entertainment Weekly *Enthralling . . . Alam keeps close to his characters, who, like insects in acrylic, remain trapped in a state of suspended unease. This, he suggests, is the modern disaster – the precarity of American life, which leaves us unsure, always, if things can get worse . . . Alam’s achievement is to see that his genre’s traditional arc, which relies on the idea of aftermath, no longer makes sense. Today, disaster novels call for something different, a recognition that we won’t find a new normal * New Yorker *Like Stephen King’s 1980 novella The Mist, Leave the World Behind expertly illustrates the horror of the unknown, the almost painful humanity we feel when facing down the end and, of course, human nature under duress. During an era of plague, racism, hatred, and division, this tale of a vacation gone awry is terrifyingly prescient * Rolling Stone *One of the eeriest, most disturbing stories I've read in some time . . . The contours of everything might be recognisable, but what's contained within is wholly deranged * Refinery 29 *Riveting and claustrophobic, Leave the World Behind invites us to sit with our discomfort and reflect on our own rushed judgments, delivering a dazzling and dark examination of family, race, class and what matters most when the impossible becomes possible * Esquire *Leave the World Behind is that rarest of things: a beautifully written, emotionally resonant page-turner. Alam explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace * Jenny Offill, author of Weather *Perfectly paced, clever and haunting . . . This is one of those stories that inspires a hungry turn of pages, preceded by that desperate and lovely need to come up for air. So easily the best thing I've read all year * Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age *This is an exceptional examination of race and class and what the world looks like when it’s ending – not at all different from the world we are in now * Roxane Gay, author of Hunger *Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is a canny Trojan horse of a novel, and also a Pandora's Box. Like the family at its center, we're seduced utterly by the bounty and insularity of its world, only to find ourselves, inch by inch, approaching a larger darkness lurking just beyond. With a potent Shirley Jackson energy, it is both eerily timeless and sharply prescient at once, and lingers long after its final page * Megan Abbott, author of Give Me Your Hand *Leave the World Behind is so many things--funny, sharp, insightful about modernity and race and parenthood and home--but at its core it's a story of our shared apocalypse; a steady look at humanity in the moment it tumbles from a great height. I have not been this profoundly unnerved by a science fiction novel since Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. * Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties *Here in your hands, wrapped in the delicious cloth of suspense, Rumaan Alam begs us to ask the most important questions. How do we let the other in? Where do we draw the borders of home? A prescient book, built for these strange times, sure to entrance and electrify * Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark *Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam's third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped--and unexpected new ones are forged--in moments of crisis * Laura Lippman, author of Lady in the Lake *

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Book SynopsisPre-order Andrew Hunter Murray's brilliantly entertaining new thriller A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering coming May 2024!Half the world is in darkness. Only she can save the light . . . the post-apocalyptic bestselling read.'A brilliant near-future thriller and a really cracking read' Richard Osman'Will keep you gripped to the very last page' C.J. Tudor'Wonderful ... the best future-shock thriller for years.' Lee Child'A stunningly original thriller' Harlan Coben'A beautifully realised and thought-provoking thriller' The Times'Intriguing and unusual' Sunday Times____________________2059. The world has stopped turning. One half suffers an endless frozen night; the other, nothing but burning sun.Only in a slim twilit region between them can life survive.In an isolationist Britain clinging on in the twilight zone, scientist Ellen Hopper receives a letter from a dying man. It contains a powerful and dangerous secret.One that those in power will kill to conceal . . .____________________'Reminiscent of Robert Harris's high-concept conspiracy thrillers' Financial Times'I read this hungrily ... A fabulous achievement.' Stephen Fry'Inventive, richly detailed world-building' Telegraph'A tantalizing, suspenseful odyssey of frustration, deceit, treachery, torture, hope, despair and ingenious sleuthing' Washington Post'A taut, thrilling runaround' Guardian'A brilliant debut ... Fans of Robert Harris will love it' Daily Express'To say it's gripping is an understatement' Sara Pascoe'Murray has crafted something original ... an interesting new twist on a post-apocalyptic tale.' Kirkus'Downright impossible to stop reading.' Booklist'Dark, believable and brilliantly written' Jenny Colgan'I couldn't put this book down!' Christina DalcherTrade ReviewI read this hungrily ... Its intelligence and bravura characterization will have you turning page after page. A fabulous achievement. * STEPHEN FRY *A brilliantly clever thriller from a brilliantly clever writer. -- Richard OsmanMurray should be commended for going into the nitty-gritty of how his post-disaster society functions[…] What really distinguishes the book, though, is the creative energy of its world-building: it demonstrates the virtue of using the future as a playground for the imagination rather than trying to second-guess it. * Telegraph: the best thrillers and crime fiction of 2020 *A taut, thrilling runaround... The Last Day is an impressive dystopian techno-thriller. Murray paints a grim picture of a draconian isolationist Britain, with some vivid descriptions of a much-changed London, and the novel’s climax has a neat twist. * Guardian Books of the Month *A brilliant debutwhich blends apocalyptic drama with a tale of espionage, keeping readers on tenterhooks […] Fans of Robert Harris will love it. * Daily Express *

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Book SynopsisThe classic Dune trilogy, one of the most influential SF series ever written, recently having been adapted into a blockbuster Oscar-nominated film, in a lavish gift hardback for collectors everywhere.Trade ReviewI know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings -- Arthur C ClarkeIt is possible that Dune is even more relevant now than when it was first published * NEW YORKER *An astonishing science fiction phenomenon * WASHINGTON POST *One of the monuments of modern science fiction * CHICAGO TRIBUNE *Powerful, convincing, and most ingenious -- Robert A. HeinleinA novel of extraordinary complexity ... the work of a speculative intellect with few rivals in modern sf * THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION *A tight mesmerising fabric, interwoven with a potent element of mysticism ... intensely realised -- Brian W Aldiss

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Book SynopsisWhen fifteen-year-old Anna begins receiving messages from another time, her parents take her to the doctor. But he can find nothing wrong; in fact he believes there may be some truth to what she is seeing. Anna is haunted by visions of the desolate world of 2082. She sees her great-granddaughter, Nova, roaming through wasteland with a band of survivors, after animals and plants have died out. The more Anna sees, the more she realises she must act to prevent the future in her visions becoming real. But can she act quickly enough?'Compelling' Sunday TimesTrade Reviewthe global warming wake-up call is compelling * SUNDAY TIMES *

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Book SynopsisIn a small Aboriginal town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both ecological disaster and a gathering of the ancestors, Cause Man Steel is chasing a mad vision: a national donkey transport scheme that will guarantee his people’s independence forever. He finds, however, as he bundles feral donkeys into his Ford Falcon and dumps them en masse in the cemetery, that not all of Praiseworthy agrees. Outrage ferments at his desecration of traditional land, while Cause’s wife Dance seeks refuge with butterflies and dreams of moving their family to China. Bad feelings reach fever pitch when citizens catch wind of the suicide of Aboriginal Sovereignty, Cause’s eldest son. All are distraught – all, that is, except eight-year-old Tommyhawk Steel, who, with his brother gone, gleefully pursues his dream of becoming white and powerful. Told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned, Praiseworthy is a marvel of explosive sentences, a shock to allegory, an outraged cry against oppression, and a biting satire for the end of days.y for which Alexis Wright has become renowned.Trade Review'The great Moana Jackson declared the doctrine of discovery a legal fiction. In Praiseworthy, farce, satire, tragedy, the colloquial, myth, pun, repetition, elegy, and the epic expose the absurdity of the doctrine and the everyday lies, habits and horrors keeping it in place. Praiseworthy is simply astonishing.' Judges of the 2023 Queensland Award for Literary Fiction ---- 'I'm awed by the range, experiment and political intelligence of Alexis Wright's work. She is vital on the subject of land and people.' Robert Macfarlane, New York Times Book Review ---- 'Monumental. Praiseworthy blew me away. If you think you know what assimilation is, you should read Praiseworthy and think again.' Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Australian Book Review ---- ‘Linguistically commodious, panoramically plotted, Praiseworthy’s 700-plus-page scale would have given Henry James a heart attack: it is a baggy monster, and more monstrous than most. Its vision is dark, humour tar-black, narration irrepressible, language roiling and rococo. All life, as in Balzac, is here … Wright gives us the living and the dead, material and non-material, Country and people; all the masters dreamed of, and all they neglected to; the entire human (and non-human) comedy … Long after the lesser concerns of contemporary fiction have ceased to matter, the work of Alexis Wright will remain.’ Declan Fry, The Guardian ---- 'The rich interrelations of ancestral spirits, larger-than-life characters, and Country all derive from the Aboriginal traditions of storytelling. But there are also signs of literary influence from every compass point on the map, including, most notably, the surrealism and magic realism of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.' Jack Cameron Stanton, The Age ---- 'Praiseworthy is Alexis Wright's most formidable act of imaginative synthesis yet . . . A hero's journey for an age of global warming, a devastating story of young love caught between two laws, and an extended elegy and ode to Aboriginal law and sovereignty.' Jane Gleeson-White, The Conversation

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Book Synopsis**Don't miss Granny McCreedy's brand-new adventure in Call of the Penguins - available now!**A Richard & Judy Book Club and BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick.A truly feel-good book club read - a #1 bestseller in ebook and audio!'This year's Eleanor Oliphant . . . Funny, bittersweet and wholly original.' Daily ExpressVeronica McCreedy is about to have the journey of a lifetime . . .Veronica McCreedy lives in a mansion by the sea. She loves a nice cup of Darjeeling tea whilst watching a good wildlife documentary. And she's never seen without her ruby-red lipstick.Although these days Veronica is rarely seen by anyone because, at 85, her days are spent mostly at home, alone.She can be found either collecting litter from the beach ('people who litter the countryside should be shot'), trying to locate her glasses ('someone must have moved them') or shouting instructions to her assistant, Eileen ('Eileen, door!').Veronica doesn't have family or friends nearby. Not that she knows about, anyway . . . And she has no idea where she's going to leave her considerable wealth when she dies.But today . . . today Veronica is going to make a decision that will change all of this.'I love this gorgeous book. Unflinching, stubborn, funny and moving, Veronica is an unlikely heroine who will sneak in and capture your heart.' Trisha AshleyReaders are falling in love with Away with the Penguins:'Without a doubt the most delightful, joyous and uplifting book I've read so far this year . . . be prepared to fall in love.' *****'A gloriously quirky and life affirming story of hope.' *****'Oh how I loved this absolute gem of a book. Both heartbreaking and heartwarming.' *****Trade ReviewThis year's Eleanor Oliphant . . . Funny, bittersweet and wholly original. * Daily Express *A glorious, life-affirming story. I read it in a day. I’m going to buy it for so many people this year! * Clare Mackintosh *I love this gorgeous book. Unflinching, stubborn, funny and moving, Veronica is an unlikely heroine who will sneak in and capture your heart. * Trisha Ashley *A warm and witty journey of self-discovery. Prior proves that it’s never too late to become the person you were meant to be. * Wendy Wax, bestselling author of MY EX-BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING *A warm-hearted and life-affirming tale about ageing, human kindness, old-fashioned values and protecting our planet. * Culturefly *

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Book SynopsisLord Purdey was shaking with anger. 'Bring back the lynx? Over my dead body!'The environmental protestors murmured, and Rory stepped forward. 'Your hunting has destroyed our hills and left them treeless wastes, devoid of wildlife. It's time that changed.''Listen, you lentil-eating cat lover,' Purdey barked through the megaphone, 'men like me own Scotland. If we want to kill anything that moves and turn the whole damn place into a theme park, we'll do it.'Someone from the group of protestors hurled a turnip. It struck Purdey and he crumpled to the ground. Just as the archaic class system he represents must eventually fall, Angus thought with a grin.In his first two bestselling books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, John D. Burns invited readers to join him in the hills and wild places of Scotland. In Sky Dance, he returns to that world to ask fundamental questions about how we relate to this northern landscape – while raising a laugh or two along the way. Anyone who has gazed at the majesty of the Scottish mountains will know this place and want to return to it. Now, as wild land is threatened like never before, it’s time we asked ourselves what kind of future we want for the Highlands.

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Book SynopsisA gorgeous new centennial edition of Ernest Hemingway’s landmark short story of returning veteran Nick Adams’s solo fishing trip in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, illustrated with specially commissioned artwork by master engraver Chris Wormell and featuring a revelatory foreword by John N.Trade Review"The finest story of the outdoors in American literature." — Sports Illustrated "'Big Two-Hearted River' may be the finest piece of fiction ever written about the experience of the veteran." — The Guardian "Matchlessly eloquent in its evocation of the pleasures of the senses and of the feeling of place. ... In 'Big Two-Hearted River,' there are moments that are not just constructed like a Cézanne painting; they look like a Cézanne painting." — Adam Gopnick, The New Yorker "Some of the best English prose of the twentieth century." — Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books "In Hemingway, fishing was always and infinitely metaphorical; Nick Adams plumbs the depths of his soul as he dangles a line." — Jay Parini, New York Times Book Review “A masterpiece, one of those rare instances when a superb writer reaches a level reserved only for those extraordinary talents with a nose for what is fundamental but not entirely clear and rational in human existence.” — Claremont Review of Books “Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ retains its hold on me, some 40 years after my first reading. It is a story that can be recited and revealed—like currents in a beloved stream—as fresh as each spring day.” — James F. Vesely, Seattle Times

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Book Synopsis'And so, with great care, he planted his hundred acorns'While hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a solitary shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzéard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness.Ten years later, after surviving the First World War, he visits the shepherd again. A young forest is slowly spreading over the valley - Elzéard has continued his work. Year after year the narrator returns to see the miracle being created: a verdant, green landscape that is testament to one man's creative instinct. miracle he is gradually creating: a verdant, green landscape that is a testament to one man's creative instinct.'I love the humanity of this story and how one man's efforts can change the future for so many' Michael Morpurgo, IndependentVINTAGE EARTH is a series of books that reveals our ever-changing relationship with the environment. These are stories old and young, set in worlds real or imagined, that allow us to explore our connection to the natural world. Transformative, wild, surprising and essential, these novels take on the most urgent story of our times.Trade Review • "One of the greatest writers of our generation." --Andre Mairaux • "Giono: he's a god. I rank him with Chateaubriand and Proust." --Jean d'Ormesson • "In Giono's work what every sensitive, full-blooded individual ought to be able to recognise at once is 'the song of the world." --Henry Miller

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Book SynopsisNOW A MAJOR NEW TV SERIES: CAROL DRINKWATER''S SECRET PROVENCELife and love, olive groves and bee hives in Provence - further adventures in the bestselling Olive Farm series from the author of THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER''Drinkwater is a rare writer who tackles other people brilliantly...Vibrant, intoxicating and heart-warming'' SUNDAY EXPRESS''She writes so well you can almost smell the sun-baked countryside'' BELLAAfter sixteen months of travelling round the Mediterranean in search of the ancient secrets of the olive tree, Carol returns to her beloved olive farm in the south of France, to her husband Michel and his burgeoning family. However, the homecoming celebrations are overshadowed by disturbing discoveries.The plight of the honey bee has become an international crisis and Carol is faced with unsettling news about the hives on her own olive farm.While the multinational companies are pushing for ''bigger, betTrade ReviewA spellbinding memoir * CHOICE *A passionate book about confronting difficult environmental issues * GOOD BOOK GUIDE *Drinkwater is a rare writer who tackles other people brilliantly...Vibrant, intoxicating and heart-warming * SUNDAY EXPRESS *One cannot resist Drinkwater's courage and joie de vivre, nor the enormous appetite and enthusiasm for her subject -- Wendy Holden * DAILY MAIL *The new leader of the pack * THE TIMES *She writes so well you can almost smell the sun-baked countryside * BELLA *Beautifully written with a great sense of humour, it captures perfectly the dreamy atmosphere of the South of France and its people * WOMAN & HOME *I love Carol Drinkwater's Olive Farm series about her life in Provence. I read them on the beach, thinking how wonderful a summer in France would be -- Jane Brown * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING *I found this the most absorbing of Carol Drinkwater's reports from her Provence Olive Farm, a sink or swim account of attempting to free the farm and its inhabitants from the dangerous chemicals needed to bring an Olive crop to fruition. -- Sue Baker * LOVEREADING.CO.UK *A passionate book about confronting difficult environmental issues. * GOOD BOOK GUIDE *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewShe is back with a heavyweight state-of-the-nation story that has been ten years in the making * Daily Mail *Roy's second novel proves as remarkable as her first * Financial Times *The Ministry of Utmost Happiness confirms Roy's status as a writer of delicate human dramas that also touch on some of the largest questions of the day. It is the novel as intimate epic. Expect to see it on every prize shortlist this year * The Times *Heartfelt, poetic, intimate, laced with ironic humour...The intensity of Roy's writing - the sheer amount she cares about these people - compels you to concentrate...This is the novel one hoped Arundhati Roy would write about India * Daily Telegraph *Teems with human drama, contains a vivid cast of characters and offers an evocative, searing portrait of modern India * Tatler *A beautiful and grotesque portrait of modern India and the world beyond. Take your time over it, just as the author did * Good Housekeeping *Fantastic. The novel is unflinchingly critical of power, and yet she empowers her underdog characters to persevere, leaving readers with a few droplets of much-needed hope. It's heartening when writers live up to the hyperbole that surrounds them * Hirsh Sawhney *A kaleidoscopic story about the struggle for Kashmir's independence * Washington Post *A sprawling, kaleidoscopic fable about love and resistance in modern India * The Guardian *The follow-up we've been longing for - a poetic, densely populated contemporary novel in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy. From its beginning, one is swept up in the story... With her exquisite and dynamic storytelling, Roy balances scenes of suffering and corruption with humour and transcendence * Vogue *Compelling, musical, cinematic... [A] genuine poignancy and depth of emotion. Her gift is for the personal: for poetic description [and an] ability to map the complicated arithmetic of love and belonging . . . The Ministry of Utmost Happiness manages to extract hope from tragedies * The New York Times *A passionate political masterpiece * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book Synopsis*SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF THE YEAR*''A novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure'' Financial Times ''Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious'' Daily Mail The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet. Because it might have just gone extinct. Nobody knows. And nobody really cares, either. Except for two people. Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish is gone for good, and biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes. They don''t trust each other an inch, but they''re left with no choice but to team up in search of the lumpsucker. And as they journey across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe - a nature reserve full of toxic waste; a floating city on the Baltic Sea; the lethal hinterlands of a totalitarian state - they''re drawn into a consTrade ReviewA comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide, Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly, excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely, forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss, as illuminating as it is entertaining. It reads like P. G. Wodehouse crashing into Philip K. Dick, with a touch of Iain M. Banks. Of course, it's smart and timely, but the writing is often very beautiful, and the ideas and their implications vertiginous. * Martin Macinnes, author of INFINITE GROUND *Venomous Lumpsucker makes the death of the natural world way more fun than it should be. This is a hilarious, terrifying novel in which Ned Beauman captures brilliantly the contradictory blend of urgency, paralysis, panic and resignation the climate emergency and its attendant mass extinctions inspire. The book left me hoping - but doubting - that Beauman is a lot less prescient than funny. * Chris Power *Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention. Like a ravenous creature, this book eats up all the great existential crises of the present moment and spits out an insane, hilarious, terrifying future that I, for one, completely believe will come true. Most of all, Beauman grapples head-on with that world-sized heartbreak of species extinction unsparingly and bravely. This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction-novely, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humor and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. Beauman could not be a more versatile writer. I will read anything he writes. * Elvia Wilk *Wildly funny and inventive. A suitably Swiftian satire for the extinction age. * Jake Arnott *A wild, absurdist quest; a wild satire of our absurd times. Seriously funny, playfully philosophical: a brilliant novel about nothing less than the future (or otherwise) of humanity. I loved it. * Joanna Kavenna *Ned Beauman is a speculative genius, and Venomous Lumpsucker is an incredible invention . . . This book holds all the great pleasures of the best science fiction novels, hyperbole, technical prowess-but with unusual humour and sensitivity to what it feels to live in this moment. * Elvia Wilk *An endlessly inventive, witty and bleak literary thriller set in the not-so-distant future, when environmental collapse has wrecked much of our ecosystem. Running the gamut from strange culinary practices to shady corporate dealing, it'll make you laugh and make you think. * Stephen Bush, Financial Times, Best books for summer *You might be forgiven for thinking that a novel about impending ecological disaster and mass extinction won't be a barrel of laughs. Yet that combination is exactly what Ned Beauman serves up in Venomous Lumpsucker . . . the novel is as intelligent as it is funny. * Sunday Times *A novel that is both funny and profound, full of extraordinary ideas and brilliant set pieces, but also generous and poignant . . . Venomous Lumpsucker was worth waiting for: a novel that delights, dazzles and moves in equal measure. * Alex Preston, Financial Times *[Beauman] has always had the curious knack of wrongfooting his readers with a beating heart where one has expected only cleverness . . . Beauman is able to push his fantastic conceits just that one uncomfortable step further . . . the ideas themselves are powerful, and earn their keep within the fictional frame * Nikhil Krishnan, Daily Telegraph *Brutally satirical and grimly hilarious * Daily Mail *Fascinating . . . An astute, whimsical send-up of the logic of contemporary capitalism, in which more and more elaborate technology is invented to counteract the very disasters that technology has spawned . . . Beauman has an enviable talent for crafting sentences, and an offbeat mind when it comes to analogies and metaphors. * i *Beauman writes beautifully on the level of the sentence... Beauman's world-building is impeccable, the narrative voice (part Douglas Adams, part Thomas Pynchon, part Jonathan Swift) is often appealing. * Literary Review *An offbeat, high-wire satire of environmental capitalism and big tech * Daily Mail *Full of fun and big ideas, [Beauman's] conceptually tricksy novels crackle with comic zip, alive to the past as well as the present . . . His mischievous intelligence can be felt everywhere * Observer *Exhilarating . . . the novels do not just have propulsive plotting but the ideas are high-octane as well . . . It could not be more timely. Yet every page has a turn of phrase, a witticism, a wry observation or smart simile that beguiles the reader into taking the serious material seriously. -- Stuart Kelly * Spectator *A laugh-out-loud novel about mass extinction (yes, really) . . . this novel is well-paced and warm-hearted, culminating in an ambitious and memorable ending -- Books of the Year * Sunday Times *Enormously pleasurable . . . a near-faultless technical performance . . . Beauman is a master of English prose, a highly self-conscious creator of sophisticated entertainments who almost never makes a false move on the page . . . It's Beauman's best book yet - and that's saying something -- Kevin Power * Guardian *Scabrously funny and satirical -- Jamie Buxton, Books of the Year * Daily Mail *Confirms his reputation as one of the foremost satirists of his generation -- Simon Ings * The Times *Venomous Lumpsucker has a utopian future of sorts, but we hardly notice it. In this novel by Ned Beauman, the human species is on trial; the prosecution is at once clinically precise and distractingly funny * New York Times *A madcap adventure story set in a dystopian world ravaged by climate change * Variety *Beauman is a lively writer with a knack for sharp descriptive language . . . But it's passing observations that futurists will really enjoy, like drugs to kill one's pleasure in food, or facial recognition software for tracking the spread of a cattle plague . . . it's these little things that make Venomous Lumpsucker a special pleasure * Toronto Star *Beauman's dark comedic writing tears apart the carbon offset industry, while using sharp storytelling to make big climate ideas easy to digest * Wired Magazine *Screamingly, bleakly funny . . . Beauman has a superlative knack for quotable, witty, and wince-inducing lines, stuffing every page with the kind of exhilarating humour borne of both despair and empathy. A thriller motivated by deep-sea mining destruction and mass extinction, a gut-punching satire of the failure of the carbon offset project: unfortunately, it's the beach read we deserve. Fortunately, it's a savagely entertaining one * Chicago Review of Books *A sharp-edged, high-tech, globe-spanning, deeply speculative tale of the near future . . . filled with brilliant characters ranging from the most venal to the most noble. The book is exciting, unpredictable, and thick with ideas; yet at the same time meditative, fated, and simple as a Zen koan * Locus Magazine *

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Book SynopsisHenry Hoke is the author of the memoir Sticker, The Book of Endless Sleepovers, the story collection Genevieves, and the novel The Groundhog Forever. His work has appeared in Electric Literature, Triangle House, The Offing, and the Catapult anthology Tiny Crimes. He holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for five years, and presently teaches at the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop.Trade ReviewOpen Throat is a blinding spotlight beam of a book that I was completely unable and unwilling to put down. I am not convinced Henry Hoke isn’t a mountain lion. -- Catherine Lacey, author of PewAn instant classic . . . The writing is so sinuous, so wry and muscular, yet with a padding, pawing playfulness, that you’re ready to go anywhere Hoke wants to take you . . . It’s funny, it’s heartbreaking and nail-bitingly propulsive, with an exquisite Hitchcockian climax. -- Rahul Raina * The Guardian *The lion king of Los Angeles . . . Hoke’s choice of narrator results in some fang-sharp incisiveness andflashes of brilliant humour * The Observer *A beguiling and memorable work * The Irish Times *Witty, emotional and gripping, Open Throat is a short but savage thrill ride * The Independent *[A] slim jewel of a novel . . . Though many readers will label Open Throat unconventional, this act of ravishing and outlandish imagination should be the norm, not the exception. At its best, fiction can make the familiar strange in order to bring readers and our world into scintillating focus. Open Throat is what fiction should be. * The New York Times Book Review *A propulsive, one-sitting read, if also a somber one . . . Without spoiling the story, it’s perhaps enough to say that the climax of Open Throat is a very L.A. one, with spotlights and drama. But it’s also a universal one. * Los Angeles Times *My definition of an unputdownable book is one that is funny, full of longing, and a bit fantastical. If a novel is all three, I'm sold. Open Throat by Henry Hoke is, for me, a Rosetta Stone of unputdownability: an allegorical tale of a queer mountain lion fighting for survival (and love) in the hills of Los Angeles. -- Melissa Broder * The Guardian *Your off-beat beach read? Open Throat is Bret Easton Ellis meets mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills . . . it already has people talking * The Sunday Times Style *I defy you to hear the premise of this sophomore novel from the always-interesting Henry Hoke and not immediately smash that preorder button . . . a playful, poignant, tragicomic delight * Lit Hub *A mountain cougar’s glimpses of LA (‘ellay’). Loved this tale of loneliness, longing and gore in the Hills. -- James Cahill, author of Tiepolo BlueI didn't know I would feel such attachment to a mountain lion when I started reading, but in Henry Hoke's talented hands, they become an instantly memorable and endearing protagonist. * Buzzfeed *This is one of the most unique books of the summer . . . a miniature masterpiece * iNews *Open Throat is a strange and beguiling prose/poem/novella about a curious, queer and raveous mountain lion stalking the Hollywood hills . . . Uniquely and bizarrely seductive * Attitude *This lyrical story of loneliness and kinship in Los Angeles is, by turns, delightful and melancholy—and inventive throughout. * Vanity Fair *Henry Hoke’s narrator is the most credible animal witness to human behavior since Robert Bresson’s Balthazar. Original, fun and completely awakening, Open Throat is a devastating portrait of LA today. -- Chris Kraus, author of I Love DickIt's not often you come across a book with such an incredibly unique premise that you can't help but read it, if only for pure curiosity. And it's even less common for these books to be wholly and entirely gratifying, entertaining, and enjoyable beyond expectation. Reader, Open Throat by Henry Hoke is all of these things. * NB Magazine *Open Throat strikes the perfect balance of humor and trauma, creating an encapsulating read that interrogates the complexities of gender identity and a world marked by climate change. -- Michael Welch, Chicago Review of BooksOpen Throat feels like a comic book and a really good one; it feels the inside of animals, specifically one animal, a mountain lion, and with them we desire blood and I can’t tell you how it ends but I love knowing a mountain lion so much. The beauty and tragedy of all of nature is in this character. Open Throat is a fierce writing act. Henry Hoke makes it true. -- Eileen Myles, author of For NowDaring and moving . . . Give this sinewy prose poem a chance and you'll fall under the spell of a forlorn voice trapped in the hellscape of modern America -- Ron Charles * The Washington Post *Strange, unique, and mesmerizing. -- Gabino Iglesias, Boston GlobeIn this fantastical, deeply moving, and original adventure--also an unforgettable reckoning with contemporary Los Angeles--Henry Hoke introduces an animal whose life is more than just survival: they are full of longing, regret, memory, sadness, and astute observation. -- Brontez Purnell, author of 100 BoyfriendsOpen Throat is an instant cult classic and a bloody masterpiece. Rhythmically brilliant, heart-wounding, and scathingly funny, I’m in love with a mountain lion and in awe of this book. -- Melissa Broder, author of The PiscesThe premise alone makes Henry Hoke's startling achievement worth the purchase . . . Philosophical and heartfelt, Open Throat is the ultimate immersion into the mind of an unlikely protagonist. -- Lauren Puckett-Pope * ELLE *If like many people you are sick of human protagonists that are often nihilistic, self-destructive, fundamentally lonely people, then perhaps you would prefer Open Throat, which is narrated by a similarly lonely mountain lion who lives in the Hollywood Hills. -- i-D, 'fiction to be excited for in 2023' My favorite book of this century so far! I keep putting off writing this blurb because every time I pick up Open Throat I re-read it and fall back in love with this gay-ass big cat and then I have to spend the whole rest of the day thinking about mountain lions and humans and sex and bodies and death and climate change and bad dads and NY v LA and what is even possible in this world. Henry Hoke is a magician. -- Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal GirlWholly original, inventive, and surprising on every level. It affirms the capaciousness of the novel as a form. I wish more books took the kinds of chances Open Throat does. -- Diane Cook, author of the Booker Prize finalist novel The New WildernessBrave; moving; excitingly bold. -- Charlotte Mendelson, author of The ExhibitionistOpen Throat is a fable for our times that cements Henry Hoke as an essential voice in experimental and deliciously queer fiction. * Electric Literature *A tight, funny book with an alarmingly unique tone * The Brooklyn Rail *Distinctive. Endearing. Poetic. Funny. In Open Throat, Henry Hoke has given voice to something both familiar and strange, that speaks to the conscious and unconscious mind at the same time, deftly revealing the world. -- Octavia Bright, author of This Ragged GraceCompulsively readable -- Megan Milks, 4ColumnsRead something crazy this summer. * The Philadelphia Inquirer *I defy you to hear the premise of this sophomore novel from the always-interesting Henry Hoke and not immediately smash that preorder button . . . a playful, poignant, tragicomic delight. * Lit Hub *Inspired by a real lion who famously lived in Hollywood, this hilarious and touching tale is blazingly original and really rather brilliant. * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice *Unique and bizarrely seductive * Attitude *. . . replete with wisdom and an unnervingly astute understanding * NB *Playful [and] provocative . . . By turns funny and melancholy, this is a thrilling portrait of alienation. * Publisher's Weekly *Compassionate, fierce, and bittersweet, this is an unforgettable love letter to the wild. * Kirkus *Highly imaginative . . . a fascinating take on the human world and his place in it. Open Throat is a treat for both animal lovers and anyone who appreciates innovative fiction. * Booklist *

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Book Synopsis“A beautiful, mournful novel about faith gravely tempered by grief and the brutal iron of modernity bringing the greatest of losses. Zhorov’s voice is fresh and appealing.” —Joy Williams, author of The Visiting Privilege and Harrow A rich, immersive debut novel, inspired by true events, about a meeting between two women in 1970s Soviet Russia—a deeply religious homesteader living in isolation with her family on the Siberian taiga and an ambitious scientist—that irrevocably alters the course of both of their lives.Galina, a promising young geologist from Moscow, is falling in love with her pilot, Snow Crane, on an expedition for minerals in Siberia. As their helicopter hovers over what should be a stretch of uninhabited forest, they see a small hut and a garden—and, the following day, when they hike from their field camp to the hut, they find a family. Agafia was born in Siberia into a family of Old Believers, a small sect of Christians who rejected the reforms that shaped the modern Russian Orthodox church. Her parents, fleeing religious persecution four decades earlier, journeyed deep into the snowy wilderness, eventually building a home far away from the dangerous and sinful world. Galina and Snow Crane are the first people she has ever met outside of her immediate household. As the two women develop a friendship, each becomes conflicted about futures that once seemed certain and find themselves straining against their past: Galina can’t shake the confines of her Soviet upbringing, and Agafia’s focus drifts from her faith to the beauty of the relentlessly harsh taiga. Underneath it all, Galina begins to see how her work opening mines threatens both Agafia and her home, and mirrors the exploitation of the natural world happening across the Soviet Union. A vivid and illuminating novel about faith, fate, and freedom against the backdrop of 1970s Soviet life, Lost Believers is an unforgettable journey.

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Book SynopsisSometimes you need to go deep into the past, to make sense of the present. Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: was the world’s technology about to crash down around her? The world’s technology did not crash. But there were worse disasters to come: Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague. Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the twentieth century becomes something else altogether. Complex, heartfelt, darkly funny and deeply moving, this is Sophie Cunningham’s most important book to date – a dazzlingly original novel about what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.​ Trade Review‘This Devastating Fever is remarkable: a thrillingly original, deeply emotional exploration of the complex echoes of history set in the shadow of the looming catastrophe of the future. Sinuous, strange, utterly compelling, it is like no other book you’ll read this year.’ -- James Bradley, author of Ghost Species and The Resurrectionist‘Brilliant and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It draws on archived letters and diary entries and the edges of what is real and what is imagined are delightfully blurred. It’s sharply layered, clever and darkly, dryly hilarious.’ -- Eliza Henry-Jones, author of Salt and Skin and In the Quiet‘A book of big ideas that reads as a page turner. I was thrilled to keep returning to the page.’ -- Kate Mildenhall, author of Skylarking and The Mother Fault‘This Devastating Fever contains the joy and pain and terror of caring deeply for another living thing: whether a loved one whose mind is failing, or cicadas destined to be incinerated in the Black Summer fires. It is also about the need to read carefully, write carefully, and think carefully – about the past and how we respond to it, and about what we owe the dead, the living, and the future.’ * The Conversation *‘This Devastating Fever feels a bit like a blast from the past and in the best way possible.’ * The Urban List *‘I can honestly say this isn’t like any book I have ever read before, yet couldn’t put down.’ * RUSSH *‘This Devastating Fever is an extraordinary achievement.’ * Kill Your Darlings *

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Science Fiction Association award for best novel, and the Kitschies Red TentacleMarine biologist Hana Ishikawa is racing against time to save the coral of the Great Barrier Reef, but struggles to fight for a future in a world where so much has already been lost.Seventeen-year-old Judith Holliman escapes the monotony of Sydney Town during the nineteenth century, when her naval captain father lets her accompany him on a voyage, unaware of the wonders and dangers she will soon encounter.Telma Velasco is hunting for a miracle in a world ravaged by global heating: a leafy seadragon, long believed extinct, has been sighted. But as Telma investigates, she finds hope in unexpected places.Past, present and future collide in this powerful elegy to a disappearing world - and vision of a more hopeful future.Trade ReviewA rich and brilliant novel about the connectedness of humanity in itself and with its world: beautifully written and compellingly drawn, layering history, present day and the future with brilliancy and power. It's a novel about the climate crisis, but it's a naturalist's novel too, with some wonderfully, vividly observed writing about sealife from coral to sharks and seahorses. Just marvellous * Adam Roberts, author of The Thing Itself *A beautifully crafted love letter to our endangered coral reefs. E.J. Swift confirms her reputation for writing elegant, heartfelt and compelling eco-fiction * Anne Charnock, Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Dreams Before the Start and Bridge 108 *Beautifully realised, vivid versions of past, present and future combine in The Coral Bones to powerful effect. It gave me much to think about. I won't forget it * Aliya Whiteley, author of Skyward Inn and The Loosening Skin *E.J. Swift pulls no punches in this beautiful and terrifying yet boldly hopeful novel. The wonder of the Great Barrier Reef is laid out for us via a vivid multi-dimensional tour through the lenses of past, present and future' * Vicki Jarrett, author of Always North *A thoughtful, immersive, very human story that speaks to current fears and hopes for our world * Guardian *E.J. Swift's The Coral Bones is a piercing and acute novel which cannot leave you indifferent. It rages like a stormy ocean, but it also offers you a serene picture of the world's beauty - something not to be lost * British Fantasy Society *

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2023'Arnott has an eye and an ear for description that can elevate otherwise quiet moments to something genuinely transcendent... A luminously told, whole-life story of a young boy discovering how to be his own man.' GuardianNed West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom - the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches - a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned - too young to enlist - roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions. But as the seasons pass and Ned grows up, real life gets in the way. Ned falls for Callie, the tough, capable sister of his best friend, and together they learn the lessons of love, loss, and hardship. When a storm decimates the Limberlost crop and shakes the orchard's future, Ned must decide what to protect: his childhood dreams, or the people and the land that surround him... At turns tender and vicious, Limberlost is a tale of the masculinities we inherit, the limits of ownership and understanding, and the teeming, vibrant wonders of growing up. Told in spellbinding, folkloric spirit, this is an unforgettable love letter to the richness of the natural world from a writer of rare talent.Trade ReviewBursts with language... an ode to the fierce and the feral * Sunday Times *Arnott has an eye and an ear for description that can elevate otherwise quiet moments to something genuinely transcendent... A luminously told, whole-life story of a young boy discovering how to be his own man. * Guardian *Carries echoes of Ernest Hemingway... a beautiful, pared-back exploration of masculinity, and the sustaining nature of dreams. * Big Issue *Wonderfully vivid * Daily Mail *Limberlost is as close to flawless as any book I have read in years. The poise and precision of Arnott's writing lends restraint to the fury at Limberlost's heart. * Jessie Greengrass, author of THE HIGH HOUSE *Spectacular and stunning. In a novel steeped in the natural landscapes of Tasmania, Arnott captures a very relatable youthful male anxiety that exists between fathers and sons. Very subtle and deeply moving. * Nick Bradley, author of THE CAT AND THE CITY *It is an unforgettable story, humble, transporting, and filled with grace and bravery. It's one of the strongest things I've read for a very long time. * Cynan Jones, author of COVE and THE DIG *Robbie Arnott is the sort of young writer we all hoped would emerge in Australia, a Conrad-like storyteller whose tales always tremble on the edge of the mythic and legendary. And as well as being a splendid narrator of tales, he has a quality too easily overlooked now. He writes beautifully! * Thomas Keneally, author of THE DICKENS BOY *Ned-with his shame and pride-blazes his way into your heart. A tender, soaring novel from one of Australia's finest writers. * Sisonke Msimang, author of The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela *An immersive experience, a story that is deeply embedded in the language of its environment... Scaled right down to a single, humble life, Limberlost is lit up by the energy of that life's relationships. It serves as a reminder of the complicated position humans occupy, tangled as we are in the webs of interdependence, of pain and responsibility and care, that bind us to a world much greater than ourselves. * Australian Book Review *In Limberlost magic lies in lyrical language and the powerfully real characters brought to life through it...This is a novel about the deepest of emotions, about love, the fear of loss, and about joy. * Age *Robbie Arnott is a tremendously talented and unique voice in Australian literature, and his third novel, Limberlost, exceeded all my expectations. It is a gorgeously written coming-of-age novel...a touching and profound depiction of connection, grief and familial love. * Readings Monthly *This book is something special: tender, sad, exceptionally well-written [and] unexpectedly moving. * Ashleigh Wilson *Sad and satisfying * The Times on The Rain Heron *Timeless and poignant * Guardian on The Rain Heron *Shocking... Beautiful... Satisfying * Scotsman on The Rain Heron *

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Book SynopsisA once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith''s Seasonal Quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now. Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer''s leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there''s ice, there''ll be fire. In Ali Smith''s Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It''s the season that teaches us survival. Here comes Winter.Discover all four instalments: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Ali Smith''s new novel, Companion piece, is available to pre-order now.*****''Dazzling . . . Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen'' Daily Telegraph ''Graceful, mischievous, joyful . . . Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope'' Independent ''A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit . . . Luminously beautiful'' ObserverTrade ReviewCleverly constructed and elegantly written. It's both an engaging human story and a place for wider topical observations. Bring on Spring * Evening Standard *If Ali Smith's four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker mid-winter than people often fear * Financial Times *Smith is a specialist by now in using a quizzical, feather-light prose style to interrogate the heaviest of material...throughout Winter, grief and pain are transfigured, sometimes lastingly, by luminous moments of humour, insight and connection... Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen * Telegraph *A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised...Smith is engaged in an extended process of mythologizing the present states of Britain... Luminously beautiful * Observer *A sparkler...tune in to Spring and Summer to see if art can save the day * Spectator *Graceful... That trademark mischievous wit and wordplay, a joyful reminder of the most basic, elemental delights of reading ... Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope * Independent *A capacious, generous shapeshifter of a novel taking in Greenham Common and Barbara Hepworth, Shakespeare and global migration, it juxtaposes art with nature and protest with apathy, finding surprising alliances in a family riven by feuds. It's a book with Christmas at its heart, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and out of time, like the festival itself * The Guardian *Dazzling second instalment of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet * The Daily Telegraph *A book I can't wait to read for Christmas * The Observer *Relish this instalment * The Times *I would like to be given Winter for Christmas * The Observer *And now looking forward to [Ali Smith's] Winter * Gordon Brown *And the book I'd most like to find in my Christmas stocking is Ali Smith's Winter * The Observer *Finally, under the tree this year I'm hoping to find Ali Smith's Winter * The Observer *It's a brisk, frosty walk under skies that could open at any moment revealing anything but snow * The Observer *A book I'd like to be given for Christmas: Winter by Ali Smith * The Observer *It takes you on a journey through time - Christmases past and present in a Dickensian way, but brings you bang up to the present - how can we live our lives and keep our memories and how do we find the truth? It is uplifting and miraculous with plenty of surprises along the way. It is vintage Smith * Jackie Kay *"Winter" is an insubordinate folk tale, with echoes of the fiction of Iris Murdoch and Angela Carter... There are few writers on the world stage who are producing fiction this offbeat and alluring... [Ali Smith] intends to send a chill up your shanks and she succeeds, jubilantly... Her dialogue is a series of pine cones flung at rosy cheeks * The New York Times *Smith is routinely brilliant, knowing, masterful... The light inside this great novelist's gorgeous snow globe is utterly original, and it definitely illuminates * New York Times Book Review *The only preparation required to savor the Scottish writer Ali Smith's virtuosic "Winter" is to pay attention to the world we've recently been living in...What Smith has achieved in her cycle so far is exactly what we need artists to do in disorienting times: make sense of events, console us, show us how we got here, help us believe that we will find our way through...Smith gives us a potent, necessary source of sustenance that speaks directly to our age...Yet we, like her characters, are past the winter solstice now - the darkest part of the coldest season done. From here on out, we're headed toward the light...It doesn't feel that way, I know. But in the midst of "Winter," each page touched with human grace, you might just begin to believe * Boston Globe *Winter is a stunning meditation on a complex, emotional moment in history * TIME *Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days...You can trust Smith to snow us once again with her uncanny ability to combine brainy playfulness with depth, topicality with timelessness, and complexity with accessibility while delivering an impassioned defence of human decency and art * NPR *The stunningly original Smith again breaks every conceivable narrative rule; reflecting her longstanding affinity for Modernism, what she gives us instead is a stylistically innovative cultural bricolage that celebrates the ecstasy of artistic influence. It demands and richly rewards close attention. [Autumn and Winter] each add to Smith's growing collection of glittering literary paving stones, along a path that's hopefully leading toward the Nobel she deserves. In the interim, we can (re)read "Winter" - and eagerly await the coming of "Spring" * Minneapolis Journal Sentinel *One of the rarest creatures in the world: a really fearless novelist...her prose is melodic, associative, wise, sometimes maddening...'she shares with Mantel and Ishiguro a sense of human caution, a need to understand, a wariness of the high-handedly authorial. All write with the humility of adulthood * Chicago Tribune *The second in Smith's quartet of seasonal novels displays her mastery at weaving allusive magic into the tragicomedies of British people and politics...a bleak, beautiful tale greater than the sum of its references * Vulture *An engaging novel due to the ecstatic energy of Smith's writing, which is always present on the page * Publishers Weekly *A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time * Kirkus Reviews *These individuals converge to confront each other in the big shabby house, like characters in a Chekhov play. At first, hellish implosion looms. Slowly, erratically, connection creeps in. Lux quietly mediates. Ire softens. Sophia at last eats something. Art resees Nature..."Winter" gives the patient reader a colorful, witty - yes, warming - divertissement * San Francisco Chronicle *With Iris and Lux as catalysts, scenes from Christmas past unfold, and our narrow views of Sophia and Art widen and deepen, filled with the secrets and substance of their histories, even as the characters themselves seem to expand. As in Sophia's case, for Art this enlargement is announced by a hallucination - "not a real thing," as Lux tells Iris, whose response speaks for the book's own expansive spirit: "Where would we be without our ability to see beyond what it is we're supposed to be seeing?" * The Minneapolis Star Tribune *

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'An apocalyptic novel for our times' – Guardian'Horrifyingly resonant' – ObserverSuperbowl Sunday, 2022. A couple wait in their Manhattan apartment for their final dinner guests to arrive. The game is about it start. The missing guests' flight from Paris should have landed by now.Suddenly, screens go blank. Phones are dead. Is this the end of civilization? All anybody can do is wait.From one of America’s greatest writers, The Silence is a timely and compelling novel about what happens when an unpredictable crisis strikes.'The Silence is Don DeLillo distilled . . . a straight shot of the good stuff' – Spectator

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Everyone should read this book' MATT HAIG'One of the most inspiring books I have ever read' YUVAL NOAH HARARI'Inspirational, compassionate and clear. The time to read this is NOW' MARK RUFFALO'Figueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world' NAOMI KLEIN*****Discover why there's hope for the planet and how we can each make a difference in the climate crisis, starting today. Humanity is not doomed, and we can and will survive. The future is ours to create: it will be shaped by who we choose to be in the coming years. The coming decade is a turning point - it is time to turn from indifference or despair and towards a stubborn, determined optimism. The Future We Choose is a passionate call to arms from former UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, and Tom Rivett-Carnac, senior political strategist for the Paris Agreement.Practical, optimistic and empowering, The Future We Choose shows us steps we can all take to renew our planet and create a better world beyond the climate crisis: today, tomorrow, this year and in the coming decade. The time to act is now. This book will change the way you see the world, and your place in it. Trade ReviewWe are at a critical moment for the survival of humans and the rest of life on Earth. In The Future We Choose, Figueres and Rivett-Carnac explain what we can do to safeguard our world. This book presents what we must do to protect our shared future - your own, and that of everyone on this planet * Leonardo DiCaprio *A call to arms for the battle of our time. * Arnold Schwarzenegger *There could not be a more important book. * Richard Branson *Full of heart, strength and solutions... I will carry it with me everywhere. * Ellie Goulding *Compelling and persuasive. Everyone can make a difference when it comes to climate change, but far too often most of us end up feeling that the things we do are not going to be enough to solve the problem: it just seems so overwhelming. After you've read this book it will be very difficult to ever feel like that again! * Stella McCartney *This book is what the moment demands: a handbook for climate action and optimism. Read it and act. * Ed Miliband *This book could not be more timely or important. * David Miliband, CEO, IRC & Former Foreign Secretary *I urge everyone to read it and heed its message. * Ban Ki-moon *The Paris Agreement was a landmark for humanity. In this timely and important book, two of the principle creators of that agreement show us why and how we can now realise its' promise. I hope it is widely read and acted on * Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace *I strongly recommend this enlightening book! The next few years are the most important in humanity's fight to solve the climate crisis. In The Future We Choose, Christiana and Tom show us what's to come, how to face it, and what can be done to make the right choice to save our planet for future generations. * Al Gore *Inspirational, compassionate and clear. The time to read this is NOW -- Mark RuffaloPlease read it! -- Gisele BündchenEveryone should read this book -- Matt HaigFigueres and Rivett-Carnac dare to tell us how our response can create a better, fairer world. -- Naomi KleinOne of the most inspiring books I have ever read -- Yuval Noah HarariEnough of wake up calls - this book is what to do when you have woken up. -- William HaguePractical and inspiring -- Lord Nicholas SternUrges us all forward and helps us know we can make a difference -- Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director, Greenpeace InternationalProtecting the environment is logical as much as ecological -- Bertrand Piccard, Pilot, Solar ImpulseRead this book. -- Michael Mann, Climate ScientistA powerful warning and helpful guidebook for us all -- Chris Anderson, Head of TEDChristiana and Tom give us hope! * Jesper Brodin, CEO, IKEA Group *An inspiring call to arms, a must read. -- Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, 2009–2013We can lead the way towards a healthier and more sustainable future. This is the first book that explains how. -- Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of ParisAn important book. Readable, inspiring, with a road map to hope. -- Tim Smit, The Eden ProjectA fine volume! -- Bill McKibbenA powerful, compassionate call to arms. * Julian Hector, Head of the BBC Natural History Unit *This could be the most important wake up call of our time. -- Professor Klaus Schwab, CEO, World Economic ForumEncourage everyone to read and react. -- Oliver Bäte, CEO, AllianzA further valuable contribution to the debate -- Ben van Beurden, CEO, Shell

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Book SynopsisA brilliantly conceived and audacious novel from one of our most consistently intelligent and beguiling writers' William BoydSurefooted and emotionally generous A serious achievement' GuardianMasterful' TelegraphA revelation' SpectatorThe new novel from the Booker shortlisted author of The Northern ClemencyAn order is issued. A population may not meet, or touch or speak to each other. They stay inside, and the reality of a few streets in a capital city emerges. An underground river is discovered; an urban grove of pomeloes emerges. The imagination reaches out, and makes sense of the world. By the sea, two men walk into a future of uncertain violence.There is time now to see the human dramas within a hundred yards (an abduction, a quiet breakdown, an outbreak of violence, a young mind beginning to stretch itself); to wait for the weather to change; to understand that what lies underneath this part of the city are seasonally wet pastures and woodlands.Written in four parts, To BatterseaTrade Review‘A brilliantly conceived and audacious novel from one of our most consistently intelligent and beguiling writers’ William Boyd, author of The Romantic ‘Surefooted and emotionally generous … A serious achievement … Less a book about the pandemic and more a book about the stories we tell ourselves about the pandemic; billions of stories, fragile, partial, and essential, each one a small but vital act of reclamation and remembrance’ Guardian ‘Interesting and innovative … A different kind of state-of-the-nation novel; an exercise in imagination and empathy born out of a moment of collective crisis’ Daily Telegraph ‘A revelation: a comedy of suburban manners slowed to the point of nightmare’ Spectator ‘Challenges everything we might have taught ourselves to expect from fiction… Wise, ingenious and passionate’ TLS ‘Bears [Hensher’s] hallmark brilliance … Magnificently succeeds in excavating the sedimentary layers of a neighbourhood in lockdown’ Financial Times ‘Eloquently distils the way in which enforced social distancing made us see the world around us through fresh eyes … an impressive addition to the canon of lockdown fiction’ Mail on Sunday ‘Playful, philosophical, sensual, violent and funny … But above all, it’s defiant: an account of confinement that refuses to be confined’ Literary Review ‘A master novelist and prose stylist … Shifts from sublimely evoked reality to terrifyingly, clearly imagined dystopia’ Country Life ‘Masterly in marrying observations of the minutiae of the lives of ‘ordinary’ people with huge, soaring themes’ AnOther Magazine ‘An imaginative tour de force. The first great lockdown novel, and perhaps the only one we'll need’ Mick Herron, author of Bad Actors ‘Utterly engrossing’ Lissa Evans, author of V for Victory

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Book SynopsisIn a lonely valley, deep in the mountains, a ranger watches over the last surviving grizzly bear.With the natural world exhausted and in tatters, Ben has dedicated himself to protecting this single fragment of the wild.One night, he hears voices in the valley poachers, come to hunt his bear.A heart-pounding chase begins, crossing forests and mountainsides, passing centuries of human ruins. Sometimes hunter, sometimes prey Ben must choose the bear's fate and his own.Is he willing to lay down his life for a dying breed?Is he willing to kill for it?Trade Review‘A tale of wilderness survival and pursuit, told in lean, propulsive prose, but with a twist…Somer raises disquieting questions about our relationship with nature, and the debt we owe to the beings with whom we share our planet – even, or perhaps especially, when there is no longer any chance of restitution’GUARDIAN ‘In vibrant, lyrical prose, Somer depicts Ben's struggles with loneliness and the approaching winter…His hardships are keenly felt due to Somer's masterful characterization…Readers will be impressed’’PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ‘Harrowingly tense and cerebral, Somer's EXTINCTION is a primordial game of cat-and-mouse-and-cat, which confronts the costs of survival while boldly redefining what it truly means to survive. Bravo!’P. J. Vernon, author of BATH HAUS and WHEN YOU FIND ME ‘We are all being asked to make choices. Our species, our animals, our world…Somer hones these questions down to the knife-edge of a lonely man and the last surviving grizzly bear, in the ragged grandeur of the remaining West. An unforgettable story, a fierce and thrilling ride’Maxim Loskutoff, author of RUTHIE FEAR and COME WEST AND SEE

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Book SynopsisA novel like none other' AMITAV GHOSHA masterpiece' AVNI DOSHIWise, funny, touching' ROBERT MACFARLANEWinner, Sushila Devi 2023Winner, Atta Galatta 2023 for Best FictionWinner, AutHer Award 2023 for FictionFinalist, Tata Live Award for Fiction 2023Longlisted, 2023 JCB Prize for LiteratureShortlisted, Valley of Words Awards 2023 for English FictionABest Book of 2022 in The New YorkerFour lives, uniquely linked, in a story that journeys across continents and centuriesFor Shai, lost and drifting, a visit to her hometown in India's Northeast offers the possibility of new ways of living.For Evelyn, a Cambridge student, scientific inspiration guides her to the forests of the lower Himalayas and a world she has only read about.For Johann, a German writer, travelling through Italy inspires him to develop ground-breaking ideas that will cement his place in history.And for a young Swede, an unwavering curiosity for Earth's natural wonders takes him on an expedition that will forever alter the waTrade Review‘Wise, funny, touching, wide-ranging, deep-delving; whip-smart dialogue and graceful, paced sentences, thousands upon thousands of them. Written by a novelist with the eye of a poet, and a poet with the narrative powers of a novelist, this is a book that needed to be written, that tells true things, and is entirely its own being’ Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland ‘A novel like none other: Janice Pariat brings vividly to life a conception of plants as beings endowed with a powerful inner vitality’ Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace ‘Pariat traverses the inherent dignity of life in all its forms and the conflict between doing and being that is alive in all of us. Timely and timeless – a masterpiece and an absolute thrill to read’ Avni Doshi, Booker-shortlisted author of Burnt Dugar ‘A novel of great charm, curiosity and adventure – a passionate call for shaking up the certainties of science and history so as to heed the intuitions and instincts that perhaps only fiction can give voice to’ Anjum Hasan, author of A Day in the Life ‘Everything the Light Touches weaves the timelessness of nature and the urgency of human emotions into an elegiac tale that is evocative, intelligent and deeply thought-provoking. A seminal work by a novelist and a poet at the height of her powers’ Pranay Lal, author of Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent ‘As the reader journeys through this atmospheric and accomplished novel, they discover that the natural world around us is loud enough for those willing to listen, and Pariat has found the language for it’ The Guardian ‘A multi-generational epic’ Cosmopolitan ‘Pariat’s sonorous lyricism is beautiful’ The Daily Mail ‘A marvel of a novel – poignant and poetic’ Woman & Home ‘Lyrical and immersive’ Woman’s Weekly ‘Impressive’ Katherine Mezzacappa

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Book SynopsisOne of Wall Street Journal''s 10 Best Books of the Year • Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize • Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize • An Irish Times Best Book of the Year “One of the most beautiful novels I have ever read.” —New York Times Book ReviewThe acclaimed novel about a couple who, pushing against traditional expectations, move with their dogs to the Irish countryside where they embed themselves in nature and make attempts to disappear from society.It is the winter following the summer they met. A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another—one embedded in ritual, and away from the friends and family from whom they’ve drifted.They arrive at their

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Book SynopsisDiscover Ali Smith''s dazzling, once-in-a-generation series, the Seasonal Quartet, a tour-de-force quartet of novels about love, time, art, politics, and how we live right nowAll four instalments of the quartet are available to buy and read in paperback and ebook now: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer A Book of the Year according to: the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the Evening Standard, The Times.''Dazzling'' Daily TelegraphWinter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer''s leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there''s ice, there''ll be fire. In Ali Smith''s Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed SeasonalTrade ReviewCleverly constructed and elegantly written. It's both an engaging human story and a place for wider topical observations. Bring on Spring * Evening Standard *If Ali Smith's four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker mid-winter than people often fear * Financial Times *Smith is a specialist by now in using a quizzical, feather-light prose style to interrogate the heaviest of material...throughout Winter, grief and pain are transfigured, sometimes lastingly, by luminous moments of humour, insight and connection... Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen * Telegraph *A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised...Smith is engaged in an extended process of mythologizing the present states of Britain... Luminously beautiful * Observer *A sparkler...tune in to Spring and Summer to see if art can save the day * Spectator *Graceful... That trademark mischievous wit and wordplay, a joyful reminder of the most basic, elemental delights of reading ... Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope * Independent *A capacious, generous shapeshifter of a novel taking in Greenham Common and Barbara Hepworth, Shakespeare and global migration, it juxtaposes art with nature and protest with apathy, finding surprising alliances in a family riven by feuds. It's a book with Christmas at its heart, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and out of time, like the festival itself * The Guardian *Dazzling second instalment of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet * The Daily Telegraph *A book I can't wait to read for Christmas * The Observer *Relish this instalment * The Times *I would like to be given Winter for Christmas * The Observer *And now looking forward to [Ali Smith's] Winter * Gordon Brown *And the book I'd most like to find in my Christmas stocking is Ali Smith's Winter * The Observer *Finally, under the tree this year I'm hoping to find Ali Smith's Winter * The Observer *It's a brisk, frosty walk under skies that could open at any moment revealing anything but snow * The Observer *A book I'd like to be given for Christmas: Winter by Ali Smith * The Observer *It takes you on a journey through time - Christmases past and present in a Dickensian way, but brings you bang up to the present - how can we live our lives and keep our memories and how do we find the truth? It is uplifting and miraculous with plenty of surprises along the way. It is vintage Smith * Jackie Kay *"Winter" is an insubordinate folk tale, with echoes of the fiction of Iris Murdoch and Angela Carter... There are few writers on the world stage who are producing fiction this offbeat and alluring... [Ali Smith] intends to send a chill up your shanks and she succeeds, jubilantly... Her dialogue is a series of pine cones flung at rosy cheeks * The New York Times *Smith is routinely brilliant, knowing, masterful... The light inside this great novelist's gorgeous snow globe is utterly original, and it definitely illuminates * New York Times Book Review *The only preparation required to savor the Scottish writer Ali Smith's virtuosic "Winter" is to pay attention to the world we've recently been living in...What Smith has achieved in her cycle so far is exactly what we need artists to do in disorienting times: make sense of events, console us, show us how we got here, help us believe that we will find our way through...Smith gives us a potent, necessary source of sustenance that speaks directly to our age...Yet we, like her characters, are past the winter solstice now - the darkest part of the coldest season done. From here on out, we're headed toward the light...It doesn't feel that way, I know. But in the midst of "Winter," each page touched with human grace, you might just begin to believe * Boston Globe *Winter is a stunning meditation on a complex, emotional moment in history * TIME *Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days...You can trust Smith to snow us once again with her uncanny ability to combine brainy playfulness with depth, topicality with timelessness, and complexity with accessibility while delivering an impassioned defence of human decency and art * NPR *The stunningly original Smith again breaks every conceivable narrative rule; reflecting her longstanding affinity for Modernism, what she gives us instead is a stylistically innovative cultural bricolage that celebrates the ecstasy of artistic influence. It demands and richly rewards close attention. [Autumn and Winter] each add to Smith's growing collection of glittering literary paving stones, along a path that's hopefully leading toward the Nobel she deserves. In the interim, we can (re)read "Winter" - and eagerly await the coming of "Spring" * Minneapolis Journal Sentinel *One of the rarest creatures in the world: a really fearless novelist...her prose is melodic, associative, wise, sometimes maddening...'she shares with Mantel and Ishiguro a sense of human caution, a need to understand, a wariness of the high-handedly authorial. All write with the humility of adulthood * Chicago Tribune *The second in Smith's quartet of seasonal novels displays her mastery at weaving allusive magic into the tragicomedies of British people and politics...a bleak, beautiful tale greater than the sum of its references * Vulture *An engaging novel due to the ecstatic energy of Smith's writing, which is always present on the page * Publishers Weekly *A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time * Kirkus Reviews *These individuals converge to confront each other in the big shabby house, like characters in a Chekhov play. At first, hellish implosion looms. Slowly, erratically, connection creeps in. Lux quietly mediates. Ire softens. Sophia at last eats something. Art resees Nature..."Winter" gives the patient reader a colorful, witty - yes, warming - divertissement * San Francisco Chronicle *With Iris and Lux as catalysts, scenes from Christmas past unfold, and our narrow views of Sophia and Art widen and deepen, filled with the secrets and substance of their histories, even as the characters themselves seem to expand. As in Sophia's case, for Art this enlargement is announced by a hallucination - "not a real thing," as Lux tells Iris, whose response speaks for the book's own expansive spirit: "Where would we be without our ability to see beyond what it is we're supposed to be seeing?" * The Minneapolis Star Tribune *

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Book SynopsisA luscious novel . . . [Helen] Humphreys offers a fresh view of a philosopher thought of as a loner, depicting his family home as a place for communion and companionship . . . This is Thoreau as he really lived. Hillary Kelly, The AtlanticA novel as wise as it is tender, a meditation on the miracle of friendship and the heartbreak of change, Followed by the Lark inhabits the life of Henry David Thoreau.Henry felt his pulse quickening with the lengthening days and the return of the birds, with the leafing out of the trees and the whir of the poplars, the trembling song of the frogs in the marsh. We mark time and make our mark on the earth, even as everything around us is shifting and growing, and soon enough these marks will disappear. Friendship comes and reorients us to the horizon; loss comes and stretches out into loneliness. Henry measured and recorded the temperature on and around Walden Pon

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Book SynopsisThe classic Dune trilogy, one of the most influential SF series ever written'I know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings' Arthur C ClarkeTrade ReviewI know nothing comparable to it except The Lord of the Rings -- Arthur C ClarkeIt is possible that Dune is even more relevant now than when it was first published * NEW YORKER *An astonishing science fiction phenomenon * WASHINGTON POST *One of the monuments of modern science fiction * CHICAGO TRIBUNE *Powerful, convincing, and most ingenious -- Robert A. HeinleinA novel of extraordinary complexity ... the work of a speculative intellect with few rivals in modern sf * THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION *A tight mesmerising fabric, interwoven with a potent element of mysticism ... intensely realised -- Brian W Aldiss

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Book SynopsisA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEARA WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco ChronicleNew York Times Book Review

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Book SynopsisBlackmail, sexual harassment, murder . . . and a missing dog: eccentric, eco-obsessed LA private eye Charlie Waldo is on the case in this quirky, fast-paced mystery. Paying a harsh self-imposed penance for a terrible misstep on a case, former LAPD superstar detective Charlie Waldo lives a life of punishing minimalism deep within the woods, making a near religion of his commitment to owning no more than One Hundred Things.At least, he?s trying to. His PI girlfriend Lorena keeps drawing him back to civilization ? even though every time he compromises on his principles, something goes wrong.And unfortunately for Waldo, all roads lead straight back to LA. When old adversary Don Q strongarms him into investigating the seemingly mundane death of a vagrant, Lorena agrees he can work under her PI license on one condition: he help with a high-maintenance celebrity client, wildly popular courtroom TV star Judge Ida Mudge, whose new mega-deal makes her a perfect target for blackmail. Reopening the coldest of cases, a decades-old fraternity death, Waldo begins to wonder if the judge is, in fact, a murderer ? and if he?ll stay alive long enough to find out.Pay or Play is the third in the Charlie Waldo series, following Last Looks and Below the Line. Last Looks was turned into a major motion picture, starring Charlie Hunnam as the offbeat private investigator.

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Book SynopsisThe second book in this environmental epic fantasy series delves into the mysteries of a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea.After setting fire to the Forever Sea and leaving the surface world behind, Kindred Greyreach dives below to find a Seafloor populated by roving bands of scavengers. Among them, Kindred discovers a familiar face working to save the Sea from the continued spread of the Greys and the ravages of the world above. But when Kindred finds herself at odds with a faction below the Sea, she and her friends will have to use every power available to them—including their link to the surface world—to forestall disaster.Meanwhile, above, a boy named Flitch, son of the Baron of the Borders, finds himself caught in a dangerous political crisis as survivors from Arcadia and the Once-City arrive on the Mainland. As monsters from the depths of the Sea begin to surface near the Mainland’s shores, FlitTrade ReviewPraise for The Endless Song"This series finale showcases the wonder and strangeness of Johnson’s world, with descriptions both terrifying and hauntingly beautiful. Readers looking for inventive, thoughtful fantasy will find plenty to enjoy." —Publishers WeeklyPraise for The Forever Sea“I can rarely remember being this excited for a debut novel. This was everything I wanted it to be. Wind-swept prairie seas, pirates, magic, and found families.” —Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning author of the Lady Astronaut series“Richly imagined and beautifully written, with a highly original and very creepy magic system—The Forever Sea is wonderful.” —R. F. Kuang, Astounding Award-winning author of The Poppy War"What an amazing world—from the ecosystem, to the ships that ply the deep grass sea, to the magic and people within!" —Fran Wilde, two-time Nebula-winning author of Riverland and Updraft“Loved The Forever Sea. Loved it. Sheer joy.” —Joanne Harris, internationally bestselling author of Chocolat“A beautifully imagined dive into the unknown.” —G.V. Anderson, World Fantasy Award winning author of "Das Steingeschöpf"“Beautifully lyrical and imaginative, Johnson's debut sings a twisting tale of adventure full of diverse characters and a lush world ripe to fall in love with. With a heart that will haunt you, this ecopunk story is unlike any you've seen before.” —Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister"In this rich and well-realized world, magic has an ecological price as well as profit, and conflicts are between equally complicated communities rather than simplistic good vs. evil. This ending of this excellent debut promises more adventures in its fragile, Miyazaki-esque world." —Booklist (starred review)"Johnson’s beautiful coming-of-age saga touches on subjects of conservation, water rights, morality, and relationships.... The book’s setting and plot are so original as to be a breath of fresh air to the fantasy genre." —Library Journal (starred review)“Lush descriptions of plant life abound... When combined with the exceptional protagonist and themes of embracing the unknown, [The Forever Sea] calls to mind Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series. With a good balance of grit and tenderness, this entertaining story makes a nice addition to the growing hopepunk subgenre.” —Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPraise for The Endless Song"This series finale showcases the wonder and strangeness of Johnson’s world, with descriptions both terrifying and hauntingly beautiful. Readers looking for inventive, thoughtful fantasy will find plenty to enjoy." —Publishers WeeklyPraise for The Forever Sea“I can rarely remember being this excited for a debut novel. This was everything I wanted it to be. Wind-swept prairie seas, pirates, magic, and found families.” —Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning author of the Lady Astronaut series“Richly imagined and beautifully written, with a highly original and very creepy magic system—The Forever Sea is wonderful.” —R. F. Kuang, Astounding Award-winning author of The Poppy War"What an amazing world—from the ecosystem, to the ships that ply the deep grass sea, to the magic and people within!" —Fran Wilde, two-time Nebula-winning author of Riverland and Updraft“Loved The Forever Sea. Loved it. Sheer joy.” —Joanne Harris, internationally bestselling author of Chocolat“A beautifully imagined dive into the unknown.” —G.V. Anderson, World Fantasy Award winning author of "Das Steingeschöpf"“Beautifully lyrical and imaginative, Johnson's debut sings a twisting tale of adventure full of diverse characters and a lush world ripe to fall in love with. With a heart that will haunt you, this ecopunk story is unlike any you've seen before.” —Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister"In this rich and well-realized world, magic has an ecological price as well as profit, and conflicts are between equally complicated communities rather than simplistic good vs. evil. This ending of this excellent debut promises more adventures in its fragile, Miyazaki-esque world." —Booklist (starred review)"Johnson’s beautiful coming-of-age saga touches on subjects of conservation, water rights, morality, and relationships.... The book’s setting and plot are so original as to be a breath of fresh air to the fantasy genre." —Library Journal (starred review)“Lush descriptions of plant life abound... When combined with the exceptional protagonist and themes of embracing the unknown, [The Forever Sea] calls to mind Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series. With a good balance of grit and tenderness, this entertaining story makes a nice addition to the growing hopepunk subgenre.” —Publishers Weekly

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