Search results for ""Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press""
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Blood of Heaven
It is 1861, and Angel Woolsack is a Confederate about to breathe his last, as the Union forces make their inexorable approach. Rejected by his wife, his wealth no longer useful to him, he sets about recording his testament.His story is that of a preacher's son, who flees the hardscrabble life of his itinerant father and falls in with a charismatic highwayman. The novel moves from the bordellos of Natchez to the Mississippi plantations, and finally to the back rooms of New Orleans where would-be revolutionaries are plotting to break away from the young United States. The Blood of Heaven is a remarkable portrait of a young man seizing his place in a violent new world.
£8.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Sweet Sunday
A tumultuous novel about America's loss of innocence in the late Sixties.Turner Raines is Mr Heartbreak. Everybody leaves him. They walk out, they run away... they die. When his oldest friend Mel Kissing dies with an ice pick through his skull, Raines picks up the thread and sets out to ask 'who?' and 'why?'But this is America in 1969 and one death is just a drop in the ocean. The USA is about to land a man on the moon and the Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, setting sons against fathers, fathers against sons. The Woodstock festival is in full swing and Norman Mailer is standing as candidate for Mayor of New York.Against this backdrop, Raines' questions take him back to the childhood home he left in Texas, back to the battered remains of his youth... and as his memory unravels, America unravels with it.
£8.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Afterglow: A Dog Memoir
Skinny's Book of the Year, 2018In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly made an indelible impact on the writer's way of being. Over the course of sixteen years together, Myles was devoted to the pit bull and their linked quality of life. And starting from the emptiness following Rosie's death, Afterglow launches a playful and incisive investigation into the mostly mutually beneficial, sometimes reprehensible power dynamics between pet and pet-owner. At the same time, it reimagines Myles's experiences with alcoholism and recovery, intimacy and mourning, celebrity and politics, spirituality and family history, while joyously transcending the parameters of memoir.Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles's childhood puppet, to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull; from shimmering poetic transcriptions of video footage taken during their walks, to Rosie's final enlightened narration from the afterlife, this totally singular text combines elements of science fiction, screenplay, monologue, and lucid memory to get to the heart of how and why we dedicate our existence to our dogs.
£14.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Last Chance Texaco: Mojo magazine's Book of the Year
A Book of the Year in Rolling Stone, Uncut, Mojo, The Telegraph and the Glasgow HeraldThis troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song.Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award-winner Rickie Lee Jones, in her own words. It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music.With candour and lyricism, the 'Duchess of Coolsville' (Time) takes us on a singular journey through her nomadic childhood, to her years as a teenage runaway, through her legendary love affair with Tom Waits, and ultimately her longevity as the hardest working woman in rock and roll. Rickie Lee's stories are rich with the infamous characters of her early songs - 'Chuck E's in Love,' 'Weasel and the White Boys Cool,' 'Danny's All-Star Joint' and 'Easy Money' - but long before her notoriety in show business, there was a vaudevillian cast of hitchhikers, bank robbers, jail breaks, drug mules, a pimp with a heart of gold, and tales of her fabled ancestors.In this electrifying and intimate memoir by one of the most remarkable, trailblazing and tenacious women in music are never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, a singer-songwriter whose music defied categorization and inspired pop culture for decades.
£10.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Dream Work
Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit to accepting the truth about one’s personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships.
£13.60
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Wandering Through Life: A Memoir
£18.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press A Dying Colonialism
Frantz Fanon's seminal work on anticolonialism and the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution. Psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, Frantz Fanon was one of the great political analysts of our time, the author of such seminal works of modern revolutionary theory as The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks. He has had a profound impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world. A Dying Colonialism is Fanon's incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as "primitive," in order to destroy those oppressors. Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression. This is a strong, lucid, and militant book; to read it is to understand why Fanon says that for the colonized, "having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death."
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The House of Morgan
£16.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Toward the African Revolution
This powerful collection of articles, essays, and letters spans the period between Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Fanon’s landmark manifesto on the psychology of the colonized and the means of empowerment necessary for their liberation. These pieces display the genesis of some of Fanon’s greatest ideas ideas that became so vital to the leaders of the American civil rights movement.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Manson in His Own Words: Destroying a Myth: The True Confessions of Charles Manson
"The myth of Charles Manson is not likely to survive the impact of his own words,” Nuel Emmons writes in the introduction to Manson In His Own Words, the shocking true confessions that lay bare the life and mind of the cult leader and notorious criminal. His story provides an enormous amount of new information about his life and how it led to the Tate-LaBianca murders, and reminds us of the complexity of the human condition. Born in the middle of the Great Depression to an unmarried fifteen-year-old, Manson lived through a succession of changing homes and substitute parents, until his mother finally asked the state authorities to assume his care when he was twelve. Regimented and often brutalized in juvenile homes, Manson became immersed in a life of petty theft, pimping, jail terms, and court appearances that culminated in seven years of prison. Released in 1967, he suddenly found himself in the world of hippies and flower children, a world that not only accepted him, but even glorified his anti-establishment values. It was a combination that led, for reasons only Charles Manson can fully explain, to tragedy. Manson’s story, distilled from seven years of interviews and examinations of his correspondence, provides sobering insight into the making of a criminal mind, and a fascinating picture of the last years of the sixties. No one who wants to understand that time, and the man who helped to bring it to a horrifying conclusion, can miss reading this book.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press A Good Day to Die
Mr. Harrison’s perceptions are jagged and cutting . . . a remarkably well-plotted story.”Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York TimesThe New York Times bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetryincluding Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to EarthJim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. His novel A Good Day to Die centers on an unlikely trio: a poet with a tendency to lapse into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; a Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and a girl who loved only one of themat first. With plans conceived during the madness of one long drunken night, the three of them leave Florida, driving west to buy a case of dynamite, determined to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believe is about to be built. A Good Day to Die is an unrelenting tour de force, and a dark exploration of what it means to live beyond the pale in contemporary America. Returning Harrison fans will be ecstatic to find this in print once again, and for new readers, this work serves as the perfect introduction to Harrison’s remarkable insight, storytelling, and evocation of the natural world.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Love Had a Compass: Journals and Poetry
"Among America's greatest poets, a true minimalist who can weave awesome poems from remarkably few words." -Richard Kostelanetz, New York Times Book Review Every generation of poets seems to harbor its own hidden genius, one whose stature and brilliance come to light after his talent has already been achieved and exercised. The same drama of obscurity and nuance that attended the discovery of Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens is suggested by the career of Robert Lax. An expatriate American whose work to date more than forty books has been published mostly in Europe, this 85-year-old poet built a following in the U.S. among figures as widespread as Mark Van Doren, e. e. cummings, Jack Kerouac, and Sun Ra. The works in Love Had a Compass represent every stage of Lax's development as a poet, from his early years in the 1940s as a staff writer for The New Yorker to his present life on the Greek Island of Patmos. An inveterate wanderer, Lax's own sense of himself as both exile and pilgrim is carefully evoked in his prose journals and informs the pages of the Marseille Diaries, published here for the first time. Together with the poems, they provide the best portrait available to date of one of the most striking and original poets of our age.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Manson in His Own Words
We called him a devil and quarantined him behind such labels as 'the most dangerous man alive.' But Charles Manson remains a shocking reminder of our own humanity gone awry. This astonishing book lays bare the life and the mind of a man whose acts left us horrified. His story provides an enormous amount of information about his life and how it led to the Tate-LaBianca murders, and reminds us of the complexity of the human condition. Born in the middle of the Depression to an unmarried fifteen-year-old, Manson lived through a bewildering succession of changing homes and substitute parents, until his mother finally asked the state authorities to assume his care when he was twelve.Regimented and often brutalized in juvenile homes, Manson became immersed in a life of petty theft, pimping, jail terms and court appearances that culminated in seven years of prison. Released in 1967, he suddenly found himself in the world of hippies and flower children, a world that not only accepted him, but even glorified his anti-establishment values. It was a combination that led, for reasons only Charles Manson can fully explain, to tragedy. Manson's story, distilled from seven years of interviews and examinations of his correspondence, provides sobering insight into the making of a criminal mind, and a fascinating picture of the last years of the sixties. No one who wants to understand that time, and the man who helped to bring it to a horrifying conclusion, can miss reading this book.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Freeman's Animals
Over a century ago, Rilke went to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where he watched a pair of flamingos. A flock of other birds screeched by, and, as he describes in a poem, the great red-pink birds sauntered on, unphased, then 'stretched amazed and singly march into the imaginary.' This encounter - so strange, so typical of flamingos with their fabulous posture - is also still typical of how we interact with animals. Even as our actions threaten their very survival, they are still symbolic, captivating and captive, caught in a drama of our framing.This issue of Freeman's tells the story of that interaction, its costs, its tendernesses, the mythological flex of it. From lovers in a Chiara Barzini story, falling apart as a group of wild boars roams in their Roman neighbourhood, to the soppen emergency birth of a cow on a Wales farm, stunningly described by Cynan Jones, no one has the moral high ground here. Nor is this a piece of mourning. There's wonder, humour, rage and relief, too.Featuring pigeons, calves, stray dogs, mascots, stolen cats, and bears, to the captive, tortured animals who make up our food supply, powerfully described in Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk's essay, this wide-ranging issue of Freeman's will stimulate discussion and dreams alike.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Graveyard of the Pacific
A vivid portrait of the Columbia River Bar that combines maritime history, adventure journalism, and memoir, bringing alive the history—and present—of one of the most notorious stretches of water in the worldOff the coast of Oregon, the Columbia River flows into the Pacific Ocean and forms the Columbia River Bar: a watery collision so turbulent and deadly that it’s nicknamed the Graveyard of the Pacific.Two thousand ships have been wrecked on the bar since the first European ship dared to try to cross it in the late 18thcentury. For decades ships continued to make the bar crossing with great peril, first with native guides and later with opportunistic newcomers, as Europeans settled in Washington and Oregon, displacing the natives and transforming the river into the hub of a booming region. Since then, the commercial importance of the Columbia River has only grown, and despite the construction of jetties on either side, the bar r
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Gettysburg
From the critically acclaimed author of All Joe Knight and White Man’s Problems, a hilarious and wildly engaging novel about a forty-seven-year-old lawyer and producer in Hollywood, who takes part in a Civil War reenactment to escape the monotony of his ordinary lifeAs a young man, John Reynolds fled his provincial hometown of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for Los Angeles, lured by the promise of a life fueled by the excitement of show business. But after twenty years in Hollywood, Reynolds feels existentially unfulfilled. He resides in a beautiful mansion with his wife and daughter, and his business is booming, but Reynolds remains despondent as his attempts to pivot into producing his own movie projects fail again and again.Depressed and at a creative dead-end, Reynolds finds himself inexplicably drawn back to the historical setting of his youth: he has secretly signed up to participate in a weekend-long reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in the unlikely California town of Enchino, sixty miles east of Los Angeles. Just before his departure, an ex-Playmate—the very centerfold of Reynolds’s adolescent daydreams—pitches him her idea for a reality TV show. When Reynolds impulsively invites the former Playmate and her best friend, a former Miss Universe, to accompany him to the reenactment, his plans for a solitary weekend of self-discovery run amok.With a compulsively readable narrative that offers a satirical portrait of Hollywood—the deal-making, the politics, the pitches—Gettysburg is an intelligent and powerful book about contemporary America.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Land of Flickering Lights: Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics
We had become the land of flickering lights, in which the standard of success was not what we were doing for the next generation of Americans, or to enhance our role in the world, but instead whether we had kept government open for another few minutes.”—Michael Bennet From Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, a powerful up-to-the-minute book that lifts the veil on the dysfunctional inner workings of the U.S. Senate through five critically important case studies out of today’s headlines and offers strong suggestions for ending our hyper-partisan politics The Land of Flickering Lights is a unique contribution to American political writing at this or any other time. Senator Michael Bennet lifts a veil on the inner workings of Congress to reveal, in his words, “through a series of actual stories—about the people, the politics, the motives, the money, the hypocrisy, the stakes, the outcome—the pathological culture of the capital and the consequences for us all.” Bennet unfolds the dramatic backstory behind five episodes crucial to the well-being of all Americans. Each of them exemplifies the hyper-partisan politics that have upended our democracy: The highly politicized confirmation battles over judicial nominations at all levels—epitomized by ugly and unprincipled fights over seats on the Supreme Court; The passage of the Trump tax law, which massively increased our national debt and widened economic inequality across the country; The shredding of the Iran nuclear deal, which undermined our national security, caused friends and foes alike to doubt America’s word, and made a mockery of the longstanding bipartisan tradition in foreign policy; The pervasive corruption unleashed by “dark money” in policies and how big donors have been able to stymie urgent action on climate change and many other issues; The sabotage by a congressional minority of the “Gang of Eight’s” bi-partisan deal to reform America’s immigration policies, a deal that would have comprehensively addressed the immigration issues that bedevil us to this day. With frankness and refreshing candor, and in elegant prose, Bennet pulls the machinations behind these episodes into full public view, shedding vital new light on our political dysfunction today. Arguing that each of us has a duty to act as a founder, he will inspire Americans of all political persuasions to demand that the “winners” of our political battles be all the American people, nor one party or the other.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press War Dances
In his first new fiction since winning the National Book Award for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, best-selling author Sherman Alexie delivers a virtuoso collection of tender, witty, and soulful stories that expertly capture modern relationships from the most diverse angles. War Dances brims with Alexie's poetic and revolutionary prose, and reminds us once again why he ranks as one of our country's finest writers. With bright insight into the minds of artists, entrepreneurs, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with average men on the brink of exceptional change: In the title story, a son recalls his father's "natural Indian death" from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor; "The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless," dissects a vintage clothing store owner's failing marriage and courtship of a Puma-clad stranger in airports across the country; and "Breaking and Entering" recounts a film editor's fateful confrontation with an thieving adolescent. Brazen and wise War Dances takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. The new beginnings, successes, mistakes, and regrets that make up our daily lives are laid bare in this wide-ranging new work that is quintessential
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Book of the Little Axe
A BOOKLIST EDITOR’S CHOICE BOOK OF THE YEARAmbitious and masterfully-wrought, Lauren Francis-Sharma’s Book of the Little Axe is an incredible journey, spanning decades and oceans from Trinidad to the American West during the tumultuous days of warring colonial powers and westward expansion. In 1796 Trinidad, young Rosa Rendón quietly but purposefully rebels against the life others expect her to lead. Bright, competitive, and opinionated, Rosa sees no reason she should learn to cook and keep house, for it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm she, alone, views as her birthright. But when her homeland changes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free black property owners—Rosa’s family among them—will be allowed to keep their assets, their land, and ultimately, their freedom. By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Montana with her children and her husband, Edward Rose, a Crow chief. Her son Victor is of the age where he must seek his vision and become a man. But his path forward is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept from him. So Rosa must take him to where his story began and, in turn, retrace her own roots, acknowledging along the way, the painful events that forced her from the middle of an ocean to the rugged terrain of a far-away land.
£18.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story
In the early 1990s, Motorola, the legendary American radio and telecom company, made a huge gamble on a revolutionary satellite telephone system called Iridium. Light-years ahead of anything previously put into space, built on technology for Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars,” Iridium was a mind-boggling technical accomplishment that sent waves of panic through phone companies around the world, because, surely, Iridium was the future of communication. Only months after launching service, bankruptcy was inevitablethe largest to that point in American history. It looked like Iridium would go down as just a science experiment.”That is, until Dan Colussy got a wild idea. Colussy, a retired former President of Pan Am, heard about Motorola’s plans to de-orbit” the system and decided he would try to buy Iridium. Somehow, the little guy figured he could turn around one of the biggest blunders in the history of business.Eccentric Orbits masterfully traces the development of satellite technology, the birth of Iridium, and Colussy’s tireless efforts to stop it from being destroyed, despite having doors slammed in his face by all of Wall Street. Piecing together funding from a motley group of investors that included a mysterious Arab prince and friends of Jesse Jackson, he eventually made his case before the most powerful people at the Clinton White House, the Pentagon, the FCC, intelligence services, and a consortium of thirty banks, pleading for the only phone that works at the ends of earth. Eccentric Orbits is a rollicking, unforgettable tale of innovation, failure, the military-industrial complex, and one of the greatest deals of all time.
£14.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Insatiable: Porn A Love Story
Asa Akira (28) has already had an extremely unusual life. Educated at the United Nations International School in Manhattan, she soon was earning a good living by stripping and working as a dominatrix at a sex dungeon. Akira has now built up a reputation for being of the most popular, hardworking, and extreme actors in the business, winning dozens of awards for her 330+ movies, including her #1 bestselling series "Asa Akira Is Insatiable". In Insatiable, Akira recounts her extraordinary life in chapters that are hilarious, shocking, and touching. In a wry, conversational tone, she talks about her experiences shoplifting and doing drugs while in school, her relationship with other porn stars (she is married to one) and with the industry at large, and her beliefs about women and sexuality. Insatiable is filled with Akira's unusual and often highly amusing anecdotes, including her visit to a New Hampshire sex shop run by a mother and son. In a world where porn is increasingly becoming part of the mainstream, Akira is one of very few articulate voices writing from the inside. She something important, controversial, and astonishingly interesting to say about sex and its central role in our culture.
£12.82
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Brown Dog: Novellas
What Harrison does on every page of Brown Dog is have fun . . . not simply for the sake of delight but because he believes delight is as close to sublimity as humans can get. . . . The great project of life, he reminds us, is to sit still long enough to appreciate it.” Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book ReviewBrown Dog is . . . an everyman on the most fundamental level . . . vividly, evocatively, alive. . . . These novellas read like a nuanced conversation between author and character. . . . Masterful.” David Ulin, Los Angeles TimesNew York Times best-selling author Jim Harrison is one of America’s most beloved writers. Of all his creations, Brown Dog has earned cult status with readers in the more than two decades since his first appearance, scrambling to stay out of jail after his salvage-diving operation uncovers the frozen body of an Indian man in the waters of Lake Superior. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, now in paperback, this book gathers together all the Brown Dog novellas, including one that has never been published.Brown Dog is a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian, a former pulp cutter who looks on work as something to do when he needs money, far inferior to the pleasures of fishing. Of course, the flip side of this is that he’s never far from catastrophe. Overindulging in food, drink, and women while just scraping by, B.D. meets a nubile archaeologist who presses him for the location of a sacred Native American burial ground; the ensuing flirtation with radicalization results in B.D. wandering Los Angeles in search of a stolen bearskin. When he returns home a little older and wiser, B.D. will seek out family and end up pining for the lesbian social worker who’s pushing him toward stability. The collection culminates with He Dog,” written for this book, which finds B.D. still marginally employed and looking for love (or sometimes just a few beers and a roll in the hay) as he goes on a road trip from Michigan to Montana and back, in search of an answer to the riddle of family and, perhaps, a chance at redemption.Witty and poignantly human, Brown Dog underscores Harrison’s place as one of America’s most irrepressible writers, and one of our finest practitioners of the novella form. It is the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison’s irresistible everyman.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Exploding the Phone
Before smartphones, back even before the Internet and personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell's revolutionary "harmonic telegraph," by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same. Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T's monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell's Achilles' heel. Phil Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of "phone phreaks" who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, the explosion of telephone hacking in the counterculture, and the war between the phreaks, the phone company, and the FBI. The product of extensive original research, Exploding the Phone is a ground-breaking, captivating book.
£13.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world's most influential and memorable structures - from the 1967 modular housing scheme in Montreal known as Habitat to the Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore. For Safdie, the way a space functions is fundamental; he is deeply committed to architecture as a social force for good, believing that any challenge, including extreme population density and environmental distress, can be addressed with solutions that enhance community and uplift the human spirit.If Walls Could Speak takes readers behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works - from the spark of imagination through the design process, the model-making, the politics, the engineering, the materials. Relating memorable stories about what has inspired him - from childhoods in Israel and Montreal to the projects and personalities worldwide that have captured his imagination - Safdie reveals the complex interplay that underpins every project and his vision for the role architecture can and should play in society at large. Illustrated throughout with drawings, sketches, photographs, and documents from his firm's voluminous archives, If Walls Could Speak is a book like no other, and will forever change the way you look at and appreciate any built structure.
£22.50
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Small Fry
Vogue's Best Books of the Year, 2018Sunday Times' Best Memoirs of the Year, 2018A New York Times Book of the YearNew Yorker Book of the YearA frank, smart and captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs.Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents - artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs - Lisa Brennan-Jobs's childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa's father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, holidays and private schools. His attention was thrilling, but he could also be cold, critical and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa decided to move in with her father, hoping he'd become the parent she'd always wanted him to be.Small Fry is Lisa Brennan-Jobs's poignant story of a childhood spent between two imperfect but extraordinary homes. Scrappy, wise and funny, young Lisa is an unforgettable guide through her parents' fascinating and disparate worlds. Part portrait of a complex family, part love letter to California in the seventies and eighties, Small Fry is an enthralling book by an insightful new literary voice.
£16.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press A Lily of the Field
Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack' (Daily Telegraph), the Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.Vienna, 1934. Ten-year-old cello prodigy Meret Voytek becomes a pupil of concert pianist Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany.The Isle of Man, 1940. An interned Hungarian physicist is recruited for the Manhattan Project in Los Alomos, building the atom bomb for the Americans.Auschwitz, 1944. Meret is imprisoned but is saved from certain death to play the cello in the camp orchestra. She is playing for her life.London, 1948. Viktor Rosen wants to relinquish his Communist Party membership after thirty years. His comrade and friend reminds him that he committed for life...These seemingly unconnected strands all collide forcefully with a brazen murder on a London Underground platform, revealing an intricate web of secrecy and deception which Detective Frederick Troy must untangle.
£8.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press theMystery.doc
Rooted in the western United States in the decade post-9/11, theMystery.doc follows a young writer and his wife as he attempts to write his second book, a national epic he hopes will last forever, and as he searches for a form that will express the world as it has become, revealing the interconnectedness of all our lives. Pop-up ads, internet search results, spam, lines of code, frames of film and television mix with canonical works of literature, alchemical manuscripts, transcripts of personal conversations, and the story of a man who wakes up one morning not knowing who he is, a blank document called themystery.doc newly appeared on his computer. Part love story, part prose poem, part documentary, part existential whodunit, part future-fiction, part Bildungsroman, part memoir, theMystery.doc is about the quest to find something lasting in a world where everything is in danger of slipping away. Love, loss, birth, death, technology, terrorism and the American Dream come together to form a great symphonic work that dazzles in both its structure and in its deep emotional resonance.
£22.50
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Old Flames
Written by 'a sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack'- Daily TelegraphThe Inspector Troy series is perfect for fans of Le Carré, Philip Kerr and Alan Furst.London, 1956.Khrushchev and Bulganin, leaders of the Soviet Union, are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy is assigned to be Khrushchev's bodyguard and to spy on him. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead and mutilated beyond recognition in Portsmouth Harbour. What was he doing under the hull of Khrushchev's ship, and who sent him there? Meanwhile, cold-blooded killings have started to follow Troy wherever he goes. Is it possible that the executioner is a fellow policeman, or, worse still, an old friend?
£9.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Gaddafi's Harem: The Story of a Young Woman and the Abuses of Power in Libya
Soraya was a schoolgirl in the coastal town of Sirte, when she was given the honour of presenting a bouquet of flowers to Colonel Gaddafi, "the Guide," on a visit he was making the following week. This one meeting - a presentation of flowers, a pat on the head from Gaddafi - changed Soraya's life forever. Soon afterwards, she was summoned to Bab al-Azizia, Gaddafi's palatial compound near Tripoli, where she joined a number of young women who were violently abused, raped and degraded by Gaddafi. Heartwrenchingly tragic but ultimately redemptive, Soraya's story is the first of many that are just now beginning to be heard.In Gaddafi's Harem, Le Monde special correspondent Annick Cojean gives a voice to Soraya's story, and supplements her investigation into Gaddafi's abuses of power through interviews with other women who were abused by Gaddafi, and those who were involved with his regime, including a driver who ferried women to the compound, and Gaddafi's former Chief of Security. Gaddafi's Harem is an astonishing portrait of the essence of dictatorship: how power gone unchecked can wreak havoc on the most intensely personal level, as well as a document of great significance to the new Libya.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Core of the Sun
The Eusistocratic Republic of Finland has bred a new human sub-species of receptive, submissive women, called eloi, for sex and procreation, while intelligent, independent women are relegated to menial labour and sterilized. Vanna, raised as an eloi but secretly intelligent, needs money to help her doll-like sister, Manna.Vanna forms a friendship with a man named Jare, and they become involved in buying and selling a stimulant known to the Health Authority to be extremely dangerous: chilli peppers. Then Manna disappears, and Jare comes across a strange religious cult in possession of the Core of the Sun, a chilli so hot that it is rumoured to cause hallucinations. Does this chilli have effects that justify its prohibition? How did Finland turn into the North Korea of Europe? And will Vanna succeed in her quest to find her sister, or will her growing need to satisfy her chilli addiction destroy her? Johanna Sinisalo's tautly told story of fight and flight is also a feisty, between-the-lines social polemic - a witty, inventive, and fiendishly engaging read from the queen of 'Finnish Weird'.
£8.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Hammer to Fall
It's London, the swinging sixties, and by rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, in the wake of an embarrassing disaster for MI6, Wilderness has been posted to remote northern Finland in a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money: smuggling vodka across the border into the USSR. He strikes a deal with old KGB pal Kostya, who explains to him there is a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union - but there is something fishy about Kostya's sudden appearance in Finland and intelligence from London points to a connection to cobalt mining in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb. Wilderness's posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too.Moving from the no-man's-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends (including Inspector Troy) and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of deception and skulduggery, of art and politics, a page-turning story of the always riveting life of the British spy.
£8.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Case of the Vanishing Blonde
Six captivating true-crime stories, spanning Mark Bowden's long and illustrious career, cover a variety of crimes complicated by extraordinary circumstances. In The Case of the Vanishing Blonde, the veteran reporter revisits some of his most riveting stories and examines the effects of modern technology on the journalistic process.From a story of a campus rape in 1983, to three cold cases solved by the inimitable private detective Ken Brennan, an LAPD investigation that unearths a murderer within its own ranks and the darkest corners of internet chatrooms, this collection contains all the best the genre has to offer. Gripping true crime from 'an old pro' (Wall Street Journal).
£14.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Flight
£12.64
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me
£13.86
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Funny Stuff: The Official P. J. O'Rourke Quotationary and Riffapedia
£13.59
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
£24.07
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom
Buddhist teacher and anthropologists Joan Halifax delves into - the shadow side of being, found in the root truths of Native religions, the fecundity of nature, and the stillness of meditation.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird
Pigeons have been worshipped as fertility goddesses and revered as symbols of peace. Domesticated since the dawn of man, they’ve been used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States and are credited with saving thousands of lives. Charles Darwin relied heavily on pigeons to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet today they are reviled as rats with wings.” Author Andrew D. Blechman traveled across the United States and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to find out how we came to misunderstand one of mankind’s most helpful and steadfast companions. Pigeons captures a Brooklyn man’s quest to win the Main Event (the pigeon world’s equivalent of the Kentucky Derby), as well as a convention dedicated to breeding the perfect bird. Blechman participates in a live pigeon shoot where entrants pay $150; he tracks down Mike Tyson, the nation’s most famous pigeon lover; he spends time with Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Pigeon Handler; and he sheds light on a radical pro-pigeon underground’ in New York City. In Pigeons, Blechman tells for the first time the remarkable story behind this seemingly unremarkable bird.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press A Place to Stand
£14.03
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1918-1937
£16.95
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Ficciones
The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century. Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges’s Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges’s genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.
£12.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press History of Wolves: A Novel
Finalist for the Man Booker Award. Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Winner of the GLCA New Writers Award for Fiction. One of theNew York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2017; An NPR and MPR Best Books of 2017; #1 Indie Next Pick; A New York Times Editors’ Choice; A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection; One of USA Today’s Notable Books; An Amazon Best Book of the Month; An ABA Indies Introduce Selection “The chilly power of History of Wolves packs a wallop that’s hard to shake off . . . an elegant, troubling debut.” —Los Angeles Times “Starkly affecting . . . one of the year’s most lauded debuts.” —Entertainment Weekly Teenage Linda lives with her parents in the austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outsider at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is faced with child pornography charges, his arrest deeply affects Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong. And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy. But with this new sense of belonging comes expectations and secrets she doesn’t understand and, over the course of a summer, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. One of the most daring literary debuts of the year and a national bestseller, History of Wolves is an agonizing and gorgeously written novel from an urgent, new voice in American fiction. “Imagine one of those twisty ‘Girl’-titled mysteries in the hands of a great stylist. Fridlund’s debut is something like that, but better . . . an indelible story of fascination and dread.” —New York magazine “This captivating debut from a prodigious new talent injects taut suspense into a teenage girl’s awakenings as she confronts a web of mysteries in the chilly woods of Minnesota. A lavishly written novel with more than a glimmer of dread.” —O Magazine, one of 10 Titles to Pick Up Now
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer
On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey,an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare.After young sailors began suddenly dying with mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, which Churchill denied. Undaunted, Alexander defied British officials and persevered with his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads - a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive - who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research.Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.
£17.09
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars
Full Service is the ultimate guilty pleasure, revealing for the first time the shadow lives of the people who created popular culture, told by the man who was so central to fulfilling their desires.Scotty Bowers, a dashing young ex-Marine exuding sex appeal, arrived in Hollywood in 1946 and quickly caught the attention of many of the town's stars. Working out of a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard, Bowers soon became the go-to guy for anyone looking for a bespoke sexual partner; no matter how outlandish the tastes, Scotty could find someone for everyone...In his thirty years 'tricking' and arranging tricks for LA's rich and famous, Bowers went to bed with thousands of people and engineered sexual liaisons of all flavours for countless more.
£10.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Commander of the Exodus
Hailed by The New York Times as "one of the most inventive, brilliant novelists in the Western world," internationally renowned Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk turns his hand to nonfiction to bring us his most important work yet. Commander of the Exodus animates the story of Yossi Harel, a modern-day Moses who defied the blockade of the British Mandate to deliver more than 24,000 displaced Holocaust survivors to Palestine while the rest of the world closed its doors. Of the four expeditions commanded by Harel between 1946 and 1948, the voyage of the Exodus left the deepest impression on public consciousness, quickly becoming a beacon for Zionism and a symbol to all that neither guns, cannons, nor warships could stand in the way of the human need for a home. With grace and sensitivity, Kaniuk shows the human face of history. He pays homage to the young Israeli who was motivated not by politics or personal glory, but by the pleading eyes of the orphaned children languishing on the shores of Europe. Commander of the Exodus is both an unforgettable tribute to the heroism of the dispossessed and a rich evocation of the vision and daring of a man who took it upon himself to reverse the course of history. "[Yossi Harel's] remarkable achievements have been engraved in history by the talent of Yoram Kaniuk." -- Ehud Barak, prime minister of Israel
£9.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Alexander the Great
The facts of Alexander's life are extraordinary, and it's no surprise that two major Hollywood films on his life are in production. Born Alexander III, king of Macedonia, and the first king to be called "the Great," he was born in 356 BC and brought up as crown prince. Taught for a time by Aristotle, he acquired a love for Homer and an infatuation with the heroic age. When his father Philip divorced Olympias to marry a younger princess, Alexander fled. Although allowed to return, he remained isolated and insecure untilP hilip's mysterious assassination about June 336. Alexander was at once presented to the army as king. Winning its support, he eliminated all potential rivals. No sooner had Alexander ascended the throne, than the Illyeians and other Northern tribes, which had been subdued by his father Philip, erupted into Macedonia, but they were quickly dispatched by the armies of Alexander. Some Grecian states, with Athens and Thebes at their head, thinking this a favorable oppurtunity, attempted to shake off the macedonia yoke; but the sudden appearance of the youthful Alexander in their midst soon put an end to all resistance. Thebes was taken by strom and razed to the ground, only the house of the poet Pindar and several other dwellings being spared; and the inhabitants were sold into slavery. Athens and the other Greek states immeaditly submitted, and were generously pardoned by Alexander. Then he took up Philip's war of aggression against Persia, adopting his slogan of a Hellenic Crusadeagainst the barbarian. He defeated the small force defending Anatolia, proclaimed freedom for the Greek cities there while keeping them under tight control, and, after a campaign through the Anatolian highlands (to impress the tribesmen), met and defeated the Persian army under Darius III at Issus (near modern Iskenderun, Turkey). He occupied Syria and--after a long siege ofTyreE--Phoenicia, then entered Egypt, where he was accepted as Pharaoh. From there he visited the famous Libyan oracle of Amon (or Ammon,identified by the Greeks with Zeus). The oracle hailed him as Amon's son (two Greek oracles confirmed him as son of Zeus) and promised him that he would become a god. His faith in Amon kept increasing, and after his death he was portrayed with the god's horns. After organizing Egypt and founding Alexandria, Alexander crossed the Eastern Desert and the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and in the autumn of331 defeated Darius's grand army at Gaugamela (near modern Irbil, Iraq). Darius fled to the mountain residence of Ecbatana, while Alexander occupied Babylon, the imperial capital Susa, and Persepolis. Alexander acted as legitimate king of Persia, and to win the support ofthe Iranian aristocracy he appointed mainly Iranians as provincial governors. Yet a major uprising in Greece delayed him at Persepolis until May 330 and then, before leaving, he destroyed the great palace complex as a gesture to the Greeks. At Ecbatana, after hearing that the rebellion had failed, he proclaimed the end of the Hellenic Crusade and discharged the Greek forces. He then pursued Darius, who had turned eastward. Darius was assassinated by Bessus, the satrap of Bactria, who distrusted his will to keep fighting and proclaimed himself king. As a result, Alexander faced years of guerrilla war in northeastern Iran and central Asia, which ended only when he married (327) Rozana, the daughter of a localchieftain. The whole area was fortified by a network of military settlements, some of which later developed into major cities. During these years, Alexander's increasing preoccupation outside of Greece led to trouble with Macedonian nobles and some Greeks. Parmenion, Philip II's senior general, and his family originally had a stranglehold on the army, but Alexander gradually weakened its grip. Late in 330, Parmenion's oldestson, Philotas, commander of the cavalry and chief opponent of the king's new policies, was eliminated in a carefully staged coup d'etat, and Parmenion was assassinated. Another noble, Cleitus, was killed by Alexander himself in a drunken brawl. (Heavy drinking was acherished tradition at the Macedonian court.) Alexander next demanded that Europeans follow the Oriental etiquette of prostrating themselves before the king--which he knew was regarded as an act of worship by Greeks. But resistance by Macedonian officers and by the Greek Callisthenes (a nephew of Aristotle who had joined the expedition as the official historian of the crusade) defeated the attempt. Callisthenes was then executed on a charge of conspiracy. With discipline restored, Alexander invaded (327) the Punjab. After conquering most of it, he was stopped from pressing on to the distant Ganges by a mutiny of the soldiers. Turning south, he marched down to the mouth of the Indus, engaging in some of the heaviest fighting and bloodiest massacres of the war. He was nearly killed while assaulting a town. On reaching the Indian Ocean, he sent the Greek oooooofficer Nearchus with a fleet to explore the coastal route to Mesopotamia. Part of the army returned by a tolerable land route, while Alexander, with the rest,marched back through the desert of southern Iran, chiefly to emulate various mythical figures said to have done this. He emerged safely in the winter of 325-24, after the worst sufferings and losses of the entire campaign, to find his personal control over the heart of the empire weakened by years of absence and rumors of his death. On his return, he executed several of his governors and senior officers and replaced others. In the spring of 324, Alexander held a great victory celebration at Susa. He, and 80 close associates, married Iranian noblewomen. In addition, he legitimized previous so-called marriages between soldiers and native women and gave them rich wedding gifts, no doubt to encourage such unions. When he discharged the disabled Macedonian veterans, after defeating a mutiny by the estranged and exasperated Macedonian army, they had to leave their wives and children with him. Because national prejudices had prevented the unification of his empire, his aim was apparently to prepare a long-term solution (he was only 32)by breeding a new body of high nobles of mixed blood and also creating the core of a royal army attached only to himself. In the autumn of 324, at Ecbatana, Alexander lost his boyhoodfriend Hephaestion, by then his grand vizier--probably the only person he had ever genuinely loved. The loss was irreparable. After a period of deep mourning, he embarked on a winter campaign in the mountains, then returned to Babylon, where he prepared an expedition for the conquest of Arabia. Weakened from numerous battles, he died in June 323 without designating a successor. His death opened the anarchic age of the Diadochi. Alexander at once became a legend. Greek accounts blended almost incredible fact with pure fiction (for example, his meeting withthe Queen of the Amazons). What remains as fact are Alexander's indisputable military genius and his successful opportunism and timing in both war and politics. The success of his ambition, at immense cost in terms of human life, spread Greek culture far into central Asia, and some of it--supported and extended by the Hellenistic dynasties--lasted for centuries. It also led to an expansion of Greek horizons and to the acceptance of the idea of a universal kingdom, which paved the way for the Roman Empire. Moreover, it opened up the Greek world to new Oriental influences, which would lay the groundwork for Christianity.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Warlock
Johnny Lundgren, a.k.a. Warlock, is an unemployed foundation executive who, after surviving a midlife crisis, finally decides to get a job. Warlock soon gets hired by a crazy, but genius doctor as a trouble-shooter, where he's tasked with everything battling poachers in the haunted wilderness of northern Michigan to investigating his employer’s wife and son in the seamy underside of Key West. A comedy with one foot in the abyss, Warlock is what the New York Times called “farcical, reflective, luscious, gritty” entertainment from one of this country’s most beloved authors.
£11.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Should the Tent Be Burning Like That?: A Professional Amateur’s Guide to the Outdoors
For more than twenty years, Bill Heavey—a three-time National Magazine Award finalist—has staked a claim as one of America’s best writers. In feature stories and his Field & Stream column “A Sportsman’s Life,” as well as other publications, he has taken readers across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. Should the Tent Be Burning Like That? gathers together a wide range of Heavey’s best work. He nearly drowns attempting to fish the pond inside the cloverleaf off an Interstate Highway four miles from the White House. He rents and crashes a forty-four-foot houseboat on a river in Florida. On a manic weeklong deer archery hunt in Ohio, he finds it necessary to practice by shooting arrows into his motel room’s phonebook (the blunt penetrates all the way to page 358, "KITCHEN CABINET—REFACING & REFINISHING"). Accompanying a shaggy steelhead fanatic—Mikey, who has no job or fixed address but owns four boats—on a thousand-mile odyssey up and down the California coast in search of fishable water, he comes to see Mikey as a purer soul than almost anyone he has ever met.Whatever the subject, Heavey’s tales are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill, and a testament to the enduring power of the natural world. Whether he’s hunting mule deer in Montana, draining cash on an overpriced pistol, or ruminating on the joys and agonies of outdoor gear, Heavey always entertains and enlightens with honesty and wit.
£17.99