Search results for ""author annie proulx""
Scribner Book Company Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
£14.93
HarperCollins Publishers Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2
A remarkable collection of short stories set in Wyoming from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Shipping News’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’. ‘Bad Dirt’ is filled with the vivid and willful characters for which Proulx has become known. Each story occupies a community or landscape described in rich and robust language, with an eye for detail unparalleled in American fiction. In ‘The Contest’, the men of Elk Tooth, Wyoming, vow to put aside their razors for two seasons and wait to see who has the longest beard come the 4th of July. Deb Sipple, the moving protagonist of ‘That Trickle Down Effect’, finds that his opportunism – and his smoking habit – lead to a massive destruction. And ‘What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?’ is the story of Gilbert Wolfscale, whose rabid devotion to his ranch drives off his wife and sons. Proulx displays her wit in every story of this stunning collection, as well as her knowledge of the West, of history, of ranching and of farming. Her profound sympathy for characters who must use sheer will and courage to make it in tough territory makes this collection extraordinarily compelling.
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week ‘A subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!’ Bill McKibben ‘I learned something new – and found something amazing – on every page’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx – whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth – comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx’s explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire and America’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest. Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when ‘in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.’ Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display. ‘Magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats’ Guardian ‘Proulx's sparkling book will open your eyes to humanity's reckless trashing of wetlands’ Telegraph ‘A haunting tribute … Proulx’s poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read’ Financial Times
£15.29
HarperCollins Publishers The Shipping News
Annie Proulx’s highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers – the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland. With ‘the aunt’ and his delinquent daughters – Bunny and Sunshine – in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. ‘The Shipping News’ is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Barkskins: Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017 NOW A MAJOR TELEVISION SERIES From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests. In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters – barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years – their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions; the revenge of rivals; accidents; pestilence; Indian attacks; and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse. Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid – in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope – that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.
£13.49
HarperCollins Publishers Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week ‘Magnificent’ Guardian ‘Remarkable … A compact classic!’ Bill McKibben ‘I learned something new – and found something amazing – on every page’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources. Here, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment, and their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit. Travelling from the fens of sixteenth-century England to America’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Fen, Bog and Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation, from one of our greatest prose stylists. ‘A rousing call to action’ Esquire ‘Sparklingly furious … it has a profoundly positive message’ Richard Mabey, Telegraph ‘This haunting tribute … is a pleasure to read’ Financial Times
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and other stories
The inspiration behind ‘Life of Pi’ director Ang Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is one of the short stories to be found in this haunting collection of Wyoming tales. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is set in the beautiful, wild landscape of Wyoming where cowboys live as they have done for generations. Hard, lonely lives in unforgiving country. Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar are two ranch hands, glad to have found each other’s company where none had been expected. But companionship becomes something else on Brokeback Mountain, something not looked for – an intimacy neither can forget. ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was made into an Academy Award-winning film by Ang Lee, and starred Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway.
£9.99
HarperCollins Publishers Close Range: Wyoming Stories
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Shipping News’ comes a collection of short stories inspired by the harsh and unforgiving landscape of Wyoming. Throughout the collection, Annie Proulx invests these stories with an intelligence and black humour that transforms them into something new and surprising. In one story, a slight young man defies his mother’s insults to become a rodeo star, while in another, an octogenarian finds himself drawn back to the ranch that he quit decades before – against his better judgement. Elsewhere, Proulx demonstrates her taste for the macabre in a grisly tale of bad weather, gambling and amputation set a hundred years ago. Inventive, compassionate and wildly funny, these marvellous stories explore the unbreakable bond between a people and their land.
£9.99
Vintage Publishing The Power of the Dog: NOW AN OSCAR AND BAFTA WINNING FILM STARRING BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH
**NOW THE WINNER OF THE 2022 BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR AND TWO 2022 BAFTA AWARDS**Discover Thomas Savage's dark poetic tale of a small town in early 20th century America.Phil and George are brothers and joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley.Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent. Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years.When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins a relentless campaign to destroy his brother's new wife. But he reckons without an unlikely protector.From its visceral first paragraph to its devastating twist of an ending, The Power of the Dog will hold you in its grip.WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ANNIE PROULX'With its echoes of East of Eden and Brokeback Mountain, this satisfyingly complex story deserves another shot at rounding up public admiration' Guardian
£9.99
Vintage Publishing The Power of the Dog: NOW AN OSCAR AND BAFTA WINNING FILM STARRING BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH
**NOW THE WINNER OF THE 2022 BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR AND TWO 2022 BAFTA AWARDS**Discover Thomas Savage's dark poetic tale of a small town in early 20th century America.Phil and George are brothers and joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley.Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent. Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years.When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins a relentless campaign to destroy his brother's new wife. But he reckons without an unlikely protector.From its visceral first paragraph to its devastating twist of an ending, The Power of the Dog will hold you in its grip.WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ANNIE PROULX'With its echoes of East of Eden and Brokeback Mountain, this satisfyingly complex story deserves another shot at rounding up public admiration' Guardian
£9.34
Faber & Faber Rites of Passage: Introduced by Annie Proulx
Introduced by Annie Proulx, lose yourself in an epic naval journey in this Booker Prize-winning historical novel: the first in the acclaimed Sea Trilogy by the author of Lord of the Flies.I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon . . .Edmund Talbot is sailing to Australia in the early nineteenth century. In his journal, he records mounting tensions aboard the ancient, stinking warship, as officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped darkness below decks. But when something happens to Reverend Colley that brings him into a 'hell of self-degradation', it seems that shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself . . .'It is the emotional veracity of life at sea that powers Golding's exceptional writing ... The fury, mystery and challenge.' Kate Mosse 'Golding writes the past as present [with] uncanny skill and tremendous intuition.' Ben Okri'A master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom - necessary, provoking, urgent, rich, complex and rare.' The Times'Golding's best and most accessible story since Lord of the Flies.' Melvyn Bragg'An extraordinary novel.' Observer'A truly noble achievement'. Patrick O'BrienTo The Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy - Book One
£9.99
Dalkey Archive Press Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form
Drawing together a wide range of focused critical commentary and observation by internationally renowned scholars and writers, this collection of essays offers a major reassessment of Aidan Higgins' body of work almost 50 years after the appearance of his first book, 'Felo De Se'.
£21.99