Search results for ""Renard Press Ltd""
Renard Press Ltd Wit and Acid 2: Sharp Lines from the Plays of George Bernard Shaw - Volume II
'If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.' One of the most prolific and respected playwrights of the twentieth century, Bernard Shaw's legacy shows no signs of waning, and his beautifully written plays, laced with wry wit and invective alike, have seen countless performances over the years, their finest lines paraded in literary conversation and review. Meticulously selected by Simon Mundy, the Wit and Acid series collects the sharpest lines from Shaw's oeuvre in small neat volumes, allowing the reader to sample some of the very best barbs and one-liners the twentieth century has to offer, and this, the second volume, covers lines from the great writer's works published after 1911. With an introduction by Simon Mundy, a poet, novelist, trenchant music critic and occasional playwright.
£8.03
Renard Press Ltd Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
The poetry of Dylan Thomas has long been heralded as amongst the greatest of the Modern period, and along with his play, Under Milk Wood, his books are amongst the best-loved works in the literary canon. First published in 1940, at the height of his fame, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is a collection of short autobiographical stories that paint fascinating and humorous portraits of life in rural Wales, and pre-empt characters and traits that echo throughout his later work. Now rightly considered one of the most important volumes in his oeuvre, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is the key to unlocking the great poet's work.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd Almost Adult
Hope’s leaving her home town up north for the bright lights of London. It’s going to be mind-blowing. Attractive Hinge dates, mature new friends… A job at a dinosaur-themed bar? Hell. Yes. Several months in things are looking slightly less rosy. Her housemate seems to hate her and her manager’s a creep… But we don’t need to talk about that. Do we? Almost Adult is a brilliantly funny play that lays bare the darker side of slick modern workplaces and the underhand employment practices that police them – or fail to – with stunning lightness of touch.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd The Bab Ballads: A New Selection
'"What?" said the reverend gent, "Dance through my hours of leisure? Smoke? Bathe myself with scent? Play croquet? Oh, with pleasure!"' Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, but another of his great - and numerous - literary contributions were his humorous ballads, written and illustrated under the pseudonym 'Bab'. Combining his trademark absurdist wit with keenly observed character studies, the ballads are a satirical tour de force that lambast society figures. This new selection, chosen and introduced by Andrew Crowther, Secretary of the W.S. Gilbert Society, brings together the very best of the ballads and presents the 'Bab' works for a new readership.
£9.36
Renard Press Ltd Art, Wealth and Riches
William Morris is perhaps best known today for the beautiful textile designs he created under the banner of Morris & Co, which continue to decorate homes around the globe. As one of the leading lights of British socialism, however, he is less well known, and this series of Morris's Manifestos seeks to highlight his extraordinary contribution to the literary canon on subjects socialist and artistic. Based on a lecture given at the Manchester Royal Institution in 1883, Art, Wealth and Riches is a thought-provoking essay that considers art as having educative and aesthetic value that should be shared with the many, rather than financial value that should be hoarded by the few. Morris asks: 'Is art to be limited to a narrow class who only care for it in a very languid way, or is it to be the solace and pleasure of the whole people?'
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Opera Obscura: A Wholly Improbable Selection of Impossible Opera
Many musical and theatrical traditions walk the very narrow path between the sublime and the ridiculous, but perhaps none more so than opera, which, while maintaining an elegant reputation, makes a show out of princes making romantic speeches to soft fruit, noses being accidentally cut off and woodpeckers performing wedding ceremonies. Opera Obscura is a beautifully illustrated collection that contributes twenty-five brand new impossibly madcap operas to the canon of magnificent absurdities, along with the intricate blueprints for several incredible opera houses and information on of a whole range of almost unbelievably incredible instruments.
£15.00
Renard Press Ltd Silent Movements
Silent Movements brings all Simon Mundy’s experience in politics and the music business together. Set in 1980 at the end of the Cold War, it tells the story of a Soviet violinist being helped by a young British cellist to defect. Along the way Mundy accurately depicts the challenges and excitement of concert performance. As Julian Lloyd Webber says, ‘Simon Mundy really knows the point where music, politics and history collide. He also understands the processes of a performer’s life.’
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd Shadows on the Island
The Caribbean island of St James in the 1980s should have been paradise. Instead the post-independence rulers turned it into a perverted and corrupt private fiefdom. The US would not act because its Government is anti-communist and American privateers wanted to keep it that way. Britain didn’t care enough to intervene officially. The disgusting practices of the Prime Minister and his family were too much to ignore, though. Philip Goshawk was sent to try to find a solution. In this atmospheric political thriller James Eno catches the dark mood just beneath the surface glamour of islands in the sun.
£11.99
Renard Press Ltd Seeking the Spoils
Seeking the Spoils is a fast-moving thriller from James Eno that contrasts the raw beauty of Scotland with the machinations of the European Parliament. Young MEP Seona Mackenzie and New York Times journalist Gaynor Schultz finds themselves in a battle to save the landscape from the combined threat of corporate greed and political corruption.
£9.36
Renard Press Ltd On Reading: Bookshop Memories, Good Bad Books, Nonsense Poetry, Books vs. Cigarettes and Confessions of a Book Reviewer
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. On Reading, the seventh in the Orwell’s Essays series, collects together Orwell’s short essays on books – ‘Bookshop Memories’, ‘Good Bad Books’, ‘Nonsense Poetry’, ‘Books vs. Cigarettes’ and ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’ – giving a rounded view of the great writer’s opinions on the literature of his day, and the vessels in which it was sold.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell set out 'to make political writing into an art', and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature - his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell's essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Shooting an Elephant, the fifth in the Orwell's Essays series, tells the story of a police officer in Burma who is called upon to shoot an aggressive elephant. Thought to be loosely based on Orwell's own experiences in Burma, the tightly written essay weaves together fact and fiction indistinguishably, and leaves the reader contemplating the heavy topic of colonialism, with the words 'when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys' echoing from the page.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd The Woman's Labour
Eighteenth-century poetry was dominated by men of education and wealth, and bookcases sagged under the weight of volumes by Swift, Johnson and Pope. When Stephen Duck’s The Thresher’s Labour was published in 1730, however, it was a sensation – highlighting the plight of the working class in verse was hereto simply unthought of. Duck’s poem came to the attention of Mary Collier, a washerwoman working in Hampshire, who was astounded to read Duck’s dismissal of women as work-shy layabouts who indulged in ‘noisy prattle’, and she penned a stinging riposte, The Woman’s Labour, which reframed Duck’s relation of harvest-time toil from a woman’s perspective. This edition of The Woman’s Labour seeks to give a wider view of the conversation, and includes The Thresher’s Labour, ‘The Three Wise Sentences’ (which Collier included in the first publication of her reply), ‘An Epistolary Answer to an Exciseman Who Doubted Her Being the Author’ and the elegy she wrote for Stephen Duck after he died.
£8.03
Renard Press Ltd Politics and the English Language
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Politics and the English Language, the second in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. In an age where the language used in politics is constantly under the microscope, Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze
Fantomina, or, Love in a Maze is a novella by Eliza Haywood which charts an unnamed female protagonist’s pursuit of the charming, shallow Beauplaisir. Dealing with major themes such as identity, class and sexual desire, and first published in 1725, Fantomina subverts the popular ‘persecuted maiden’ narrative, and reaches a climax which would have shocked its contemporary readership. Moving to London, a young woman – let’s call her Fantomina – meets a dashing man at the theatre. After a short, but intense, fling, Beauplaisir grows bored of Fantomina, and leaves her. Outraged that she should be so treated, Fantomina discards her disguise in favour of another, and sets off in hot pursuit of her victim, and a game of cat and mouse begins. This edition features an introduction by Dr Sarah R. Creel, Bethany E. Qualls and Dr Anna K. Sagal of the International Eliza Haywood Society.
£8.03
Renard Press Ltd The Decorative Arts Their Relation to Modern Life and Progress and The Manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
The second in the Morris's Manifestos series, The Decorative Arts is a passionate argument against the homogenisation of production, and a cry for art to make itself seen in design art will make our streets as beautiful as the woods, as elevating as the mountainsides.'
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Love and Freindship
Jane Austen, one of the nation’s most beloved authors, whose face adorns our currency, surely needs no introduction, but while many are familiar with her groundbreaking novels, and despite lending its name to a film adaptation of Lady Susan in 2016, her burlesque Love and Freindship is an unjustly neglected gem of satirical comedy. Written when she was still in her teens, Love and Freindship is a fascinating, light-hearted epistolary work that shows Austen’s wit developing into the satirical prowess she is remembered for, and casts the novels with which her name is so associated in a new light.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd The Gift of the Magi
First published in 1905, O. Henry's masterpiece, The Gift of the Magi, is a moving short story that highlights the plight of the poor at Christmastime. Desperately in love but destitute, Della and Jim try to find ways to drum up the cash for presents for one another, but in the end find they have sacrificed too much along the way. An ode to love and a warning against the consequences of capitalism, The Gift of the Magi has stood the test of time and has sadly never been more relevant. Part of Renard's successful Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to the Three Peas, a small charity supporting refugees.
£6.04
Renard Press Ltd Inside the Whale
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Inside the Whale, the eighth in the Orwell’s Essays series, discusses Henry Miller’s controversial Tropic of Cancer, and considers the driving power behind the great books of the 1930s. Comparing Miller with other literary giants, Orwell lambasts the notion that all literature is good, forcing the reader to think for themselves, with his final words ringing in their ears: ‘five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.’
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd The Inheritors
We inherit the lineage we're all born into, with its history and its contradictions, with the very beautiful and the very ugly, neither of which we can have a hand in being able to change.'The family of Nisar Chowdhury moves from Dhaka to Chicago when he is just thirteen, and he grows up feeling estranged from both lands. Thirty years on, he returns to the city of his birth, only to find it changed beyond recognition. Rekindling old relationships and trying to get to grips with his father's decision to sell off their remaining properties in the city, Nisar must navigate the labyrinth of a society that has moved on without him. The Inheritors is a vivid portrait of a city giddy with the march of change.
£10.04
Renard Press Ltd The Prophet
First published in 1923, The Prophet is a collection of twenty-six poetic fables that centre around the prophet Al Mustafa, who, boarding a boat in the city of Orphalese, where he has lived for many years, prepares to sail home. On the voyage Al Mustafa is approached by a group of travellers, with whom he discusses deep topics - love, friendship, passion, pain, religion - and The Prophet becomes a manual and spiritual guide. This edition features the original illustrations prepared by the author, as well as an introduction by Dr Daniele Nunziata, which introduces the great work for a new generation.
£8.03
Renard Press Ltd Every Trick in the Book
'There's only control, control of ourselves and others. And you have to decide what part you play in that control.' Cast your eye over the comfortable north London home of a family of high ideals, radical politics and compassionate feelings. Julia, Paul and their two daughters, Olivia and Sophie, look to a better society, one they can effect through ORGAN:EYES, the campaigning group they fundraise for and march with, supporting various good causes. But is it all too good to be true? When the surface has been scratched and Paul's identity comes under the scrutiny of the press, a journey into the heart of the family begins. Who are these characters really? Are any of them the 'real' them at all? Every Trick in the Book is a genre-deconstructing novel that explodes the police procedural and undercover-cop story with nouveau romanish glee. Hood overturns the stone of our surveillance society to show what really lies beneath.
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Renard Press Ltd Foggerty's Fairy
‘Take care. The consequences of an act are often much more numerous and important than people have any idea of.’ Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, a creative partnership that diverged over the supernatural. Unlike Sullivan, Gilbert was a great fan of fairy tales, and Foggerty’s Fairy, one of his most unjustly neglected plays, is a brilliant farcical comedy that hinges on the wish-granting of a fairy. Loosely based on his short story ‘The Story of a Twelfth Cake’, Foggerty’s Fairy considers the dangers of playing with the past. Trying to shore up his relationship, a man enlists a fairy’s help to make a few tweaks in his past – he soon realises, however, these small changes have made great waves through time, and his present becomes unbearable.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd Saki's Plays
The undisputed master of the short story, Saki's name is synonymous with brilliant writing that satirises Edwardian Society, and his plays were no exception. In his only full-length play, 'The Watched Pot', Trevor Bavvel, sole heir to a country estate, is in want of a wife, but must operate under the strict attention of his miserly mother Hortensia. Although wildly neglected today, Saki's plays met with widespread acclaim in his day, and he was even compared favourably with the great Oscar Wilde. This complete edition of Saki's plays - the first complete edition ever published - demonstrates the great writer's prowess as a playwright, and sparkles with the same wit as the short stories that have enchanted generations of readers.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd Still Lives
'The glow of my cigarette picks out a dark shape lying on the ground. I bend down to take a closer look. It's a dead sparrow. I wondered if I had become that bird, disoriented and lost.' Young, handsome and contemptuous of his father's traditional ways, PK Malik leaves Bombay to start a new life in America. Stopping in Manchester to visit an old friend, he thinks he sees a business opportunity, and decides to stay on. Now fifty-five, PK has fallen out of love with life. His business is struggling and his wife Geeta is lonely, pining for the India she's left behind. One day PK crosses the path of Esther, the wife of his business competitor, and they launch into an affair conducted in shabby hotel rooms, with the fear of discovery forever hanging in the air. Still Lives is a tightly woven, haunting work that pulls apart the threads of a family and plays with notions of identity. Shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize, Winner of the Reader's Choice Award at the Diverse Book Awards 2023
£10.04
Renard Press Ltd In the Clouds: The Impressions of a Chair
In 1878 Gustave Flaubert looked on in horror as his publisher picked up a manuscript from the mysterious stage actress Sarah Bernhardt and published it in place of a new edition of his latest work, and watched it go on to become an instant bestseller, achieving international fame. Narrated by a chair in a hot-air balloon, In the Clouds is a light-hearted, humorous tale that follows a character reminiscent of Bernhardt through the skies above Paris. Sadly the story sunk into obscurity, lying out of print in the English language for much of the twentieth century. Featuring the original illustrations by Georges Clairin, and in a fresh edit of the first English translation, this edition seeks to bring the tale to a new generation of readers.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd The Burglar's Christmas
'He drew a long sigh of rich content. The old life, with all its bitterness and useless antagonism and flimsy sophistries, its brief delights that were always tinged with fear and distrust and unfaith, that whole miserable, futile, swindled world of Bohemia seemed immeasurably distant and far away, like a dream that is over and done.' First published in 1896, The Burglar’s Christmas is a short story by the great American writer Willa Cather. Set in Chicago on a cold Christmas Eve, the down-and-out Crawford learns the value of forgiveness. (Part of Renard’s Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to Three Peas, a small refugee charity. This year, instead of a Christmas card, why not send a book?)
£6.04
Renard Press Ltd Saki's Cats
Saki’s Cats rounds up the tales about cats, big and small, by the undisputed master of the short story. ‘Tobermory’, one of Saki’s most famous pieces, demonstrates the danger that would ensue from granting cats the power of speech – animals have long lurked unseen, eavesdropping, in the background. The tom in ‘The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat’ is the only one to enjoy his meal, as is the leopard in ‘The Guests’. In ‘The Penance’ and ‘Mrs Packletide’s Tiger’, hunters who put cats in their sights are humiliated and blackmailed. ‘The Achievement of the Cat’ considers how cats have come to be served by the human race. In addition to the short stories about cats, Saki’s Cats also collects Saki’s juvenile letters to his sister Ethel about the tiger cub he adopted while living in Burma. The feisty felines of these tales are the only clear winners, and, with a characteristic smirk and dash of his pen, it is Edwardian Society that Saki sends slinking off, tail between its legs.
£8.03
Renard Press Ltd A Letter to a Hindu
Dated the 14th of December 1908, A Letter to a Hindu was a letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Tarak Nath Das, a Bengali revolutionary and scholar, in response to a request for support for India’s separation from British rule, which argued that the Indian people should seek to free themselves from British rule through non-violent protests and strikes, and other forms of peaceful resistance. The letter soon gained international attention after it was published in the Free Hindustan, and it came to the attention of the young Mahatma Gandhi. Drawing on a variety of sources, cultures and teachings, Tolstoy’s letter was instrumental in forming Gandhi’s views on non-violent resistance – as Gandhi himself acknowledges in his introduction: ‘To me, as a humble follower of that great teacher whom I have long looked upon as one of my guides, it is a matter of honour to be connected with the publication of his letter’.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd A Room of One's Own
In October 1928 Virginia Woolf was asked to deliver speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on the subject of 'Women and Fiction'; she spoke about her conviction that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. The following year, the two speeches were published as A Room of One's Own, and became one of the foremost feminist texts. Knitted into a polished argument are several threads of great importance - women and learning, writing and poverty - which helped to establish much of feminist thought on the importance of education and money for women's independence. In the same breath, Woolf brushes aside critics and sends out a call for solidarity and independence - a call which sent ripples well into the next century.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd My Book of Revelations
The countdown to the millennium has begun, and people are losing their heads. A so-called Y2K expert gives a presentation to Scotland's eccentric Tech Laird T.S. Mole's entourage in Edinburgh, and soon long hours, days, weeks and months fill with seemingly chaotic and frantic work on the 'bug problem'. Soon enough it'll be just minutes and seconds to go to midnight. Is the world about to end, or will everyone just wake up the next day with the same old New Year's Day hangover? A book about what we know and don't know, about how we communicate and fail to, My Book of Revelations moves from historical revelations to the personal, and climaxes in the bang and flare of fireworks, exploding myths and offering a glimpse of a scandal that will rock Scotland into the twenty-first century. As embers fall silently to earth, all that is left to say is: Are we working in the early days of a better nation?
£10.04
Renard Press Ltd Do I Bark Like a Dog
Exploring his colourful, rich and often dramatic life in London and summers spent in southern Italy among his large extended family, Do I Bark Like a Dog? considers the roots of Volpe's identity. Delving into family secrets and lies, he discovers how extraordinary events filtered through time to propel his unlikely but successful career in opera.
£12.99
Renard Press Ltd Exile and Other Poems: Centenary Edition
First published in 1923, Exile and Other Poems is an important, poignant collection from one of the foremost Imagist war poets. Penned after witnessing the horrors of the frontline during the First World War, Aldington’s brutal, honest verse lays bare unimaginable experiences. The first part of the collection, ‘Exile’, explores the poet’s survivor’s guilt, post-traumatic stress and sense of alienation. The collection continues with a ‘Songs for Puritans’ and ‘Songs for Sensualists’, pastiches of seventeenth and eighteenth-century love poetry, and a series of more personal poems exploring the natural world, from which Aldington drew reassurance. Enriched with a fascinating introduction and explanatory notes by leading Aldington scholars Elizabeth Vandiver and Vivien Whelpton, this centenary edition seeks to place Exile firmly back on the map of war poetry, from which it has been missing for too long.
£10.04
Renard Press Ltd The Fir Tree
First published in 1844, The Fir Tree is a moving short story about a tree that is so desperate to grow up that it cannot appreciate the present. Following the tree from its early years until it is big enough to be cut down and used as a Christmas tree, it highlights the importance of living in the moment, and offers a topical and bleak outlook on our use of nature. Part of Renard’s successful Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to the Three Peas, a small charity supporting refugees.
£6.04
Renard Press Ltd Waltz With Me
When Maggie Byrne attends the retirement dinner of her old music teacher at the convent school she attended, she discovers she has more in common with the founding nun, Cornelia Connelly, than she previously realised. As events in Maggie’s world progress and relationships break down, Cornelia’s remarkable life waltzes and weaves through Maggie’s, bringing them together through their shared love for music. Inspired by true stories of the nineteenth-century educational pioneer and reverend mother Cornelia Connelly and an ex-student of one of the schools she founded, Waltz With Me paints a moving picture of the challenges of marriage and motherhood, the calling of vocation, the nature of personal sacrifice for a greater cause and the impact of faith, infusing live waltz, sacred and folk music through the unfolding drama.
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Renard Press Ltd The Fragile Land: An Arthurian Allegory
Stories surrounding the legendary King Arthur have been told since time immemorial, and every generation has a new take on the tale. The Fragile Land approaches the legend from a radical angle, setting it firmly in the post-Roman world of late fifth-century Europe, when the language of Britannia was still Brythonic and the Saxons had not yet superimposed their own place names. The Fragile Land chronicles the crucial years of Arthur’s life, from the age of fifteen into his early thirties, as he comes to the fore as elected Overlord, empowered to confront the Barbarian threat and to keep the factious leaders of the island’s kingdoms in some sort of political alliance. Enhanced by a beautifully illustrated map by the artist Kate Milsom, Simon Mundy’s cunningly woven tale of an island in unrest draws subtle parallels with contemporary cultural disputes and casts the legend in a whole new light.
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Renard Press Ltd Queer Ukraine: An Anthology of LGBTQI+ Ukrainian Voices During Wartime
Against the backdrop of brutal invasion, it is much easier for right-wing figures to target marginalised groups, and during wartime the queer community is exceedingly vulnerable to persecution, scapegoating and censorship. Being visibly queer in Ukraine is an act of rebellion in itself, but LGBTQI+ people find ways to express themselves against all odds, to create beyond all constraints. And what is queerness without defiance - the linking of arms, the echo of a hundred voices? Every voice tells a story, and this anthology is a platform for these voices, an archive of their existence. It is time for them to tell their stories on their own terms - and for the rest of the world to stand in solidarity with them. Proceeds from the sales of this book go to a selection of charities supporting LGBTQI+ people in Ukraine. The list is periodically reviewed so that funds go to where they're most sorely needed, but includes: TU Platform Mariupol (Supporting queer youth), Queers For Ukraine (Supporting people with HIV in Ukraine and delivering much-needed hormones for the trans community) and Insight NGO (Humanitarian Aid for the LGBTQI+ community in Ukraine).
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd Never Laura
A mysterious suicide pandemic sweeps the world, leaving nations reeling, pointing fingers. Losing her parents to the tragedy as a child, Laura makes a failed attempt to take her own life, and suffers at the hands of those cast as her protectors. Fourteen years later, still trying to escape her pain, she meets a powerful entrepreneur whose groundbreaking technology offers the ultimate freedom - a soul-flight. Tempted by the promise, she strikes a deal that will change her life for ever. Laura soon discovers that the soul-flight is not quite what it seems, and she is no longer in control of her mind, the confines of her body and the outside world starting to blur. To regain control of herself, Laura must travel into dimensions previously inaccessible and uncover a past she never knew she had. A powerful, thought-provoking tale set in a world transformed by technology, Never Laura is a startling work in which the dance between humanity and artificial intelligence challenges the very essence of who we are.
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Renard Press Ltd 100 Paintings
Revolution has torn through the land, leaving society teetering on a knife edge. A young artist finds himself holed up at the City Hotel with his mother, where he must sing for his supper. In the face of ruin, with a pile of unpaid hotel bills growing out of control, the artist has just three days to produce one hundred artworks before he and his mother are turned out onto the street. Forced to face his demons, the artist struggles to stay on course, and soon finds he has to consider the very nature of art and capitalism if he is to succeed in his task. 'A stunning debut… a profound examination of the value and meaning of being an artist… a series of hilarious tirades hide a deeper exploration of artistry and the ideal conditions for art to be made.' — Broadway World, 'Set in a disturbingly familiar future, this play makes us ponder the true value of art.' — London Pub Theatres Magazine
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men
For many years the victim of smear campaigns by notable male writers, and dismissed as being merely ‘the mother of Mary Shelley’, Mary Wollstonecraft has claimed her rightful title as one of the founders of feminist thought, a movement anchored in her Vindications. Outraged by Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, its use of gendered language and defence of monarchy and hereditary privilege, A Vindication of the Rights of Men turned the tables on philosophy. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman swiftly followed, taking the conversation further, and arguing the case for women’s education. Together, these two seminal works went on to change the course of history, and her arguments continue to hold water today. This edition contains explanatory notes and an introduction by Bee Rowlatt, Chair of the Wollstonecraft Society.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd The Christmas Dinner
'We were ushered into this banqueting scene with the sound of minstrelsy, the old harper being seated on a stool beside the fireplace and twanging his instrument with a vast deal more power than melody. Never did Christmas board display a more goodly and gracious assemblage of countenances.' First published in 1820 in Irving’s masterpiece, The Sketch Book, The Christmas Dinner is a charming tale by the great American writer behind such timeless classics as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Painting the scene of a Christmas dinner spent at the table of Bracebridge Hall, a countryside manor, the merry songs and stories of the dinner table echo with jollity of Christmases long past. (Part of Renard’s Christmas Card Classics series, 25% of the RRP of each book sold goes to Three Peas, a small refugee charity. This year, instead of a Christmas card, why not send a book?)
£6.04
Renard Press Ltd The Prevention of Literature
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In The Prevention of Literature, the third in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell considers the freedom of thought and expression. He discusses the effect of the ownership of the press on the accuracy of reports of events, and takes aim at political language, which ‘consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together.’ The Prevention of Literature is a stirring cry for freedom from censorship, which Orwell says must start with the writer themselves: ‘To write in plain vigorous language one has to think fearlessly.’
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Politics vs. Literature
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. Politics vs. Literature, the fourth in the Orwell’s Essays series, is, at heart, a review of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Having been given a copy of the book on his eighth birthday, Orwell knows it inside out, and thinks highly of it; it is ‘pessimistic’, though, he says – ‘it descends into political partisanship of a narrow kind,’ designed to ‘humiliate man by reminding him that he is weak and ridiculous.’ Using the book as an example of enjoying a book whose author one cannot stand, Orwell goes on to say that he considers Gulliver’s Travels a work of art, leaving the reader to reconsider the books on their own shelves.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Kew Gardens
First published in 1921 as part of her ground-breaking short-story collection Monday or Tuesday, Kew Gardens follows the thoughts of a set of characters walking past a flower bed in the royal botanic garden on a hot July day. Interweaving the thoughts of the characters with depictions of the natural world surrounding them, the narrative flows from mind to mind, from the tranquil flower bed to the bustling city outside. Written in Woolf’s trademark style, brimming with keen observation and rich language, Kew Gardens is both a paean to the natural world and an empathetic exploration of human experience. 'The light fell either upon the smooth, grey back of a pebble or the shell of a snail with its brown, circular veins, or, falling into a raindrop, it expanded with such intensity of red, blue and yellow the thin walls of water that one expected them to burst and disappear… Then the breeze stirred rather more briskly overhead and the colour was flashed into the air above, into the eyes of the men and women who walk in Kew Gardens in July.'
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd The Tower: 1928
First published in 1928, The Tower was Yeats's first collection published after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1923, and it is perhaps the major work that most cemented his reputation as one of the foremost literary figures of the twentieth century. The titular poem, 'The Tower', refers to Thoor Ballylee Castle, a Norman tower that Yeats purchased in 1917, and which formed the basis of the original cover design - evoked in the cover of this edition. The collection also includes some of his most inventive and profound work, and develops deep themes regarding life, love and myth. With explanatory notes, this edition seeks to bring the collection to a greater readership and to offer a more profound understanding of the great poet’s work.
£8.70
Renard Press Ltd The Communist Manifesto
Working men of all countries, unite! First published in 1848, The Communist Manifesto is one of the most influential pieces of writing of all time. Written by two leading German philosophers whose names are now universally known, The Communist Manifesto is a documentation of class struggle and the plight of workers under capitalism, and a call for redress. In it, Marx and Engels lay out a searing account of the damage wrought by capitalism, and set out a route towards an alternative: a society without class, private property or a state. Beating a path for revolution and the overthrow of capitalism, The Communist Manifesto is a stirring call to arms that resounds with truth and power today.
£6.72
Renard Press Ltd Crossing Over
Edie finds the world around her increasingly difficult to comprehend. Words are no longer at her beck and call, old friends won't mind their own business and workmen have appeared in the neighbouring fields, preparing to obliterate the landscape she has known all her life. Rattling around in an old farmhouse on the cliffs, she's beginning to run out of excuses to stop do-gooders interfering when one day she finds an uninvited guest in the barn and is thrown back into the past. Jonah has finally made it to England - where everything, he's been told, will be better. But the journey was fraught with danger, and many of his fellow travellers didn't make it. Sights firmly set on London, but unsure which way to turn, he is unprepared for what happens when he breaks into Edie's barn. Haunted by the prospect of being locked away and unable to trust anyone else, the elderly woman stubbornly battling dementia and the traumatised illegal immigrant find solace in an unlikely companionship that helps them make sense of their worlds even as they struggle to understand each other. Crossing Over is a delicately spun tale that celebrates compassion and considers the transcendent language of humanity.
£10.03
Renard Press Ltd The Green Indian Problem
Set in the valleys of South Wales at the tail end of Thatcher's Britain, The Green Indian Problem is the story of Green, a seven year-old with intelligence beyond his years - an ordinary boy with an extraordinary problem: everyone thinks he's a girl. Green sets out to try and solve the mystery of his identity, but other issues keep cropping up - God, Father Christmas, cancer - and one day his best friend goes missing, leaving a rift in the community and even more unanswered questions. Dealing with deep themes of friendship, identity, child abuse and grief, The Green Indian Problem is, at heart, an all-too-real story of a young boy trying to find out why he's not like the other boys in his class. Longlisted for the Bridport Prize (in the Peggy Chapman-Andrews category)
£10.04
Renard Press Ltd Oh Calm Down
1999. Lucy is in labour. She's just been handed a document to sign and her sense of self is beginning to deteriorate. 2024. Claire is an art student. Her latest panic attack means her art course could be over. Oh, and she can't stop contemplating her own mortality. Claire and Lucy have OCD. But they don't know that yet. Misdiagnosis, mistreatment and misinformation around OCD were rife in 1999 And still are now.
£9.89