Search results for ""selfmadehero""

In December 1913, the New York World newspaper published the first crossword in history. It appeared in their Sunday supplement, “Fun.” A century later, this absorbing puzzle continues to attract (and infuriate) millions of devotees every day. But the world’s most popular—and seemingly mundane—pastime has a surprising history, filled with intrigue and adventure. Paolo Bacilieri’s FUN transports us from turn-of-the-century New York to present-day Milan, taking in stories of ingenious puzzle makers, ardent solvers, and intellectual luminaries. Part detective story, part docudrama, and interlaced with a fiction of Bacilieri’s own imagining, FUN questions the crossword’s “harmless” status. Sure, it’s fun—but could it also be a form of resistance, of cryptic communication, of espionage?

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Shakespeare turned a tale of unrequited love, family dispute and fatal shipwreck into a miraculously evergreen Christmas favourite. At the beginning of the story, everyone is alone; by the end, everyone - well, almost everyone - has found their other half... Li reimagines Illyra as a 'steampunk' world of snowy mountain tops and lush green valleys.

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One of Shakespeare's greatest and, in recent years, most controversial plays. After borrowing a large sum of money from the Jewish money-lender Shylock, the merchant Antonio faces a devastating credit crunch when his fleet of ships is sunk in a storm. Shylock insists on the small print of his terms and conditions, seeking a literal 'pound of flesh'.

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In 1972, the rock’n’roll messiah ZIGGY STARDUST was born. His provocative play on sexual identity and gender roles laid the foundation for David Bowie’s ascent to becoming one of the most successful pop musicians of all time. Reinhard Kleist’s Starman weaves the gripping tale of this outrageous character’s genesis, rise, and fall, as well as of David Bowie’s hapless efforts in the London music scene before Ziggy’s arrival, and of the struggles he experienced with his own creation at the height of his fame. As Bowie transforms himself, ever more frenetically, into the egocentric rock star he first conceived, the extravagant lifestyle he had only ever imagined threatens to engulf him, and bring everything down before his eyes… [This publication has not been prepared, approved, authorized or licensed by the David Bowie estate or any related entity.]

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Frida Kahlo, remembered as one of the most inspiring personalities of the 20th century, was a woman of two intertwined parts: she was both a charismatic and empowered artist exploring themes of resistance, authenticity, cruelty, and suffering, and a more private person whose wounded body caused her a lifetime of pain that underpinned the many successes and disappointments that marked her time in the world. Revealing and exploring these two Fridas, Francisco de la Mora’s graphic biography – completed with the endorsement and support of the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City – vividly documents the landscapes and environments that inspired her, the dreams and nightmares that drove her, and the many people she loved. It is also a joyously beautiful tribute to her life, her work, her home – and her art. “Frida Kahlo’s work has been widely celebrated as representative of Mexican national and indigenous traditions, and for depicting the female experience and form. Overcoming illness, trauma, and physical injury, her iconic life, and the enduring art she made of it, communicate indomitable strength and the constant possibility of change.” — Circe Henestrosa, Educator and Fashion Curator (co-curator of ‘Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving’ at San Francisco’s de Young Museum in 2020).

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Assigned female at birth, Nathan spends his formative years facing questions without answers. As puberty hits and begins to change his body, it all just feels wrong, and something needs to change for it to feel right. He finds himself at a crucial crossroads. Becoming oneself is the work of a lifetime, no matter our gender, sexuality, or refusal to be limited by such categorizations. For Nathan, his courageous first steps towards discovering his true self happen through transition. Based on a true story, Catherine Castro and Quentin Zuttion explore the tenacity and bravery that such a journey entails while society continues to wrestle with the meaning of identity. Call Me Nathan issues a moving call for understanding, a powerful denunciation of prejudice, and a celebration of everything it means to love.

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Diego Rivera was a revolutionary painter in more ways than one. Attending art school at eleven, by his twenties he counted among the most influential figures of the Parisian art scene of the early 20th century, including Picasso, Modigliani, Braque and Gris. Rivera’s murals, both in his native Mexico and the USA, reflect the contradictory turbulence of his character and times. He met Lenin in Paris, Stalin in Moscow, and offered refuge to Trotsky during his Mexican exile. Meanwhile his work was commissioned by those giants of capitalism, Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. Rivera’s indefatigable industry was matched by his zest for life, accumulating hundreds of lovers and four wives – including Frida Kahlo, whose formidable partnership is also one of the great love-stories of art history. This beautifully realized graphic novel tells the story of the extraordinary life and times of an artist in whom myth and reality fused.

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Forty-something Louise is married to Peter, with whom she has four children. They live in a big house, and on paper everything looks fantastic. But Louise has a secret that she barely dares to admit to herself: a burning desire for women. When I Came Out is the story of a woman who has met society’s expectations throughout her life but finally realizes that she has not been true to herself. From first-time creator Anne Mette Kærulf Lorentzen, this bold and elaborate piece of autobiographical work addresses personal anxieties about coming out later in life and documents her jump from a safe, well-established, heteronormative, middle-class life to living openly as a lesbian. With beautiful drawings using anthropomorphic characters, Anne Mette Kærulf Lorentzen tells her coming out story with charming sensitivity and a loving humour.

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In 1909, while on a fundraising lecture tour in America, Sigmund Freud met Horace Frink, an early disciple of his theories of psychoanalysis, whose traumatic childhood and complicated personal life came to cast a dark shadow over Freud’s professional career. Inspired by this little-known and tragic true story, artist Lionel Richerand and philosopher Pierre Péju have woven a spellbinding and thought-provoking fable of two divorces, three deaths, and a ménage à quatre.

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Emil Zátopek is arguably the greatest Olympic champion of all time. The Czech runner’s three gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics, for the 5,000 meter, 10,000 meter, and marathon is an achievement that has never been matched. His success as a runner made him a national hero, but as a public figure, outspoken and unafraid to take a stand, he was equally impressive. Even before the Helsinki Games, Zátopek had scored a remarkable victory, successfully pressuring the Communist regime to allow his colleague Stanislav Jungwirth, who until then had been excluded on political grounds, to compete. In Zátopek, Jan Novák and Jaromír 99 trace the extraordinary life and times of the great Olympian, from his first meeting with Dana, the love of his life, to the victories that would ensure his lasting legacy.

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The history of wine is the history of civilisation. It is the religious drink par excellence. In Greek mythology, references to wine abound. In the Bible, after the Flood, Noah plants a vineyard. In the Middle Ages, it was in the monasteries and churches that the syrupy drink of antiquity, unpalatable if not diluted, was transformed into the wine we know today. Wine expert Benoist Simmat and artist Daniel Casanave trace the story of wine from its origins in the Mediterranean to the globalised industry of the 21st century. Taking in the innovations that have punctuated wine’s long history, from oak barrel aging to the invention of the bottle, Wine: A Graphic History will leave readers with a fresh view of our own drinking culture.

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In 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart leaves Salzburg for Paris. The French capital promises to liberate the 22-year-old from the suffocating grip of his father, and from a city that is unable to accommodate his genius. But there is no grand entrance for the former child prodigy. When Mozart arrives in Paris, he is cash-strapped, unknown and his French is poor. His mentor, the critic Baron von Grimm, introduces him to a number of Parisian nobles. But recognition is hard-won, and at times the French court appears indifferent to Mozart's talents and disapproving of his spontaneity. Tracing the composer’s six-month stay in the city of lights, Mozart in Paris dramatizes the confrontation between a sparkle-eyed genius and mundane reality. Frantz Duchazeau spotlights a frustrating yet formative period of the composer’s life — and in doing so creates a living, breathing portrait of a man whose music, as Einstein famously said, “was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.”

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After suffering violence and betrayal at home, a young boy flees into an uncompromising landscape ravaged by drought. Without food or water, exposed to the heat of the sun and the violence of his pursuers, the boy sets out across the Spanish plains. An encounter with an elderly goatherd offers hope of survival. The old man can help him stay ahead of the dangers that lie outside—but he can’t fix the internal drama that plays out in the boy’s mind. Nightmares are a constant reminder of a traumatic past and an unstable present. Based on the award-winning novel by Jesús Carrasco, Javi Rey’s Out in the Open is a cinematic graphic novel about escaping abuse and finding humanity in a world torn apart by the violence of men.

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Herman is a reclusive, straight-laced street cleaner—or so it seems to those he works with on the city’s waterfront. But he has an extraordinary hidden talent: the ability to transform his appearance at will. When the unsmiling cinematic genius MIO calls an open audition for her new movie, a queue forms along the waterfront, snaking past the industrial park, the beach, the shipyard, and beyond. On the fourth day, Herman joins it. As he waits, swept up in the frenzy of creative ambition that has overcome the city, his past life becomes increasingly remote. By the time he enters the audition room, he might have lost his job, but his talent remains. Dazzled by Herman’s ability to adapt to any role, MIO deems the rest of the cast redundant, sparking a furious outcry. When the cult director’s new film premieres, with Herman performing every role, it doesn’t get the reaction she expects. Spectacularly drawn, Herman by Trade is a captivating graphic novel about art, identity, and making space for self-expression.

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Three unemployed wasters find themselves embroiled in an unusual dispute with their new neighbours: Carole and her weeping mother. When the shabby Carlisle intervenes in their lives, he incurs the wrath of their landlord – the silent, grinning embodiment of evil, Mr Stapleton – and his mute minion son, Craig. As Mr Stapleton’s malign influence spreads to his housemates, Carlisle takes the fight to his enemy and realises he must sacrifice his life to save the world. Owing more to William Blake than to Stephen King, this brooding, unnerving and absurdist graphic novel deliberately shuns the conventional genre trappings of blood and gore in favour of freak falls of liquorice allsorts, cherubim in cowboy suits and narcotic cavity wall insulation.

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Set mainly in America, with a backdrop of the 1954 race to break the four-minute mile, The Murder Mile is hardboiled detective fiction that follows the investigation into the murder of a fictional athlete attempting to break the world record. Investigator Daniel Stone must navigate frame-ups, conspiracies, cartels, Communism and bribes in his search for the answers surrounding runner Todd “The Phoenix Flyer” Naylor’s death.

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What begins with a seemingly achievable task such as drawing a line of demarcation becomes something far greater for the book’s two comical heroes Miller and Pynchon. Instead, they embark on measuring the Venus transit, through which the distance between the earth and the sun is calculated. With the magnitude of such a task, their personal hopelessness seems to increase, and the more precisely the distances are calculated, the more their own limits become apparent. For the melancholic Pynchon and the ballsy Miller, these abstract numbers represent their personal reality. For Pynchon, who cannot get over the death of his beloved wife, for Miller who unremittingly continues to lose himself in sexual debauchery. A hilarious look at the human condition through time, space and logic.

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Andre Diniz tells the extraordinary story of Mauricio Hora, who lives in one of the most dangerous slums (favelas) in Rio, Brazil. In spite of the odds, Hora has made a name for himself internationally as a photographer. We are led from his challenging childhood living with his drug dealer father up to the present day.

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On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, an incident takes place in a North London park. Chris is accidentally bitten by an excited dog, and aims a defensive kick at it. The owner, well-known polemicist Ivan Grubb, takes to his blog to express his outrage, spinning the story to sit happily within his own narrative. When Ivan and Chris relate the event to their children, they are surprised and confused by the strength of feeling their reactions have provoked. The Park is a delicate examination of how anger, repression and powerlessness can overwhelm even the most logical and well-intentioned person in a confusing modern world.

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1919 – the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire is losing control of the city port of Fiume to pirates. A self-styled "Pirate King", Gabriele d'Annunzio (poet, Italian war hero and Dadaist) storms the city with 3000 loyal Italian footsoldiers. He declares Fiume a free Republic: a utopian city-state, with himself as Commander. The city soon descends into looting and surreal decadence, reminiscent of the last days of Rome. Amid this chaos, the beautiful Mina, a black-haired young singer, is lost in this city gone mad, consumed by a love affair with a young soldier. Haunted by the horror of the trenches, a soldier, Lauriano, hunts Fiume's alleys in vain for the ghost that haunts his dreams.

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But I Really Wanted to Be an Anthropologist is an introduction to the world of Margaux, a charming 30-something living in Paris, navigating the world as an illustrator. This diary documents her day-to-day existence with her boyfriend and young daughter, drinking and smoking, and the difficulties of a persistent and precocious child. Anyone who's ever worn inappropriate shoes to the supermarket or danced around the house in their underwear will be charmed by Motin's irreverent humour.

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In a sleepy village, a retired gentleman is consumed with tales of chivalry. Seeing no impediments, such as logic, propriety or sanity, to fulfilling his dreams, this would-be hero reinvents himself as the Knight-Errant, Don Quixote. He sets out across the arid open country in search of adventures accompanied only his dim-witted squire, Sancho Panza.

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After years as a prisoner in the Bastille, Dr. Manette is reunited with his daughter in England. There, two men – an exiled French aristocrat and a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer – are joined through their love for Lucie Manette. From tranquil London, the action moves to the bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, and soon all fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

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Banned for 27 years and initially published in a heavily censored edition, The Master and Margarita is probably the most important Russian novel of the 20th century. Written as a satire of Stalin's suffocating bureaucracy, the book has inspired Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, The Rolling Stones' song Sympathy for the Devil and the work of many other international artists, writers and musicians.

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This haunting interpretation, exploring the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of a poor student who murders a miserly pawnbroker, is reimagined in Putin-era St. Petersburg. Hailed a 'resounding success', it brings fresh relevance to this chilling tale.

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Shakespeare's famous tragedy unfurls in front of a dramatic manga setting, in which the fair city of Verona becomes a street in the highly fashionable Shibuya district of Tokyo. The swordfights become duals with katanas; the Capulets and the Montagues, opposing Yakuza families. Conflict explodes when Romeo - a bleached-blonde, well-dressed rock star - falls in love with Juliet, the pure and innocent Capulet daughter.

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It is the 4th century B.C.E in Greece. Hipparchia is about to marry the rich son of a family friend when she meets Crates. As the wedding day approaches, Hipparchia becomes increasingly captivated by the views and way of life of this strange philosopher who lives on the streets. Gradually she starts to realize that the safe, comfortable, and cushioned life of luxury that has been mapped out for her is actually one of emptiness, and spiritual imprisonment. Crates and Hipparchia came to develop a central strand of the so-called “Cynical” movement in Athenian philosophy – so-named for the dog-like tenacity or canine fury of their rejection of all conventional values. One of their fundamental principles was that we can only attain true happiness if we are independent of material possessions and social position. Hipparchia was a strong woman who had the courage to live by her own ideals, despite all the prevailing prejudices of her time. Her story continues to speak to ours.

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The Motherless Oven and The Can Opener’s Daughter may have raised more questions than they answered. But The Book of Forks explains everything. Castro Smith finds himself imprisoned within the mysterious Power Station, writing his Book of Forks while navigating baffling daily meetings with Poly, a troubled young woman who may be his teacher, his doctor, his prison guard… or something else entirely. Meanwhile, back home, Vera and Scarper’s search for their missing friend takes them through the chaotic warzone of the Bear Park and into new and terrifying worlds. With The Book of Forks, Rob Davis completes his abstract adventure trilogy by stepping inside Castro’s disintegrating mind, to reveal the truth about the history of the world, the meaning of existence and the purpose of kitchen scales.

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Musician, novelist, poet, actor: Nick Cave (b. 1957) is a Renaissance man. His wide-ranging artistic output—always uncompromising, hypnotic, and intense—is defined by an extraordinary gift for storytelling. In Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, Reinhard Kleist employs a cast of characters drawn from Cave’s music and writing to tell the story of a formidable artist and influencer. Kleist paints an expressive and enthralling portrait of Cave’s childhood in Australia; his early years fronting The Birthday Party; the sublime highs of his success with The Bad Seeds; and the crippling lows of his battle with heroin. Capturing everything from Cave’s frenzied performances in Berlin to the tender moments he spent with love and muse Anita Lane, Kleist’s graphic biography, like Cave’s songs, is by turns electrifying, sentimental, morbid, and comic—but always engrossing.

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This manga recreation of Shakespeare's text transfers the action from Ancient Rome to a future Iraq, once again facing dictatorship after its prolonged struggles to establish a democracy. Part of the successful Manga Shakespeare series, a fusion of classic Shakespeare with manga visuals.

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Constance Maud was at the heart of the British campaign for women’s votes. Her novel No Surrender was published at the height of that struggle and used as a persuasive tool by suffragists. Hailed by Emily Wilding Davison as “a book which breathes the very spirit of our Women’s Movement”, the fast-paced story interweaves the lives of women from all classes working together to bring about change. Our hero Jenny is a small but fierce Lancashire textile mill worker who puts principle before everything. No Surrender is sometimes funny, sometimes violent, but always exciting and authentic. It is highly regarded as an important document of the arguments for and against extending votes to women, for its witty storytelling and for an unflinching depiction of the rapid escalation of violence encountered by the women involved. In this faithful graphic adaptation, creators Scarlett and Sophie Rickard craft a compelling fiction that paints a comprehensive picture of social, political, economic and cultural life in early 20th century Britain that is still acutely relevant today. The graphic format is the embodiment of the suffrage rallycry of “Deeds not Words” and this book is the perfect sister volume to their stunning adaptation of the socialist classic The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

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In 1895, the Lumière brothers invented the cinematograph. Less than a year later, 23-year-old Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker in cinema history, made The Cabbage Fairy, a 60-second movie, for Léon Gaumont, going on to direct over 300 films before 1922. Her life is a shadow history of early cinema, the chronicle of an art form coming into its own. A free and independent woman, rubbing shoulders with luminaries such as Georges Méliès and the Lumières, she was the first to define the professions of screenwriter and producer. She directed the first feminist satire, then the first sword-and-sandal epic, before crossing the Atlantic in 1907 to become the first woman to found her own production company in New Jersey. Alice Guy died in 1969, excluded from the annals of film history. In 2011, Martin Scorsese honoured this cinematic visionary, “forgotten by the industry she had helped create”, describing her as “a filmmaker of rare sensitivity, with a remarkable poetic eye and an extraordinary feel for locations”. The same can be said of Catel & Bocquet’s luminous account of her life.

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A young man flees a disaster at home, and comes to live in the city with his sister, making ends meet by taking a job as a deliveryman – only to encounter a flood of old friends and past acquaintances on his daily route… At first elated by the company of these waifs and strays, their own desperation for work begins to trouble his conscience – but what happens when you can’t deliver help to everyone? Chris W. Kim’s distinctively detailed graphic style embodies an elusively disquieting parable of modern isolation, and of the ties that bind – or fail to bind – society together.

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Providence, Rhode Island, 1928. A dangerous inmate disappears from a private hospital for the insane, his method of escape baffling the authorities. Only the patient’s final visitor, family physician Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett—himself a piece of the puzzle—holds the key to unlocking The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. A macabre mixture of historical investigation, grave-robbing, and bone-chilling revelation, this newly reissued adaptation (in a smaller format, with a foreword by Jeff Lemire and a new cover) artfully lays bare one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most horrifying creations. “This is really the best way to enjoy Lovecraft.” - Boing Boing

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Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck is one of Belgium’s most significant artists, famous for his early contributions to the Northern Renaissance movement of the 15th century. His polyptych classic, the Ghent Altarpiece (or The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb), is considered a masterpiece of European art and one of the most influential paintings ever made. In The Mystic Lamb, the famous Flemish illustrator Jan Van der Veken and history professor Harry De Paepe, produce a series of works in honour of Van Eyck’s coveted treasure. The book discusses Jan Van Eyck and explores why his paintings were so exceptional, as well as the robbery of two parts of the work in 1934, which was never resolved. This is an easy-to-read collection of interesting anecdotes alongside illustrations telling you everything you ever wanted to know about Jan Van Eyck and The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.

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Gerda stands at the window of her nursing home, looking up at the stars. A simple question has been haunting her for years, but until now she’s managed to avoid it: has her life been a happy one? As Gerda negotiates the degradations of old age and the indignity of being cared for by strangers, the past begins to seep into the present. Memories sweep over her. She remembers her life as a bespectacled schoolgirl, bullied for being smart. She remembers her ambition to enter the closed and overwhelmingly male field of astrophysics. And she remembers, most powerfully, that one summer – the summer of her life – during which she would be forced to make the most difficult decision of all: between her career and the love of her life. The Summer of Her Life is a poetic, touching and profound graphic novel that grapples with questions that are too often left unasked. What is it like to spend your twilight years in a home? How do you know whether you’ve made the right choices? And what does it mean, in the end, to be happy?

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It is the long, hot summer of 1976. Hugo, the youngest child of three, is walking with his father in the woods. There, he comes face-to-face with a wolf—and from that moment on, his life will never be the same again. Soon after, a tragic accident leaves Hugo desolate and disoriented. The family, now grieving and incomplete, moves to a new home. Among Hugo’s new neighbors is the Wolf Man—a dangerous recluse, according to the boy next door. Spellbound by the movie The Time Machine and desperate to return to the days before the accident, Hugo draws up plans to build a contraption that will turn back time. But only the Wolf Man has the parts Hugo needs to complete his machine, and that will mean entering his sinister neighbor’s house. Beautifully illustrated in pencil, Wolf is a captivating and poignant graphic novel about confronting childhood grief and overcoming the loss of a loved one.

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“Incredible, inspiring, infinitely readable” — Craig Thompson, author of Blankets “The story was tremendous, a real page-turner. And I loved Michael Kennedy’s artwork.” — Frank Quitely “[Tumult] reads like an art house thriller. An ode to cinema, it has shades of Jim Jamusch or a hipster Hitchcock, and some of the boldest, most original art I’ve seen in years” — Christian Ward “Unique, thrilling and illustrated with gusto” — Michael Allred "Tumult is the coolest indie movie on paper. Oblique, funny and beautiful work from two future comic stars!” — Sean Phillips Adam Whistler has it all, so why does he feel so empty? When he breaks his ankle on a Mediterranean holiday he impulsively ends his relationship, toppling himself into emotional free fall. At a house party he meets—and beds—the lovely Morgan. But when he encounters her a few days later she has no memory of him and introduces herself as Leila. Leila has dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities. People are being murdered and Leila fears that Morgan, the personality Adam first met, is the killer. He doesn’t believe that any part of her is capable of it, so he sets out to unravel the mystery of her past. Tumult is a stylish, contemporary psychological thriller in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith.

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In 1911, Roger Casement was knighted by King George V for his humanitarian work. Five years later, he was hanged for treason. The Trial of Roger Casement traces the astonishing downfall of an Irishman once feted for his compassion but later condemned both as a revolutionary and as a homosexual. Fionnuala Doran follows Casement’s efforts to gain German support for an independent Ireland, his drive to recruit volunteers and his subsequent arrest in County Kerry. This politically charged and enlightening graphic novel pictures Casement’s three-day interrogation at Scotland Yard, his incarceration at the Tower of London and his time in the dock at the Old Bailey. Hopes of a reprieve begin to vanish when his private diaries are seized and circulated by police, but Casement’s defiance never wavers: there, in the courtroom, he delivers one of the greatest speeches of all time.

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In the British Comic Award-winning The Motherless Oven, Scarper Lee asked: “Who the hell is Vera Pike?” In the second part of Rob Davis’ trilogy, we get a chance to find out. This is Vera’s story. Grave Acre is a cruel world of opportunity and control. Vera’s mother is the Weather Clock, the omnipotent and megalomaniacal Prime Minister of Chance. Her father is a can opener. Charting Vera’s unsettling childhood, the book takes us from her home in Parliament to suicide school, and from the Bear Park to the black woods that lie beyond. In the present day, Vera and Castro Smith are determined to see their friend Scarper again – but is he still alive? And if so, can they save him? Can anyone outlive their deathday? Both a sequel and a darkly inventive standalone graphic novel, The Can Opener’s Daughter answers many of the questions posed in The Motherless Oven, while asking plenty more of its own.

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An extraordinary and inventive graphic biography, Steffen Kverneland’s Munch explores the relationships and obsessions that drove the artist behind ‘The Scream’. Using text drawn from the writings of Edvard Munch and his contemporaries, this extensively researched and beautifully drawn graphic novel debunks the familiar myth of the half-mad expressionist painter – anguished, starving and ill-treated – to reveal the artist’s neglected sense of humour and optimism. Born out of a life-long fascination with all things Munch, Kverneland’s award-winning seven-year project is the funniest and most entertaining portrait yet of a complex man and a pioneering artist. “Munch is a dazzling use of sequential storytelling… Rarely have I read a more entertaining biography.” The Comics Journal

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Just over 225 years ago, one of the most incredible odysseys in human history took place. 1,500 men and women were crammed aboard 11 ships and transported to the other side of the planet. They were criminals, outcasts, renegades: the scum of England. Having travelled over 24,000km, across three oceans, they arrived at a country that did not yet exist. For some, it was a one-way trip to hell; for others, it proved an unexpected chance of a new life. Bollée and Nicloux’s 500-page masterpiece is an accurate, perceptive and sympathetic account of the birth of Australia.

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Verloc Nim has travelled with his brother Conrad to the desert planet Ona(ji) to recover the mysterious biorobotic experiment aama. The planet is home to an abandoned group of scientists, who have been left to their fate. In the second volume of Frederik Peeters’ science fiction series, Conrad sets up an expedition to find the professor who has taken aama to another part of the planet. With the assistance of their robot-ape Churchill, Verloc and Conrad embark on a journey that brings spectacular discoveries and unsettling encounters… Aama won the 'Best Series' prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2013.

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In a series of hilarious parodies, Sylvain Coissard and Alexis Lemoine answer the nagging questions of art history: what caused The Scream? Why is Van Gogh’s Yellow Bedroom so suspiciously tidy? Why is Cézanne wearing a bandage in his famous self-portrait? This book is for anyone who wants to know what happened before the Mona Lisa smiled. Or, rather, what might have happened.

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Moomintroll (with a little help from his friends and family) shows us how to explore the world beyond our doorstep, inventing games, making toys, eating good food and having fun... Moomin-style! This handy manual, written by Cally Law, features Tove Jansson's strip cartoons, illustrations and words of wisdom from her Moomin novels, so there will always be something to do, even on rainy days.

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On the run from the mob, a trio of 1920’s Chicago Jazz musicians take a job from an elderly reverend, playing for what they think is his wife’s funeral in the backwoods of Illinois. Unfortunately, the funeral is actually an elaborate cult ritual to raise the spirit of an evil sorcerer who swiftly begins raising the dead and terrorizing the innocent townsfolk. With monsters, moonshiners and mobsters on their trail, the friends must draw upon their various talents to stop this evil, save the townspeople and escape with their lives.

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Hellraisers tells the story of four of the greatest boozers of all time: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed. Robert Sellers and Jake cleverly weave the four biographies seamlessly into one fast-paced adventure of drunken binges, orgies, parties and fun. Told through the eyes of Martin, a wannabe Hellraiser, the story begins in a typical London pub at Christmas time. One by one, each of the four Hellraisers take this disillusioned soul on a personal tour of their childhoods, rise to stardom and chaotic personal lives.

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In October 1958, a young German journalist arrives in Havana, Cuba, and sets out to meet and interview Fidel Castro on behalf of a German newspaper. He finds himself in a country plunged into revolution. From the viewpoint of this young journalist, Kleist presents a detailed look at the life and politics of the Cuban 'Maximo Lider' Fidel Castro, from his childhood to the present day. Beautifully realised in Kleist's bold, striking style, Castro is a unique portrait of one of the most enduring and controversial figures in modern history.

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