Category Archives: Accessories
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane
In April 1871, a constable walking a beat near Greenwich found a girl dying in the mud – her face cruelly slashed and her brains protruding from her skull. The girl was Maria Jane Clouson, a maid for the respectable Pook family, and who was pregnant at the time of her death. When the blood-spattered
The Age of Magic
From Booker Prize-Winner Ben Okri. A group of world-weary travellers discover the meaning of life in a mysterious mountain village. Eight film-makers arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three
Admiral Collingwood: Nelson`s Own Hero
Admiral Lord Collingwood, the eldest son of a Newcastle merchant, went to sea in 1761 at the age of thirteen. In his nearly fifty years in the Navy he rose to become a fine seaman, a master of gunnery, a battle commander the equal of his friend – and rival in love – Nelson. He
Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain
As one of the largest predators left in Britain, the fox is captivating: a comfortably familiar figure in our country landscapes; an intriguing flash of bright-eyed wildness in our towns.; Yet no other animal attracts such controversy, has provoked more column inches or been so ambiguously woven into our culture over centuries, perceived variously as
A Sweet, Wild Note: What We Hear When the Birds Sing
A Guardian `Readers` Choice` Best Book of 2017; Birdsong is the soundtrack to our world. We have tried to capture its fleeting, ephemeral beauty, and the feelings it inspires, for millennia.; In this captivating and lively account, Richard Smyth explores science, music, literature, landscape and the thousand different ways in which birdsong has moved us.
Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one
Bloom
Say `algae` and most people think of pond scum. What they don`t know is that without algae, none of us would exist.; There are as many algae on earth as stars in the universe, and they have been essential to life on our planet for aeons. Algae created our oxygen-rich atmosphere, abundant oceans and coral
New American Stories
The short story is a barometer for the state and shape of literature. New American Stories presents the boldest, most innovative and most resonant fiction coming out of the American literary scene. Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet and Leaving the Sea, has here curated an anthology that gives the lay of the literary
Make It Scream, Make It Burn
`Intelligent, compassionate, and so fiercely, prodigiously brave. This is the essay at its creative, philosophical best` Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries on THE EMPATHY EXAMSA profound exploration of the oceanic depths of longing and obsession, Make It Scream, Make It Burn is a book about why and how we tell stories. It takes the
The Story of a Brief Marriage
Dinesh is a young man trapped on the frontlines between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers. Desensitized to the horror all around him, life has been pared back to the essentials: eat, sleep, survive. All this changes when he is approached one morning by an older man who asks him to marry his
Between Light and Storm: How We Live With Other Species
Beginning with the very origins of life on Earth, Woolfson considers pre-historic human-animal interaction and traces the millennia-long evolution of conceptions of the soul and conscience in relation to the animal kingdom, and the consequences of our belief in human superiority. She explores our representation of animals in art, our consumption of them for food,
Cove
WINNER OF THE BBC NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD 2017Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be there is all but shattered. Now he must pit himself against the pain
Corvus: A Life With Birds
One spring, many years ago, Esther Woolfson`s daughter rescued a fledgling rook. That rook, named Chicken, quickly established herself as part of the family, and other birds, including an irascible cockatiel and a depressive parrot, soon followed. But it was the corvids – members of the crow family – who amazed Woolfson with their personality
The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons From the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness
This fascinating book charts the relationship between Mark Rowlands, a rootless philosopher, and Brenin, his extraordinarily well-travelled wolf. More than just an exotic pet, Brenin exerted an immense influence on Rowlands as both a person, and, strangely enough, as a philosopher, leading him to re-evaluate his attitude to love, happiness, nature and death. By turns
Sabrina
`The best book – in any medium – I have read about our current moment … A MASTERPIECE` Zadie Smith`A masterpiece for our times` ObserverWHERE IS SABRINA? The answer is hidden on a videotape, a tape which is en route to several news outlets, and about to go viral. A landmark graphic novel, already hailed
Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)
Beginning with the election of Donald Trump (โ€The Loneliest Man in the Worldโ€) and expanding back and forth into American history, surveillance, violence against the individual, the denormalizing of misogyny and the rehumanizing of public space. The ultimate focus of the book is climate and feminist activism, bringing Solnit`s trademark deep analysis to bear on
Earthlings
Natsuki isn`t like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two
Slime: A Natural History
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKSlime is an ambiguous thing. It exists somewhere between a solid and liquid. It inspires revulsion even while it compels our fascination. It is a both a vehicle for pathogens and the strongest weapon in our immune system. Most of us know little about it and yet it
