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When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, David Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realisation: it’s impossible to take a vacation from yourself. With ‘Calypso’, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality.
‘Less’ is the story of a 49-year-old writer, Arthur Less, who learns that his former boyfriend is about to get married. To avoid the wedding and heartbreak, he decides to embark on a trip around the world, accepting invitations to a series of half-baked lectures and literary events. From almost falling in love in Paris, almost falling to death in Berlin, to booking himself as the (only) writer on a residency in India, and an encounter in a desert with the last person on earth he wishes to see, ‘Less’ is a novel about missteps, misunderstanding and mistakes.
Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler and Janet Malcolm. Their lives intertwine as they cut through the cultural and intellectual history of America in the twentieth century, arguing as fervently with each other as they did with the sexist attitudes of the men who often undervalued their work as critics and essayists. These women are united by their ‘sharpness’, the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit, a claiming of power through writing rather than position. ‘Sharp’ is a vibrant and rich depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties at night gave out to literary slanging matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books.
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days – as he has done before – and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives – so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before.
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.
The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can’t. Won’t people turn away if they know the real me? You wonder. The me that hates my own child, that put my perfectly healthy dog to sleep? The me who thinks, deep down, that maybe The Wire was overrated? For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening.
Born Eugenia Peterson in early 20th century Russia, Indra Devi was a rebel from earliest childhood. In the 1930s she fled to Berlin, and then – driven by her passion for yoga and a fascination with yogic philosophy – she journeyed to India, at a time when unaccompanied young European women were unheard of. In India she performed perhaps her greatest feat – convincing even the most recalcitrant yogis, from Krishnamurti to Krishnamacharya, to reveal to her the secrets of their art. Written with vivid clarity, and describing the extraordinary spread and popularisation of a philosophical movement, this book brings Indra Devi’s little-known but wholly remarkable story to life.
This is the story of Doaa, an ordinary girl from a village in Syria, who in 2015 became one of five hundred people crammed on to a fishing boat setting sail for Europe. The boat was deliberately capsized, and of those five hundred people, eleven survived; they were rescued four days after the boat sank. Doaa was one of them Рher fianc̩ Bassem, with whom she had fled, was not; he drowned in front of her. Melissa Fleming, the Chief Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, heard about Doaa and the death of 489 of her fellow refugees on the day she was pulled out of the water. She decided to fly to Crete to meet this extraordinary girl, who had rescued a toddler when she was nearly dead herself. They struck an instant bond, and Melissa saw in Doaa the story of the war in Syria embodied by one young woman.
Language is always changing. No one knows where it is going but the best way to future-cast is to look at the past. John Simpson animates for us a tradition of researching and editing, showing us both the technical lexicography needed to understand a word, and the careful poetry needed to construct its definition. He challenges both the idea that dictionaries are definitive, and the notion that language is falling apart.
Born Eugenia Peterson in early 20th century Russia, Indra Devi was a rebel from earliest childhood. In the 1930s she fled to Berlin, and then – driven by her passion for yoga and a fascination with yogic philosophy – she journeyed to India, at a time when unaccompanied young European women were unheard of. In India she performed perhaps her greatest feat – convincing even the most recalcitrant yogis, from Krishnamurti to Krishnamacharya, to reveal to her the secrets of their art. Written with vivid clarity, and describing the extraordinary spread and popularisation of a philosophical movement, this book brings Indra Devi’s little-known but wholly remarkable story to life.
In 2013, Dr Feelgood founder, Blockheads member and musical legend Wilko Johnson was diagnosed with terminal cancer. With ten months to live, he decided to accept his imminent death and went on the road. His calm, philosophical response made him even more beloved and admired. And then the strangest thing happened: he didn’t die. ‘Don’t You Leave Me Here’ is the story of his life in music, his life with cancer, and his life now – in the future he never thought he would see.
Arriving in Naples as a naive young intern at the American Consulate, Katherine is set up on a blind date – at least that’s what she’s expecting. Instead, Salvatore brings her home to eat pizza with his family. But this is no ordinary pizza, and the woman who makes it is no ordinary woman. Katherine and Salve do end up dating – and marrying – but it’s Salvatore’s mother who truly initiates Katherine into Italian society, offering her a culinary and cultural education that marks the beginning of her womanhood. Along the way, Katherine dabbles in dubbing porn, learns to cook an octopus, and fends off frisky Italian suitors. Most importantly, she acquires carnale, the quintessentially Neapolitan sense of living with comfort and confidence in one’s body.
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