ISBN: 9780008245122
Title: Bad Boy of Athens: Classics from the Greeks to Game of Thrones
Author: MENDELSOHN DANIEL


'Mendelsohn takes the classical costumes off figures like Virgil and Sappho, Homer and Horace ... He writes about things so clearly they come to feel like some of the most important things you have ever been told.' Sebastian Barry

Over the past three decades, Daniel Mendelsohn's essays and reviews have earned him a reputation as 'our most irresistible literary critic' (New York Times). This striking new collection exemplifies the way in which Mendelsohn - a classicist by training - uses the classics as a lens to think about urgent contemporary debates.

There is much to surprise here. Mendelsohn invokes the automatons featured in Homer's epics to help explain the AI films Ex Machina and Her, and perceives how Ted Hughes sought redemption by translating a play of Euripides (the 'bad boy of Athens') about a wayward husband whose wife returns from the dead. There are essays on Sappho's sexuality and the feminism of Game of Thrones; on how Virgil's Aeneid prefigures post-World War II history and why we are still obsessed with the Titanic; on Patrick Leigh Fermor's final journey, Karl Ove Knausgaard's autofiction and the plays of Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams, and Noël Coward. The collection ends with a poignant account of the author's boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, which inspired his ambition to become a writer.

In The Bad Boy of Athens, Mendelsohn provokes and dazzles with erudition, emotion and tart wit while his essays dance across eras, cultures and genres. This is a provocative collection which sees today's master of popular criticism using the ancient past to reach into the very heart of modern culture.

Format: Paperback
Price: $28.00

ISBN: 9780544817340
Title: Best American Essays 2018
Author: ALS HILTON & ATWAN ROBERT (EDS)

The Pulitzer-Prize winning and Guggenheim-honored Hilton Als curates the best essays from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites, bringing "the fierce style of street reading and the formal tradition of critical inquiry, reads culture, race, and gender" (New York Times) to the task.

Format: Paperback
Price: $33.00

ISBN: 9781474607759
Title: Best of A. A. Gill
Author: GILL A A

For over twenty years, people turned to A. A. Gill's columns every Sunday - for his fearlessness, his perception, and the laughter-and-tear-provoking one-liners - but mostly because he was the best. 'By miles the most brilliant journalist of our age', as Lynn Barber put it. This is the definitive collection of a voice that was silenced too early but that can still make us look at the world in new and surprising ways.

In the words of Andrew Marr, A.. A. Gill was 'a golden writer'. There was nothing that he couldn't illuminate with his dazzling prose. Wherever he was - at home or abroad - he found the human story, brought it to vivid life, and rendered it with fierce honesty and bracing compassion. And he was just as truthful about himself. There have been various collections of A. A. Gill's journalism - individual compilations of his restaurant and TV criticism, of his travel writing and his extraordinary feature articles. This book showcasesthe very best of his work: the peerlessly funny criticism, the extraordinarily knowledgeable food writing, assignments throughout the world, and reflections on life, love, and death. Drawn from a range of publications, including the Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, Tatler and Australian Gourmet Traveller, The Ivy Cookbook and his books on England and America, it is by turns hilarious, uplifting, controversial, unflinching, sad, funny and furious.

Format: Paperback
Price: $28.00

ISBN: 9781933517407
Title: Bluets
Author: NELSON MAGGIE

Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . . A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. WithBluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, includingSomething Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) andWomen, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.

Format: Paperback
Price: $36.00

ISBN: 9780349141893
Title: Calypso
Author: SEDARIS DAVID


David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.

If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris' cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, 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 realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny-it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris' powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris' darkest and warmest book yet-and it just might be his very best.

Format: Paperback
Price: $28.00

ISBN: 9781472154705
Title: Crying Book
Author: CHRISTLE HEATHER


"A poignant and piercing examination of the phenomenon of tears--exhaustive, yes, but also open-ended. . . A deeply felt, and genuinely touching, book." --Esm Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias

"Spellbinding and propulsive--the map of a luminous mind in conversation with books, songs, friends, scientific theories, literary histories, her own jagged joy, and despair. Heather Christle is a visionary writer." --Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks

Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen-tear-shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear-collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women's tears play in racist violence.

Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle's investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy.

Format: Hardback
Price: $35.00

ISBN: 9781781259368
Title: Dramatic Exchanges The Lives & Letters of the National Theatre
Author: ROSENTHAL DANIEL (EDITOR)

The perfect gift for any theatre loverThere has been always as much drama offstage as on at the National Theatre, and much of it is to be found in the letters, telegrams, scribbled notes and colourful postcards of its main players. - What drove Laurence Olivier to confess: 'The foolishness of my position starts to obsess me'?- Why did Maggie Smith write: 'I am absolutely heartbroken by your decision'?- What prompted Judi Dench to ask: 'Can't you write me a musical so that I can sit on a chair in a fur hat & nothing else and sing RUDE songs?' This book brings together for the first time some of the most inspiring, dramatic and amusing letters from the life of Britain's most beloved theatre: Laurence Olivier's gracious rejection letters, Peter Hall's combative memos, Helen Mirren's impassioned defence of theatrical innovation, fantastical good luck missives and long conspiratorial letters. Together, they reveal the stories behind some of the most lavish, triumphant, daring and disastrous productions in the theatre's history, including Amadeus, Romans in Britain, Laurence Olivier's Othello, Closer, The History Boys and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A rich collection of correspondence like no other, this book offers a fascinating and celebratory look at the world of theatre and beyond.

Format: Trade paperback
Price: $37.00

ISBN: 9780141395463
Title: Essays
Author: ORWELL GEORGE

'Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.'

Format: Paperback
Price: $21.00

ISBN: 9781925498080
Title: Everywhere I Look
Author: GARNER HELEN

Garner is a 2016 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient for her non-fiction writings. The judges praised Garner's work as intelligent, lucid and often disturbing.
PRAISE FOR EVERYWHERE I LOOK
A captivating collection No matter the topic, Garner is a charming and courageous writer whose distinctive voice exemplifies the range of what is possible in personal writing. Publishers Weekly
Garner brings to the collection not only her tremendous powers of observation but a continued employment of those skills to force readers to confront unpleasant truths. The graceful prose with which she delivers her insights will challenge readers to look at what is happening around them. Library Journal (STARRED REVIEW)
Like strolling around in an idiosyncratic, surprising, and informative museum. Kirkus
'Garner is a natural storyteller: her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive. New Yorker
Compulsively readable essays. Observer
Writes with the humor and precision of Joy Williams, the warmth and ferocity of Elena Ferrante, and the investigative rigor of Janet Malcolm.' John Freeman, LitHub
A thoughtful dissection of the emotional anatomy of the everyday . Financial Times UK]
This is Garner in expansive mood writing gracefully about everything from her family to ballet to the dawn service. The Spectator

Garner is a wonderful appreciator: she invites us into the work under review by leading us along the path of discovery she has followed. Open Letters Monthly
Garner s prose is so very pleasant to read dry, relaxed sentences that calmly reach out towards loveliness Her] willingness to look at and truly see the failures of human behavior, in herself no less than in others, that lends her work its power. Guardian
A rich, beautiful book by a poet of the everyday, a sheer master of prose. Australian
A book with a big scope, both in terms of the subjects covered and of the stylistic approaches used to discuss them a great reminder of the range of the essay as form.' Signature
There s not a word wasted or out of place. Garner observes, intuits, shares and cares about the lives she writes about like no-one else. Readers will laugh, cry, squirm and gasp and wonder. It s Garner s unique gift as a writer, and it s beautifully realized in Everywhere I Look. Books + Publishing

Spanning fifteen years of work, Everywhere I Look is a book full of intuition, insight and humor. It takes us from backstage at the ballet to the trial of a woman for the murder of her newborn baby. It moves effortlessly from the significance of moving house to the pleasure of re-reading Pride and Prejudice.

Helen Garner is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Spare Room was published to critical acclaim in 2010. Her work of true crime This House of Grief received international praise.
PRAISE FOR This House of Grief
Garner] doesn't merely listen. She watches, imagines, second-guesses, empathizes, agonizes. Her voice intimate yet sharp, wry yet urgent inspires trust.' Atlantic

She writes with a profound understanding of human vulnerability, and of the subtle workings of love, memory and remorse. Economist

Helen Garner is an invaluable guide into harrowing territory and offers powerful and unforgettable insights.' Kate Atkinson
THIS HOUSE OF GRIEF won the Honorable Mention in the INDIEFAB 2015 Book of the Year Awards, True Crime category
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Format: Paperback
Price: $30.00

ISBN: 9780241971024
Title: Feel Free: Essays
Author: SMITH ZADIE

A New York Times Notable Book

From Zadie Smith, one of the most beloved authors of her generation, a new collection of essays

Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.

Arranged into five sections--In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free--this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network--and Facebook itself--really about? "It's a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore." Why do we love libraries? "Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay." What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? "So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we'd just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes--and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat."

Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, "Joy," and, "Find Your Beach," Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics, as well as Smith's own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive--and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith.

Format: Paperback
Price: $30.00