Becky – Sarah May (Signed)
£14.99Signed by the author.
Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia – Hadley Freeman (Signed)
£16.99Signed by the author.
From Hadley Freeman, bestselling author of House of Glass, comes a searing memoir about her experience with anorexia, and her long journey to full recovery. From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. For the next twenty years, she grappled with various forms of self-destructive behaviour as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. In a brilliant narrative that combines personal experience with deep reporting on the issues around the illness, Freeman details her experiences with anorexia, and how she overcame it. Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story that will be profoundly helpful for those who suffer from an eating disorder, and those who desperately want to understand them.
I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was – Ruby Wax (Signed)
£18.99Signed by the author.
Checking into a mental clinic wasn’t exactly on my radar in 2022. Writing about it wasn’t either. But here we are. I spent a lifetime trying to create a ‘front’ to give everyone the illusion that all is well. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Now I look back and I think, ‘what the f*ck was that all about?’I began the book trying to find meaning by going on various, life-changing journeys, I ended up in a mental clinic; obviously things didn’t work out the way I expected.
This is the story of what happened after the mental car crash . . .
From then on, the journey had to turn inward. It turns out I wasn’t looking for meaning, I was looking for home. I’m not a fiction writer. I can’t fake it. I could say I rode into the sunset, but life isn’t like that unless you’re a cowboy. Truth is I’m not as well as I thought I was.
La Vie: A year in rural France – John Lewis-Stempel (Signed)
£16.99Signed by the author.
The Charente: roofs of red terracotta tiles, bleached-white walls, windows shuttered against the blaring sun. The baker does his rounds in his battered little white van with a hundred warm baguettes in the back, while a cat picks its way past a Romanesque church, the sound of bells skipping across miles of rolling, glorious countryside. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood.
He wanted to be self-sufficient, to make his own wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming. And so, buying an old honey-coloured limestone house with bright blue shutters, the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers. Over that first year, Lewis-Stempel fell in love with the French countryside, from the wild boar that trot past the kitchen window to the glow-worms and citronella candles that flicker in the evening garden.
Although it began as a practical enterprise, it quickly became an affair of the heart: of learning to bite the end off the morning baguette; taking two hours for lunch; in short, living the good life – or as the French say, La Vie.
Ravenous – Henry Dimbleby & Jemima Lewis (Signed)
£16.99Signed by the author.
You may not be aware of this – not consciously, at least – but you do not control what you eat. Every mouthful you take is informed by the subtle tweaking and nudging of a vast, complex, global system: one so intimately woven into everyday life that you hardly even know it’s there. The food system is no longer simply a means of sustenance.
It is one of the most successful, most innovative and most destructive industries on earth. It sustains us, but it is also killing us. Diet-related disease is now the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the developed world – far worse than smoking.
The environmental damage done by the food system is also changing climate patterns and degrading the earth, risking our food security. Few people know the workings of the food system better than Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain, government adviser and author of the radical National Food Strategy. In Ravenous, he takes us behind the scenes to reveal the mechanisms that act together to shape the modern diet – and therefore the world.
Skandar and the Phantom Rider – A. F. Steadman (Signed)
£12.99Signed by the author.
Skandar Smith has achieved his dream to train as a unicorn rider. But as Skandar and his friends enter their second year at the Eyrie, a new threat arises. Immortal wild unicorns are somehow being killed, a prophecy warns of terrible danger, and elemental destruction begins to ravage the Island. Meanwhile, Skandar’s sister, Kenna, longs to join him – and Skandar is determined to help her, no matter what.
As the storm gathers, can Skandar discover how to stop the Island tearing itself apart – before it’s too late for them all? Get ready for more action, unforgettable characters, and mesmerizing world building. Be one of the first to join the adventure
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne – Katherine Rundell (Signed)
£16.99Signed by the author.
The Golden Mole: and Other Living Treasure – Katherine Rundell (Signed)
£14.99Signed by the author.
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this passionately persuasive and sharply funny book, Katherine Rundell tells us how and why.
A lavishly illustrated collection of the lives of some of the Earth’s most astounding animals, The Golden Mole is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck – to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness. A swift flies two million kilometres in its lifetime. That’s far enough to get to the moon and back twice over – and then once more to the moon.
The Lightman System – Roger Hyams
£16.00Signed by the author.
The Little Match Girl Strikes Back – Emma Carroll (Signed)
£12.99Signed by the author.
The New Life – Tom Crewe (Signed)
£16.99Signed by the author.
The New Life is a lyrical debut novel which balances big questions with small and powerful intimacies. Re-imagining a moment in Victorian history, it tracks the stories of two men, the middle-aged John Addington and the younger Henry Ellis, who embark on a project to write a book on the subject of ‘sexual inversion’ – male homosexual love, sexuality, and relationships. Both are married to women, but neither man’s marriage is conventional. John is pursuing a sexually-charged affair with a younger man from a socially-inferior background which his wife is helpless to prevent, while Henry and Edith’s marriage of two minds – intended as a demonstration of how the relationship between men and women might be redefined in The New Life for which they are both striving – comes under strain with the unanticipated intrusion of a third party. Against these human dramas the two men pursue their project, driven by principles and personal desires – but unbeknownst to them the ‘love that dare not speak its name’ is about to be forced out of the shadows and into the harsh, judgmental light of Victorian morality, public opinion, and the press.
Crewe writes with elegance and sympathy. This is a book that, first and foremost, is about people: their thoughts, their dreams, their desires. It is highly charged with sexual energy – the almost unbearable weight and pressure and desire deprived of an outlet: ‘lust as a winter coat worn in summer, never to be taken off’. The world of Victorian London through which his characters move is intensely atmospheric – a swirl of cold rooms, oppressive dark wooden furniture, carriages, labourers, meeting-house crowds, letters flying back and forth – but it is a light sketch to be filled in by the mind of the reader, unencumbered by lengthy descriptions. His observations on the dynamics of couples are subtle and enjoyable. John Addison and Henry Ellis confine the scope of their book to the subject of male inversion, but is often Crewe’s female characters which are the most captivating: the bold Angelica who inserts herself into Henry and Edith’s married life, John spirited teenage daughter, and his quietly suffering wife Catherine, trapped and constrained by her husband’s behaviour and by society’s intolerance.
Crewe – an editor at the LRB who has a PhD in 19th century history from Cambridge – describes himself in the afterword as merrily reshaping and rewriting the facts of the people and events which inspired the book with ‘the enthusiasm of the ex-historian’. In doing so he has created a sharp and sympathetic novel. His extensive suggestions for further reading will no doubt inspire a great many readers to dive deeper into this fascinating period and topic for themselves.
Review by Thomas Laskowski
The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them – Peter Wohlleben (Signed)
£18.99Signed by the author.
In his beloved book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben revealed astonishing discoveries about the social networks of trees and how they communicate. Now, in The Power of Trees, he turns to their future, with a searing critique of forestry management, tree planting, and the exploitation of old growth forests.
As human-caused climate change devastates the planet, forests play a critical role in keeping it habitable. While politicians and business leaders would have us believe that cutting down forests can be offset by mass tree planting, Wohlleben offers a warning: many tree planting campaigns lead to ecological disaster. Not only are these trees more susceptible to disease, flooding, fires, and landslides, we need to understand that forests are more than simply a collection of trees.
Instead, they are ecosystems that consist of thousands of species, from animals to fungi and bacteria. The way to save trees, and ourselves? Step aside and let forests-which are naturally better equipped to face environmental challenges-heal themselves. With the warmth and wonder familiar to readers from his previous books, Wohlleben also shares emerging scientific research about how forests shape climates both locally and across continents; that trees adapt to changing environmental conditions through passing knowledge down to their offspring; and how old growth may in fact have the most survival strategies for climate change.
The Things That We Lost – Jyoti Patel (Signed)
£16.99Signed by the author.
Titanium Noir – Nick Harkaway (Signed)
£18.99Signed by the author.
A virtuosic mashup of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler by way of Marvel – the story of a detective investigating the murder of a Titan, one of society’s most powerful, medically-enhanced elites.
Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases. So when he’s called in to investigate a homicide at a local apartment, he is surprised at first to see that the victim appears to be a rather typical techie. But on closer inspection, he finds the victim is over seven feet tall. And even though he doesn’t look a day over thirty, he is actually ninety years old. Clearly, he is a Titan – one of this dystopian, near-future society’s genetically-altered elites. There are only a few thousand Titans worldwide, all thanks to Stefan Tonfamecasca’s discovery of the controversial T7 genetic therapy, which elevated his family to near godlike status. A dead Titan is big news .. . a murdered Titan is unimaginable.
But Titans are Cal’s specialty. In fact, his ex-girlfriend, Athena, is a Titan. And not just any Titan – she’s Stefan’s daughter, heir to the Tonfamecasca empire. As Cal digs deeper into the murder investigation, he begins to unravel the complicated threads of what should have been a straightforward case, and it soon becomes clear he’s on the trail of a crime whose roots run deep into the dark heart of the world. Titanium Noir is a tightly woven, intricate tale of murder, betrayal, and vengeance.
UPROAR! Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London – Alice Loxton (Signed)
£25.00Signed by the author.
London, 1772: a young artist called Thomas Rowlandson is making his way through the grimy backstreets of the capital, on his way to begin his studies at the Royal Academy Schools.
Within a few years, James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank would join him in Piccadilly, turning satire into an artform, taking on the British establishment, and forever changing the way we view power. Set against a backdrop of royal madness, political intrigue, the birth of modern celebrity, French revolution, American independence and the Napoleonic Wars, UPROAR! follows the satirists as they lampoon those in power, from the Prince Regent to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Their prints and illustrations deconstruct the political and social landscape with surreal and razor-sharp wit, as the three men vie with each other to create the most iconic images of the day.
Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London – Oscar Jensen (Signed)
£10.99Signed by the author.
Compelling, moving and unexpected portraits of London’s poor from a rising star British historian – the Dickensian city brought to real and vivid life. Until now, our view of bustling late Georgian and Victorian London has been filtered through its great chroniclers, who did not themselves come from poverty – Dickens, Mayhew, Gustave Dore. Their visions were dazzling in their way, censorious, often theatrical.
Now, for the first time, this innovative social history brilliantly – and radically – shows us the city’s most compelling period (1780-1870) at street level. From beggars and thieves to musicians and missionaries, porters and hawkers to sex workers and street criers, Jensen unites a breadth of original research and first-hand accounts and testimonies to tell their stories in their own words. What emerges is a buzzing, cosmopolitan world of the working classes, diverse in gender, ethnicity, origin, ability and occupation – a world that challenges and fascinates us still.