Fiction & Literature (255)

The Wind in the Willows

ISBN: 9781853261220

Author: Kenneth Grahame    Publisher: Wordsworth Editions

A children's classic comes to life in an enchanting dramatization narratedby Alan Bennett. Enter the world of the great river and meet the marvelousriverbank an...


A children's classic comes to life in an enchanting dramatization narratedby Alan Bennett. Enter the world of the great river and meet the marvelousriverbank animals: the poetic Rat, his friend Mole, and the boastful Toad, asthey voyage down the river and into the Wild Wood to great adventures! This exclusive BBC production features a full cast, authentic sound effects andsweeping music to warm hearts young and old.


Pages: 192


Dimensions: 126 x 198 x 8 mm


Publication Date: 01-10-1993


$9.99
Pride and Prejudice

ISBN: 9781853260001

Author: Jane Austen    Publisher: Wordsworth Editions

This ironic novel of manners follows the tale of Elizabeth Bennett and her prejudice for her suitor Darcy. The delineations of middle-class attitudes, moral fir...


This ironic novel of manners follows the tale of Elizabeth Bennett and her prejudice for her suitor Darcy. The delineations of middle-class attitudes, moral firmness and the author's sense of comic and satirical ridicule make Pride and Prejudice" one of the enduring classics."


Pages: 288


Dimensions: 126 x 198 x 19 mm


Publication Date: 01-09-1995


$9.99
Quotable Dickens

ISBN: 9781849532587

Author: Max Morris    Publisher: Summersdale Publishers

This hand-picked collection gathers together Charles Dickens' wisest and wittiest quotations, ranging from his famous and much-loved novels to his lesser-known ...


This hand-picked collection gathers together Charles Dickens' wisest and wittiest quotations, ranging from his famous and much-loved novels to his lesser-known letters, plays and short stories. Quotable Dickens" is an old curiosity shop of a book that's sure to delight all lovers of this great British writer's uniquely humorous and perceptive style."


Pages: 160


Dimensions: 95 x 130 mm


Publication Date: 06-02-2012


$17.99
The Best Book In The World

ISBN: 9781780942247

Author: Peter Stjernstrom    Publisher: Hesperus Press

Author Titus Jensen is waiting for his big break. But he's middle-aged, has rather a fondness for alcohol and no one seems to take him seriously enough. He make...


Author Titus Jensen is waiting for his big break. But he's middle-aged, has rather a fondness for alcohol and no one seems to take him seriously enough. He makes ends meet by giving public readings from obscure books at festivals across Sweden which is okay, but he can't help thinking there has to be more to life for an author of his quality - Eddie X is cool. Eddie X is hip. Eddie X is a hit with the ladies and loves being the centre of attention. A radical poet and regular on the festival circuit, he can't help thinking there has to be more to life for a talented, good-looking man like himself - One night, after a successful event at which Titus reads from The Diseases of Swedish Monarchs and Eddie X waxes lyrical to the thrashing tones of metal band The Tourettes, the unlikely pair get horribly drunk together and hatch a plan. There's only one thing for a budding writer to do to get worldwide recognition: write the best book in the world - a book so amazing that it will end up on all the bestseller lists in every category imaginable: thriller, self-help, cookery, business, dieting - a book that combines everything in one! But there is only room for one such amazing book and as the alcohol-induced haze clears Titus and Eddie X both realise they are not willing to share the limelight. Who will win the race to write the best book in the world, and to what unimaginable lengths will they go to get there first ... ? Hilariously quirky and witty, The Best Book in the World will take you on a meandering race to the finish line, throwing plenty of satirical punches along the way.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 400


Publication Date: 01-09-2013


$34.99
Born to a Red-Headed Woman

ISBN: 9781877578878

Author: Kay McKenzie Cooke    Publisher: Otago University Press

Using the extraordinary capacity of music to revive the places and people from our pasts, this poetic memoir springs from over 50 song titles of song lines and ...


Using the extraordinary capacity of music to revive the places and people from our pasts, this poetic memoir springs from over 50 song titles of song lines and spans more than four decades.
Laconic, wry, subtly philosophical, Kay McKenzie Cooke's new collection carries us from her rural Southland girlhood in the 1950s and 60s to the bitter pressures of adopting out her baby as a teenager in the 1970s, and to her present as grandmother, mother, wife and author.
A plain-spoken honesty, a sensitivity tot he natural world, a gentle humour, a deep sense of how the richness of our relationships lodges in ordinary rituals and routines: all combine in a quietly moving autobiography.
"Born to a Red-Headed Woman" is documentary, vivid, ever grounded in the workaday detail of farming, the changing decades, family, city life and job. Yet at times the language peels right back to the tender nerve of major, formative losses.
If Cooke's observations of the daily are the simple melodic lines that seem to coast on the surface, beneath that runs a rich bass line of meditation on time, on meaning, how to live a life true to oneself, and to familial love.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 72


Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm


Publication Date: 28-04-2014


$25.00
Cloudboy

ISBN: 9781877578809

Author: Siobhan Harvey    Publisher: Otago University Press

"Cloudboy" is a deep-mulling, richly sensitive account of a mother's adjustments to the needs of an autistic child.
This prize-winning suite of poems grow...


"Cloudboy" is a deep-mulling, richly sensitive account of a mother's adjustments to the needs of an autistic child.
This prize-winning suite of poems grows out of extremes of love and frustration, as the poet introduces a bright, unpredictable, markedly individual boy to the rigid, often airless routines of the school system.
Any empathetic parent knows the fears and anxieties of sending a young child into the world of other children, their casual cruelties and dreamy naivety. Each concern in exponentially increased when a child's educational and emotional needs set them apart.
Cloudboy writes his own version of Genesis, he invents a new language; he sketces intricate maps; he reads Aristotle and develops an obsession with Dr Who; he interrupts; he sways; his 'fists come clenched and swinging'. To onlookers, Cloudboy seems troubled, trouble.
Cirrus, cumulus, arcus, stratus: cloud forms speak to Harvey of the phrases of the mother-child bond; the mood-swings and leaps of her child's mind; the mutability of personality; the attraction and evaporation of human kindness; presence and absence; reverie and forgetfulness; the intensity and yet bittersweet transience of early childhood.
With a limber, gorgeously metamorphic sense of sculptural and sonic aspects of poetic form, this book is a tender and detailed atlas of a child's imaginative potential. Yet one of the most remarkable gifts it reveals for us readers is Cloudmother's own finely calibrated perceptions.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 80


Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm


Publication Date: 28-04-2014


$25.00
The Judas Tree

ISBN: 9781927145463

Author: Lorna Staveley Anker    Publisher: Canterbury University Press

LORNA STAVELEY ANKER was born in 1914. She used to joke that this was the cause of the First World War. In truth, the poems in this fine collection reveal her a...


LORNA STAVELEY ANKER was born in 1914. She used to joke that this was the cause of the First World War. In truth, the poems in this fine collection reveal her as New Zealand’s first woman war poet. There are poems here that arise from her childhood memories of Kaiser Bill. Three of her uncles died in France.
She was a ‘war widow’ in the Second World War, one of the civilian casualties who make up what is known as ‘the unsung generation’.
This collection contains the best of her published poems and a substantial number never seen before. Edited with loving care by Canterbury poet Bernadette Hall, this is a book that will open your eyes to our nation’s invisible history, the story of a seemingly ordinary life that proves to be extraordinary in the telling.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 96


Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm


Publication Date: 20-04-2013


$20.00
Edwin's Egg and other poetic novellas

ISBN: 9781877578137

Author: Cilla McQueen    Publisher: Otago University Press

Cilla McQueen was New Zealand Poet Laureate 2009-11. One of her writing projects during her time as laureate was "Serial", which she described as'exploring a sp...


Cilla McQueen was New Zealand Poet Laureate 2009-11. One of her writing projects during her time as laureate was "Serial", which she described as'exploring a space between prose and poetry'. It was published in chapters on the Poet Laureate website.
Retitled "Edwin's Egg and other poetic novellas", this work is now published for the first time in hard-copy format, combining McQueen's evocative text with wonderful images from the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

8 slim volumes in a slipcase.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 264


Dimensions: 108 x 150 mm


Publication Date: 27-03-2014


$39.95
Poems, Parables and Drawings

ISBN: 9780486468228

Author: Kahlil Gibran    Publisher: Dover Publications

The perfect companion to Kahil Gibran's classic, The Prophet, this elegant volume presents an original selection of works by the popular writer and artist. It ...


The perfect companion to Kahil Gibran's classic, The Prophet, this elegant volume presents an original selection of works by the popular writer and artist. It consists of the complete texts and drawings of The Madman and The Forerunner, plus twenty additional illustrations - many long out of print - and a perceptive essay by art historian Alice Raphael.


Pages: 188


Dimensions: 144 x 215 x 18 mm


Publication Date: 01-12-2008


$39.99
On Europe

ISBN: 9781843916215

Author: Mark Twain    Publisher: Hesperus Press

‘In a little while we were speeding through the streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with which books had long ago made us f...


‘In a little while we were speeding through the streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with which books had long ago made us familiar. It was like meeting an old friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the street corner; we knew the genuine vast palace of the Louvre as well as we knew its picture; when we passed by the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it was or to remind us that on its site once stood the grim Bastille, that grave of human hopes and happiness...’

This is a brand new selection of Mark Twain’s views on Europe and the Europeans, taken from several volumes of travelogues recounting his journeys across the continent with wit, vivacity and humour. Few fellow travellers, locals or ideologies are left unscathed. Uproariously funny at times and often cutting with his remarks, Twain always seems to pull it back from the brink and err on the side humour rather than offence. Throughout France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, the food, the language, the customs and the people, no subject escapes analysis of the most amusing kind.

In addition, On Europe provides a captivating snapshot into life late nineteenth-century Europe – Twain’s writing documents the political zeitgeist of a changing era. The author also takes the opportunity to lambast fellow travel writers, lampooning their overwrought style and grandiose emotional outpourings. Following the age-old tradition of new-world travellers returning to the old world, Twain’s account features the usual blend of awe and disillusionment which met Americans in equal measure when confronted with lands so steeped in history and legend and yet now in the grip of modernity.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 120


Publication Date: 29-03-2013


$24.99
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