In the gloom of the forest floor, fallen branches are sheathed with fungal stripes of yellow and purple. But beneath the colourful surface, the fallen litter is alive with the clandestine workings of fungi.

What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Underground Lovers brings us to our knees, magnifier in hand, to find out.

Fungi offer a way to imagine life differently. In Underground Lovers, Alison Pouliot reaches down to earth, and deeper, to dwell with fungal allies and aliens, discover how fungi hold forests together, and why humans are deeply entwined with these unruly renegades of the subterrain. Told through first-hand stories — from the Australian desert to Iceland’s glaciers to America’s Cascade Mountains — Alison Pouliot shares encounters with glowing ghost fungi and unearths the enigma of the lobster mushroom. Melding science and personal reflection, she explores the fungi that appear after fire, how fungi and climate change interact, the role of fungi in our ecosystems, and much more.

‘An evocative, accessible and important book about one of the most vital, yet hugely ignored, kingdoms on our planet – fungi. After reading this you cannot help but see the world in a different light – and should approach mushrooms and truffles with new relish.’ — Charles Massy, author of Call of the Reed Warbler

‘Anyone who has joined Alison in a forest, anywhere in the world, will know her incredible ability to magnify those microscopic organisms that hold our natural world together, to connect every element of human life — physical, emotional or social — to the function of our natural landscapes. Underground Lovers is like a walk in the forest, pungent and complex, filled with curiosity and wonder, and leaving you with a sense that there is so much more to uncover.’ — Millie Ross, horticulturist and presenter, ABCTV Gardening Australia

‘Sensual and scientific. Dazzling and boundary breaking. Underground Lovers will make you see the world anew.’ — Long Litt Woon, author of The Way Through the Woods

‘The world of fungi is our world even if we don’t know it and can’t see most of it — strange, dazzling, spooky, unpredictable, friendly, deadly, sly. And Alison is the perfect guide. She surprises and informs, delights and warns; makes you wish you could walk with her and her passionate companions. That’s OK. In this book you do.’ — Paul Kelly, songwriter

A lavishly illustrated collection of essays on drawing as a vital intellectual, artistic and life practice, by the artists of the Royal Drawing School.

Drawing is among the most profound ways of engaging with the world. It is absorbing, instinctive – a way not just of seeing, but of understanding what we see.

Ways of Drawing brings together a range of reflections and creative propositions by contemporary artists and teachers associated with the Royal Drawing School, generously illustrated with images by alumni of the School and the work of significant artists past and present. From explorations of artistic development to short, imaginative strategies for seeing the world afresh, it repositions this art form as a vital force in the contemporary world.

Advocating passionately for drawing as both deeply personal and utterly essential, this book is an invaluable companion for artists with all levels of experience looking for new inspirations for their practice.

FROM THE WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE

Birnam Wood is on the move…

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker – or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.

Mircea Cărtărescu is a well-known across Europe as a star of experimental Romanian literature. His sprawling, surrealist novel Solenoid made waves across the continent as it was translated into several languages. However, the quest to find an English translator to take on the task was considered a lost cause for several years, until it the painstaking process was begun by Sean Cotter. We are very pleased to say this ground-breaking novel is finally available in English!

Solenoid is “relentlessly experimental” (New York Times); a literary collage of anecdotes, dreams, and journal entries that weave a metaphysical and mythic narrative about a failed novelist-turned-teacher. It is highly sensory–often to the point of visceral grossness–and oscillates between the mundane and the horrific. At 672 pages it is an ambitious text, and one we are quite excited by.

‘A magnificent, sweeping epic’ JENNIFER SAINT, Sunday Times-bestselling author of ARIADNE
‘Shannon is simply a master of the genre‘ C. S. PACAT, New York Times-bestselling author of DARK RISE
‘A tremendous triumph’ LONDON SHAH, award-winning author of the LIGHT OF THE ABYSS series
‘A gorgeous, glittering epic’ DAILY MAIL
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A return to the world of Samantha Shannon’s Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling The Priory of the Orange Tree
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Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory’s purpose.

To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hroth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow exactly where she wants to be.

The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother’s past is coming to upend her fate.

When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.

Intricate and epic, A Day of Fallen Night sweeps readers back to the world of A Priory of the Orange Tree, showing us a course of events that shaped it for generations to come.

The first illustrated critical monograph of Academy Award–winning writer/director Bong Joon-ho, the visionary behind films such as Parasite, Snowpiercer, Okja, and The Host.

Brilliantly illustrated and designed by the London-based film magazine Little White Lies, Dissident Cinema examines the career of the South Korean writer/director, who has been making critically acclaimed feature films for more than two decades.

“The self-professed founder of the “Bong hive,” as the auteur’s fans call themselves, Han pinpoints not only artistic tics and influences, but also the historical, political and cultural contexts that could go unnoticed by American eyes. Alongside glimpses of maquettes, concept art and Bong’s graphic-novel-like storyboards, collaborators testify to his sense of play. “It’s just constant silliness,” the actress Tilda Swinton tells Han. “I don’t know if I’ve worked in that way with anyone else.” – Read the rest of the New York Times review

Karen Han is a Korean American film and culture writer who has been a contributor to outlets such as the New York Times, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, VICE, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, and Vulture, and she was a Documentary Feature Competition Juror for SXSW in 2019. She became a culture writer for Vox in July 2018, moving over to Polygon in November of 2018. She lives in Los Angeles.

Stephanie LaCava is a writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Vogue, and Interview. Her debut novel, The Superrationals, was published by Semiotext(e) in 2020.

Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New York and heads to to the Pacific Northwest. She’s seeking to escape both the eyes of the world and the echoing voice of that last bad man.

But a chance encounter with a dubious doctor in a graveyard, and the discovery of a dozen old film reels, opens the door to a study of both the peculiarities of her body and the absurdities of her famous family.

At once an analysis of the abandoned 1968 Cannes Film Festival and a literary take on cinema du corp, Stephanie LaCava’s new novel is an audaciously sexy and moving exploration of culture and connections, bodies and breakdowns.

Surreal and seductive collection of stories by Taiwanese American writer and poet K-Ming Chang. Themes of body, memory, queerness and family explored with boundless, dark imagination.

Surreal and seductive – brimming with moths, myths and mothers, nine-headed birds, ghost cousins and storm-chasers – Gods of Want is a startling first collection of short stories from a rising talent.

In ‘Auntland’, a stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking kisses from women at temple and buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prep for citizenship tests. In ‘The Chorus of Dead Cousins’, ghost cousins cross space, seas and skies to haunt their living cousin. In ‘Xif ‘, a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to oust her. In ‘Mariela’, two girls explore each other’s bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark. And in ‘Resident Aliens’, a series of mysterious widows, each harbouring a calamitous secret, make their home in a former slaughterhouse.

K-Ming Chang’s storytelling is fierce, fabulist and feminist. In these uncanny tales, she delves into myth and memory, corporeality and ghostliness, queerness and the quotidian, with boundless imagination.

‘A wonderful, gritty, explosively violent, and beautifully realised debut’ – DAILY MAIL

‘GODKILLER will have you in its grasp from the first pages’ – Samantha Shannon, bestselling author of PRIORY OF THE ORANGE TREE

You are not welcome here, godkiller.

Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins.

Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour.

Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning – something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.

On a hot summer night in August of 1973 DJ Kool Herc and his sister, Cindy, put on a ‘back to school jam’ in the recreation room of their apartment block at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. The rest is history. The birth of hip hop rippled out across the globe, influencing music and fashion for generations.

Early hip hop style focused on customisation – from spray-painted jean jackets and sweatshirts to creased jeans and fat laced sneakers. Before Louis Vuitton had apparel, Dapper Dan designed his own luxury sport wear in addition to one-of-a-kind looks with the logos of MCM, Gucci, and Fendi. Hip hop’s eclectic style eventually evolved into its own apparel brands, from Cross Colours to FUBU to Sean John, Roc-A-Wear, Baby Phat, Billionaire Boys Club, and BAPE. Sections on individual designers run alongside thematic chapters on stylists, record labels, pink, hairstyles, nameplates, hoops, nails, and sneakers.

Each chapter on hip hop style is illustrated with photographs of performers, entrepreneurs, and iconic pieces. New research from journalists who witnessed the developments firsthand and oral histories from celebrities and designers make Fresh Fly Fabulous the definitive source for hip hop style.

Elizabeth Way serves as associate curator at The Museum at FIT and author of Black Designers in American Fashion. Elena Romero serves as assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and is a correspondent for CUNY-TV’s magazine show LATINAS. Slick Rick is an iconic rapper, producer, and trendsetter whose hip hop classic with Doug E. Fresh “La Di Da Di” (1986) helped establish hip hop’s love affair with fashion.