A beautiful, full-color dive into the history and future of Studio Ghibli, Japan’s preeminent animation house. In-depth looks at every one of their 26 feature films – including the latest, Earwig and the Witch – means there’s something for everyone, while exclusive interviews and rare director’s commentary plus behind-the-scenes tidbits will excite even the most devoted Ghibli afficionados. A gorgeous, stirring must-have for Studio Ghibli fans and newcomers alike!

From classics like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to the latest work, Earwig and the Witch, this beautiful art book introduces all 26 acclaimed Studio Ghibli films. Take a deep look into Ghibli’s first 3D feature film, Earwig and the Witch, with an exclusive interview with director Goro Miyazaki.

13+

We use salty or artful language to win arguments, slander, cheat, and bully, as well as to express feelings of joy or frustration by swearing or “blowing off steam.” Rik Smits delves into the magic of oaths and profanity, art and advertising, the lure of fake news and propaganda, as well as invective and off-color jokes the world over. This book shows why conversation dies in crowded elevators and what drives us to curse at our laptops. The Art of Verbal Warfare is, when all is said and done, the story of how we can get through life without coming to physical blows.

‘If you want to know why you swear, what counts as a potty mouth in other cultures, and why words can hurt more than sticks and stones, then this rampage of a book is for you: it will amuse, embarrass, provoke, enlighten, and annoy the hell out of you about all forms of dirty language and dirty politics. It is also a passionate defense of the joys and failures Western democracy, liberalism, and rationality — for which using words well really matters.’ — Simon Goldhill, professor of Greek, University of Cambridge, fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and foreign secretary of the British Academy

Rik Smits is a linguist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His books include The Puzzle of Left-handedness, also published by Reaktion Books, and Dawn: The Origins of Language and the Modern Human Mind.

A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS . “This biography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson’s legacy.” -Joyce Carol Oates

Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson’s beloved fiction- flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad.

i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story-with as many levels as grand central station-with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet.

Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson’s college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday – raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories – entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson’s writing over nearly three decades.

The novel is getting sadder. It’s always such a strange feeling – I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their ways.

Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson’s own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson-writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife-up to the light.

Whether it’s diamond-encrusted grills, oversized “truck” style chains, bust-down Rolex and Patek Philippe watches or a Tiffany necklace, jewelry is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture. Glittering, blinged-out jewels are the shining statement of a collective identity: unapologetic, charismatic, and street savvy.

Spanning the history of hip-hop jewelry, from the 1980s to today, Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History is a stunning compilation of storytelling and visuals. Hundreds of extraordinary images of every major hip-hop artist on record celebrate how “Ice” has become a proclamation of identity and self-expression.

Starting with Run-DMC’s gold Adidas pendants and Eric B. & Rakim’s ostentatious dookie rope chains and Mercedes medallions, the jewelry then transforms from street style into a booming design culture. The hip-hop tradition of “show up and show out” reaches new heights with artists like Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, Gucci Mane, and Cardi B, whose over-the-top pieces integrate unique pop culture references, unconventional materials, and enduring collaborations with artists like Takashi Murakami.

Author Vikki Tobak reveals – in great detail – the work of pioneering jewelers such as Tito Caicedo of Manny’s, Eddie Plein, and Jacob the Jeweler as well as newer artisans such as Avianne & Co., Ben Baller/IF & Co., Greg Yuna, Johnny Dang, Eliantte, and many more.

Ice Cold is a treasure trove of dazzling, inspirational style, featuring the work of leading photographers, including Wolfgang Tillmans, Janette Beckman, Jamel Shabazz, Timothy White, Gillian Laub, David LaChapelle, Danny Clinch, Chris Buck, Mike Miller, Phil Knott, Raven B. Varona, Al Pereira, Albert Watson and many more.

A foreword by hip-hop superstar Slick Rick and essays by A$AP Ferg, LL COOL J, Kevin “Coach K’ Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas of Quality Control Music take us on personal journeys into their jewelry universe.

Ice Cold goes beyond the ostentatious bling to reveal a transformative story that is loud and proud.

Twelve visions of living in a climate-changed world.

We are living in the Anthropocene-an era of dramatic and violent climate change featuring warming oceans, melting icecaps, extreme weather events, habitat loss, species extinction, and more. What will life be like in a climate-changed world? In Tomorrow’s Parties, science fiction authors speculate how we might be able to live and even thrive through the advancing Anthropocene. In ten original stories by writers from around the world, an interview with celebrated writer Kim Stanley Robinson, and a series of intricate and elegant artworks by Sean Bodley, Tomorrow’s Parties takes rational optimism as a moral imperative, or at least a pragmatic alternative to despair.

In these stories-by writers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, and Australia – a young man steals from delivery drones; a political community lives on an island made of ocean-borne plastic waste; and a climate change denier tries to unmask “crisis actors.” Climate-changed life also has its pleasures and epiphanies, as when a father in Africa works to make his son’s dreams of “Viking adventure” a reality, and an IT professional dispatched to a distant village encounters a marvelous predigital fungal network. Contributors include Pascall Prize for Criticism winner James Bradley, Hugo Award winners Greg Egan and Sarah Gailey, Philip K Dick Award winner Meg Elison, and New York Times bestselling author Daryl Gregory.

“The first thing I remember drawing was a creature… and not much has changed since. I’m still drawing creatures in all their myriad forms, something that feels perpetually childish in the best possible way: primary, elemental, instinctive – all the artistic qualities I’ve learned to trust through the trials and errors of so many ground-down pencil stubs. I draw many other things, but for some reason, when my mind and sketchbook are cleared of all else, I often revert to a creature, either known or unknown.”

CREATURE is a 224-page collection of previously unpublished and rarely-seen paintings and drawings, accompanied by notes detailing Shaun Tan’s fascination with non-human beings. From ‘lost things’ to nameless companions, friends and enemies, odd house-guests and bewildering strangers, Tan’s sketchbooks are filled with variations on an apparently endless theme. How might we relate to beings that are so far removed from our ‘normal’ human selves? And how is it that, in spite of weird appearances, they can also feel so familiar?

This survey of work draws from notebooks, folios and canvases across 25 years of work as an illustrator, artist, writer and film-maker. Some relate to stories where strange creatures are prominent, such as The Rabbits, The Lost Thing, The Arrival and Tales from Outer Suburbia. Others are singular gallery paintings, concept artwork for obscure or unrealised book, film and theatre projects, as well as experimental works.

“All artists and writers have a body of material that, for whatever reason, rarely sees the light of day, and is often all the more compelling because of this. Stories remain unwritten, images are left brimming with possibility, and the glimpse into artistic process is a little deeper than usual. Certain themes can be seen recurring in various forms, consciously or otherwise. In my case, I noticed in reviewing past work that animals and strange creatures turn up an awful lot. In fact, they are probably the most common element I’ve used in visual narrative, ever since early childhood – a time when many of us are busy drawing creatures – even though the style, subjects and reasons vary greatly. I’m certainly not alone here. Art, literature, film and mythology are nothing if not a menagerie of other-worldly beings. Why do we find them so fascinating? CREATURE is my own attempt to answer this question, as well as enjoy the simple pleasure of drawing and painting things I’ve never seen before, granting them that fleeting illusion of life, and leaving them open to each reader’s unique imagination.“

Over six years of imprisonment in Australia’s offshore migrant detention centre, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani bore personal witness to the suffering and degradation inflicted on him and his fellow refugees, culminating eventually in his prize-winning book No Friend but the Mountains.

In the articles, essays, and poems he wrote while detained, he emerged as both a tenacious campaigner and activist, as well as a deeply humane voice which reflects the indignity and plight of the many thousands of detained migrants across the world.

In this book Boochani’s collected writings are combined with essays from experts on migration, refugee rights, politics, and literature. Together, they provide a moving, creative and challenging account of not only one writer’s harrowing experience and inspiring resilience, but the wider structures of violence which hold thousands of human beings in a state of misery in migrant camps throughout Western nation-states and beyond.

A raucous yet reflective look back at the evolution of the music press and the passionate rock and pop journalists who defined the music of the 20th century.

Totally Wired is the definitive story of the music press on both sides of the Atlantic, tracing the rise and fall of the creatively fertile media sector which grew from humble beginnings nearly 100 years ago to become a multi-billion business which tested the limits of journalistic endeavour.

Covering the music press’s evolution from the 1950s to the 2000s, through rock & roll, Mod, the Summer of Love, Glam, Punk, Pop, Reggae, R&B and Hip Hop, Paul Gorman chronicles the development of individual magazines from Tin Pan Alley beginnings and the countercultural foundation of Rolling Stone, the underground press and the 70s heyday of NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. Illuminated by the author’s first hand interviews, Gorman paints a complete picture of the scene exploring the role played by such writers as Lester Bangs, Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent in the development of the careers of the likes of David Bowie, The Clash and Led Zeppelin, and tackling head on the entrenched sexism and racism faced by women and people from marginalized backgrounds by shining a spotlight on those publications and individuals whose contributions have often been unfairly overlooked.

Evoking the music press’s kaleidoscopic visual identities, Totally Wired is illustrated with rare and legendary magazine artwork throughout. What emerges is a compelling narrative containing conflicting stories of unbound talent, blind ambition and sometimes bitter rivalries which make Totally Wired a rollercoaster and riveting read.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize

Luka enjoyed this afternoon-sized novel. Highly readable, but not simple; it thrums with the complexities and tragedies of 1980s Catholic Ireland. It’s very understated, like all the best novels are. It’s one of those painful, concise reads that slaps you with such authentic emotion that you have to stare into space for a while after the final page is turned. Tender like a bruise but so full of hope and love that you can’t help but be affected. – Luka

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

‘A genuine once-in-a-generation writer.’ The Times

‘[A] snowglobe of a story that fits a whole bustling, striving, yearning world into 114 finely wrought pages.’ Sunday Times

‘Powerful and affecting and very timely . . . deeply moving.’ Hilary Mantel

‘Stunning . . . A haunting, hopeful masterpiece.’ Sinead Gleeson

‘Remarkable . . . Truly exquisite.’ Daily Telegraph

‘A restrained and intensely moral book, full of hope and love.’ Observer

‘Marvellous – exact and icy and loving all at once.’ Sarah Moss

From the author of The History of the World in 100 Animals, a BBC Radio Four Book of the Week, comes an inspirational new book that looks at the 100 plants that have had the greatest impact on humanity, stunningly illustrated throughout.

As humans, we hold the planet in the palms of ours hands. But we still consume the energy of the sun in the form of food. The sun is available for consumption because of plants. Plants make food from the sun by the process of photosynthesis; nothing else in the world can do this. We eat plants, or we do so at second hand, by eating the eaters of plants.

Plants give us food. Plants take in carbon dioxide and push out oxygen: they give us the air we breathe, direct the rain that falls and moderate the climate. Plants also give us shelter, beauty, comfort, meaning, buildings, boats, containers, musical instruments, medicines and religious symbols. We use flowers for love, we use flowers for death. The fossils of plants power our industries and our transport. Across history we have used plants to store knowledge, to kill, to fuel wars, to change our state of consciousness, to indicate our status. The first gun was a plant, we got fire from plants, we have enslaved people for the sake of plants.

We humans like to see ourselves as a species that has risen above the animal kingdom, doing what we will with the world. But we couldn’t live for a day without plants. Our past is all about plants, our present is all tied up with plants; and without plants there is no future.

From the mighty oak to algae, from cotton to coca here are a hundred reasons why.