Cloud Cuckoo Land

Anthony Doerr     Recommended by    

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See comes the highly anticipated Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book.

Thirteen-year-old orphan Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless and curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, she finds a book: the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.

Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.

Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of gravest danger. Their lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own. Dedicated to “the librarians then, now, and in the years to come,” Cloud Cuckoo Land is a beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship—of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart.

Creature

Andrea Ballance and Grasya Oliyko     Recommended by    

Creature is dreaming and playing in space, causing worlds to be born in the big bangs she creates. Her eyes shine like nebulas as she surveys the vast expanse she calls home. Silence and stillness envelop her, as she readies herself to… POUNCE!

Open your eyes to beauty and wonder in galaxy-sized proportions with this magical, mystical picture book. Written in rhythmic prose with lively and bright illustrations, this calming and beautiful combination of the comfort of cats and the magic of space is the perfect bedtime read.

AGE 0-3 Years

Filthy Animals

Brandon Taylor     Recommended by    

A hotly charged new work of fiction from the Booker Prize shortlisted author of Real Life.

In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young adults in the American midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family; menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night; a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink; and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort, and cruelty.

Ghibliotheque

Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham     Recommended by    

Based on the Ghibliotheque podcast, which leafs through the library of films from the world’s greatest animation studio, Studio Ghibli. A fully illustrated book that reviews each Studio Ghibli movie in turn, in the voice of expert and newcomer.

Ghibliotheque includes details of production, release, themes, key scenes and general review as well as Ghibli-specific tidbits!

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke     Recommended by Sharon    

Winner of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction

The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL, ‘one of our greatest living authors’ NEW YORK MAGAZINE

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.

In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims?

Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

Here’s what Bernardine Evaristo, chair of judges of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, said about Piranesi: “We wanted to find a book that we’d press into readers’ hands, which would have a lasting impact. (…) Clarke has given us a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy which melds genres and challenges preconceptions about what books should be. She has created a world beyond our wildest imagination that also tells us something profound about what it is to be human.”

Depeche Mode by Anton Corbijn

Anton Corbijn / TASCHEN editors     Recommended by Sharon    

In 2020, TASCHEN released the limited edition Depeche Mode by Anton Corbijn (81-18), signed by Depeche Mode and Anton Corbijn, and it became one of the fastest selling collector’s editions in the publishing company’s history.

Now, TASCHEN present this this equally epic, but more wallet friendly XL edition (not signed), featuring over 500 photographs from Corbijn’s extensive archives, as well as concept and album art. This collection is not to be missed by any DM fans.

corbijn_depeche_mode_xl_int_open002_014_015_x_08122_2103311400_id_1349700corbijn_depeche_mode_xl_int_open002_120_121_x_08122_2103311402_id_1349754corbijn_depeche_mode_xl_int_open002_068_069_x_08122_2103311401_id_1349727 corbijn_depeche_mode_xl_int_open002_032_033_x_08122_2103311401_id_1349798

 

Harlem Shuffle

Colson Whitehead     Recommended by    

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. 

 

Julia and the Shark

Kiran Millwood Hargrave     Recommended by    

For fans of Philip Pullman, Sally Gardner and Frances Hardinge.

The shark was beneath my bed, growing large as the room, large as the lighthouse, rising from unfathomable depths until it ripped the whole island from its roots. The bed was a boat, the shark a tide, and it pulled me so far out to sea I was only a speck, a spot, a mote, a dying star in an unending sky…

Julia has followed her mum and dad to live on a remote island for the summer – her dad, for work; her mother, on a determined mission to find the elusive Greenland shark. But when her mother’s obsession threatens to submerge them all, Julia finds herself on an adventure with dark depths and a lighthouse full of hope…

A beautiful, lyrical, uplifting story about a mother, a daughter, and love  with timely themes of the importance of science and the environment.

Ideal for ages 9 – 13+

Evacuation Road

HM Waugh     Recommended by    

Local Author 


Five teens. One week. Half a continent.

Eva is far from home when everything goes wrong.

And then it gets even worse.

Her evacuation bus leaves her behind, stranded with classmates she barely knows. The chase is on. But South America is big, and the old rules are changing quickly. This is the road trip Eva never knew she needed.

This is the race for the last flight home.

Ideal for 9 – 13+ years

The Petticoat Parade: Madam Monnier and the Roe Street Brothels

Leigh Straw     Recommended by    

Josie de Bray was a brothel madam who owned most of Roe Street, Perth from WWI up to the 1940s. This immensely readable social history uses the life of Josie de Bray as conduit into the lives of her friends and competitors – the many women who paraded in their petticoats on the verandas of Roe Street, and who were kept from the public view and were secret keepers themselves in the seamier side of town.

‘Brilliant … Leigh Straw’s unflinching yet compassionate account brings vividly to life the flamboyant Perth madam Marie Monnier and the fascinating, brave women of red-light Rue de Roe.’ Larry Writer author of Razor

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