Dr Lisa Cooper’s The Flowers gives us the opportunity to peer into the practices and vistas of someone who works with flowers daily as a leading floral designer and artist. Through anecdote, gentle instruction and photographic essays the reader will be taken from Cooper’s studio workspace, to the growers’ farms – the pictorial documentation of the flower growers captures the subjects portraitised within their ‘natural’ working environment, surrounded by a landscape of roses, knee-deep in camellias – and then on to The Flowers displayed and arranged in the vase.

For Cooper, there is no higher medium for the expression of human emotion than flowers, and her presentation of 17 floral designs also constitutes a collection of stories from her own personal ‘garden of live flowers’: the people – family, friends, growers, artists, gardeners and florists – who have influenced and inspired her.

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in a broken-down property in the middle of nowhere. Strangers to each other, they have no idea where they are or how they came to be there with eight other girls, forced to wear strange uniforms, their heads shaved, guarded by two inept yet vicious armed jailers and a ‘nurse’. The girls all have something in common, but what is it? What crime has brought them here from the city? Who is the mysterious security company responsible for this desolate place with its brutal rules, its total isolation from the contemporary world? Doing hard labour under a sweltering sun, the prisoners soon learn what links them: in each girl’s past is a sexual scandal with a powerful man. They pray for rescue — but when the food starts running out it becomes clear that the jailers have also become the jailed. The girls can only rescue themselves.

The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. Most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

In this beautifully presented volume, the essence of seventy-five fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm is wonderfully evoked by Shaun Tan’s extraordinary sculptures.

Nameless princes, wicked stepsisters, greedy kings, honourable peasants and ruthless witches, tales of love, betrayal, adventure and magical transformation: all inspiration for this stunning gallery of sculptural works. Introduced by Grimm Tales author Philip Pullman and leading fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes, The Singing Bones breathes new life into some of the world’s most beloved fairy tales.

100 miles from the gambling town of Reno, in the wilderness of northern Nevada, lies a vast, hostile plain known as the Black Rock Desert. The region has been an empty and windswept dry lake bed for most of the past 10,000 years. Except, that is, for one brief week at the end of each summer, when atemporary city rises out of the barren clay.

This is the surreal and amazing site of Burning Man. Baked by the sun, and blinded by dust, the gathering acquires different meanings for different people: Temporary community, spiritual adventure, performance stage, desert rave, social experiment. It’s also the incubator of some of the most remarkable site-specific outdoor art ever made: a mechanized fire-breathing octopus, a towering wooden temple 15 meters tall, and the eponymous Man himself—a skeletal sculpture set ablaze at the event’s conclusion.

Here, writer and photographer NK Guy presents 16 years of Burning Man art. His dazzling images record these participatory, collective, intrinsically ephemeral installations and happenings in the desert, which exist for no clearer purpose than because someone wanted to express something. The result is testimony to a realm far beyond the ego, commerce, and power play of mainstream cultural output: It is one of the most pure, uninhibited, expressive centers of our time.

In Birdland, Australian fine-art photographer Leila Jeffreys presents us with a bird-watching experience like no other, drawing birds out from their leafy shadows and airy territories and presenting them to us with the skill and intricate detail of a portrait painter. The result is a stunning encounter with some of the world’s most beautiful birds.  Birdland invites us to rediscover birds, to gaze unhindered, and to marvel at their many-splendored glory.

When Meena finds snakebites on her chest, her worst fears are realised: someone is after her and she must flee India.  As she plots her exit, she learns of the Trail, an energy-harvesting bridge spanning the Arabian Sea that has become a refuge for itinerant vagabonds and loners on the run.  This is her salvation.  Slipping out in the cover of night, with a knapsack full of supplies including a pozit GPS, a scroll reader, and a sealable waterproof pod, she sets off for Ethiopia, the place of her birth.

Meanwhile, Mariama, a young girl in Africa, is forced to flee her home.  She joins up with a caravan of misfits heading across the Sahara. She is taken in by Yemaya, a beautiful and enigmatic woman who becomes her protector and confidante. They are trying to reach Addis Abba, Ethiopia, a metropolis swirling with radical politics and rich culture.  But Mariama will find a city far different than she ever expected—romantic, turbulent, and dangerous.

As one heads east and the other west, Meena and Mariama’s fates are linked in ways that are mysterious and shocking to the core.

Written with stunning clarity, deep emotion, and a futuristic flair, The Girl in the Road is an artistic feat of the first order: vividly imagined, artfully told, and profoundly moving.

Bella is very surprised one morning to discover her house has moved in the night – not a lot, just a little. Her parents are too busy to notice, but even they can’t pretend it’s not happening when they wake up to find their house on the banks of a lake. Night after night the house moves and the family wakes to a new location. Unless Bella can solve the mystery, who knows where they’ll end up?

An absolutely gorgeous story full of wonder and delight!

As one journey ends, another begins. The moment is coming. Be ready. To start a new path, to grow up, to change, to rise to the occasion. This stunning wordless picture book by Beatriz Martin Vidal brings us up to the moment of a child’s flight, as she launches into life and imagination takes off.

A chronicle of history’s preeminent and peculiar notions of death and the afterlife.

Throughout history, the nature and mystery of death has captivated artists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, and theologians. This eerie chronology ventures right to the borderlines of science and sheds light into the darkness. Here, topics as wide ranging as the Maya death gods, golems, and séances sit side by side with entries on zombies and quantum immortality. With the turn of every page, readers will encounter beautiful artwork, along with unexpected insights about death and what may lie beyond.

How does sound taste?
Do colours smell?
Why do onions make me cry?
Who builds the wings for birds to fly?

Renowned street artist Kyle Hughes-Odgers brings his unique vision to these and many other questions. From the practical to the philosophical, this book is guaranteed to fire young imaginations!  The art is gobsmackingly gorgeous as one would expect from Kyle, but this book is also a joy to read and explore.  Great for little ones and adults alike.