An intriguing and complex family story. I was hooked from the first sentence.’ – Nozizwe Cynthia Jele, author of The Ones with Purpose

What is the cost of giving a gift? What is the cost of receiving one?

At eleven years old, Julian Flint prefers to remain invisible, safe inside the architecture of adults provided by his mother, his uncle and his aunt. But when his mother, Emma, a celebrated sculptor, takes them all on a family holiday to a hotel by the sea, he meets the captivating and irreverent Clare and everything he thought he knew begins to shift – setting off a chain of events that will determine each of their fates.

From the award-winning author of The Dream House and The White Room comes Craig Higginson’s most gripping and nuanced novel to date. Moving from the lush beaches of uMhlanga Rocks to the stark midwinter wastes of Johannesburg and the rich and strange coral reefs of Mauritius, this masterfully plotted novel explores the fault-lines between loyalty and betrayal, innocence and accountability, blindness and perception, entrapment and flight. The Book of Gifts dives into the deepest and most hazardous reaches of human consciousness in order to catch the brightest fish.

Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab.She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity.

Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours.

Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from over-seas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion?

Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.

With an Introduction and Notes by David Herd, Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury and co-editor of 'Poetry Review'. Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's quest to avenge the whale that 'reaped' his leg. The quest is an obsession and the novel is a diabolical study of how a man becomes a fanatic. But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab's appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each. Among the crew is Ishmael, the novel's narrator, ordinary sailor, and extraordinary reader. Digressive, allusive, vulgar, transcendent, the story Ishmael tells is above all an education: in the practice of whaling, in the art of writing. Expanding to equal his 'mighty theme' - not only the whale but all things sublime - Melville breathes in the world's great literature. Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written by an American.

Asher Baum is quietly losing his mind. Can you blame him?

'Maybe what I really want is to make sense of all people’s lives. Of everything, the whole shebang'

A middle-aged Jewish journalist turned novelist and playwright, consumed with anxiety about everything under the sun, Baum's turgid philosophical books receive tepid reviews and his prestigious New York publisher has dropped him. His third marriage is on the rocks and he suspects his handsome and successful younger brother may have seduced his Harvard-educated wife. He is uneasy with her close relationship with her son, a more successful author than he, and suspicious of her closeness with their neighbour in Connecticut. And in a moment of irrationality, he has impulsively tried to kiss a pretty young journalist during an interview that she is about to go public with.

Is it any wonder Baum has started talking to himself? Strangers shake their heads and walk around him on the street. Meanwhile he learns a startling secret that could cause havoc should he expose it. Should he keep it to himself or reveal it and blow up his marriage?

What's with Baum? is Woody Allen's first novel and it is everything you would expect of him--and more. A portrait of an intellectual crippled by neurotic concerns about the futility and emptiness of life; an amusing glimpse into the New York publishing establishment; above all, a highly entertaining, tightly plotted, beautifully wrought piece of fiction from one of America's greatest and most versatile cinematic and literary talents.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more nervous she becomes about what she’ll find. Louisa is proof that happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of friendship and art.

For Kahlil Gibran, re-telling the story of Jesus had been the ambition of a life time. He had known it from childhood, when as a poor boy in the Middle-East, he'd been taught by a priest reading the bible with him. Now, in his maturity - and a successful writer in the USA - he wanted tell the story as no one had told it before. With 'Jesus, the Son of Man', (1928) he did just that; set alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, here is 'The Gospel according to Gibran.' Gibran's approach is to allow the reader to see Jesus through the eyes of a large and disparate group of people. Some of these characters will be familiar: amongst others, we hear from Peter; Mary his mother; Luke; Pontius Pilate, Thomas and Mary Magdalene. But many other characters are new, created by Gibran, including a Jerusalem cobbler, an old Greek shepherd - and the mother of Judas. 'My son was a good man and upright,' she tells us. 'He was tender and kind to me, and he loved his kin and his countrymen.' What connects these people is the fact that they all have an opinion about Jesus; though no two opinions are the same. 'The Galilean was a conjuror, and a deceiver,' says a young priest. But then a woman caught in adultery experienced him in a different way. 'When Jesus didn't judge me, I became a woman without a tainted memory, and I was free and my head was no longer bowed.' Not all the women like him, however. A widow in Cana, whose son is a follower, remains furious: 'That man is evil! For what good man would separate a son from his mother?' While a lawyer has mixed feelings: 'I admired him more as a man than as a leader. He preached something beyond my liking; perhaps beyond my reason.' A philosopher is in awe, however: 'His senses were continually made new; and the world to him was always a new world.' With each fresh voice, a different aspect of Jesus' character is explored; and a different reaction named. Gibran concludes by reminding us that all the characters and attitudes presented in the story live on in the world today, with nothing different now from then. The Logician is clear in his distrust: 'Behold a man disorderly, against all order; a mendicant opposed to all possessions; a drunkard who would only make merry with rogues and castaways.' But for Gibran himself, whose Lebanese roots placed him close to the original steps of the Galilean, Jesus is worth rather more; and is present still: 'But Master, Sky-heart, knight of our fairer dream, You do still tread this way. No bows nor spears shall stray your steps; You walk through all our arrows. You smile down upon us, And though you are the youngest of us all, You father us all. Poet, Singer, Great Heart! May our God bless your name.'

Rejacketed edition of the darkly gripping novel by the Ockham Prize-winning author of Lioness

Tom Stone is madly in love with his wife Ann. Pushing forty and expecting their first child, they buy a semi-derelict house in Hackney. Despite their spiralling money troubles, they believe this is their settled future. But Ann becomes convinced she's being shadowed by a homeless man whose presence seems like a terrible omen. As their child grows, Ann's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, feverish and disturbed. On the verge of losing everything, Tom makes a decision that he hopes will save their lives.

Novel About My Wife is a taut, sensuous and chilling portrait of a marriage beset by paranoia and obsession.

Emily Perkins is the author of a prize-winning collection of short stories, Not Her Real Name, and four novels, including Novel About My Wife (winner of the NZ Book Award and the Believer Magazine Book of the Year, The Forrests (longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction) and Lioness (winner of the Ockham NZ Prize for Fiction)

'There he lay looking as if youth had been half-renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey, the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst the swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.'

Thus Bram Stoker, one of the greatest exponents of the supernatural narrative, describes the demonic subject of his chilling masterpiece Dracula, a truly iconic and unsettling tale of vampirism.

The perfect gift for any Jane Austen lover for only GBP19.99. Each boxset contains six books, together creating a comprehensive collection of Austen's best and much-loved works. Beautifully packaged in a ridged, matt-laminated slipcase with metallic detailing, complete with strikingly attractive, bespoke artwork. Includes: Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility

Boet Cronje is hardkoppig, arrogant en ontken dat sy bruin regterhand op die plaas eintlik sy halfbroer is. Maar met God as vennoot, 'n familieplaas en 'n erfgenaam lyk die toekoms vir Boet aanvanklik belowend. 'n Langdurige droogte en die dood van sy seun laat hom egter in opstand teen God kom. Die koggelaar vertel die verhaal van 'n man wat oortuig is dat God hom tart; ironies genoeg word hy die een wat koggel.

Jacob Hochstetler is a peace-loving Amish settler on the Pennsylvania frontier when Native American warriors, goaded on by the hostilities of the French and Indian War, attack his family one September night in 1757. Taken captive by the warriors and grieving for the family members just killed, Jacob finds his beliefs about love and nonresistance severely tested. Jacob endures a hard winter as a prisoner in an Indian longhouse. Meanwhile, some members of his congregation the first Amish settlement in America move away for fear of further attacks. Based on actual events, Jacob's Choice describes how one man's commitment to pacifism leads to a season of captivity, a complicated romance, an unrelenting search for missing family members, and an astounding act of forgiveness and reconciliation. This expanded edition of Jacob's Choice includes maps, photographs, family tree charts, and other historical documents to help readers enter the story and era of the Hochstetler family.

Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

Jane Austen, one of the nation's most beloved authors, whose face adorns our currency, surely needs no introduction, but while many are familiar with her groundbreaking novels, few have come across her short burlesque work The History of England. Billed a history 'from the reign of Henry IV to Charles I by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian', The History of England pokes fun at the overly verbose and grand histories of Austen's day. Written when she was just fifteen, this is a comic tour de force that shows Austen's wit developing into the satirical prowess she is remembered for.

Pride and Prejudice, which opens with one of the most famous sentences in English Literature, is an ironic novel of manners. In it the garrulous and empty-headed Mrs Bennet has only one aim - that of finding a good match for each of her five daughters. In this she is mocked by her cynical and indolent husband. With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.