Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots―which are then sold, collected, and handed on―he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive.

And so begins The Hare with Amber Eyes, this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations.

A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.

Maurice Sendak is the widely acclaimed American children's book author and illustrator. This critical study focusses on his famous trilogy, Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There, as well as the early works and Sendak's superb depictions of Grimms' fairy tales in The Juniper Tree. L.M. Poole begins with a chapter on children's book illustration, in particular the treatment of fairy tales. Sendak's work is situated within the history of children's book illustration, and he is compared with many contemporary authors. This new edition includes a new introduction, a new bibliography and many more illustrations. The text has been completely revised and updated.

The Somerset Levels are arresting at any time of year, at any time of day. The wide horizons of the Glastonbury Plain, ringed by the Mendip Hills, provide rich panoramas for an artist - black clouds scudding across a sunlit moor, floods inundating fields, winds bending the willows into fascinating shapes. This small collection of paintings is one woman's vision of the ever-changing landscape of one of the most beautiful parts of the British Isles.

No other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color. Whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time as a conscript in the dazzling light of Algeria, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 19th century, the work Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations was the late series of water lilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, which, in their approach towards almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art. This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential artist, and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary.

About Red Social Red Social by Alejandro Garcia-Lemos and Cynthia Boiter is a visual and literary art book that evolved from a 2012 art exhibition of work by Garcia-Lemos at the Goodall Gallery at Columbia College in Columbia, SC. The title of the book and exhibition, Red Social, translates to Social Network in Garcia-Lemos's native Spanish. As he approached this body of work, which is made up of 24 unique portraits, Garcia-Lemos who is a native of Bogota, Colombia, focused on relationship-building and the community of fellow artists and arts lovers he had become enmeshed in in his new home of Columbia, SC. The sitters for each portrait, almost all of whom were close members of his newly formed community, were asked to bring symbolic icons for their sitting and many went so far as to collaborate on their specific portraits. (Several fellow-artists made actual artistic contributions to their portraits.) "The creative space that opened during these sessions provided an atmosphere of candor which mimicked that of the therapist," the artist says. "I came to realize the importance of a comfort level between the artist and subject and I chose people who have been supportive of me and are truly friends and family." Once the series was complete and had been exhibited, Garcia-Lemos hoped to continue in the collaborative spirit so he approached local writer and editor, Cynthia Boiter. It was his idea to have Boiter create short fictional stories about the characters in the portraits-whether she was personally familiar with the characters or not-based on nothing but the title of the portrait and the various icons represented. Boiter says that, "Many of the friends about whom I wrote had to become strangers before they could become subjects about whose inner lives-their worries, fantasies, and insecurities-I could write. But as unconnected as these stories are to the portrait models who inspired them, they are still real stories, I'm sure, that belong to someone else out there." The result is a fascinating reverse-process of illustration. Based upon Garcia-Lemos's paintings, Boiter uses fiction to illustrate the portrait subjects. Each piece of short fiction-few are over 250 words in length-tells the tale of a unique individual with subject matters ranging from love to loss to issues of gender roles, new roles, and throwing off the roles society attempts to impose upon all of us.

Scion of an artistic dynasty, Giovanni Bellini is arguably the greatest Venetian painter of the early Renaissance. His astonishing naturalism revolutionised altarpiece painting and is still a source of wonder, as any visit to Frari in Venice will confirm. Most of what we know about this great artist comes from the earliest biographies by Vasari and Ridolfi printed here - the Ridolfi never before translated into English. A different and very personal insight is given by extensive correspondence with Bellini's great but neglected patron Isabella d'Este.

Joy Postle Blackstone was best known for her vivid murals, often depicting the jubilant wading birds of Florida. When she died in 1989, the world lost a wonderful artist but Joy was much more than a painter. Joy s father died when she was only three; her childhood was spent nurtured by her mother and brother, until she began her career at the Chicago Art Institute.

After graduation, her life changed, as she and her family moved to rural Idaho to live on the family homestead. There, she met her husband, Bob, and so began their three-year honeymoon, in the midst of the Great Depression. Joy painted and Bob promoted. They lived a vagabond life. They eventually settled in Florida, where Joy made friends with the birds who would make her murals legend.

"Joy Cometh in the Morning" traces an artist s life from 1896 through to her death in 1989. Joy Postle Blackstone harbored the psychological scars of abortion, infidelity, childlessness, death, and the eventual limitations of advanced age; yet, as the Bible says, Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Through feast or famine, hope or despair, Joy persevered, and she did it with a smile.

This first collection of bright and colourful images introduces a unique and notable talent. Though trained as both scientist and lawyer it is fascinating to see the other side of the artist's brain expressed on canvas. The progression from initially tentative brushstrokes to the sophisticated and extraordinary use of unusual techniques results in exceptional images.

The book is a straight forward account of Alexander Russo's adventurous journey in the Naval Reserve, serving with Naval Intelligence and as combat artist during WWII. He was the fi rst and youngest of Naval personnel to volunteer and engage in the landings in Sicily and Normandy, the graphic results of which form part of the Navy's Historical Records of World War II. The book also continues with the development and challenges of the artist in post-war years, which provides valuable insights for anyone pursuing a career in the fi ne arts. The book also continues with the development and challenges of the artist in post-war years, which provides valuable insights for anyone pursuing a career in the fine arts.

This book marks the centenary of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain by critically re-examining the established interpretation of the work. It introduces a new methodological approach to art-historical practice rooted in a revised understanding of Lacan, Freud and Slavoj Zizek. In weaving an alternative narrative, Kilroy shows us that not only has Fountain been fundamentally misunderstood but that this very misunderstanding is central to the work's significance. The author brings together Duchamp's own statements to argue Fountain's verdict was strategically stage-managed by the artist in order to expose the underlying logic of its reception, what he terms 'The Creative Act.' This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers, including art historians, psychoanalysts, scholars and art enthusiasts interested in visual culture and ideological critique.