Bloomsbury Publishing strana 44 z 88

'Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power whose novels will be read, cherished and reread long after most so-called "serious" novels are forgotten' Observer Katherine Rundell - Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and prize-winning author of five novels for children - explores how children's books ignite, and can re-ignite, the imagination; how children's fiction, with its unabashed emotion and playfulness, can awaken old hungers and create new perspectives on the world. This delightful and persuasive essay is for adult readers.

We are living through a crisis of distraction. Plans get sidetracked, friends are ignored, work never seems to get done. Why does it feel like we're distracting our lives away? In Indistractable, behavioural designer Nir Eyal shows what life could look like if you followed through on your intentions. Instead of suggesting a digital detox, Eyal reveals the hidden psychology driving you to distraction, and teaches you how to make pacts with yourself to keep your brain on track. Indistractable is a guide to making decisions and seeing them through. Empowering and optimistic, this is the book that will help you design your time, realise your ambitions, and live the life you really want.

Fearless heroes, feisty princesses, sly magicians, terrifying dragons, talking foxes and miniature dogs. They all feature in this enthralling compendium of Chinese fairy tales and legends, along with an array of equally colourful characters and captivating plots. Although largely unknown in the West, the 70-plus stories in this volume are just as beguiling as the more familiar Grimms' Fairy Tales or Arabian Nights. They were collected in the early 20th century by Richard Wilhelm and first translated into English by Frederick H Martens. This beautifully produced revised and edited new edition includes updated notes which not only provide background on the tales, but also offer a fascinating insight into ancient Chinese folk lore and culture. These are stories to return to time and time again. From awesome adventures to quirky allegories, from the exploits of the gods to fables about beggars who outwit their betters, Chinese Fairy Tales and Legends is extraordinarily diverse and endlessly engaging. These wonderful stories have enduring and universal appeal, and will intrigue both children and adults.

In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Zizek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Zizek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. Alongside striking images of the Moebius strip, the cross-cap, and the Klein bottle, Zizek brings alive the Hegelian triad of being-essence-notion. Radical new readings of Hegel, and Kant, sit side by side with characteristically lively commentaries on film, politics, and culture. Here is Zizek at his interrogative best.

Max really wants a pet. His parents aren't so sure. Puppies chew, parrots screech and sharks have too many teeth. How about a dragon? Max's parents say that dragons don't exist, so Max settles for a pet worm instead. Except this particular worm turns out to be very unusual when its back begins to turn spikey and it begins to breathe smoke ... Dragons don't exist. Do they?A funny and light-hearted story from much-loved children's author Debi Gliori, perfect for any child who has ever wanted a pet. With an added cautionary tale about being careful what you wish for.

Edmund White was forty-three years old when he moved to Paris in 1983. He spoke no French and knew just two people in the entire city, but soon discovered the anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. White fell passionately in love with Paris, its beauty in the half-light and eternal mists; its serenity compared with the New York he had known. Intoxicated and intellectually stimulated by its culture, he became the definitive biographer of Jean Genet, wrote lives of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. Frequent trips across the Channel to literary parties in London begot friendships with Julian Barnes, Alan Hollinghurst, Martin Amis and many others. When he left, fifteen years later, to return to the US, he was fluent enough to broadcast on French radio and TV, and as a journalist had made the acquaintance of everyone from Yves St Laurent to Catherine Deneuve to Michel Foucault. He'd also developed a close friendship with an older woman, Marie-Claude, through whom he'd come to a deeper understanding of French life. Inside a Pearl vividly recalls those fertile years, and offers a brilliant examination of a city and a culture eternally imbued with an aura of enchantment.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year 'Douglas Murray fights the good fight for freedom of speech ... A truthful look at today's most divisive issues' - Jordan B. Peterson '[Murray's] latest book is beyond brilliant and should be read, must be read, by everyone' - Richard Dawkins In his devastating new book The Madness of Crowds, Douglas Murray examines the twenty-first century's most divisive issues: sexuality, gender, technology and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and 'intersectionality'. We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal - and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting. Readers of all political persuasions cannot afford to ignore Murray's masterfully argued and fiercely provocative book, in which he seeks to inject some sense into the discussion around this generation's most complicated issues. He ends with an impassioned call for free speech, shared common values and sanity in an age of mass hysteria.

It starts as a game at a book group one night. Never Have I Ever... done something I shouldn't. But Amy Whey has done something she shouldn't. And Roux, the glamorous newcomer to Amy's suburban neighborhood, knows exactly what that is. Roux promises she will go away. She will take herself and her son, who is already growing dangerously close to Amy's teenage stepdaughter, and she will go. If Amy plays by her rules. But Amy isn't prepared to lose everything she's built. She's going to fight back, and in this escalating game of cat and mouse, there can be only one winner.

An enthralling, epic fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons - and the women who must lead the fight to save it. A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tane has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey." For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

Hollywood was talking as never before. Kantor and Twohey outmanoeuvred Harvey Weinstein, his team of defenders and private investigators, convincing some of the most famous women in the world - and some unknown ones - to go on the record. Three years later, it led to his conviction. This is how they did it.

An extraordinary creative achievement by two extraordinary talents, Jim Kay's inspired reimagining of J.K. Rowling's classic series has captured a devoted following worldwide. This stunning new fully illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire brings more breathtaking scenes and unforgettable characters to life - including Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum. With paint, pencil and pixels, Kay conjures the wizarding world as we have never seen it before. Fizzing with magic and brimming with humour, this full-colour edition will captivate fans and new readers alike as Harry, now in his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, finds himself competing in the legendary Triwizard Tournament and facing death-defying tasks, dragons and Dark wizards ...

Half-Fae, half-human Bryce Quinlan loves her life. Every night is a party and Bryce is going to savour all the pleasures Lunathion also known as Crescent City has to offer. But then a brutal murder shakes the very foundations of the city, and brings Bryce s world crashing down. Two years later, Bryce still haunts the city s most notorious nightclubs but seeking only oblivion now. Then the murderer attacks again. And when an infamous Fallen angel, Hunt Athalar, is assigned to watch her every footstep, Bryce knows she can t forget any longer. As Bryce and Hunt fight to unravel the mystery, and their own dark pasts, the threads they tug ripple through the underbelly of the city, across warring continents, and down to the deepest levels of Hel, where things that have been sleeping for millennia are beginning to stir ... With unforgettable characters and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series by #1 New York Timesbestselling author Sarah J. Maas delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom and the power of love.

Patti's Smith's exquisite prose is generously illustrated in this full-color edition of her classic coming-of-age memoir, Just Kids. New York locations vividly come to life where, as young artists, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe met and fell in love: a first apartment in Brooklyn, Times Square with John and Yoko's iconic billboard, Max's Kansas City, or the gritty fire escape of the Hotel Chelsea. The extraordinary people who passed through their lives are also pictured: Sam Shepard, Harry Smith, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. Along with never-before-published photographs, drawings, and ephemera, this edition captures a moment in New York when everything was possible. And when two kids seized their destinies as artists and soul mates in this inspired story of love and friendship.

A thrillingly reimagined fairytale from the truly magical combination of author Neil Gaiman and illustrator Chris Riddell, now available as a gorgeous paperback enhanced with gloriously vibrant red ink highlights. Weaving together hints of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty with a shimmering thread of dark magic, it will hold readers spellbound from start to finish. On the eve of her wedding, a young queen sets out to rescue a princess from an enchantment. She casts aside her fine wedding clothes, takes her chain mail and her sword and ventures into the tunnels under the mountain towards the sleeping kingdom. This queen will decide her own future - and the princess who needs rescuing is not quite what she seems. Twisting together the familiar and the new, this delicious, captivating and darkly funny tale shows its creators at the peak of their talents and was the winner of the 2016 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. Lavishly produced and packed with glorious Chris Riddell illustrations, this amazingly beautiful book makes a spectacular and magical gift.