Ahmad, Jamil: The Wandering Falcon. Hamish Hamilton 2011. Signed by the author. £30.00

 

A first collection of short stories that the author kept in his desk drawer for over 30 years and finally got around to publishing at the tender age of 79.

 

“Is this a novel or a collection of short stories? The question doesn’t really matter in the reading of it. The child born in the first chapter/story appears, often in the most tangential fashion, in all the subsequent sections, except one. A third of the way through the book he is given a name: Tor Baz or Black Falcon”, Kamila Shamsie, The Observer.

Armitage, Simon: In Memory of Water. Ilkley Festival of Literature 2011. £10.00

 

One of an edition of 500 signed and numbered copies. A pamphlet consisting of 6 poems that have been carved in stone along the route of the South Pennine watershed - the Stanza Stones. Fine thread-bound pamphlet.

 

 

Also, next summer look out for Black Roses, poems that he contributed for a BBC drama which was one of the most praised radio plays in the BBC’s history.

Armitage, Simon: The Death of King Arthur. Faber 2011. £12.99

 

“Armitage handles the alliterative verse with great energy and verve, attaining the momentum of a siege-tower falling off a cliff, and relishing the opportunity for comic boastfulness and gluttonous, bloodthirsty comedy…Armitage's version might do for alliteration what Eliot's Practical Cats once did for rhythm”, Sean O’Brien, The Guardian

 

Barnes, Julian: The Sense of Ending. Jonathan Cape 2011. Winner of the MAN Booker Prize. £30.00 unsigned, but see below for details of a limited edition.

 

“It would be a mistake to dismiss this as a mere psychological thriller. It is in fact a tragedy, like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which it resembles…Its effect is disturbing – all the more so for being written with Barnes’s habitual lucidity. His reputation will surely be enhanced by this book. Do not be misled by its brevity. Its mystery is as deeply embedded as the most archaic of memories”, Anita Brookner, The Daily Telegraph.

 

Two limited editions of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes have been published. 25 fully leather bound and 75 quarter leather bound copies will be published, all signed and numbered (cloth edition) or lettered (leather edition). The full leather edition sold out on publication. The quarter leather edition is still available and is priced at £240.

Barry, Kevin. City of Bohane. Jonathan Cape 2011. Paperback original. Signed and dated by the author. £12.99.

A hotly tipped first novel that has had reviews to die for. The book failed to make the MAN Booker lists, but I am told it is continuing to receive great reviews when it is published elsewhere. The author, an experienced screenplay writer, has already adapted the next for cinema. Due to published in the USA in March 2012.

While not appreciated by the MAN Booker judges, I’ll lay my reputation on the line and claim that in time this will prove to be one of the greatest novels of the twenty first century.

“Feel the heat; crave the light. Pay heed to this tale of modern Ireland taking leave of itself. Dip a metaphorical toe in the reeking, absurd, obstreperous life of it all, in the City of Bohane, where there's more than a fillip on each terse page. The prose is sizzling, its molecules rocked by the force of collision”, Tom Adair, The Scotsman.

“Those people who harbour ambitions to write a book are usually made to reassess things when writers like Kevin Barry pop up on the radar. As of this book's publication, he is a game-changer, someone who will perch annoyingly at the back of the minds of Irish literature's up-and-comers whispering "must try harder". Incredibly, The City of Bohane isn't even his career-defining masterpiece -- that, you can rest assured, is on the way -- and may struggle to secure an audience outside of Ireland and the UK. As a declaration of intent, however, it's impossible to ignore”, Hilary White, Irish Independent.

Burnside, John: Black Cat Bone. Jonathan Cape 2011. Winner of the Forward Prize. and T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. Fine paperback original. Signed and dated by the author. £20.00

Duffy, Carol Ann: The Bees. Picador 2011. Shortlisted for the 2011 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. The author’s first collection since her appointment as Poet Laureate.  Signed by the author. £20.00

 

“The Poet Laureate’s wonderful new collection is full of buzzwords…Duffy is a poet alert to every sound and shape of language. Whether writing sonnets, epilogues, elegies or love songs, she is attuned to the hum of nature, angered by what humans are doing to it, in awe of what two heats can feel”. Mark Sanderson, The Daily Telegraph.

 

“Wonderfully varied…Here’s a mixter maxter of every kind of Duffy poem: angry, political, elegiac, witty, nakedly honest, accessible, mysterious. “ Liz Lochhead, The Guardian

 

“Duffy is at her best when most personal. When she has a real subject – the death of her mother – the difference is overwhelming. “Water” is perfectly controlled, yet written with what could almost be mistaken for casualness.” Kate Kellaway, The Observer.

Duffy, Carol Ann: The Christmas Truce. Signed by the author. Picador 2011. £6.00

 

A single poem depicting the Christmas Day truce in 1914 when soldiers from the German and British trenches put aside their guns. played football, sang carols and swapped presents.

Eco, Umberto: The Prague Cemetery. Harvill Secker 2011. Signed by the author. Chaos reigns in nineteenth century Europe, where the birth of modern day Anti-Semitism was taking place, but fighting for a place in the cauldron with many other isms.  £20.00

 

“Eco is a comic master”, Lisa Appignanesi, The Independent

Hadley, Tessa: Married Love. Jonathan Cape 2012. A teenager announces her engagement to a pensioner. Sparks fly. £14.99, signed copies should be available at a higher price.

 

“Hadley’s stories frequently manage to compress a novel’s-worth of development into 20-odd pages without seeming rushed or to be merely skimming the surface”, Alfred Hickling, The Guardian.

 

“Only Alice Munro and Colm Toibin, among all the working short story writers I’m aware of, are so adept at portraying whole lives in a few thousand words. Hadley joins their company.” Edmund Gordon, The Observer

Hall, Sarah: The Beautiful Indifference. Faber 2011. Paperback original. £12.99.

 

A wide ranging collection of short stories. Signed copies are on their way to me..

 

“Hall is a writer of both rare vision and talent”, Lucy Scholes, The Sunday Times

Harbach, Chad: The Art of Fielding. Fourth Estate 2012. A new American wunderkind. £16.99 Signed copies may be available if the author visits the UK; however, as the book’s subject is baseball, there may not be demand as the sport is relatively unknown over here.

Harris, Robert: The Fear Index. Hutchinson 2011. An eventful day in the life of a hedge fund manager. Signed by the author.  £18.99

 

“the plot ingeniously combines a number of recent phenomena (financial, political, online, artistic)…Harris is an admirer of John le Carré and there are echoes of the master in the prose…grippingly dramatising the workings of the economy” Mark Lawson, The Guardian

Harvey, Samantha. All is Song. Jonathan Cape 2012. Drawing inspiration from Socrates, Samantha Harvey’s second novel looks into family relationships. £16.99. Signed copies should be available at a price to be confirmed.

 

“This is a novel of ideas that also creates believable characters and explores complex relationships. Harvey’s prose is graceful and unhurried, full of sharp observation and moments of subtly understated pathos. It’s good to read the work of a writer who refuses to compromise or fit neatly into any given category, one brave enough to tackle such uncommercial subjects as myth, religion and the nature and value of contemplation ”. Carol Birch, The Guardian.

Hobbs, Peter: In the Orchard, the Swallows. Faber 2012. A new short novel from a promising young author. £12.99 I’ll be trying for signed copies at a price to be confirmed.

Hollinghurst, Alan: The Stanger’s Child. Picador 2011. Signed by the author. Longlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. £20.00 (see below for details of a limited edition)

 

“Masterly in its narrative sweep, richly textured prose and imaginative flair and depth, this novel about an increasingly threadbare literary reputation enormously enhances Hollinghurst’s own. With The Stranger’s Child, an already remarkable talent unfurls into something spectacular”, Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times.

 

A top quality limited edition of Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel The Stranger’s Child has been published. The edition consists of just 40 signed and numbered copies for public distribution. Bound in full dark green leather and contained in a matching slipcase, the copies are signed, numbered and dated on publication day. £285.

James, P D. Death Comes to Pemberley. Faber  2011. Signed by the author. £32.00

Levin, Adam: The Instructions. Canongate 2011. Signed and dated by the author. Red and grey versions are available. £25.00

McKeon, Belinda: Solace. Picador 2011. Signed and dated by the author. £15.00.

 

An exceptionally well written first novel from an Irish author of whom great things are tipped.  The book looks at contemporary Ireland and in particular examines family life as people come to terms with bereavement and the generational conflict between rural and urban lifestyles.

 

“this fine first novel brought to my mind the performance of a talented young dancer whose steps and movements are flawless but who has not yet learned to let herself become the dance she dances”, Ursula le Guin.

Matar, Hisham; Anatomy of a Disappearance, Penguin Viking 2011. Signed by the author (and with the publisher’s “signed by the author” roundel sticker on the front cover). £16.99

 

A widowed father and his teenage son fall in love with the same woman, but middle-eastern politics catch up with the family. The author draws of his own experience – his father disappeared many years ago. The author has been seen frequently in and on the UK media in recent weeks commenting on current events in Egypt and Libya.

 

“Sensually written, there is an extravagant feel to even the simplest sentence”, Catherine Taylor, The Sunday Telegraph.

 

“Haunting in every sense, Anatomy of a Disappearance is an absorbing novel that finds its eloquence in what is left unsaid and its most vivid imagery in what has been lost”, Adam Lively, The Sunday Times.

Miller, Andrew: Pure. Sceptre 2011. Signed by the author. Winner of the 2011 Costa Novel Award £17.99

 

Excavation and rebuilding of an old cemetery leads the engineer in charge to question his mortality.

 

“Exquisite inside and out, Pure is a near faultless thing: detailed, symbolic and richly evocative of a time, place and man in dangerous flux. It is brilliance distilled, with very few impurities”, Holly Kyte, The Sunday Telegraph.

Muldoon, Paul: Feet of Clay Signed by the author. Fine large format pamphlet. One of 100 copies printed on Magnani paper. £75.00

Nagra, Daljit: Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!! Faber 2011. Shortlisted for the 2011 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. Signed by the author. £12.99

 

A second collection of poetry from a British poet of Indian descent. The title comes from an exhibit in Victoria & Albert Museum.

 

“…wonderful, contradictory combination of broken English and runaway fluency or the sheer exuberance with which words hit the page. It is a delight…the combination of delicacy, sauciness and nicely crafted verse is delicious” Kate Kellaway, The Observer.

O’Brien, Sean: November. Picador 2011. Signed by the author. A scarcer hardback edition of the author’s latest collection of poems. £16.00

Ondaatje, Michael: The Cat’s Table. Jonathan Cape 2011. Signed by the author. £22.00

Oswald, Alice: Memorial. Faber 2011. Shortlisted for the 2011 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry. A single poem which is also a new interpretation of Homer’s Iliad. I hope to have signed copies at a price to be confirmed in February, but for now I have a couple of book plated copies at £15.00

 

“Homer is full of marvellous images as armies of swarming bees, flattened fields of corn, waves that come in convoy. Oswald’s poetic structure itself contains grand rhythms – rather like the sea. The extended similes are printed twice. They come at you like repeated waves. The push the poem forward and draw it back. There is a line in Homer that translates as the “trance of war” and this describes the poem’s atmosphere. I long to hear Memorial performed; it would be tremendous”. Kate Kellaway, The Observer

 

“Oswald has achieved a miraculous feat. She’s exposed a skeleton, but exposed something magnificently eerie and rich. She has truly made, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Spender, a miniature Iliad, taut, fluid and graceful, its tones knelling like bells into the clear air, ringing out in remembrance of all the untimely dead.” Philip Womak, The Telegraph.

 

“It’s a major achievement”, Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian.

 

A special edition of Memorial by Alice Oswald is available. A single poem that draws from Homer’s Iliad, the edition is quarter bound in black book-calf and red cloth, blocked in gold, with handmade Italian endpapers, encased in a black cloth-covered slipcase, signed by the author and numbered and priced at £125.

Raisin, Ross: Waterline. Penguin Viking. Paperback original. Signed and dated by the author. £15.00

 

Mick, a working class Glaswegian is widowed after a long marriage and starts to descend into hopelessness and despair.

 

“There are rare novels that embed themselves in your sensibility so profoundly you can imagine conversations arising between characters that never occurred on the page. I now hear Cathy, the central character Mick’s wife of 35 years, chiding him: What would become of you without me, Mick?”, Alan Warner, The Guardian.

Taseer, Aatish: Noon. Picador 2011. Paperback original. Signed by the author. £12.99

 

A look back at recent issues on the Indian sub-continent.

 

“If the partition of India is associated with midnight (as in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children), Aatish Taseer’s temporal territory is the opposite time: his characters are dealing with partition’s reverberations over the decades…In both form and content, Taseer movingly evokes the heartbreak of a nation, conveying with great acuity what happens when the ground beneath our feet is shaken to its core.” Anitha Sethi, The Independent.

Toibin, Colm: The Street. Tuskar Rock 2010. £250.00.

 

A separate edition of a short story from Colm Toibin's collection The Empty Family.  Limited to 50 copies, numbered in roman numerals from I to L, the edition is signed and dated (30 September 2010) by the author. The book is hand set, 80 pages (untrimmed) long, printed on Somerset mould made and bound in full Harmatan blue leather by the Fine Book Bindery.  The book is enclosed in a slipcase covered in navy blue cloth. A very impressive production. Images showing the book in various stages of production are available on request.

Tomalin, Claire: Charles Dickens – A Life. Penguin Viking 2011. Signed by the author. This book is hard to find as a signed first printing without damage caused by the removal of stickers. £45.00

Young, Kerry: Pao. Bloomsbury 2011. Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel. Paperback original. £17.00