New Releases

The word most commonly used to describe Muriel Spark is ‘puzzling’. Spark was a puzzle, and so too are her books. She dealt in word games, tricks, and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events. Evelyn Waugh thought she was a saint, Bernard Levin said she was a witch, and she described herself as ‘Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes’. Following the clues, riddles, and instructions Spark planted for posterity in her biographies, fiction, autobiography and archives, Frances Wilson aims to crack her code.

A coming-of-age memoir that follows a large, working-class Irish family as it plunges into chaos in the wake of a terminal diagnosis—and the author's own hidden struggle to endure when her sister's disease becomes the dark star around which they all revolve.

Drawing on personal experience, as well as philosophy and sociology, Daniel Schreiber explores the tension between the desire for solitude and freedom, and for companionship, intimacy and love. Along the way he illuminates the role that friendships play in our lives—can they be a response to the loss of meaning in a world in crisis? A profoundly enlightening book, Alone explores how we want to live.

The Durrells are probably the most celebrated literary family of the 20th century. Gerald turned them into celebrities with his tripartite memoir, beginning with My Family and Other Animals (1956) which told of his experiences with his widowed mother Louisa and three siblings during their time in 1930s Corfu. We know of the Durrells from their own writings and from the image of them created by TV, film and biographical accounts of specific figures. What we do not know is the truth.

We’ve all heard the story about waking up as a cockroach—but what if a crisis turned you into a clam? After the dissolution of her marriage, a writer is transformed into a “clam” via typo after her mother keeps texting her to “clam down.” The funny if unhelpful command forces her to ask what it means to “clam down”—to retreat, hide, close up, and stay silent. Idiomatically, we are said to “clam up” when we can’t speak, and to “come out of our shell” when we reemerge, transformed.

Lise Manin nous présente une biographie de l'écrivain Colette dont l'existence hors-norme se révèle au travers des nombreuses sources mobilisées et de son œuvre qui présente une dimension autobiographique. L'auteure retrace la vie d'une femme dont l'œuvre multiforme a questionné les normes de genre dans la France des XIXe et XXe siècles, suscitant engouements et scandales. Personnalité du milieu littéraire et théâtral parisien, Colette a aimé de façon inconventionnelle, s'est mariée trois fois et a vécu publiquement sa bisexualité.

En estas páginas acompañamos a Andy Robinson a lo largo de diez terroríficas crónicas de viaje por América, para descubrir la cara oscura del turismo postpandémico, en la que grandes monopolios nacionales y multinacinales controlan hoteles, aerolíneas, cadenas de restaurantes o de entretenimiento, dejando a las comunidades locales al margen.