In 1960, the author was the first black child to integrate into an all-white school in New Orleans. 60 years later, here is an impassioned call for racial equality.
First UK publication of this celebrated C20th century American poet. Coleman is known as the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles'; her poems are defiant, frank and vivid in their treatme... read more
A re-issue of LB's famous and very funny memoir about working in a New York Hotel. He came to the US in 1914, aged sixteen, and worked at the 'Hotel Splendide' as he called it for the next t... read more
Scanlan's prose is pared back to the bone in this slim novel about an Iowa horse trainer and the scuzzy, feverish world of racing with its trailers and motels...
A memoir set in rural Wyoming where Ehrlich moved in 1978 after the unexpected death of her partner. There is grief, of course, but there are also cowboys and beautiful descriptions of the A... read more
Cars, guns, computers etc have stopped working. Safe in rural Maine, the protagonists are visited by an old acquaintance in a retro-fitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. It can'... read more
A mysterious philanthropist travels up and down a stretch of Canadian coast delivering books to people who live too far from libraries. This novella was first published in 1933.
Although not well known in the UK, Lewis is one of the best conteporary US novelists. This, set on the coast of Maine, is a sort of parable of contemporary American society.
Slim but far-reaching memoir of the author's brush with suicide, framed as the consequence of familial trauma and isolation. Superbly written, this bears honourable comparison with William S... read more
A singular, haunting coming-of-age story set in the Canadian Arctic, in which myth and savage reality blur into each other. An acclaimed debut by an Inuk author.
In a silty blend of ecology and economics, ALT takes the matsutake mushroom – the most valuable mushroom in the world, comfortable in ravaged landscapes - as a metaphor for the intricate n... read more
The Cleverley family is graced with fame and fortune, but disaster in their media world is just a tweet away... This satire on social media and today's culture wars will make you ROFL. A li... read more
Another outing for Inspector Gamache, the Quebecois investigator - crowd control, social manipulation and a charismatic academic touting dangerous ideas lead inevitably to murder most foul.
A furniture salesman, who tries to keep to the straight and narrow with only the occasional foray into fencing a pilfered gewgaw for a cousin, finds himself drawn into a much bigger heist. A... read more
A bravura upending of the clichés of the 'Great American Novel' from the author of Then We Came to the End. Set in early C21st America, Ferris's protagonist is a romantic in the style of Up... read more
A prelapsarian tale about a haven of racially integrated citizens, based on a real island off the coast of Maine which became - for a while - an exotic utopia in the late C18th.