Constance Debre, born in 1972 in Paris, trained and practised as a lawyer before becoming a full-time writer. She is also the author of Play Boy, winner of the 2018 Coupole Prize.>
At the heart of Born to Run lies a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians, the Tarahumara, who live quietly in canyons and are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals. A small group of the world's top ultra-runners (and the awe-inspiring author) make the treacherous journey into the canyons to try to learn the tribe's secrets and then take them on over a course 50 miles long. With incredible energy and smart observation, McDougall tells this story while asking what the secrets are to being an incredible runner. Travelling to labs at Harvard, Nike, and elsewhere, he comes across an incredible cast of characters, including the woman who recently broke the world record for 100 miles and for her encore ran a 2:50 marathon in a bikini, pausing to down a beer at the 20 mile mark.
Constance seemingly had it all - she was born into a wealthy and influential family, was a successful lawyer, and was loved by her husband and son. But behind this veneer was the stifling pressure to conform to the boundaries of French society within which she could not be herself and survive.
Playboy traces one woman''s transition from heterosexual lawyer, mother and wife to the buzz-cut and tattooed lesbian taking the Parisian literary scene by storm. Constance is a detached narrator as she takes us through the quiet boredom of her life with her husband Laurent, the betrayal of his affair, the arrival of her son, and the influence of drugs and alcohol on her relationship with her family. Unburdened by marital and familial obligations, a new Constance emerges, free to explore the complexities of her love for women and herself.
An affecting and propulsive chronicle of transgression and the balance of power, Playboy is an unflinching account of Constance Debre''s discovery of bachelorhood.
'Sarai Walker has done it again ... upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal.' Maria Semple, bestelling author of Where'd You Go Bernadette
'A riveting, gothic page-turner' the New York Times
'Wonderful... A book one doesn't want to put down... I highly recommend' Sarah Jessica Parker
The reclusive Sylvia Wren, one of the most important American artists of the past century, has been running from her past for sixty years. Born Iris Chapel, of the Chapel munitions dynasty, second youngest of six sisters, she grew up in a palatial Victorian 'Wedding Cake House' in New England, neglected by her distant father and troubled, haunted mother.
The sisters longed to escape, but the only way out was marriage. Not long after the first Chapel sister walks down the aisle, she dies of mysterious causes, a tragedy that repeats with the second sister, leaving the rest to navigate the wreckage, with heart-wrenching consequences.
The Cherry Robbers is a wonderfully atmospheric, propulsive novel about sisterhood, mortality and forging one's own path.
Drawn from 3,000 years of the history of power, this is the definitive guide to help readers achieve for themselves what Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, Louis XIV and Machiavelli learnt the hard way. Law 1: Never outshine the master Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies Law 3: Conceal your intentions Law 4: Always say less than necessary. The text is bold and elegant, laid out in black and red throughout and replete with fables and unique word sculptures. The 48 laws are illustrated through the tactics, triumphs and failures of great figures from the past who have wielded - or been victimised by - power.
Evening draws in; families reunite, fires are lit, curtains snapped shut. But what is hiding in the shadows beyond the warm living-room glow, where the light won''t reach? And what surprises will creaks in the night bring on Christmas morning?
Weaving together eleven classic tales of murder and mystery from the greatest writers in the genre, Murder in the Wintertime brings a winter chill to last beyond the last bite of frost. From a fall (or a push?) from an icy verge, to yuletide games gone awry, things appear and disappear, weapons melt away and a blanket of snow covers creeping footfall.
Featuring work from classic authors such as Catherine Aird, Carter Dixon, Peter Lovesey and more.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS PRIZE 2016 It's 1996, Bill Clinton has just been re-elected and in Houston a mayoral election is looming. As usual the campaign focuses on Pleasantville -- the African-American neighbourhood of the city that has swung almost every race since it was founded to house a growing black middle class in 1949. Axel Hathorne, former chief of police and the son of Pleasantville's founding father Sam Hathorne, was the clear favourite, all set to become Houston's first black mayor. But his lead is slipping thanks to a late entrant into the race -- Sandy Wolcott, a defence attorney riding high on the success of a high-profile murder trial. And then, just as the competition intensifies, a girl goes missing, apparently while canvassing for Axel. And when her body is found, Axel's nephew is charged with her murder. Sam is determined that Jay Porter defends his grandson. And even though Jay is tired of wading through other people's problems, he suddenly finds himself trying his first murder case, a trial that threatens to blow the entire community wide open, and reveal the lengths that those with power are willing to go to hold onto it.
The holiday season is here, and for most of us, our minds will be on carefree days in the sunshine. But for every trip to the seaside or sultry afternoon on the sunlounger, there''s someone who''s busy packing a suitcase full of secrets and a motive ... for murder.
Join ten of the best crime writers in history for the trip of a lifetime, as they puzzle, astound and delight you with these classic mysteries.
The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him.
This novel by International Booker Prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai - perhaps his most serene and poetic work - describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area, making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history and being.
''Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict '' Noam Chomsky The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi''s powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project. These ideas and their echoes defend Nakba - the Palestinian term for the establishment of the state of Israel - the cession of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, the Six Day War and the occupation. Moving through these critical moments, Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets and resistance leaders with his own accounts as a child of a UN official and a resident of Beirut during the 1982 seige. The result is a profoundly moving account of a hundred-year-long war of occupation, dispossession and colonialisation.
An updated edition of the Sunday Times Bestseller Britain's best-known classicist Mary Beard, is also a committed and vocal feminist. With wry wit, she revisits the gender agenda and shows how history has treated powerful women. Her examples range from the classical world to the modern day, from Medusa and Athena to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton. Beard explores the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, considering the public voice of women, our cultural assumptions about women's relationship with power, and how powerful women resist being packaged into a male template. A year on since the advent of #metoo, Beard looks at how the discussions have moved on during this time, and how that intersects with issues of rape and consent, and the stories men tell themselves to support their actions. In trademark Beardian style, using examples ancient and modern, Beard argues, 'it's time for change - and now!' From the author of international bestseller SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.
The International Booker Award winner''s breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and graffiti vandalism
''Propulsive and revelatory'' The New York Times
''A work of genius'' Telegraph
Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Kohler''s classes in particle physics for two years, he is convinced that global cataclysm is imminent. And so he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, hoping to convince her of the imminent danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter.
Written in one cascading sentence with the force of atomic particles colliding, Krasznahorkai''s latest novel is a tour de force, a morality play of blistering satire, a devastating encapsulation of our helplessness in the face of the moral and environmental dilemmas we face.
Suitable for those with an interest in conquest, self-defense, wealth, power or simply being an educated spectator, this book teaches you how to cheat, dissemble, feign, fight and advance your cause in the modern world.
The real threat to liberal democracy isn''t autocrats - it''s the lack of effective action by progressives.
In Abundance, veteran journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson reveal the structural, economic and political forces that have led to the America, and much of the liberal world, of today: where scarcity and preservation drive the agenda, and we have forgotten how to deliver on big ideas.
Decades of slashing immigration, off-shoring manufacture, preventing house-building and stalling ambitious infrastructure projects like high-speed rail means America has a shortage of workers, houses, innovative products and climate-change solutions. It''s a story repeated across the Western World. To progress on the greatest challenges of our time, from housing to climate change, healthcare to infrastructure, progressives need a vision of abundance, and the ability and willingness to enact transformative strategies. Here, the authors lay out the barriers to consequential action, and how we can overcome them to actively build a better, more abundant future.
''Baron Wenkcheim''s Homecoming is a fitting capstone to Krasznahorkai''s tetralogy, one of the supreme achievements of contemporary literature. Now seems as good a time as any to name him among our greatest living novelists.'' Paris Review Hailed internationally as perhaps the most important novel of the young twenty-first century, Baron Wenckheim''s Homecoming is the culmination of Laszlo Krasznahorkai''s remarkable and singular career.
Nearing the end of his life, Baron Bela Wenckheim decides to return to the provincial Hungarian town of his birth. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he wishes to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. What follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town''s alternately drab and absurd existence. Spectacular actions are staged, death and the abyss loom, until finally doom is brought down on the unsuspecting residents of the town.
''I''ve said a thousand times that I always wanted to write just one book. Now, with this novel, I can prove that I really wrote just one book in my life. This is the book - Satantango, Melancholy, War & War, and Baron. This is my one book.'' Laszlo Krasnahorkai
Which sort of seducer could you be: *Siren? *Rake? *Cold Coquette? *Star? *Comedian? *Charismatic? or *Saint? This book will show you which. 'Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. In part II, immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip.
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?
Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century USA, and the artist who really invented the Readymade. Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of post-War artists in Latin America, and the women artists defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned, and your eyes opened to many art forms often overlooked or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan this is the history of art as it''s never been told before.
A guide to the strategies of war. Spanning world civilisations, and synthesising dozens of political, philosophical, and religious texts, it features the subtle social game of everyday life. It contains examples of the genius and folly of those from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher and Hannibal to Ulysses S Grant.
''Agatha Christie for the 21st century'' - THE TIMES
''The queen of tricksy crime'' - SUNDAY TIMES
Six Students. One Murder. Your Time Starts Now...
The students of Royal Hastings University''s new Multimedia Art course have been trouble from day one. Acclaimed artist Alyson wants the department to revolve around her. Ludya struggles to balance her family and the workload. Jonathan has management experience but zero talent for art. Lovely Patrick can barely operate his mobile phone, let alone professional design software. Meanwhile blustering Cameron tries to juggle the course with his job in the City and does neither very well. Then there''s Jem. A gifted young sculptor, she''s a promising student... but cross her at your peril.
The year-long course is blighted by accusations of theft, students setting fire to one another''s artwork, a rumoured extra-marital affair and a disastrous road trip. But finally they are given their last assignment: to build an interactive art installation for a local manufacturer. With six students who have nothing in common except their clashing personal agendas, what could possibly go wrong?
The answer is: murder. When the external examiner arrives to assess the students'' essays and coursework, he becomes convinced that a student was killed on the course and that the others covered it up. But is he right? And if so, who is dead, why were they killed, and who is the murderer? Only a close examination of the evidence will reveal the truth. Your time starts now...
The must-read, pocket-sized Big Think book of 2020 It feels like the world is falling apart. So how do we keep hold of our optimism? How do we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, trust and believe in something better? And how can we stay sane in this world of division? In this beautifully written and illuminating polemic, Booker Prize nominee Elif Shafak reflects on our age of pessimism, when emotions guide and misguide our politics, and misinformation and fear are the norm. A tender, uplifting plea for optimism, Shafak draws on her own memories and delves into the power of stories to reveal how writing can nurture democracy, tolerance and progress. And in the process, she answers one of the most urgent questions of our time.
''Kuper is a shrewd observer in this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology'' The Sunday Times
From the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer''s tale of a naif getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city.
Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city''s notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family''s neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change.
This century, Paris has globalised, gentrified, and been shocked into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational conflict. Sometimes it''s a multicultural paradise, and sometimes it isn''t. This decade, Parisians have lived through a sequence of shocks: terrorist attacks, record floods and heatwaves, the burning of Notre Dame, the storming of the city by gilets jaunes, and the pandemic. Now, as the Olympics come to town, France is busy executing the ''Grand Paris'' project: the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs.
This is a captivating memoir of today''s Paris without the cliches.
The concise edition of the 2019 WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS BOOK AWARD From the million-copy bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of readers, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Concise Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defence.
In her international best-seller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now, she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE).
Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained?
Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.
We give up too easily. With a simple change of attitude, what seem like insurmountable obstacles become once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Ryan Holiday, who dropped out of college at nineteen to serve as an apprentice to bestselling 'modern Machiavelli' Robert Greene and is now a media consultant for billion-dollar brands, draws on the philosophy of the Stoics to guide you in every situation, showing that what blocks our path actually opens one that is new and better. If the competition threatens you, it's time to be fearless, to display your courage. An impossible deadline becomes a chance to show how dedicated you are. And as Ryan discovered as Director of Marketing for American Apparel, if your brand is generating controversy - it's also potentially generating publicity. The Stoic philosophy - that what is in the way, is the way - can be applied to any problem: it's a formula invented more than 2,000 years ago, whose effectiveness has been proven in battles and board rooms ever since. From Barack Obama's ability to overcome obstacles in his election races, to the design of the iPhone, the stoic philosophy has helped its users become world-beaters.
