Jamrach S Menagerie

Jaffy Brown is running along a street in London’s East End when he comes face to face with an escaped circus animal. Plucked from the jaws of death by Mr Jamrach – explorer, entrepreneur and collector of the world’s strangest creatures – the two strike up a friendship. Before he knows it, Jaffy finds himself on board a ship bound for the Dutch East Indies, on an unusual commission for Mr Jamrach. His journey – if he survives it – will push faith, love and friendship to their utmost limits.

A life in the spotlight will keep anyone hidden. Julia Pastrana is the singing and dancing marvel from Mexico. She is heralded across nineteenth-century Europe as much for her talent as for her unusual looks. Yet few can see past her freakish appearance to the ambitious woman within. Orphans of the Carnival sweeps us from the music halls of Vienna to an attic in modern-day South London, playing out an epic tale of grit, love, music and the triumph of the human spirit pushed to extremes.

SHORTLISTED for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction A thrilling and powerful novel about a young boy lured to sea by the promise of adventure and reward, with echoes of Great Expectations, Moby-Dick, and The Voyage of the Narwhal. Jamrach’s Menagerie tells the story of a nineteenth-century street urchin named Jaffy Brown. Following an incident with an escaped tiger, Jaffy goes to work for Mr. Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals, alongside Tim, a good but sometimes spitefully competitive boy. Thus begins a long, close friendship fraught with ambiguity and rivalry. Mr. Jamrach recruits the two boys to capture a fabled dragon during the course of a three-year whaling expedi­tion. Onboard, Jaffy and Tim enjoy the rough brotherhood of sailors and the brutal art of whale hunting. They even succeed in catching the reptilian beast. But when the ship’s whaling venture falls short of expecta­tions, the crew begins to regard the dragon—seething with feral power in its cage—as bad luck, a feeling that is cruelly reinforced when a violent storm sinks the ship. Drifting across an increasingly hallucinatory ocean, the sur­vivors, including Jaffy and Tim, are forced to confront their own place in the animal kingdom. Masterfully told, wildly atmospheric, and thundering with tension, Jamrach’s Mena­gerie is a truly haunting novel about friendship, sacrifice, and survival.

An eminent, ageing Australian writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled Strong Opinions. For him, troubled by Australia's complicity in the wars in the Middle East, it is a chance to air some urgent concerns: how should a citizen of a modern democracy react to their state's involvement in an immoral war on terror, a war that involves the use of torture? Then in the laundry room of his apartment block he encounters an alluring young woman. He offers her work typing up his manuscript. Anya is not interested in politics, but the job will be a welcome distraction, as will the writer's evident attraction towards her. Her boyfriend, Alan, is an investment consultant who understands the world in harsh economic terms. Suspicious of his trophy girlfriend's new pastime, Alan begins to formulate a plan...

It is 1740 and Louise Fletcher, a young dairymaid on an Essex farm, has been warned of the lure of the sea for as long as she can remember-after all, it stole away her father and brother. But when she is offered work in the bustling naval port of Harwich serving a wealthy captain's daughter, she leaps at the chance to see more of the world. There she meets Rebecca, her haughty yet magnetic mistress. Intertwined with Louise's story is that of fifteen-year-old Luke, who is beaten and press-ganged, sent to sea against his will on the warship Essex in the service of His Majesty's Navy. He must learn fast and choose his friends well if he is to survive the brutal hardships of a sailor's life and its many dangers, both up high in the rigging and in the dark belowdecks. She Rises brings to vivid life both land and sea in Georgian England, but explores a thoroughly modern and complex love story. Bold, brilliant, and utterly original, this debut novel is an accomplished and gripping search for identity and survival.

Combining psychological suspense with elements of the ghost story, Shadow Girls is a literary exploration of girlhood by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Jamrach's Menagerie. Manchester, 1960s. Sally, a cynical fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, is much too clever for her own good. When partnered with her best friend, Pamela – a mouthy girl who no-one else much likes – Sally is unable to resist the temptation of rebellion. The pair play truant, explore forbidden areas of the old school and – their favourite – torment posh Sylvia Rose, with her pristine uniform and her beautiful voice that wins every singing prize. One day, Sally ventures (unauthorised, of course) up to the greenhouse on the roof alone. Or at least she thinks she's alone, until she sees Sylvia on the roof too. Sally hurries downstairs, afraid of Sylvia snitching, but Sylvia appears to be there as well. Amidst the resurgence of ghost stories and superstition among the girls, a tragedy is about to occur, one that will send Sally further and further down an uncanny rabbit hole... Praise for Shadow Girls: 'A terrific evocation of a bygone Manchester girlhood, poignant and creepy by turns, by one of the most under-rated writers in England' D.J. Taylor 'Compulsively readable, Shadow Girls is an atmospheric, shape-shifting novel, part coming-of-age, part supernatural thriller. Birch renders the atmosphere of the sixties impeccably, and conveys most brilliantly the taut, complicated relationships between teenage girls with all their neediness, bravado and gullibility' Lesley Glaister

Domestic fiction.

"A luminous work of historical fiction that explores the far reaches of the Arctic and of men's souls." —Denver Post Capturing a crucial moment in the history of exploration—the mid-nineteenth century romance with the Arctic—Andrea Barrett's compelling novel tells the story of a fateful expedition. Through the eyes of the ship's scholar-naturalist, Erasmus Darwin Wells, we encounter the Narwhal's crew, its commander, and the far-north culture of the Esquimaux. In counterpoint, we meet the women left behind in Philadelphia, explorers only in imagination. Together, those who travel and those who stay weave a web of myth and mystery, finally discovering what they had not sought, the secrets of their own hearts.