This poetry collection remembers and honours the heavy woes and the little joys in life for what they were, what they are and what they will be. For life is nothing without sorrow and delight.

Even the grittiest blue collar city has a spark of magic under the surface; but in Baltimore, graffiti holds secret messages and artists are the spellcasters. Abandoned buildings hide ancient beings, and at the local club, you might find yourself rubbing shoulders with menacing and otherworldly creatures. If you know how to look, of course. Merrick Moore is just a regular guy with dreams of making it big with his garage band, but not much else - until he crashes a party thrown by reclusive eccentrics. He gets more than he bargained for: new powers, a girlfriend who can visit him in his dreams, and a seven year bond with the local Fae court. When the mortal enemies of his new friends show up to his band's first gig, Merrick finds himself trying to prevent the start of a war that will have consequences for everyone, Fae and human alike.

'The fact that this novel is so witty is incidental to how good it is - it has characters you care about deeply and a heart as big as a cathedral' Miles Jupp 'The finest love story I have read in years. Perfect I'd say.' Phyllida Shrimpton, author of Sunflowers in February Mr Baxter is ninety-four years old when he falls down his staircase and finds himself resident at Melrose Gardens Retirement Home. Baxter is many things - raconteur, retired music teacher, rabble-rouser, bon viveur; but 'good patient' he is not. Indeed, Melrose Gardens is his worst nightmare. Then he meets Gregory. Greg is just nineteen years old, but he has already suffered a loss so heavy that he is in danger of giving up on life before he even gets going. Seeing the boy's pain, Baxter decides to take him under his wing. Together they embark on a spirited journey to the war graves of Northern France, for Baxter to pay tribute to the love of his life; the man he waved off to fight in a senseless war; the man who never returned. As Baxter shares his memories, Gregory starts to see that life need not be a matter of mere endurance; that the world is huge and beautiful; that kindness is strength; and that the only way to honour the dead, is to live every last second we have while we're here.

A New York Review Books Original Everything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed his masterpiece, Life and Fate. The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. But in a novel that seeks to take in the whole tragedy of Soviet history, Ivan’s story is only one among many. Thus we also hear about Ivan’s cousin, Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, and Pinegin, the informer who got Ivan sent to the camps. Then a brilliant short play interrupts the narrative: a series of informers steps forward, each making excuses for the inexcusable things that he did—inexcusable and yet, the informers plead, in Stalinist Russia understandable, almost unavoidable. And at the core of the book, we find the story of Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s lover, who tells about her eager involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932–33, which led to the deaths of three to five million Ukrainian peasants. Here Everything Flows attains an unbearable lucidity comparable to the last cantos of Dante’s Inferno.

Jake Entwhistle is smart and handsome, but living with a shadow over his romantic history. Janet Rossi is a bright, witty aide to the governor of Massachusetts, but Janet suffers from an illness that makes her, as she puts it, “not exactly a good long-term investment.” After meeting by accident late one night, they begin a love affair filled with humor, startling intimacy, and a deep, abiding connection.

The “definitive biography” of the poet and political dissident who became the last president of Czechoslovakia—and first president of the Czech Republic (Walter Isaacson). This portrait of Vaclav Havel, iconoclast and intellectual, renowned playwright turned political dissident, president of a united then divided nation, and dedicated human rights activist, is written by his former press secretary, advisor, and longtime friend—and recounts the turbulent twentieth-century era through which he prevailed. Havel’s lifelong perspective as an outsider began with his privileged childhood in Prague and his family’s blacklisted status following the Communist coup of 1948. This feeling of being outcast fueled his career as an essayist and a dramatist writing absurdist plays as social commentary. His involvement during the Prague Spring and his leadership of Charter 77, his unflagging belief in the power of the powerless, and his galvanizing personality catapulted Havel into a pivotal role as the leader of the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Although Havel was a courageous visionary, he was also a man of great contradictions, wracked with doubt and self-criticism. But he always remained true to himself. This “smart and exciting” biography is “both inspiring and filled with lessons for our time” (Walter Isaacson). “Havel was one of the most important intellectual-troublemaking statesmen of his time—a nonconformist, determined to live in truth, who questioned the system, his countrymen and himself constantly. No one is better suited than Michael Zantovsky to describe, interpret, and analyze this moral giant . . . A brilliantly informed intellectual and political history.” —Madeleine Albright “Entertaining, intimate, and moving . . . Zantovsky’s voice—that of a natural storyteller with an eye for the memorable anecdote, a mischievous wit, an easy intelligence, and keen sense of balance and fairness—is so engaging.” —Paul Wilson, The New York Review of Books