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The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan’s gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation’s troubled past:the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million “Communists,” followed by three decades of Suharto’s despotic rule.      Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years....  Drawing on local sources—folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope—and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan’s distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

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Celebrate 45 women artists, and gain inspiration for your own practice, with this beautiful exploration of contemporary creators from the founder of The Jealous Curator. Walk into any museum, or open any art book, and you'll probably be left wondering: where are all the women artists? A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women) offers an exciting alternative to this male-dominated art world, showcasing the work of dozens of contemporary women artists alongside creative prompts that will bring out the artist in anyone!This beautiful book energizes and empowers women, both artists and amateurs alike, by providing them with projects and galvanizing stories to ignite their creative fires. Each chapter leads with an assignment that taps into the inner artist, pushing the reader to make exciting new work and blaze her own artistic trail. Interviews, images, and stories from contemporary women artists at the top of their game provide added inspiration, and historical spotlights on art "herstory" tie in the work of pioneering women from the past. With a stunning, gift-forward package and just the right amount of pop culture-infused feminism, this book is sure to capture the imaginations of aspiring women artists.

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The ultimate color-by-color flower reference guide - from New York's pre-eminent floral designers, Putnam and PutnamPlanning a wedding, a dinner, a birthday party, a romantic evening, holiday entertaining, or just arranging flowers for the pleasure of having them, more often than not your creative process begins with thinking about the color of the flowers that you want. To help you find what you are looking for, Flower Color Guide is the first reference book to organize flower types by color, with an emphasis on seasonality and creative color schemes - and the results are stunning in their sheer variety. What Pantone is to color, Flower Colour Guide is to flowers.Showcasing 400 flowers at their peak, with stunning photography taken by Putnam & Putnam in their Brooklyn studio, this guide includes an appendix featuring perforated pages, with tips on flower care, notes on how to prepare vessels and a list of suggested color schemes. A great gift to give, or to have for oneself, the book speaks to the most seasoned flower enthusiasts as well as those just beginning to explore the possibilities of arranging flowers.Michael and Darroch Putnam have built a reputation for romantic, dramatic floral arrangements and installations using color as their guiding principle - here, they share their knowledge with readers worldwide: "This is the book we wished we had when we started doing flowers."

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WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA NOVEL AWARD AND BESTSELLING LITERARY PAPERBACK OF THE YEAR'Atkinson's finest work, and confirmation that her genre-defying writing continues to surprise and dazzle' ObserverA God in Ruins relates the life of Teddy Todd – would-be poet, heroic World War II bomber pilot, husband, father, and grandfather – as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have. This gripping, often deliriously funny yet emotionally devastating book looks at war – that great fall of Man from grace – and the effect it has, not only on those who live through it, but on the lives of the subsequent generations. It is also about the infinite magic of fiction. Few will dispute that it proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the most exceptional novelists of our age.'A dazzling read...ends on one of the most devastating twists in recent fiction' DAILY TELEGRAPH

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Ellen is a single artist living alone on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1970s. She is beset by old boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by 'radiances' - episodes of joyous, reckless unreality. Under the influence of 'radiances' she becomes Princess Esmeralda, and West 72nd Street becomes the kingdom over which she rules. Life as Esmeralda is a liberating experience for Ellen, who, despite the chaos and stigma these episodes can bring, relishes the respite from the confines of the everyday. And yet those around her, particularly the men in her life, are threatened by her incarnation as Esmeralda, and by the freedom that it gives her.The Princess of 72nd Street is Elaine Kraf's witty, dizzyingly inventive take on female liberation and mental health, a work of immense literary power and unbridled energy. Provocative at the time of its publication in 1979 and thoroughly iconoclastic, it is a remarkable portrait of an unforgettable woman.

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Do you speak to your cat? Do you feel your cat understands you and vice versa? Cat lovers across the globe know cats can speak. In this compelling new book, Susanne Schotz – a professor at Sweden’s Lund University – shares insights into her long-standing cat communication research. Proving that cats not only speak to one another, but also to their human caretakers. This clever book teaches us how to better understand our cats by translating their sounds, recognising their meaning in different situations and giving practical tips to understand them better. Unlocking the cat code, this crash course in cat phonetics is the perfect gift for cat-lovers everywhere.

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The perfect gift for a new dad on Father's Day! Baby Touch: Hello Daddy is a bright, interactive board book from Ladybird's best-selling Baby Touch series. With exciting touch-and-feels and high-contrast colours, this book is perfect for sharing and helps to stimulate your baby's senses as they discover all sorts of babies and their daddies. Neigh along with daddy horse, roar with daddy tiger - and look out for a mirror surprise at the end!Sensory developmentFirst wordsRecommended for children aged 0+Illustrated by Lemon Ribbon StudioAlso available: Baby Touch: Playbook Baby Touch: Happy Birthday!Baby Touch: Faces: a black-and-white bookBaby Touch: Animals Tab Book

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This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956. Set in the early postwar years, The Setting Sun probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. The influence of Osamu Dazai’s novel has made “people of the setting sun” a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.

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In this comprehensive, widely used text, Michael Gorman presents a theologically focused, historically grounded interpretation of the apostle Paul and raises significant questions for engaging Paul today. After providing substantial background information on Paul's world, career, letters, gospel, spirituality, and theology, Gorman covers in full detail each of the thirteen Pauline epistles. Enhancing the text are questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter as well as numerous photos, maps, and tables throughout. The new introduction in this second edition helpfully situates the book within current approaches to Paul. Gorman also brings the conversation up-to-date with major recent developments in Pauline studies and devotes greater attention to themes of participation, transformation, resurrection, justice, and peace.

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Klawde and Raj are back! As summer turns to fall, our favorite warlord cat remains in his pitiful exiled existence. But Raj has an even scarier prospect than cosmic exile: starting at a new school.And if things didn’t seem complicated enough, both cat and human are confronted with two figures from their past they did not expect to pop up in Elba, Oregon...Heavily illustrated, with a hilarious, biting voice that switches between Raj’s and Klawde’s perspectives, this is the story of an unlikely friendship that emerges as two fish out of water continue to find their footing in strange new worlds.

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Following on from her Sunday Times bestseller, I Wish I Knew This Earlier, Toni Tone is back again – and this time, filled with advice that goes beyond our dating and romantic lives. ‘In my opinion, change as a form of evolution is wonderful, because nobody should stay exactly the same forever. If you’re not evolving or growing, what are you doing? Embrace personal change if it means the you of today is better than you of yesterday.’ Do you wish you had more confidence in yourself? Are your friendships changing as you get older and you’re not sure how manage it? Is your career unfulfilling or taking over your life? These are the kinds of issues that Toni Tone explores in her brand-new book, Take Note: Real Life Lessons. Threading in her own experiences, and in particular, what she took away from her twenties, Toni provides genuine and insightful advice on a whole array of topics. Everything from ageing to making (and ending) friendships, to reinventing yourself and challenging your comfort zone, to ignoring ‘deadlines’ and going at your own pace – Take Note has all of the ingredients you’ll need to reach your fullest potential, in one handy, accessible place.

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