New Releases by Posy Simmonds

In May 1977 Posy Simmonds, an unknown young illustrator, started drawing a weekly comic strip for the Guardian. It began as a silly parody of girls'' adventure stories, making satirical comments about contemporary life. The strip soon focused on three 1950s school friends in their later middle-class and nearly middle-aged lives: Wendy Weber, a former nurse married to polytechnic sociology lecturer George with a large brood of children; Jo Heep, married to whisky salesman Edmund with two rebellious teenagers; and Trish Wright, married to philandering advertising executive Stanhope and with a young baby. The strip, which was latterly untitled and usually known just as ''Posy'', ran until the late 1980s. Collected here for the first time are the complete strips. Although celebrated for pinpointing the concerns of Guardian readers in the 1980s and their constant struggle to remain true to the ideals of the 1960s, they are in fact remarkably undated. They show one of Britain''s favourite cartoonists, celebrated for Literary Life and Tamara Drewe, maturing into genius.

***WINNER OF THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020*** ''Simmonds is a copper-bottomed genius... she is as brilliant a writer as Britain has'' Jenny Colgan, Mail Online Cassandra Darke is an art dealer, mean, selfish, solitary by nature, living in Chelsea in a house worth £7 million. She has become a social pariah, but doesn''t much care. Between one Christmas and the next, she has sullied the reputation of a West End gallery and has acquired a conviction for fraud, a suspended sentence and a bank balance drained by lawsuits. On the scale of villainy, fraud seems to Cassandra a rather paltry offence - her own crime involving ''no violence, no weapon, no dead body''. But in Cassandra''s basement, her young ex-lodger, Nicki, has left a surprise, something which implies at least violence and probably a body . . . Something which forces Cassandra out of her rich enclave and onto the streets. Not those local streets paved with gold and lit with festive glitter, but grimmer, darker places, where she must make the choice between self-sacrifice and running for her life.

Lulu doesn''t want to be stuck in a museum, she wants to play outside in the snow! She sits on the bench and sniffs. Before she knows it the flying babies have escaped a painting and swept her off her feet. Lulu is flown into a whimiscal, magical adventure through a world of pictures, meeting Kings, growling at tigers and getting lost in the woods.

Lulu is going to be a bridesmaid, but the night before the wedding she eats too much chocolate and is very poorly. Lulu has a nap to feel better, but before long she is woken up by someone crying. Join Lulu on her very chocolatey escapades as she tries to rescue the wedding cake''s sugar bride from some mice who have a very sweet tooth.

Tamara Drew is loosely inspired by a 19th century novel -- Far From the Madding Crowd. Set in a writers'' retreat, it is a thrilling tale of jealousy and desire.

A humorous story about a baker cat and his mice friends.

How Lavender became the Bravest Rabbit in the World Whenever there is the slightest hint of danger, Lavender the rabbit can be found with her friends the goose and the hens clucking with concern. So when a group of tourist town foxes arrive on their first visit to the countryside, Lavender is very wary indeed, even though the town foxes think that the idea of eating rabbits is just sick. Rabbit’s courage is challenged even further when the town foxes invite the rabbits to a party. However, Lavender joins the group and even perseveres when the others decide that the situation has become quite scary. What happens next, as the town foxes come face to face with their hungry country cousins, ensures that Lavender returns home a heroine! From the Hardcover edition.

This book consists of approximately fifty ''Literary Life'' cartoons which were serialised weekly every Saturday in the Guardian''s Review section from November 2002 until December 2004, and two short stories, ''Murder at Matabele Mansions'' and ''Cinderella''. Posy Simmonds examines the pretensions of the literary world with her customary flair for light, witty satire and social observation. Women writers suffer ''Rustic Block'' after moving to the countryside, type their sexual fantasies into their laptop, and (in ''Enemies of Promise'') juggle the dilemmas of feminism and motherhood. Male authors are shown suffering the ego-perils of coming into contact with the public at book signings, and complain about reviewers and ''media hoops''. Jealousies and rivalries emerge out of reading groups; struggling small booksellers have to deal with recalcitrant customers or sales reps pushing the latest celebrity book. Simmonds'' penchant for literary pastiche and parody is given full rein, as in ''Murder at Matebele Mansions''. And she wickedly suggests a family''s fixed smiles as a young girl explains the plot of her Harry Potter book ... Funny, insightful and beautifully drawn, Literary Life will delight fans of Gemma Bovery.

"Gemma is the bored, pretty second wife of Charlie Bovery, the reluctant stepmother of his children and the bete-noire of his ex-wife. Gemma''s sudden windfall and distaste for London take them across the Channel to Normandy, where the charms of French country living soon wear off. Is it a coincidence that Gemma Bovery has a name rather like Flaubert''s notorious heroine? Is it by chance that, like Madame Bovary, Gemma is bored, adulterous, and a bad credit risk? is she inevitably doomed? These questions consume Gemma''s neighbour, the intellectual baker, Joubert. Denying voyeurism, but nevertheless noting every change in the fit of her jeans, every addition to Gemma''s wardrobe, her love-bites and lovers, Joubert, with the help of the heroine''s diaries, follows her path towards ruin. Adultery and its consequences. Disappointment and deception. The English in France. Fat and slim. Then and now. Many familiar ingredients of the novel are given new life in Gemma Bovery''s unique graphic form. Like Posy Simmond''s legendary cartoon strips featuring the Weber family, Gemma Bovery will be published in weekly parts in the Guardian"

''A-A-A-atishoo, '' sneezed the anteater, ''brr!'' shivered the bear and ''It''s cold, '' complained the cat. Anteater, Bear, Cat and Duck are f-f-f-freezing and so go on a journey in search of somewhere warm and cosy. . . On their way, they meet some weird and wonderful alphabetical creatures and sights - yaks playing xylophones and ''chopslicking'' foxes for starters.

Der schönste Spielplatz ist für Polly und Jack der Trödelladen ihrer Eltern mit den ausgestopften Tieren. Eines Nachts werden die Tiere lebendig...