New Release Books by Russell Hoban

'This is what literature is meant to be' Anthony Burgess 'O what we ben! And what we come to...' Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilization, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story. 'Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece' Observer 'A timeless portrayal of the human condition ... frightening and uncanny' Will Self 'A book that I could read every day forever and still be finding things' Max Porter

'Recalls Orwell's 1984 and Wells's The Time Machine ... a revelation' Guardian On 4 November 2052, Fremder Gorn is discovered drifting in deep space. He has no spacesuit, no helmet, no oxygen, but he is still alive: the sole survivor from the mysteriously vanished ship Clever Daughter. How did he get here? To find out, Fremder must search through memory, dream and the unknowable fragments of his own mind. 'A wildly imaginative piece of science fiction' The Times 'Unputdownable, moving, ingenious ... it will remain in my head with troubling images and scenes for a long time' A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

'Sparkles with classical allusions and a wisecracking humour ... it is pure joy' Daily Telegraph It all begins the night a leaflet comes through the door of unsuccessful novelist Herman Orff, promising a magical cure for writer's block. The strange treatment plunges him into a hallucinatory London dreamworld populated by figures mythical and real: a severed talking head, Vermeer's girl with a pearl earring, his lost love Luise and, beneath it all, the Kraken awaiting. As Herman will discover, creating art is a tough business. 'One of his most accessibly entertaining books' The Times 'Short, smart and fizzy, the novel seeks out the roots of creativity with none of the solemnity that phrase implies' New Statesman

'Russell Hoban's imagination knows no bounds ... darkly funny and profound' The Times 'You want to buy my death for a million pounds!' Piccadilly Circus tube station is an unlikely location for a pact with the Devil, but this is where Jonathan Fitch first meets Mr Rinyo-Clacton. Devastated after his girlfriend Serafina has left him, Jonathan agrees that this mysterious stranger will pay him a million pounds for a year, if he agrees to die at the end of it. What could possibly go wrong? 'A poignant and engaging fable of ownership and surrender' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday 'Nothing is accidental or optional in this jewelled clockwork egg of a book ... Hoban is a hugely skilled, moving and endlessly entertaining writer' The Times Literary Supplement

Celebrate Christmas with the inspiration for the beloved Jim Henson film — in print after over 40 years. In 1977, when Jim Henson debuted the now-classic film Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, few knew it was based on a story written and illustrated by Russell and Lillian Hoban, creators of Bread and Jam for Frances and other treasured children's books. With an enduring score by the great Paul Williams, the movie remains a holiday tradition in homes across America. Now the book that started it all is back in print, in a beautiful gift edition that will thrill Muppets fans young and old. Inspired by the classic tale "The Gift of the Magi," the story begins in a poor country cottage, as Emmet Otter dreams of buying Ma a piano for Christmas, while Ma dreams of buying Emmet a guitar. When a village talent contest is announced, both imagine their dreams coming true. But what they don't imagine finding is their real reward — the power of love, family, and hope in hard times. It is a story that reaches into a reader's heart and reminds us all that fortune favors the brave. A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year "[A] welcome reissue of the Hobans' 1971 story . . . Colorful illustrations of the close-knit animal community contain plenty of warmth." —The Horn Book

Who but Russell Hoban could weave a tale of life’s pleasures and pain around a candy pig? And who but Quentin Blake could make the most poignant of stories so lighthearted and delightful? In this episodic picture book by an inimitable author-illustrator duo, a fantastic chain of events is triggered by the unacknowledged fall of a marzipan pig behind the sofa. We meet in quick succession a heartsick mouse, a lonely grandfather clock, an owl in love with a taxi meter, a worker bee, a fading hibiscus flower, a mouse who greets the dawn dancing, and finally a boy who guesses at the true relations between things. Appealing to the unsentimental yet sensitive nature of children, The Marzipan Pig is exquisitely attuned to the bittersweet wonder of life and to the sentience of all beings.

'Superb ... Pilgermann is history, metaphysics, a tangle of mysteries, profound and simple' Guardian It is 1097 and a traveller arrives in the great, walled city of Antioch with a vision of a beautiful and mysterious geometric design that will change the lives of all those who see it. Pilgermann is a mesmerising recreation of the world of the Crusades, following its unlikely hero and those he meets on a journey of picaresque horror across a Europe of hatreds, visions and a desperate wish for salvation. 'A dark treatise on the mysterious nature of things ... The world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place borrowing from Hieronymus Bosch, pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical novel' The New York Times Book Review 'A strange and beautiful work' Evening Standard

'An original ... a delight to read' The Times On an ordinary day in a strangely unfamiliar London, Kleinzeit is fired from his advertising job and told he must go to hospital with a skewed hypotenuse. There on Ward A4, he falls in love with the divine, rosy-cheeked Sister and is sent spinning into a quest involving, among other things, a glockenspiel, sheets of yellow paper, Orpheus, the Underground and that dirty chimpanzee, Death. 'Kleinzeit, is a sort of holy fool, a fierce, lonely intelligence desperately trying to make sense of a hopeless world. A tour de force ... entirely delightful' Auberon Waugh, Evening Standard

'A piece of invention as original as any of Tolkien's or C.S. Lewis's' New Statesman 'I have gone to look for a lion.' In a world where lions have become extinct, the map-maker Jachin-Boaz nevertheless abandons his wife and son to find one, leaving just this note. But his decision has unexpected consequences. He will be pursued by his son, Boaz-Jachin, and by something else: a tawny-skinned, amber-eyed beast from another place and time, a bringer of life and death. 'Magic at work ... Funny as well as beautiful' Irish Times 'Hoban is unclassifiable, thank goodness. His narrative is so minutely and compellingly realistic that after a time you cease to notice that he has stood reality on its head' Sunday Times

Harvey thinks his big sister, Mildred, is mean and rotten and she thinks he is stupid and no-good, so they both spend some lonely hours refusing to play together.

A young boy who is afraid of the operation that can help him get well learns to overcome his fear with the help of a caring nurse.

Brilliant and hilarious, full of monsters and disbelieving grown-ups - this is an irresistible Hoban and Blake classic, back in print at last.From the inimitable duo of Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, the pair behind the hilarious tales of Captain Najork, this is the story of John, who likes to draw monsters. Lots of them. Red monsters, yellow monsters, scaly monsters, furry monsters, even invisible monsters. Nothing but monsters! His mum and dad are beginning to worry. Then one day John starts a monster drawing that fills up a whole sheet of wrapping paper - and that's just the tip of the tail! Will this be his biggest monster ever? Or even ... how long will it remain just a drawing?

Discovering that his soon-to-be-born first offspring, a soonchild, cannot hear the World Songs from her mother's womb, Sixteen-Face John, an Arctic Circle shaman, embarks on a fantastical journey to different eras and in the forms of animals and demons to find the songs that will inspire the soonchild's birth.

Since the age of thirteen, Christabel Alderton has been troubled by a sort of second sight that works sometimes, but not always. Death is much on her mind because the men in her life tend to die before their time and she's come to think she's bad luck. Fascinated by Christabel, diabetologist Elias Newman is keen to know her better but she's afraid of what might happen. Taking the reader from the River Lea via a haunted woodland bog, out to the crash of the Pacific surf on Kahakuloa Head in the Hawaiian Islands, this is Russell Hoban at his engrossing, inimitable best.

In the aquarium at the London Zoo, three sea turtles swim endlessly in 'their little bedsitter of ocean'. Two lonely people, William G and Neaera H, become obsessed with the turtles' captivity, and resolve to rescue them and release them in to the sea. William's and Neaera's diaries tell the story of how they achieve the turtles' freedom, and in the process re-define their own lives.

A fire-breathing dragon takes a boy on a fantastic sky-high adventure in this irresistible Hoban and Blake classic. From the inimitable duo of Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, the pair behind the hilarious tales of Captain Najork, comes a story about a little boy, a fire-breathing dragon, and their sky-high adventure! "I can make fire come out of my nose and mouth," the dragon under the pavement tells John. "I can fly. I can spin gold into straw if you have any gold." John doesn't have any gold - and he doesn't need any straw. (Not yet, anyway.) The dragon tells John that if he fights the dragon and wins, the dragon will take him flying." What a challenge! Where will it lead? John soon finds out - and he also finds out that you just never know when a bundle of straw might come in handy... With sword-flashing excitement, a moon landing and plenty of magic, this irresistible page-turner is brought back into print in a bigger format - and a beautiful, more colourful, new edition.

A boy beaver decides he wants to be a tramp who sleeps in open fields and does odd jobs for food, but his beaver instincts eventually get the best of him.

'This table,' said the man. 'What about the table?' said the woman. 'It's wearing me out,' said the man. What to do? The man makes a decision. He finds a tablewood tree, cuts it down, saws it up and makes a new table. There's nothing like a new table. This one is strong enough for elephants to dance on! But. 'Where would we get the elephants?' said the woman. 'Advertise in the Classified Section,' said the man. 'Elephants wanted for table work. Must be agile.' It looks as if the man and the woman might need some more tables! 'We could open a restaurant,' said the man. A restaurant with dancing elephants - where will it all lead?

Re-issued to coincide with the centenary of Messiaen's birth, The Messiaen Companion was the first major study to appear after the composer's death in April 1992. It was the first book to offer both a complete survey of Messiaen's extraordinary achievements and a comprehensive guide to his music, also examining in detail the enduring inspiration which Messiaen derived from his religious faith and from his lifelong passion for ornithology and the natural world. The contributors, all of whom have made a special study of the composer, include two biographers of Messiaen and a number of the foremost interpreters of his music. Messiaen's influential teaching is recalled in essays by three of his pupils (Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, and Peter Hill), and the composer is also remembered in a remarkable and moving contribution from his widow and devoted musical companion, the pianist Yvonne Loriod.

The little Brute family is not nice. Can Baby Brute change their ways?

Another classic from Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, featuring a jam-powered frog and an eccentric headmistress ... as nutty and compulsive as ever. A Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake classic, and a brilliant companion volume to How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen, this is the story of Tom who invents a jam-powered frog. Fooling around as he loves to do, Tom takes his Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet out on the frog out for a spin. When Captain Najork sees them hopping past his window, he and his hired sportsmen jump into their pedal-powered snake and set off in hot pursuit. Events, adventure and sheer craziness conspire to bring Tom and the Captain together at the local girls' boarding school, where Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork is in the middle of a best-of-three armwrestling contest against the Headmistress ... A rip-roaring adventure guaranteed to keep the pages turning and the laughs bouncing off the ceiling!

In Ariosto's epic sixteenth century poem Orlando Furioso, the beautiful Angelica is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero. He swoops in riding a hippogriff, a fantastical winged creature, the offspring of a griffin and a mare. Volatore, as this hippogriff calls himself, has escaped Ariosto's poem after being trapped within it for centuries and is now determined to find Angelica himself. Landing in San Francisco, he meets Angelica Greenberg and the unlikely couple falls in love. But events constantly conspire to separate them, and Volatore sets out to find the perfect form he must embody to consummate their love. Angelica Lost and Found contains life-enhancing wisdom and emanates with wicked drollery, aesthetic insight and the romance of Russell Hoban at his best.

With a new baby sister in the house, Frances is feeling quite forgotten. Mother doesn’t have time to iron Frances’s favorite dress, her parents don’t appreciate her new song, and there are no raisins for her oatmeal. So Frances decides to run away, and she does—but not too far. Full of warmth and family love, this new edition of Russell and Lillian Hoban’s beloved classic is perfect for beginning readers.

Frances doesn't think her little sister, Gloria, can be her friend. But when Frances's friend Albert has a no-girls baseball game, Frances shows him a thing or two about friendship—and a thing or two about what girls can do. Along the way, Frances discovers that sisters can indeed be friends . . . maybe even best friends.

Frances is a fussy eater. In fact, the only thing she likes is bread and jam. She won't touch her squishy soft-boiled egg. She trades away her chicken-salad sandwich at lunch. She turns up her nose at boring veal cutlets. Unless Mother can come up with a plan, Frances just might go on eating bread and jam forever!

Frances is jealous of her sister's birthday, but birthday spirit moves her to reluctantly give her coveted gift.

Irving Goodman, self-confessed dirty old man, is 83 years old and has just fallen in love. Unfortunately, Justine Trimble, star of 1950s cowboy B-movies, has been dead for 47 years. He saw her first in Last Stage to El Paso, a lowlife black-and-whie Western, and has been unable to think of anything else since. Desperate, Goodman invokes the help of his old friend, Istvan Fallock, to see if they can't somehow coax a videotape to yield the 25-year-old Justine. So with a test tube, distillation of frog, a soupcon of primordial soup mixed with a suspension of disbelief, they summon her back to life. And to their surprise and consternation, she materializes. As a reward for lust and hubris, Irving gets a lot more than the affection and attention he'd bargained for. Thus beings an amazing tale of murder and mayhem in contemporary London, where sexy vampire cowgirls run amok, chased by men old enough to know better.

Four stories featuring Frances the badger. Presented in abridged easy to read form.