New Release Books by Russell Hoban

''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

''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

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

''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

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.

"Like the fantasies of Tolkien, Thurber, E. B. White, The Mouse and His Child is filled with symbolism and satire, violence and vengeance, tears and laughter." -- The New York Times The images stay with you long after the book is done: the toy mouse and his father, on a journey together joined hand in hand; Manny Rat, the nefarious lord of the junkyard, stalking the toy mice for their clockwork parts; Uncle Frog, spouting wisdom and nonsense from within a glove; and the Bonzo Dog Food dog, repeating himself endlessly on a label, fading away to the last visible dog...Russell Hoban''s novel is many things: a stirring adventure story, a sharp-witted comedy, and the moving tale of a father and son struggling to return to a state of grace.Called one of the great works of children''s literature of the twentieth century -- but with an audience that spans ages and times -- The Mouse and His Child has been lovingly re-illustrated by Caldecott Medalist David Small for a new generation and a new millennium.

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?

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?

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.

Angelica''s Grotto is a pornographic website into which seventy-two-year-old art historian Harold Klein wanders one evening. Klein, a walking catalogue of infirmities, known to medical consultants as ''he who declines to hop the twig'', may not be up to much physically but there''s a lot of sex going on in his head. ''You''re a tiger from the neck up, Professor,'' says Melissa, the brains behind the website, when at last Klein faces the object of his desire. Harold first visits Angelica''s Grotto after losing his ''inner voice'', that censoring mechanism that keeps us from blurting out the first thing that pops into our heads and finding ourselves in Casualty as a result of it. Harold consults a therapist about this new lack of mental privacy and also has one-to-one onscreen dialogue in the Grotto. ''If I had an inner voice I wouldn''t be telling you all this,'' he explains to the as-yet-unmet Melissa. But when the flesh-and-blood Melissa and her large and well-hung colleague Leslie enter his life he finds it''s good to keep the angina medicine at the ready. Harold Klein''s odyssey takes him not only through erogenous zones but into various corners of the London art world, down the underground and up the buses.

An inexplicable message flashed onto the screen of his Apple II computer at 3 a.m. heralds the beginning of a startling quest for frustrated author Herman Orff. Taking up the offer of a cure for writer''s block leads him ''to those places in your head that you can''t get to on your own'' - and plunges him into a semi-dreamland inhabited by a bizarre combination of characters from myth and reality: the talking head of Orpheus; a lost love; the young girl of Vermeer''s famous portrait - and a frequency of Medusas.

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.

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!

‘Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.’ Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

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

What happens if you wake up thirsty in the middle of the night? How do you trick the most insufferable boy in the village? What would you do on your birthday if you were a lobster? Find out in this short story collection. Chucklers is a collection of books that make reading a pleasure.

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?

One hot summer Thursday, Harry meets the rag-and-bone man and his horse, and follows them through the rain door - to a whole other world behind the weather. When Harry hears a lion roar, he wants to get home as fast as he can - but that turns out to be easier said than done. After an exciting adventure involving a home-made dinosaur and a sky-high flight through the mother of all thunderstorms, will Harry manage to escape the thundering lion and get back home?

A classic tale of the triumph of fooling-around fun over humourless no-nonsense adult disapproval! Tom loves to fool around. He fools around with dropping things from bridges into rivers and he fools around with barrels in alleys. He fools around so much that his maiden aunt, Miss Fidget Wonkham-Strong (who wears an iron hat and takes no nonsense from anyone), sends for Captain Najork and his hired sportsmen to teach Tom a lesson. Captain Najork, says Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, is seven feet tall, with eyes like fire and a voice like thunder. He teaches fooling-around boys the lesson they so badly need, and it is not one that they soon forget. Captain Najork lays down a challenge: they will play womble, muck and speedball - in that order. And it turns out not to be Tom who gets taught a lesson after all!

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.

The late author of the Frances series and British Children''s Laureate illustrator of the Roald Dahl stories follows the experiences of a discarded popsicle stick that is picked up by a little girl who dreams about a magical horse that gallops with her through cities, jungles and over an ice-pop mountain leading to a gold-filled pirate chest.

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!

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.