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StephenLead Designer at Lake Forest ParkStephen loves anything that gives voice to his bottomless well of despair, including (but not limited to) pretentious classics, depressing comics, old spy novels, and histories of the early 20th century. In his spare time, Stephen makes comics and doodles on blank surfaces. |
Isambard Kingdom Brunel—legendary civil engineer and real historical figure—is trapped in a game of cat and mouse between Captains Nemo and Ahab in this entertaining literary pastiche in which two of the greatest monomaniacs in Victorian adventure writing are drawn into a deadly collision course. Laying undersea cable has never sounded so thrilling.
The word "feminism" has never been so ubiquitous, but it's in danger of being reduced to a new way to make women buy things. In this fantastic book (which is only partially about sex), Kristen Ghodsee makes a powerful case for the power of universal social programmes like childcare, healthcare, and parental leave to grant women economic, social, and political independence.
This new book by the founder of Jacobin magazine is a fantastic introduction to democratic socialism, the hottest new craze that's sweeping the nation! In his typically readable and engaging style, Bhaskar imagines a plausible socialist future, outlines the successes and failures of socialism in the Twentieth Century, and shows how the instability of liberal capitalism presents an opportunity for the resurgence of democratic socialist politics.
These are the class-war comics you didn't know you needed! A wry and thought-provoking collection of short comics based on the writings of Bertolt Brecht. You might not laugh, but you'll think about how life is terrible.
The 2016 election haunts this story of a man's (actually a dog's) reactions to his failing marriage, but in this and so many other ways the delicately balanced storytelling avoids simplistic dichotomies and easy answers. The result is an empathetic portrayal of characters who hurt each other and themselves without understanding why, which ends on a note of ambiguous hopefulness.
In this gently fantastic and hallucinatory first novel by celebrated graphic designer Peter Mendelsund (What We See When We Read), Percy Frobisher travels to a kind of uncanny TED-conference institute in the desert to work on a project that grows more unfocused as the days pass, while becoming more and more fascinated with a local shop that can apparently reproduce anything at all.
New York Times illustrator Nora Krug uses comics, collage, narrative and found documents to explore her ambivalent feelings of nostalgia and guilt for her German family's wartime past. A fascinating historical detective story!
I can't even remember when I started this book. A self-described "saga of the Russian Revolution," it's as monumental and as sprawling as the enormous apartment building at its heart. A work of history to rival the classics of Russian literature.
After being driven into exile by the rise of the Nazis, communist writer Anna Seghers wrote this heartfelt and hopeful thriller that combines the suspense of a Hitchcock movie with the real tragedy of a community in the grip of a collective madness.
The first comic book to be nominated for the Booker Prize! The deadpan style of an in-flight safety pamphlet heightens the alienation and suppressed anxiety in this story of private tragedy hijacked by the Internet.
If watching the Daily Show in 2018 feels like pelting rocks against the bloodstained blade of an IDF bulldozer, Chapo is here with a dose of the hard stuff.
By turns hilarious and thought-provoking, this book will take you on an unforgettable journey from the unforgiving landscape of the American Southwest to the diction of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a secret military programme to remotely pilot moths.
Psychadelic surrealism meets high school drama in this story of teenage friendship and paradise found and lost in a basement washing machine. Full of deadpan humour and delightfully weird visuals!
At the insanely young age of 21, Tillie Walden is already an incredible talent, and Spinning is exactly the kind of moving, insightful coming-of-age tale for girls that my wife is always complaining don't exist.
This ingenious collection borrows and recontextualizes vocabulary from the US Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms. A fascinating exercise in linguistic appropriation that won the PEN Literary Award.
Art, genius and immortality are examined via a fascinating exploration of the life and legacy of the painter Diego Velázquez and his most famous work.
Take a disorienting dive into language, meaning and identity with this new collection of experimental narratives by the author of the fantastic Vertigo.
From the secret history of a hallucinogenic sound file to pornographic sitcoms, direct-sales pyramid schemes and Mirror Facebook, this inventive, experimental collection explores the impact of technology, media and capitalism on how we think and feel, while demonstrating that Jillian Tamaki is one of the greatest comics artists working today.
Eleanor Davis draws comics the way that regular people form sentences. She drew this travel diary on a cross-country bike trip, and the entries range from spare doodles of her progress or aching knees to finely rendered moments of heartbreaking beauty.
"Not a novel, not a memoir, not a lyric" — whatever this book is, it's a fiercely intelligent and sharply funny exploration of a woman's emotional and intellectual development that will have you running to keep up.
The Russian Revolution is one of the defining events of modern history, and sci-fi author China Miéville has turned its tumultuous, hopeful, and ultimately tragic build-up into a thrilling and fascinating page-turner.
A heartbreaking look at the struggle of undocumented migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. Drawing on stories she heard as a volunteer interpreter, Luiselli reveals the suffering and exploitation at the heart of an arbitrarily cruel border policy.
Will Eisner's expressively drawn collection, combining kitchen-sink melodrama with fairytale elements, introduced "graphic novels" to the world and inaugerated the modern era of comics as art. This beautiful new edition is the perfect way to experience them.
This timely and terrifying book offers a fascinating insight into the convergence of authoritarianism, espionage and organized crime in Putin's Russia.
Marlys is the best friend you wish you had when you were eight: an irrepressible agent of chaos. Lynda Barry captures the spirit of childhood with phenomenal humour and warmth.
Take an unforgettable trip to the historic city of Hav! Watch the exciting roof-race! Explore the caves of the mysterious Kretevs! Marvel at the secret rites of the Cathars! Morris evokes a place so rich and fascinating that you'll wish you were there!
Like a Romantic Larry David, Geoff Dyer travels from Tahiti to the Arctic Circle, meeting humiliation and disappointment on his quest for the Sublime.
Jess melds fact and fiction in this dazzling mix of forms that blends vaudeville, spirituals, dialogues, minstrel songs and slave statistics into a fascinating account of black culture after the Civil War.
In this bleak dreamlike narrative, Adrià Guinart is like an anti-Quixote, wandering the countryside in search of escape from his country's perpetual war, but finding instead, like Quixote, frequent merciless beatings.
In the genre-guzzling longest work by a true comics master, Daniel Clowes turns a pulp sci-fi scenario into the most cynical and sordid story you'll ever read about the power of true love.
It's amazing how much clarity Varoufakis has shed on such a complex subject. If you want to understand not only the Euro crisis, but the fragility and unfairness at the heart of the global financial system, you must read this book.
This debut collection of short fictions and narratives is so witty, raw and insightful that you'll read it again and again!
Beautiful, surreal, often willfully opaque, this is a fantastic work by an arist at the height of his power.
This eclectic collection of short comics is beautiful in every respect. Fantastically well drawn, intelligent, witty and often unbearably personal, it could be the best book I read last year.
In an incredible feat of imagination and stylistic skill, Robinson inhabits the life and thoughts of an unschooled drifter who marries an aging pastor in the third novel set in the town of Gilead, Iowa.
Did you love Mad Men? Of course you did. So do yourself a favour and read this dark and funny exploration of the sordid and tempestuous inner life of an outwardly banal executive in the Sixties.
The beautifully written, heartbreaking story of a disillusioned young spinster and her self-destructive brother. This is my favourite of Robinson's novels set in Gilead, but they're all fantastic.
Part-treatise, part-memoir of a troubled marriage, what begins as a philosophical exploration of the nature and purpose of hotels takes in home, love, marital politics, madness and the Marx Brothers in a witty and insightful stream of associations.
This linguistically ambitious novel uses an invented dialouge that borrows from the vocab, spelling, and syntax of Old English to recreate the world of Saxon Britain in the bloody period after the Norman invasion. Learning to read it is an experience in itself!
Guessing the weight of a cake plunges Arthur Rowe into a deadly game of cat and mouse in this WWII-era thriller that combines the excitement of Hitchcock with the absurdity of a Kafkaesque nightmare.
Not much useful life advice here, but this delightful book about a Parisian apartment building and all the people and objects that have inhabited it, is one of the most unusual and fascinating novels I've ever read.
