Lloyd Jones – författare

The next morning Alma showed up with his tin case of pencils and his sketchbooks. She showed him through to the sitting room. She had an idea that a sitting was a formal occasion and in preparation had gone around the room straightening cushions and pulling off furnishing covers. She had dressed herself up in her Sunday best, a black skirt and red blouse. She had been toying with putting a flower in her hair.Long ago, when the men were away at the war, Alma began painting the women of the town. Alice, his favourite, returned his attentions, and when her husband George came home from the war, he set out to prove his love and reclaim his wife by moving a hill to improve the view for her - with a spade and wheelbarrow.Now, decades later, the townspeople, looking to escape various corners of despair, turn to Alma''s drawing classes and, in doing so, learn to rediscover each other. For when you draw, the only thing that matters is what lies before you. Paint Your Wife is a colourful, sensual novel, brimming with rich stories and even richer characters.

From Lonely Planet, the world''s leading travel guide publisher, Better Than Fiction 2, the follow-up to 2012''s Better Than Fiction, is a second serving of true travel stories told by some of the world''s best fiction writers including Dave Eggers, Jane Smiley and Karen Joy Fowler.

Varied in place, plot and voice, these are stirring and evocative pieces that all share one common characteristic-they manifest a passion for the precious gift of travel, from its unexpected but inevitably enriching lessons about other peoples and places, to the truths, sometimes uncomfortable but always enlarging, it reveals about ourselves.

By turns comic, dramatic, and moving - from Francine Prose''s confrontation of the mysteries of India to DBC Pierre''s search for Hemingway''s muse in Italy - these 30 short tales reveal the joys, perils, and surprises of travel, and that truth can often be stranger (and better) than fiction.

Whether on a plane en route to your own travel adventure, or at home settling in for a vicarious experience of world adventures, embark on this literary journey around the world and explore your passion for travel now!

Authors: Lonely Planet, Don George, Dave Eggers, Jane Smiley, Karen Joy Fowler, Stefan Merrill Block, Francine Prose, DBC Pierre, Fiona Kidman, Alexander McCall Smith, Keija Parssinen, MJ Hyland, Catherine Lacey, Rebecca Dinerstein, Lloyd Jones, Porochista Khakpour, Jack Livings, Marina Lewycka, Lydia Millet, Suzanne Joinson, Sophie Cunningham, Christina Nichol, Mandy Sayer, Steven Amsterdam, Marie-Helene Bortino, Shirley Streshinsky, Steven Hall, David Shafer, Avi Duckor-Jones, Lily King, Aliya Whitely, and Natalie Baszile

About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world''s leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet''s mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.

Lonely Planet''s award-winning list travel literature anthologies include An Innocent Abroad (Independent Publishers Award, Silver for Essays, 2015) and A Fork in the Road (Lowell Thomas Award, Bronze for Travel Book, 2014; James Bear Award, Nominated for Travel Fiction, 2014).

''Lonely Planet. It''s on everyone''s bookshelves; it''s in every traveller''s hands. It''s on mobile phones. It''s on the Internet. It''s everywhere, and it''s telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.'' -- Fairfax Media

''Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.'' - New York Times

Lonely Planet guides have won the TripAdvisor Traveler''s Choice Award in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Lloyd Jones was seven years old the first time he climbed high into a grandstand to watch rugby with his father. The experience was baptismal. From his new elevated perspective Jones believed he could see everything that mattered – a field of play that rolled out, green with promise, from suburban New Zealand to the wider world.

The grandstand is a guiding metaphor for these questing narrative poems that reach back into childhood and forward into the life of a writer constantly experimenting with form and voice.

Jones writes of the wild secrets of boyhood – riding dogs, falling from trees, destroying the class ukuleles, learning to sail in small boats. He is alert to the airless small-town grievances that must inevitably be escaped.

As an aspiring young writer Jones travelled widely, testing his identity against difference – places, people, politics and importantly, language.

The more recent poems are a re-assembling of coordinates and a return to the local view. The grandstand has long been decommissioned – it's a housing estate now, but the poems are full of air and greenery. Dream spaces where language is forever in play.

''You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames''. Bougainville, 1991. A small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda''s last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers'' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville''s children are surprised to find the island''s only white man, a recluse, reopening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts'' inspiring reading of Great Expectations. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns. Mister Pip is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished.