Extraordinary Books – förlag

'A tremendous book – oracular, clear, vital. It will shift the ground under every reader of it' Ali SmithA radical reframing of Russia’s war on Ukraine‘Apocalypse Baroque bears witness to a country on fire and a culture that fights against erasure. Crossing Ukraine in trains and volunteer cars, I have collected testimonies of everyday defiance that has surprised the world and, at times, Ukrainians themselves. A suitable language for relaying the atrocities we endure does not exist. I accept it, alongside the need to reach for a universal dimension in the singular horror of each act of Russian aggression. When reaching for the universal, one often taps into folklore. And once in the realm of folklore, one can read the old stories in a new way and make the reading emancipatory. In the sixteen tales that comprise this book, we meet characters from myth and legend next to my contemporaries and fellow citizens, united in a fightfor justice.’ Sasha Dovzhyk

What drives someone to commit the unthinkable?Austin 1966. Dunblane 1996. Port Arthur 1996. Utøya 2011. In this deeply insightful account, pre-eminent forensic psychiatrist Paul E. Mullen examines the complex psychology behind lone mass killers. With unflinching clarity, he burrows into the minds of these damaged individuals, drawing on his decades of forensic work assessing mass murderers first-hand. Mullen brings readers into a dark landscape populated with killers who have achieved the ugly fame they had sought – in the US, UK, Australia, Norway and beyond – as well as lesser-known, equally chilling cases. He illuminates troubling patterns that unite the perpetrators, such as obsessive rage, personal grievance, fascination with weapons and yearning for infamy, often culminating in suicide. He also considers the impact of media sensationalism on the killers’ grandiose fantasies and proposes steps toward better threat assessment and identification of warning signs. Challenging myths around madness and violence, Mullen reveals the unsettling truth: these killers are not incomprehensible monsters, but profoundly disturbed people shaped by knowable forces that, when properly understood, can be countered effectively. Running Amok does not simply examine tragedy; it is a call to action, urging society to confront the shadows and prevent the next horror.

Fresh from a night in a Miami jail, Steven lands in Guatemala City, ready for riotous road trips fuelled by booze, cocaine and passionate curiosity about people from all walks of life. His guide? Antonio, a sweet-natured, streetwise hotel concierge who shepherds Steven through colonial Antigua, the volcanic shores of Lake Atitlán and the untamed beaches of Monterrico. Danger is never far off, but neither are laughs – and there’s plenty of both when Steven accompanies Antonio on a visit to his rural home village. Then there’s Anabella, a glamourous, garrulous, middle-aged woman with whom Steven strikes up an unlikely friendship, accompanying her back to the capital with her family. There he mooches an open-ended stay in her gated community, which bristles with armed guards and famous eccentrics. Froelich’s gonzo travelogue is a darkly hilarious, unapologetic plunge into beauty and madness, privilege and privation. With a raw, witty voice, Froelich explores the absurdities of the human condition, never letting truth get in the way of a good story.

Dr Harry Silman’s WW2 diaries, detailing life as a POW tending to fellow combatants during forced labour on the Burma Railway. A Cool Head in Hell is a compelling historical narrative based on Harry Silman’s diaries, comprising one of the most comprehensive accounts by a POW under the Japanese to survive WWII.Silman joined the British Army in 1939 as a medical officer. In 1940, he was one of the last soldiers to be shipped out during the mass retreat from Dunkirk. In 1942, his division was assigned to assist in the defence of Singapore, but arrived just before the island fell to Japan. Captain Silman spent the rest of the war in the notorious Changi POW camp as well as in the northernmost camps of the notorious Burma Railway, where he tended to Allied forced-labourers.Throughout, Silman kept diaries in secret – illegal and dangerous for a POW. He wrote regular accounts of his harrowing experiences in the camps when he himself was weakened and exhausted, caring as best he could for hundreds of ill, wounded and dying men. Articulate, graphic, compassionate and lit with good humour, the diaries have been edited with care and illuminating commentary by Silman’s daughter, Jacqueline Passman.

He’s back! In this second travel memoir, The Man Without a Plan lands in Belize, a country about which he knows nada. But he quickly amasses an array of new friends – some of whom can even match his penchant for being in a near-constant buzz from industrial-quantity drugs and drink.As ever, the characters with whom Steven ingratiates himself become his surrogate (dysfunctional) family. But Tracey, Devonais, Ask Bobby!, Valentino and a pack of kids led by the feral Molokai soon have Steven suspecting that his cheerfully transactional relationships are, in fact, ensnaring him in a web of scams. Will he be left for broke, stranded in this shabby paradise? Is his paranoia justifiable, or the result of continuous cocaine use? His response is to embark with the gang on a road trip along the coast, taking in shantytowns, hotels, beaches and, at a low ebb, jail.Coarse, irresponsible and wilfully uninformed, Froelich is nevertheless observant and interested. Belize is about the ways in which chaotic, complex human beings find community, no matter where they’re from or where they’re headed.

Across the fractured end of the twenty-first century, multiplegenerations endure the upheavals of climate collapse and the violent remaking of what was once the United States. At the heart of the cruel, chaotic wastelands of the Southwest are the brother and sister known in whispers as ‘the Twins’: Tom and Tam MacAllister. Their brief insurrection against the oligarchic powers of a broken nation blazes with elemental force, echoing long after their fall. Half-history, half-legend, their legacy lingers in surpising ways as a bleaker order re-forms. Dennison Smith’s taut, luminous prose carries this mythic novel of violence and renewal, confronting what is lost – and what may yet be born.

A Frida Kahlo painting, a scandal, and secrets that threaten to change the course of historyIn 1938, showgirl-turned-socialite Dorothy Hale falls from a Manhattan skyscraper. Her friend Clare Boothe Luce – writer, diplomat and rising political figure – commissions Frida Kahlo to paint a memorial portrait.Months later, reporting from Europe, Clare encounters the Duchess of Windsor in Paris and begins to question what really happened that night. In New York, Frida, estranged from Diego Rivera, wrestles with betrayal, ambition and the demands of her art. As she works on the painting that will become one of her most unsettling, she edges closer to the truth.At the heart of this novel lies a real-life mystery: was Dorothy Hale’s death an act of despair, or something far more dangerous, entangled with the power struggles shaping the modern world?

People often assume that Steven Froelich is a rock star, with his flowing blond locks and manic ‘where’s the party at!’ vibe. His Keith Richards-level consumption of narcotics and booze does nothing to dispel the impression.Froelich has now set his sights on the reputed El Dorado of ‘white gold’. Colombia: Playing with Powder is the latest instalment of his Latin American travel memoirs – a peripatetic trail of debauched cocaine use, furtive transactions in hostels, taxis and bars, and oddball characters.Froelich’s trademark illiberal rants, unfiltered stream of consciousness and indifference to social or political tensions unpeel the workings of the mind of a true addict; but equally, he yearns for a more elusive substance than cocaine: human connection