Picador – serie

Andrea Dworkin wrote Right-Wing Women in 1983 - a crucial and deeply illuminating analysis of the right's position on abortion, homosexuality, antisemitism, female poverty, and antifeminism. Forty years later, the book feels more vibrant, clear-eyed, and visionary than ever, especially as these issues get relitigated in both legal and public forums. In addition to her revelatory and nuanced portraits of figures like Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly, and an examination of the roots of a distinctly woman-led brand of American conservatism, Right-Wing Women will give readers the thrill of rediscovering the force and elegance of Dworkin's arguments and her skill as one of our most adept and prophetic feminist thinkers.

From 1941 to 1947, 18,000 Italian prisoners of war were sent to Australia. The surrender of Mussolini in 1943 created a novel circumstance: prisoners who were no longer enemies. Due to a shortage of guards and their new status as friendlies, many of these exiles were sent to work on isolated farms, unguarded. This is the unforgettable story of a woman named Gin Boyle. An albino, a classically trained pianist, and a woman with a painful past, Gin's ghostly skin and transparent white hair have made her an outcast since birth. Disavowed by her wealthy step-father, her unlike saviour is the farmer Mr Toad - a little man, with a taste for ladies corsets.

If you're fat and fail every diet, if you're thin but can't get thin enough, if you lose your job, if your child dies, if you are diagnosed with cancer, if you always end up with exactly the wrong kind of person, if you always end up alone, if you can't get over the past, if your parents are insane and ruining your life, if you really and truly wish you were dead, if you feel like it's your destiny to be a star, if you believe life has a grudge against you, if you don't want to have sex with your spouse and don't know why, if you feel so ashamed, if you're lost in your life, if you have ever wondered, How am I supposed to survive this? This is how.

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by a beautiful yet ruthless pirate. He will be spared, Mad Hannah Mabbot tells him, as long as he can conjure an exquisite meal every Sunday from the ship's meager supplies. While Wedgwood attempts to satisfy his captor with feats such as tea-smoked eel and pineapple-banana cider, he realizes that Mabbot herself is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. Yet there is a method to Mabbot's madness, and as the Flying Rose races across the ocean, Wedgwood learns to rely on the bizarre crew members he once feared: a formidable giant who loves to knit; a pair of stoic martial arts masters, sworn to defend their captain; and the ship's deaf cabin boy, who becomes the son he never had.

The Big Green Tent is the kind of book for which the term "Russian novel" was invented. A sweeping saga, it tells the story of three school friends who meet in 1950s Moscow and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys - an orphaned poet; a gifted, fragile pianist; and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets - struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled. Rich with love stories, intrigue, and a cast of dissenters and spies, The Big Green Tent offers a panoramic survey of life after Stalin and a dramatic investigation into the prospects for integrity in a society defined by the KGB. Each of the central characters seeks to transcend an oppressive regime through art, a love of Russian literature, and activism. And each of them ends up face-to-face with a secret police that is highly skilled at fomenting paranoia, division, and self-betrayal. Ludmila Ulitskaya's big, yet intimate novel belongs to the tradition of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak: a work of politics, love, and belief that is a revelation of life in dark times.Named a must-read book by New York magazine, Travel Leisure, Flavor wire, and Bustle, and a Best Fiction Book of the Year by The Christian Science Monitor