Picador – serie

A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism.

Andrea Dworkin's seminal 1981 work on the issue of pornography argues that the industry serves only to harm and oppress women. Her discussion of pornography as an outgrowth of the power that men exert over women - the power of owning, the power of money, and the power of sex, among others - still blazes with its clarity and immediacy, and illustrates how these inequities, while displayed in raw form in pornography, are endemic in all media.With a lively and deeply compelling voice, Andrea Dworkin succinctly outlines her anti-pornography stance. Though the media environment may have changed, this passionately and powerfully argued classic remains a relevant and crucial contribution to the area of feminist studies.

The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of its mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets.Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Proserpina and Neftalí. One of Three Rivers’ last literate citizens, Neftalí hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí’s possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick’s forces, Neftalí and Proserpina, with the help of a wounded Bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city—and in the process, unlock Rivas’s connection to Three Rivers itself.An adventure that only the acclaimed Fernando A. Flores could dream up, Brother Brontë is a mordant, gonzo romp through a ruined world that, in its dysfunction, tyranny, and disparity, feels uncannily like our own. With his most ambitious book yet, Flores once again bends what fiction can do, in the process crafting a moving and unforgettable story of perseverance.

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.