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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Northern Europe

• Scandinavia
• Great Britain
• Ireland

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  Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way by Simon Armitage

  Price: £16.99    Add to Basket

  One might question how interesting a travelogue about a route that the author describes as “pointless ... leading from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular” could possibly be. But Simon Armitage’s account of his 256-mile trek - penniless and backwards - up the Pennine Way is not a record of human endurance, but a lovely homage to land and people and a charming meditation on his life as a poet. As he writes about his attempts to pay his way by appearing, wind-whipped and bedraggled, at prearranged readings, Armitage comes across as funny, observant and deeply likeable.

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  Mrs Robinson's Disgrace by Kate Summerscale

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  From the author of the award-winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale dissects one of the most notorious divorce cases of Victorian Britain. Scandalous beyond belief in an era when the shapely ankles of tables were kept covered, the story of Isabella Robinson and her love of the dashing Edward Lane exposes the hypocrisies and passions of 19th century England.

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  Xenophobe's Guide to the Danes

  Price: £3.99    Add to Basket

  An hilarious, tongue-in-cheek exposition on what it means to be Danish.

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  A Crisis of Brilliance by David Haycock

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A gripping, vibrant biography of five of the most exciting artists of the 20th century. Dora Carrington, Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Mark Gertler and Richard Nevinson met at the Slade in London and were the young, talented, bon vivants of their day, who depicted their world on canvas and its slide into the horrors of the First World War.

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  Mortality by Christopher Hitchens

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  A collection of the great contrarian's last pieces of writing, with a introduction by his editor at Vanity Fair and an afterword by his wife. An oddly inspiring but fitting tribute to a formidable intellect and man of letters.

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  Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  The long-awaited memoir from one of the world's greatest living authors. In 1989 Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeini for writing The Satanic Verses - a fatwa was declared and the author went into hiding. Joseph Anton, a pseudonym he chose to reflect his favourite authors, Conrad and Chekhov, is a frank and compelling account of his time underground.

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  Shakespeare's Restless World by Neil MacGregor

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  This is the major new project from Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects. Selecting 20 objects from Shakespeare's life and times he explores the stories behind them and conjures up the Bard's world.

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  Spell it Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling by David Crystal

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  Britain's foremost linguistics expert delves into the peculiarities of English spelling, unearthing the stories behind the rogue words that confound us. A delightful and eye-opening journey, taking in sixth century monks, French and Latin upstarts, the Industrial Revolution and the internet.

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  Scotland: The Autobiography

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  A clever and fantastically interesting book that tells the story of 2,000 years of Scottish history, through a selection of eye-witness accounts. These amusing, readable and evocative extracts include James IV on the evils of tobacco, Samuel Johnson on a Visitor's Impressions of Scotland and George Mackay Brown on porridge.

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  Book of Silence by Sarah Maitland

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Sarah Maitland describes the history of silence, its role in world religion and her own pursuit of it living in isolation on the Scottish moors. Part history, part travelogue and part autobiography from the sensitive, nature-loving author.

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  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  In her 1985 novel, Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Winterson told the story of a young girl adopted by strict pentecostal parents who want nothing more than for their daughter to become a missionary. Instead, the girl falls in love with a woman. Oranges was semi-autobiographical; here, Winterson paints a riveting portrait of her domineering, unwelcoming mother, and of her own search for meaning. Wise, amusing and often deeply sad.

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  A Very English Hero: The Making of Frank Thompson by Peter J. Conradi

  Price: £18.99    Add to Basket

  Conradi's biography of Frank Thompson - poet, soldier, intellectual and eccentric - brother of the historian E. P. Thompson and lover of Iris Murdoch, is a vivid account of a young man's courage and idealism in the face of war. Conradi weaves together the poet's letters and journals to create a portrait of an extraordinary man.

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  Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss

  Price: £14.99    Add to Basket

  Sarah Moss's wonderful memoir of uprooting her young family and moving to Iceland for a year is a heartfelt love letter to Iceland and an intriguing exploration of its culture and heritage. A perfect mix of domestic detail and travel writing, this is an engaging and beautifully written book.

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  Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

  Price: £10.00    Add to Basket

  A beautiful copy of the classic account of Gavin Maxwell's life in a settlement on the west coast of Scotland and his relationship with a family of otters. Nature writing at its absolute best.

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  The New Few: Or a Very British Oligarchy by Ferdinand Mount

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  The thesis put forward in this significant book is that Britain is an oligarchy, which has arisen because politicians have successfully advanced the view that only by concentrating power can the nation achieve its goals. In his concluding section, Mount offers a number of persuasive arguments as to how this state might be solved, including adopting practices from mainland Europe.

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  The Invention of Memory by Simon Loftus

  Price: £30.00    Add to Basket

  In The Invention of Memory Simon Loftus presents us with a heady blend of family memoir with a history of Ireland, foregrounding the story of the Protestant Ascendancy families. What emerges however, is also a meditation on the nature of memory, as the tall tales, legends and ghost stories combine to form a narrative of shifting moods and viewpoints. It has been likened to an Irish Hare with Amber Eyes.
  
  To discover more about this wonderful book, visit The Invention of Memory's sub-site here.
  
  To read an extract, click here.

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  Wives and Stunners: The Pre-Raphaelites and their Muses by Henrietta Garnett

  Price: £20.00    Add to Basket

  In this spirited and witty portrait of the late Victorian world, Garnett - granddaughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant - offers delightful new perspectives on the group of women who lived, loved, suffered and even died in the name of art.

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  The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began by Stephen Greenblatt

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Greenblatt's new history of the Renaissance describes how the discovery of a 1000 year old manuscript of Lucretius' 'On the Nature of Things' sparked the thirst for knowledge which characterized the Renaissance in Western Europe.

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  The Love-Charm of Bombs by Lara Feigel

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  This is an extraordinary portrait of London during the Blitz as it was experienced by some of our most eminent writers. Drawing on the prose of Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene, Rose Macaulay, Hilde Spiel and Henry Yorke, this war-time chronicle is a real page-turner, a beautifully poetic account of the everyday realities of the Blitz.

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  Wildwood by Roger Deakin

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Environmentalist Roger Deakin shares with us his passion for trees, embarking on a quest from his moated, wooden house in Suffolk, across England and as far as China in search of ancient apple trees. A magnificent, informative and heartfelt journey.

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  Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power by David Priestland

  Price: £20.00    Add to Basket

  In this contentious and ground-breaking work, David Priestland argues that history is the chronicle of a power struggle between three castes, those of the merchant, the soldier, and the sage, all of them with radically different values, all of them harbouring a desire to exert control over the masses.

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  The Opium War by Julia Lovell

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  A lively new history of the conflict between England and China which began in 1839, it explores how the Opium wars still cast their long shadow over Chinese nationalism.

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  Willpower by Roy F. Baumeister

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Willpower, as it is described by psychologists Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, is what separates us from animals. They explore how willpower can be treated as a mental 'muscle', which can be exercised, sustained and nourished in the same way as physical muscles. Full of insightful research and personal tips to lead a more successful, happier life.

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  Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper

  Price: £25.00    Add to Basket

  Drawing on years of interviews and conversations with Leigh Fermor and his closest friends, this beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts - widely considered to be the greatest travel writer of our time.

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  Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  An immensely entertaining and often very moving account of the Double Cross System; a core team of five double agents who successfully convinced the Nazis that Calais and Norway, not Normandy, were the targets of the 150,000-strong invasion force. It was one of the oddest military units ever assembled: a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a Serbian seducer, a wildly imaginative Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming, and a hysterical Frenchwoman whose obsessive love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the entire deception. Their enterprise was saved from catastrophe by a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic sacrifice is here revealed for the first time.