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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Northern Europe

• Scandinavia
• Great Britain
• Ireland

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  The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A nuanced Sherlock Holmes mystery that remains utterly true to the spirit of the original Conan Doyle books. When an agitated gentleman arrives unannounced at 221B Baker Street, Holmes and Watson are drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events, stretching from the gas-lit streets of London to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston.

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  Someone To Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

  Price: £13.99    Add to Basket

  This Icelandic thriller from Yrsa Sigurdardottir is a study in keeping the reader tense. The protagonist is a young man with Down's syndrome convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people. One of his fellow inmates in the Psychiatric hospital he is being kept in is convinced of his innocence, and hires Private Detective Thora to prove it.

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  The Poet by Faber

  Price: £34.97    Add to Basket

  We have chosen three of the best recent collections of poetry as a perfect gift for a poetry lover. Don Paterson's Selected Poems are a wonderful introduction to his luminous and lyrical poetry; Alice Oswald's Memorial, an interpretation of Homer's Iliad; Simon Armitage's Death of King Arthur, short-listed for the T. S. Eliot poetry prize - a legend reworked with contemporary insights.

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  Poems on the Undeground

  Price: £16.99    Add to Basket

  A new collection of 230 of the most captivating poems to have appeared on the Underground over the last 26 years. This beautifully packaged hardback edition is published in celebration of the Underground's 150th anniversary. A lavishly published book that is sure to appeal to those who are neither tired of London nor life.

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  Mother, Brother, Lover by Jarvis Cocker

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A collection of lyrics from the frontman of the band Pulp, acclaimed singer songwriter Jarvis Cocker. Each one is presented with commentary and an introduction by the man himself, taking the reader on a 33 year tour into the life, art and preoccupations of Cocker. Includes classics such as 'Common People' and 'This is Hardcore'. Music meet comedy, reflection, and poetry.

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  A Winter Book by Tove Jansson

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Selected and introduced by Ali Smith, this is a wonderful collection of Jansson's evocative and dreamlike tales, filled with Nordic humour and wisdom.

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  Complete Short Stories by Elizabeth Taylor

  Price: £14.99    Add to Basket

  Collected together for the first time, Elizabeth Taylor's powerful, acutely observed stories - many only recently discovered - tell of the awkward passions of lonely holiday-makers, the minor jealousies and triumphs of marriage, and the sentiments of outsiders trying to adapt to the genteel English countryside.

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  The Tain

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  The greatest epic in Irish folk literature newly translated by Ciaron Carson.

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  Dolly: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A deliciously creepy novella, just in time for Halloween, makes for atmospheric and sinister reading.

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  NW by Zadie Smith

  Price: £18.99    Add to Basket

  This portrait of the urban ennui of four thirtysomethings is beautifully observed but lacks the warmth and humour that made White Teeth so delightful.

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  The Sagas of Icelanders

  Price: £14.99    Add to Basket

  A magnificent edition collecting all of the great Sagas. Perhaps too weighty to carry en route but an essential classic for any bookshelf.

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  The Saga of Grettir the Strong

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  Tells the tale of Grettir, an 11th Century warrior struggling to hold on to the values of an heroic age as they are eclipsed by Christianity and pastoralism. A moving conclusion to the Golden Age of the Sagas.

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  The Saga of the Volsungs

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A hugely influential epic that has inspired the likes of Tolkien and Wagner, this is a fantastic tale of princely jealousy, unrequited love, greed and vengeance.

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  The Kalevala

  Price: £10.99    Add to Basket

  The Finnish equivalent of the Greek epics or the Icelandic sagas, the Kalevala grew out of a rich oral poetic tradition and plays a pivotal role in Finnish national identity to this day.

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  The Mabinogion

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A lovely hardback edition and a fresh new translation of the The Mabinogion tales, 11 Welsh medieval stories of myth and enchantment.

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  Egil's Saga

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  This, the most famous of the Sagas and a true masterpiece of medieval literature, tells of the long and brutal life of the tenth-century warrior-poet and farmer Egil Skallagrimsson. It charts his progression from youthful savagery to mature wisdom, exploring univeral themes of love, loyalty, independence and war.

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  Eirik The Red & Other Icelandic Sagas

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A great, lightweight collection of nine sagas with an interesting introduction by translator Gwyn Jones.

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  The Forgotten Waltz

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Enright captures the egotism and folly at the heart of Ireland's boom years in this tale of a fated affair. As the narrator Gina weaves unreliable stories, it becomes clear that her self-delusion is a desperate attempt to ward off her underlying self-hatred.

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  Umbrella by Will Self

  Price: £18.99    Add to Basket

  Self’s sprawling, digressive, Modernist prose is not always easy to digest, but his intensely creative novel does reward its persistent readers with a magnificent, full picture of the First World War, the pathology of mental illness and the disorientating, polyphonic reality of 21st-century London.

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  Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

  Price: £20.00    Add to Basket

  JK Rowling's much-anticipated new adult novel is set in the fictional West Country village of Pagford, where a local election sparks the biggest battle the village has ever seen. Blackly comic and constantly surprising.

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  Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A fresh and original novel set in the tunnels of the London Tube system, an addictive mix of police procedural and fantasy fiction. Aaronovitch's third novel follows DC Grant underground and across the Tube map in search of a mysterious murderer.

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  Solace by Belinda McKeon

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Escaping a life circumscribed by an overbearing father in a small farming community, Mark Casey flees to the vibrant, contemporary city of Dublin and embarks on a doctoral thesis. There, his life becomes a meaningless sequence of pubs and parties, until the day that he meets the enigmatic Joanne Lynch, the daughter of a man who once spectacularly wronged Mark's father....

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  Capital by John Lanchester

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  A sweeping panorama of post-crash London. When each household on Pepys Road receives a mysterious card bearing the words "We Want What You Have", the lives of a desperate banker, a teenage football sensation, a Polish builder and a Zimbabwean traffic warden are illuminated and drawn together.

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  Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A stylish new novel from Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth is an excellent plot-driven, literature-infused, highly enjoyable read. Set in 1972 it follows the fortunes of Serena Frome, unintentionally recruited to MI5 to set in motion Operation Sweet Tooth.

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  The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  An atmospheric ghost story set in 1950s Yorkshire by the acclaimed author of The Siege and The Betrayal. The first story to be published under Arrow's new Hammer Horror imprint is exquisitely written and utterly chilling.