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The 2013 Winners are In!



Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

North America

• USA
• Canada

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  The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  In the late nineties Bill Bryson undertook a 14,000 mile journey across his rejected home land. With wit and sensitivity, he brings to life the culture of small town America. One of the funniest and most acutely observed of all of Bryson's books.

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  A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

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  The best of his travel books set in America, Bill Bryson describes hiking some 2,200 miles through the bear, rattlesnake and hiker-infested woods of the East Coast of America from Georgia to Maine. Very funny and reliably well-written.

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  Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Michael Wallace, Edwin Burrows

  Price: £19.99    Add to Basket

  This exhaustive and fascinating examination of the city, prior to its expansion to include the boroughs, is remarkable in its detail and the liveliness of the characters from Manhattan's foundation onward.

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  In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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  A masterpiece of non-fiction written as a novel about the cold-blooded murder of an Arkansas family in the 1950s. Its chilling tone and clinical descriptions of the murder and the killers are astonishing. Highly recommended.

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  The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. Vol. 2 by Robert Caro

  Price: £18.99    Add to Basket

  The second of a three-part biography of Lyndon Johnson, this enthralling narrative beings with the future President's elevation to the U.S. Senate in 1948. It's an intense historical drama, and an absolutely thrilling account of his limitless ambition.

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  The Power Broker: Robert Moses & The Fall of New York by Robert Caro

  Price: £10.95    Add to Basket

  Moses began his career as a petty official, rising to become the most powerful man in New York, creating most of the present infrastructure, eyesores and arguably causing the demise of many neighbourhoods. This autobiography traces the egos, treachery and corruption at the heart of city politics.

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  Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky

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  In his methodical, intellectual and startling prose, Noam Chomsky explores American foreign policy from 1945 up to the 'War on Terror.' An important, thought-provoking book.

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  The Last Campaign by Thurston Clark

  Price: £15.00    Add to Basket

  An engaging account of Bobby Kennedy's presidential nomination campaign, his eloquence, his charisma and his potential, before his assassination in 1968. Although Thurston Clark does get a little carried away with deifying his subject.

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  John F. Kennedy: An Unfinished Life by Robert Dallek

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  A balanced, sensible and clear account of the life of John F. Kennedy in a single volume. Never-before-seen material reveals a rather cold, rational man but a brave one, who suffered from chronic ill health.

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  Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat

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  A moving, intimate portrait of a family of Haitian immigrants and the devoted uncle they left behind.

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  Satan's Circus by Mike Dash

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  The thrilling story of Satan's Circus, the sleazy, depraved, glamorous square mile of 1890s Manhattan, and its downfall at the hands of the NYPD.

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  City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis

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  A punchy social and economic history of Los Angeles in all its dazzle and despair.

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  Blue Nights by Joan Didion

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  A devastating account of the premature death of Didion's daughter from pneumonia and septic shock. Blue Nights is a tragic companion-piece to The Year of Magical Thinking - a raw meditation on the death of Didion's husband. Precise, humane and utterly candid, yet perhaps less emotionally taut than her previous work.

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  Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

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  The marvellous Joan Didion captures the mood of 1960s California, and indeed much of America, in her collection of essays on American life. Seen by a journalist and written by a poet.

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  Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski

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  A lively, entertaining book describing author Jenny Diski's trip around the edges of America by train. She meditates on the landscape, the people she meets, on being a diehard smoker and on solitude.

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  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

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  A moving account of the toll of Hurricane Katrina on the people of New Orleans. Eggers follows a middle class, Muslim family living in the city before, during and after the disaster, describing their disbelief and eventually their utter disillusionment with America.

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  Going to Extremes by Barbara Ehrenreich

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  A collection of amusing, informative and satirical essays which rage against the inequalities of America where a wealthy minority obsessed with plastic surgery exists alongside devastatingly poor trailer parks communities. Barbara Ehrenreich exposes the myth of a sugar-coated land of money and opportunity.

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  The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

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  Wyoming resident Gretel Ehrlich describes the nature and people of her homeland from cowboys to hermits, from the harsh wind to the prairie lightening. A glorious meditation on this American wilderness.

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  American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis

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  A comprehensive account of the contradictions that shaped this Founding Father and, thereby, the Constitution. This brief biography weaves a first-rate story about the man and his beautiful home at Monticello, Virginia.

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  I Remember Nothing and other reflections by Nora Ephron

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  Nora Ephron confronts middle age with refreshingly dour humour in this companionable series of essays about the frustrations of modern life, the struggle to remember names and the failure to master recent technology.

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  Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans

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  James Agee writes with poetic elegance and acute observation about the lives, the hardships, the toil and the poverty of the Alabama sharecroppers of the 1930s. Accompanied by the hauntingly beautiful photographs of Walker Evans.

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  Colossus by Niall Ferguson

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  Niall Ferguson's incisive and challenging history of America as an Empire and its potential inability to cope with the weight of its own imperialism.

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  Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power by Niall Ferguson

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  This provocative history of the Western world, from the "miserable", plague-ravaged 15th century to the present day, considers what it was about the civilisation of the West that enabled it to trump the opulent empires of the Orient. According to Ferguson, the West developed a number of "killer applications" that the rest of the world lacked: democracy, medicine, science, competition and a protestant work ethic. Whether or not you dispute his daring claims, Ferguson's zeal is compelling and his whistle-stop tour of civilisation is extraordinary.

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  Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson

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  A tribute to Canada, Will Ferguson narrates with passion, knowledge and comedy the three years he spent travelling across Canada by canoe, seaplane and helicopter.

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  The Snow Geese by William Fiennes

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  A wonderful debut from William Fiennes which describes his journey following the migration of the Snow Goose from the Canadian Arctic, down to the Gulf of Mexico and back again. Part travelogue, part natural history and part meditation on the meaning of home, this is a beautifully written and fascinating story.