Daunt Books

Your Basket

Shops

News Flash

The 2013 Winners are In!



Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

North America

• USA
• Canada

• 

  The Immigrant by Manju Kapur

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A sensitive and thoughtful novel which follows Ananda and Nina as they both leave India for Canada, their experience of settling into their new homeland and their testing marriage. Similar in subject and style to Jumpha Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth.

• 

  The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A whimsical, tender novel from one of Brooklyn's much-feted writers of the Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer set, it tells the story of the lonely and heartbroken old Mr. Leo Gursky and a little girl called Alma who is trying to keep family from shattering after her father's death.

• 

  Great House by Nicole Krauss

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  A ruthless Israeli father, a struggling writer, a Chilean poet and fragile young woman are the subjects of this elegiac novel, whose narrative coalesces around a writing desk that all have longed to possess. As it moves through decades and continents, the covetable desk comes to embody the power of memory, the value of writing and the endurance of the human spirit in the face of historical tragedy.

• 

  Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Darting backwards and forwards from the deep recesses of the past where myths are made to the present day, this novel boasts an extraordinary array of characters: Nicky, a rock musician running away from the high life; Smidt, an engineer, who drops out and heads for the desert; Joanie, who gets involved in an extraterrestrial cult. Linking these strands are a couple and a place: Jaz and Lisa are the troubled parents of the autistic Raj, whose story dominates the book. The place is the three fingers rocks in the Californian desert; so vividly described that it exists almost like a separate character. A beautiful exploration of the way humans and their landscape interact.

• 

  Edible Stories: A Novel About Food in Sixteen Courses by Mark Kurlansky

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  A witty and unusual novel about man's relationship with taste, from one of our favourite food writers. When Robert Eggle finds himself neck-deep in a pothole, he realises he can remember nothing about his life. Worst of all, all he can taste is salt...

• 

  Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  This collection of stories beautifully explores the notion of identity in a foreign land. Of Bengali descent, the author grew up in Rhode Island and now lives in Brooklyn.

• 

  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Sincerely one of the best books ever written, this is the story of lawyer Atticus Finch and his defence of a black man accused of rape, as told by Atticus' six year-old tom boy of a daughter Scout. An astonishing portrayal of the American South in the 1950s and a story which deals with issues of class, racism and loss of innocence in a way that is subtle, powerful and incredibly moving. If you read it at school, then we beg you, read it again.

• 

  The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A searing and deliciously funny novel which dissects the crises and eccentricities of a hyper-connected, modern world. Conveyed in witty, colourful prose, this stylistic tour de force follows the hapless Milo as he struggles to re-connect with the timeless themes of life: love, desire and the weight of the past.

• 

  The Call of the Wild and Other Stories by Jack London

  Price: £6.99    Add to Basket

  A massively influential collection of short stories, Jack London's powerfully evocative description of the ice, the wind, the loneliness and the freedom of Alaska have inspired many to follow his footsteps and those of his lupine hero White Fang. Highly recommended.

• 

  A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Three fiercely evocative stories from Norman Maclean, which describe the people, small towns, woods and rivers of Western Montana. Trout in dappled sunlit rivers and golden autumn leaves, time and again it is the overwhelming power of nature that speaks to the soul of his characters.

• 

  The Elegant Cockroach by Diedre Anne Martin

  Price: £13.99    Add to Basket

  A stylish little story about a sartorially successful but lonely cockroach. A heartwarming modern fable.

• 

  Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  The first book in the series, it is a joyful, exuberant story about a young secretary who moves to San Francisco. While amusing and warm-hearted, Maupin's realism also captures the mood and concerns of 1960s San Francisco with remarkable skill.

• 

  Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A remarkable portrait of New York, using as its focus Philippe Petit's astonishing high line walk between the twin towers. Wonderfully evocative, McCann brings to life the sounds and smells of the city from the hum of the traffic and the wailing of sirens to the beat of pigeons wings.

• 

  Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Arguably McCarthy's masterpiece. A relentlessly dark and troubling account of 19th century scalp hunters on the US and Mexico border lands. Vastly ambitious in its literary and descriptive scope, the novel plunges the reader into a nightmarish world of staggering depravity. Utterly disconcerting and memorable in every aspect.

• 

  In Cuba I was a German Shepherd by Ana Menendez

  Price: £12.00    Add to Basket

  A series of interlinked short stories about Cuban exiles in Miami which capture their homeland in all its noisy, colourful and passionate glory.

• 

  The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A justifiably popular novel that aptly catches the innocent mood of the 30-something generation struggling to find their identities in New York City prior to its violation on September 11, 2001

• 

  Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Described by John Berger as 'the most important book I have read for forty years', Fugitive Pieces is a heartbreaking, poetic story about two Jewish men attempting to overcome devastating loss.

• 

  Texas by James A. Michener

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A sweeping epic from James A. Michener which narrates the history of Texas over four and a half decades in the form of a novel. Gripping yet historically accurate, Michener describes a magnificent spectrum of characters from Spanish conquistadors, to explorers, German settlers and oil men.

• 

  Hawaii by James Michener

  Price: £11.99    Add to Basket

  Author of the celebrated short stories that inspired the musical South Pacific, James Michener also wrote this hefty novel, a history of Hawaii written in fictional episodes. Each chapter sees the arrival of a group of settlers, from the Polynesians in 800 to the Japanese in 1950, and uses their stories to bring the history, geology and natural landscape of the islands to life.

• 

  Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  The passionate love story and intricately-researched historical novel which made Georgia famous, this is the tale of Scarlett O'Hara, a spoilt, Georgian society belle and Rhett Butler, set against a backdrop of the American Civil War. Definitely worth reading if you can face a 1000-page book.

• 

  A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Exceptional short story writer Lorrie Moore has written a disturbing, exquisitely moving and yet surprisingly humorous novel about modern America. Through the eyes of a student babysitter she explores themes of race, terrorism and the war in Afghanistan. If it's slow at times, it makes up for it with some truly breathtaking moments.

• 

  The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  This masterful short story writer weaves together fact and fiction in 12 stories relating to family, from her grandparents in Edinburgh, to her parents in Ontario and her own adolescence in 1950s Canada. Winner of the International Man Booker Prize, Munro is one of the best authors of contemporary short fiction.

• 

  The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  A surprising clever love story about two people from Chicago, Henry and Clare, and Henry's propensity to leap uncontrollably forwards and backwards through his own life. Similar in feel to Love Story, this will have you crying like a baby.

• 

  Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  The darkly comic debut from Southern author Flannery O'Connor, Hazel Motes returns from the army and feels compelled, through cases of mistaken identity, to become a preacher. An intriguing mix of satire and serious theological debate.

• 

  Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  After his wife and son return to England, intimidated by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dutchman Hans van den Broek spends a surreal year in New York where he befriends fellow cricketer and mysterious Indian businessman Chuck Ramkissoon. A refreshing, gripping and wonderfully-crafted book, worthily shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which will appeal to both boys and girls.