Art Genre

The fantasy novel you've always wished Jane Austen had written Shades of Milk and Honey is exactly what we could expect from Jane Austen if she had been a fantasy writer:Pride and Prejudice meets Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It is an intimate portrait of a woman, Jane, and her quest for love...

Toby “Trotty” Veck, a humble and tender-hearted messenger, struggles each day under the crushing weight of poverty and the harsh indifference of the society around him. A man of simple faith and steadfast spirit, he finds his hope tested by the injustices he witnesses—the arrogance of the wealthy, the despair of the poor, and the cruel suggestion that the downtrodden are to blame for their own misery. On a bleak New Year’s Eve, as Trotty listens to the ancient church chimes echoing through the fog, a strange and wondrous transformation occurs.

A collection of writing by Simon Reynolds, centered on music that seemed, in its moment, to prefigure the Future Simon Reynolds's first book in eight years is a celebration of music that feels like a taste of tomorrow. Sounds that prefigure pop music's future—the vanguard genres and heroic...

“So often people ask me if there’s a book on story I can recommend. This is the one. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”––Alexa Junge, writer/producer, Friends, Sex and the City, The West Wing A master class of 27 lessons, drawn from 27 diverse narratives, for novelists...

Tipper has been caring for her family’s estate for years now, ever since her father disappeared, making a living by selling off his famous artwork. Then she learns that three statues she sold were carved from an ancient foundation stone, and the fabric of her reality is crumbling. She must free her father and save the world. But she can’t do it alone....

20th Century Ambient details a crucial period in which ambient music became a fully realized idea and is secretly one of the most popular genres in the world. This book walks through ambient's ambiguous timeline to uncover not just the genre's evolution but to understand why it resonates so deeply with the human spirit.

Delve into the festive world of Charles Dickens with this collection of twenty stories originally published in the Christmas editions of his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round. While some tales brim with holiday spirit, others reveal Dickens' sharp critique of the social and economic injustices of his time. Each story offers a unique glimpse into the complexities of Victorian society, blending warmth, wit, and social commentary.

What the hell is shoegaze? A scene? A movement? A sound? Back in the Nineties, many would have said the so-called genre was entirely fabricated. The term itself, an offensive piss-take given by the notoriously catty and scene-obsessed British music press, was plainly rejected by the absurdly small collection of bands to which it supposedly applied. In this ambitious oral history of a genre that has eluded definition for three decades, Ryan Pinkard unearths the first wave of shoegaze, following the core bands, their sounds, their influence, and their journeys in and out of obscurity.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born September 29, 1547, was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and one of the pinnacles of world literature. Much of his life was spent in poverty and obscurity, many of its details are disputed or unknown, and the bulk of his surviving work was produced in the three years preceding his death.

"We are all travelers in the 'wilderness of the world' - travelers with a donkey." So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878. Alone with his pack-donkey Modestine, and showing total disregard for discomfort, Stevenson relishes to the full his walking tour of the Cevennes.

This is the story of an artist who was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of art. In much of its general outline, this famous novel follows the life of Paul Gauguin, famous French post-impressionist painter, but it is not a novelized biography of Gauguin. Rather it is a sharply-delineated, carefully wrought "private life", written by one of the most vivid and penetrating contemporary literary masters.

In Plunderphonics, Matthew Blackwell tells the story of a group of musicians who advocated for changes to the copyright system by deploying unlicensed samples in their recordings. Though the legal terrain did not shift in the favor of plunderphonic musicians, they changed public perception of fair use and enabled more widespread sampling in underground music.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In a dazzling work of historical fiction in the vein of Nancy Horan’s Loving Frank, Dawn Tripp brings to life Georgia O’Keeffe, her love affair with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and her quest to become an independent artist. This is not a love story. If it were, we...

Discover the science behind the most popular sci-fi franchise of all time. Capturing the imagination and hearts of crowds worldwide, Star Wars is a fantastic feat of science fiction and fantasy. We marvel at the variety of creatures and technology and the mystery behind the force. But how much of the Star Wars world is rooted in reality? Could we see some of the extraordinary inventions materialize in our world?

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep the child. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist and ended up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly died. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days.

Née à Strasbourg en 1761, la jeune Marie Grosholz, future madame Tussaud, est employée dès son plus jeune âge comme apprentie par un sculpteur sur cire. Lorsque le duo devient célèbre à Paris pour ses réalisations, Marie a pour modèles les plus grandes personnalités de l'époque : Voltaire, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, etc. Bientôt elle est accueillie à la Cour où elle prodigue des leçons de sculpture à la princesse Élisabeth, sœur du roi. En 1789, la capitale entre en ébullition, la foule exige des têtes.

A parody for fans of Harry Potter and The Crown, Harry Windzor and the Magic of Monarchy is an irreverent, satirical twist on the life of Prince Harry and the House of Windsor. There are spats between heirs and spares, dodgy deals between the Palace and the press, and so many scandals swept under the rug that even the corgis are suspicious. Maybe this isn’t a satire after all...

A one-of-a kind survey of rap and hip hop history from 1973 to today by Chuck D, arguably the most influential rapper in the world. In the more than 40 years since the days of DJ Kool Herc and "Rapper's Delight," hip hop and rap have become a billion-dollar worldwide phenomenon. Yet there is no...

A child is stolen - gone but not forgotten. As Stella watches the police investigation unfold, she starts to ask a terrifying question. Where was her own mother that night?

Charles Dickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. After the success of A Christmas Carol in 1843 Dickens continued the series throughout the 1840s, maintaining what he called "the Carol philosophy" to "strike a sledgehammer blow" for the poor, uneducated, and repressed.