{"title":"Staff Picks","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"little-boy","title":"Little Boy","description":" In 1935 a small boy is found in a mine in what is known as the Belgian Congo. It is a time of ferment; nefarious forces are at play. Against this backdrop, the boy’s discovery draws the attention of men of distinction across the globe – scientists, politicians and army men. Soon enough a race begins, to bring the boy into safe custody. After a tortuous journey by train through the continent of Africa, the boy travels by ship to New York, where he is taken into the care of the United States Army. From here our diminutive hero will become swept up in a narrative not of his own making, a narrative that will lead him into the heart of one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century. \n Audacious in its conceit, thrillingly readable and profoundly humane, \u003ci\u003eLittle Boy\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel of science and politics, of men and war, of compassion and becoming. In prose of baffled grace, it weaves a path through some of the darkest moments in our collective history. Its ending will leave you, like its protagonist, suspended in mid-air, stunned by the awful things that men have put forth into the world.    ","brand":"UEA Publishing Project","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39386605748302,"sku":"9781913861063","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_40a8e152-c46d-4b2c-a72d-b553a6ef975d.jpg?v=1752241240"},{"product_id":"keeping-the-house","title":"Keeping the House","description":" \u003ci\u003eCabbages\n. . . The Turkish variety are prized for their enlarged leaf bud, that’s where\nwe put the heroin . . . \u003c\/i\u003e \n\n\n\n There’s a stash of heroin waiting to be imported, and no\none seems sure what to do with it . . . But Ayla’s a gardener, and she has a\nplan. \n\n\n\n Offering a fresh and funny take on the\nmachinery of the North London heroin trade, \u003ci\u003eKeeping the House\u003c\/i\u003e lifts\nthe lid on a covert world thriving just beneath notice: not only in McDonald's\nqueues and men’s clubs, but in spotless living rooms and whispering kitchens.\nSpanning three generations, this is the story of the women who keep their\nfamily – and their family business – afloat, juggling everything from police\nsurveillance to trickier questions of community, belonging and love. ","brand":"And Other Stories","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39436540805198,"sku":"9781913505080","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_66952115-69ec-4873-adaa-d2489e4aff54.jpg?v=1752240993"},{"product_id":"all-the-men-i-never-married","title":"All the Men I Never Married","description":"\u003ch3\u003eShortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis eagerly awaited second collection of poems from Kim Moore is pointedly feminist, challenging and keenly aware of the contradictions and complexities of desire. The 48 numbered poems take us through a gallery of exes and significant others where we encounter rage, pain, guilt, and love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe book opens with a rally-cry that is also a warning: ‘\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe are coming under cover of darkness\u003c\/em\u003e,’ and continues with the description of ‘We’ as being woman, both witch-like (feared) and oppressed, with ‘hobbled’ childhoods and spaces that were ‘given’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe book moves in a roughly chronological way from here, with early poems about the innocent friendships of childhood that have a dreamy, anticipatory quality. They foreshadow a later eroticism, but also hint at fear, with the awkward boy with ‘unwashed clothes’: ‘We hated the way you followed us around…’. Then come the terrifying episodes of violence or near violence – incidents in which our narrator barely escapes rape at a party, or where the narrator’s friend suffers the consequences of defending herself from unwanted attention in a nightclub, ‘that being in public is a dangerous thing’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThere are also amusing anecdotes as in 12: After the reading… which reports a confrontation with a male in the audience who accuses her of objectifying the male gender. The author observes a naïve younger self just coming to terms with sexuality and speaks of desire, touching upon its inherent power, its temptations and deceptions. There are a number of poems that re-enact the ‘easy misogyny’ of everyday life and observe it from an appalled distance. An episode with a taxi driver where casual banter becomes increasingly threatening rings only too true.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAll The Men I Never Married\u003c\/em\u003e is a powerful collection of deeply thoughtful and deeply felt poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39510547300430,"sku":"9781781726419","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_94828444-2c2e-4665-bc21-e15280e68875.jpg?v=1752240006"},{"product_id":"the-last-one","title":"The Last One","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe daughter of Algerian immigrants, Fatima Daas is raised in a home where love and sexuality are considered taboo and signs of affection avoided. Living in the majority-Muslim Clichy-sous-Bois, she often spends more than three hours a day on public transport to and from the city, where she feels like a tourist observing Parisian manners. She goes from unstable student to maladjusted adult, doing four years of therapy – her longest relationship. As she gains distance from her family and comes into her own, she grapples with her attraction to women and how it fits with her religion, which she continues to practice. When Nina comes into her life, she doesn’t know exactly what she needs but feels that something crucial has been missing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Through fiction, I was able to explore everything that had made me,' Daas says. 'Being a woman, but not what was expected of a woman. Being a north African woman, but also French, the only member of the family born in France. Being lesbian, being Muslim. It was almost a luxury for me, through fiction, to make all those identities coexist in my central character. I knew that those identities were in tension and confrontation in society, but for once, through fiction, I felt like I was liberating and reconciling them'.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Hope Road","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39584332906574,"sku":"9781913109851","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_d7008e1e-4e3d-49e9-abfb-e286b1ffbb6b.jpg?v=1752240984"},{"product_id":"bargain-bin-rom-com","title":"Bargain Bin Rom-Com","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBargain Bin Rom-Com\u003c\/em\u003e is the first collection of poems by Leena Norms.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the politics of ice-cream to the permission slip you didn’t know you needed, this is a tongue-in-cheek look at living on a planet that is filled with both doom and glitter.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Burning Eye Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39890489606222,"sku":"9781913958299","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/original_4981f4fe-34d5-45eb-992f-57af43e118f8.jpg?v=1752239954"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/staff-picks\/tice-cin.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}