The collection of a lifetime from the bestselling novelist, poet and cultural phenomenon Before she became one of the world's most important and loved novelists, Margaret Atwood was a poet. Dearly is her first collection in over a decade. It brings together many of her most recognisable and celebrated themes, but distilled from minutely perfect descriptions of the natural world to startlingly witty encounters with aliens, from pressing political issues to myth and legend.
By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in flux, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.
Dearly is a pure Atwood delight, and long-term readers and new fans alike will treasure its insight, empathy and humour.
ISBN 9781529113280
Frances Howard has beauty and a powerful family and is the most unhappy creature in the world. Anne Turner has wit and talent but no stage on which to display them. Little stands between her and the abyss of destitution. When these two very different women meet in the strangest of circumstances, a powerful friendship is sparked. Frankie sweeps Anne into a world of splendour that exceeds all she imagined: a Court whose foreign king is a stranger to his own subjects; where ancient families fight for power, and where the sovereign s favourite may rise and rise so long as he remains in favour. With the marriage of their talents, Anne and Frankie enter this extravagant, savage hunting ground, seeking a little happiness for themselves. But as they gain notice, they also gain enemies; what began as a search for love and safety leads to desperate acts that could cost them everything.
'Based on the true scandal that rocked the court of James I, A Net for Small Fishes is the most gripping novel you'll read this year: an exhilarating dive into the pitch-dark waters of the Jacobean court. The Thelma and Louise of the seventeenth century.' Lawrence Norfolk.
ISBN 9781526616654