M. John Harrison Books

"They stepped into the poem and disappeared forever."--George BarkerThe NEW Oxford Treasury of Children's Poems is a perfect introduction to the magic world of poetry. There is something here to please everyone. Familiar, well-loved poems, and many new surprises, are brought together in a beautiful illustrated collection that is full of Jumblies and dragons; wiseold women and baby brothers; dogs, horses, and cats that howl at the moon. There are trains and talking tables; schools and scary houses; moms, dads, bears, and crocodiles. The choice of poets is wide-ranging, from Robert Louis Stevenson on dreams and Rudyard Kipling's "The Way through the Woods,"to June Crebbin's ode to a dad whose "face looks sort of lonely/Without its fuzzy beard." There is a poem from Frank Asch about sunflakes--"We could go sleighing/in the middle of July"--and one from Lewis Carroll about a cheerful crocodile who "welcomes little fishes in,/With gently smiling jaws."Poems by W. B. Yeats; Edward Lear; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; A. E. Housman; and W. H. Auden fill out this delightful collection that is a companion to The Oxford Treasury of Children's Poems , one of OUP's most successful poetry books for children. Throughout the book, charming color illustrationscomplement the liveliness and atmosphere of the poems.

"Throughout his career, M. John Harrison's writing has defied categorisation, building worlds both unreal and all-too real, overlapping and interlocking with each other. His stories are replete with fissures and portals into parallel dimensions, unidentified countries and lost lands. But more important than the places they point to are the obsessions that drive the people who so believe in them, characters who spend their lives hunting for, and haunted by, clues and maps that speak to the possibility of somewhere else.This selection of stories, drawn from over 50 years of writing, bears witness to that desire for difference: whether following backstreet occultists, amateur philosophers, down-and-outs or refugees, we see our relationship with 'the other' in microscopic detail, and share in Harrison's rejection of the idea that the world, or our understanding of it, could ever be settled."--Provided by publisher

The beloved cult classic from the winner of the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize: a novel of life-changing moments, incredible descriptions of landscape and the power of an obsession.

No touring holiday is complete without one of these essential guides. The driving guides series holds a range of 23 titles offering an extensive list of destinations for you to choose from. They contain everything the self-drive traveller needs en route, with exciting detours away from the main tourist trail.

One of our greatest and most original living writers sets out the perils of the writing life with joyful provocation

EMPTY SPACE is a space adventure. We begin with the following dream: An alien research tool the size of a brown dwarf star hangs in the middle of nowhere, as a result of an attempt to place it equidistant from everything else in every possible universe. Somewhere in the fractal labyrinth beneath its surface, a woman lies on an allotropic carbon deck, a white paste of nanomachines oozing from the corner of her mouth. She is neither conscious nor unconscious, dead nor alive. There is something wrong with her cheekbones. At first you think she is changing from one thing into another - perhaps it's a cat, perhaps it's something that only looks like one - then you see that she is actually trying to be both things at once. She is waiting for you, she has been waiting for you for perhaps 10,000 years. She comes from the past, she comes from the future. She is about to speak... EMPTY SPACE is a sequel to LIGHT and NOVA SWING, three strands presented in alternating chapters which will work their way separately back to this image of frozen transformation.

This is Elric-like in its presentation. It wouldn't be surprising if the author (at the time of publication, still in his twenties) was strongly influenced by Moorcock's style of writing & subject matter. In a far-future world where technology is on the decline & swords & sorcery on the rise, a civil war in Earth's last great kingdom threatens to destroy civilization. The aggressor kingdom has unearthed ancient relics of the past it cannot control. Overall the story moves pretty quickly, with some relatively memorable characters with forgettable names. The ending is cliched. Earth has evidently gone through several cycles of decline & rebirth (Midsummer Century, anyone?). Even the ancient artifacts & places don't bear any recognizable resemblance to things known today. That lends things a bit too much unreality. Others may find the far future vista refreshing.--Caleb N. Diffell (edited)

(An omnibus volume contains all the Viriconium stories, originally published in four The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings, In Viriconium, and Viriconium Nights, this landmark collection gathers four groundbreaking fantasy classics from the acclaimed author of Light)

Chronicles the symbiotic relationship between Mike Rose--head of a courier company that serves the genetics industry, and Isobel Avens--a woman twenty years younger than he and obsessed with the desire to fly