The Hare with Amber Eyes - A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal

$15.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who "burned like a comet" in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of the m larger than a matchbox. The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection. The netsuke--drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers--were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir's "Luncheon of"" the Boating Party." Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in "Remembrance of Things Past." Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry. The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler's theorist on the "Jewish question" appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she'd served even in their exile. In "The Hare with Amber Eyes," Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves. ...Show more

The Princess Diarist - A Sort of Memoir by Carrie Fisher

$12.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher's New York Times bestselling intimate, hilarious, and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie.   When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the f ilming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved--plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naivet , and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford.   With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher's intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time--and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience. ...Show more

Lives of Eminent Men by John Aubrey

$10.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

'Mr William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style, and make a speech.' Gen tleman scholar John Aubrey spent his life collecting anecdotes, gossip and biographical detail about his contemporaries. These biographical sketches are the result - a colourful evocation of poets and philosophers, including Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare. An unorthodox approach to the art of biography, full of lively and witty detail, they are a singular portrait of a tumultuous age. ...Show more

The Letters Of John And Abigail Adams by John Adams

$12.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

Covering key moments in history, these letters are an intimate portrait of a colonial family and an important historical record of the beginnings of American government.

Betsy and the Emperor: The True Story of Napoleon, a Pretty Girl, a Regency Rake, and an Australian Colonial Misadventure by Anne Whitehead

$18.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was sent into exile on Saint Helena. He became an 'eagle in a cage', reduced from the most powerful figure in Europe to a prisoner on a rock in the South Atlantic. But the fallen emperor was charmed by the pretty teenage daughter of a loc al merchant, Betsy Balcombe...Anne Whitehead brings to life Napoleon's last years on Saint Helena, revealing the central role of the Balcombe family. She also lays to rest two centuries of speculation about Betsy's relationship with Napoleon...After Napoleon's death, Betsy travelled to Australia in 1823 with her father, who was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. When the family lost their fortune, she returned to London and published a memoir which made her a celebrity...With her extraordinary connections to royalty and high society, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency romance, but she was always fighting for her independence. This new account reveals Napoleon at his most vulnerable, human and reflective, and a woman caught in some of the most dramatic events of her time. ...Show more

Muhammad Ali - A Memoir by Michael Parkinson

$14.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

Muhammed Ali appeared on Michael Parkinson's chat show four times, with Parkinson declaring him the 'most remarkable human I ever encountered'. Drawing on those now iconic interviews, Michael Parkinson discusses the life of a sporting icon. From the early days of admiration for his political beliefs, to the world-beating boxing and the later years where illness began to take hold. Parkison Takes on Ali is the personal account of high profile meetings with a remarkable man. ...Show more

Prisoner of Tehran - The End of Childhood in Iran by Marina Nemat

$12.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

Brought up as a Christian, Marina Nemat

A Positively Final Appearance - A Journal, 1996-98 by Alec Guinness

$15.00 NZD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: very good

White Beech - The Rainforest Years by Germaine Greer

$12.00 NZD

Category: Ecology | Reading Level: very good

No Marketing Blurb

Toast - The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater

$8.00 NZD

Category: Food | Reading Level: very good

The biggest memoir of the year, from Britain

Fitzroy of the Beagle by H E L Mellersh

$25.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: good-very good

The Life and Work of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna - MA Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington

$15.00 NZD

Category: Pacific | Reading Level: good