New Releases by Ali Smith

From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.

Ali Smith melds the tale and the essay into a magical hybrid form, a song of praise to the power of stories in our lives In February 2012, the novelist Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith’s heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate. Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights—on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.

Ali Smith''s "beautifully written, precise, poetic" (The Observer) debut that follows the briefly intertwined lives of two young women When we meet Amy Shone, she is a young parent struggling to raise Kate, a precocious eight-year-old. Amy is an enigma-a brilliant scholar who has forgotten how to read. She is estranged from her wealthy English parents and lives a nomadic life in Scotland, dragging Kate from one school to the next, barely scraping by. And then there is Ash, a fiery Scottish actresss who cannot shake her demons-chief among them an unrequited passion for Amy that has obsessed her ever since they met as teenagers. Like is the story of two parallel lives that intersect briefly, then diverge. It is also a timeless evocation of adolescence and its agonizing anticipations, its contradictory yearnings for freedom and safety, its blind quest for mastery over pleasure and pain. Deftly constructed, passionately imagined, Like is a remarkable debut from a powerful talent.

The Ballad of Speedball Baby is the thrilling, darkly hilarious, and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable story of Ali Smith’s coming of age in ’90s New York as she commits to the messy, exhilarating life of a musician and must survive the slings and arrows society reserves for women who refuse to comply. As an only child reeling from the demolition of her parents’ toxic marriage, the New York City underground music scene offers a young Ali a different family of misfits and talented outsiders to belong to. She becomes the bass player for edgy band Speedball Baby, a decision that will take her around the world—from onstage at the legendary CBGBs to the red-light district of Amsterdam. She’s often the only girl in a broken-down tour van, being strip-searched at the Croatian border, chased by lunatics, and navigating the seedy underbelly of a male-dominated music scene full of addiction, violence, and misogyny—all while keeping her sharp wit and dark humor intact. Rimmed with heavy black eyeliner and smelling faintly of cheap booze, The Ballad of Speedball Baby is a pulse-quickening, unpredictable ride through the ’90s music scene—alternately terrifying, hilarious, and painfully evocative—as well as a love letter to the power of female solidarity.

''Wonderful ... all killer, no filler'' Red Magazine ''Dazzling stories, as inventive as they are inspiring'' Daily Mirror ''Where power and feminist rage meet'' Stylist ______________________________ A fun and fearless anthology of feminist tales, by fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers: Margaret Atwood, Susie Boyt, Eleanor Crewes, Emma Donoghue, Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, Claire Kohda, CN Lester, Kirsty Logan, Caroline O''Donoghue, Chibundu Onuzo, Helen Oyeyemi, Rachel Seiffert, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Smith - introduced by Sandi Toksvig. DRAGON. TYGRESS. SHE-DEVIL. HUSSY. SIREN. WENCH. HARRIDAN. MUCKRAKER. SPITFIRE. VITUPERATOR. CHURAIL. TERMAGANT. FURY. WARRIOR. VIRAGO. For centuries past, and all across the world, there are words that have defined and decried us. Words that raise our hackles, fire up our blood; words that tell a story. In this blazing cauldron of a book, fifteen bestselling, award-winning writers have taken up their pens and reclaimed these words, creating an entertaining and irresistible collection of feminist tales for our time. ''A slick collection of clever tales, with something for bluestockings and banshees alike'' Guardian ''Delightful, thought-provoking'' Louisa Young, Perspectives

This story of three men''s work helping traumatized kids in one of America’s most underserved cities reveals how mindfulness tools can help children and communities not only survive but thrive In this inspiring book, founders of The Holistic Life Foundation Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez describe how they have spent the past twenty years teaching yoga, meditation, and breathwork to thousands of at-risk kids in Baltimore schools helping them to develop deep reserves of patience, empathy, resolve, and—when needed—the righteous anger that fuels deep structural change. Their work has received wide national attention due to their remarkable results: The schools that have participated in their programs have seen suspension rates plummet and graduation rates go through the roof. Ali and Atman discovered as young children the power of mindfulness practices to sustain them through the challenges of growing up in a neighborhood in Baltimore that was struggling with poverty and violence—a community they now serve. The Holistic Life Foundation’s mission is to empower kids to find this same stillness and light within themselves and to let it shine out to help change the world. In this book, Ali, Atman and Andres share hands-on mindfulness and meditation tools readers can teach kids that will empower them to do this same work in their own communities. Let Your Light Shine is essential reading for parents, educators, activists, and anyone looking to make a difference in the lives of young people.

"A woman receives an unexpected call from a former classmate asking for help deciphering a puzzling interaction, and from there, Smith spins out a broader story about loneliness, refuge and freedom.” —The New York Times Book Review “Lyrical and timely…Smith’s novel will push readers to consider what it means to let people into your life, even when you don’t want to.” —TIME A story is never an answer. A story is always a question. A day spent locked in a room by border officials without any explanation as to why. A riddle that seemingly has no answer: curlew or curfew, you choose. A phone call from a college friend who hasn''t been in touch in years. And all of it is somehow inextricably linked to the life of a young blacksmith hounded from her trade and branded a vagrant nearly 500 years ago. Award-winning author Ali Smith shines a guiding light through the nightmarish now with a provocative novel that intertwines our atomized present and the uncannily parallel era of the Black Plague. In the hope that our medieval past may unlock the answers we seek to understand our hazy future, Companion Piece is a kaleidoscope of human history and experience, and a stunning addition to Smith''s gorgeous canon.

From the Man Booker Prize finalist: Seasonal Quartet is a series of four stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, which, when taken together, give us something more—all four united by the passing of time, the timing of narrative, and the endless familiarity yet renewal that the cycle of the seasons is. Grounded in current politics, in the work of artists Pauline Boty, Barbara Hepworth, Katherine Mansfield, and Loretta Mazzetti, and in Shakespeare''s four final romances The Tempest, Cymbeline, Pericles, and A Winter''s Tale, the Seasonal Quartet is "one of modern fiction''s most elusive and most important undertakings" (Charles Finch, The Boston Globe).

The fourth novel in the Seasonal Quartet by Man Booker Prize Finalist Ali Smith is “a prose poem in praise of memory, forgiveness, getting the joke, and seizing the moment” (The New York Times). In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world’s in meltdownu00ad—and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time. This is a story about people on the brink of change. They’re family, but they think they’re strangers. So: Where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common? Summer.

Now there''s a girl who understands things, the crow thought. When two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, die in a vicious battle over the crown of Thebes, the new ruler, King Creon, decides that Eteocles will be buried as a hero, while Polynices will be left outside as a feast for the dogs and crows. But the young Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, will defy the cruel tyrant and attempt to give her brother the burial he deserves. This simple act of love and bravery will set in motion a terrible course of events that will reverberate across the entire kingdom... Dave Eggers says, of the series: "I couldn''t be prouder to be a part of it. Ever since Alessandro conceived this idea I thought it was brilliant. The editions that they''ve complied have been lushly illustrated and elegantly designed."

FOREWORD BY ALI SMITH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY FRANCESCA WADE Who better to serve as a guide to great books and their authors than Virginia Woolf? In the early years of its existence, the Times Literary Supplement published some of the finest writers in English: T. S. Eliot, Henry James and E. M. Forster among them. But one of the paper''s defining voices was Virginia Woolf, who produced a string of superb essays between the two World Wars. The weirdness of Elizabethan plays, the pleasure of revisiting favourite novels, the supreme examples of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad: all are here, in anonymously published pieces, in which may be glimpsed the thinking behind Woolf''s works of fiction and the enquiring, feminist spirit of A Room of One''s Own. Here is Woolf the critical essayist, offering, at one moment, a playful hypothesis and, at another, a judgement laid down with the authority of a twentieth-century Dr Johnson. Here is Woolf working out precisely what''s great about Hardy, and how Elizabeth Barrett Browning made books a "substitute for living" because she was "forbidden to scamper on the grass". Above all, here is Virginia Woolf the reader, whose enthusiasm for great literature remains palpable and inspirational today.

A once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith''s Seasonal Quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now. Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer''s leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there''s ice, there''ll be fire. In Ali Smith''s Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It''s the season that teaches us survival. Here comes Winter. Discover all four instalments: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer. Ali Smith''s new novel, Companion piece, is available to pre-order now. ***** ''Dazzling . . . Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen'' Daily Telegraph ''Graceful, mischievous, joyful . . . Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope'' Independent ''A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit . . . Luminously beautiful'' Observer

Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever . . . ''A beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities'' Guardian ''Bravura, brilliant and unsettling . . . leaving you marvelling'' Financial Times ''Fantastic'' Spectator ''A terrific writer. There is an awful lot to lift the soul, not least Smith''s extraordinary playful use of language'' Daily Mail ''Undoubtedly Smith at her best. Puckish, yet elegant; angry, but comforting'' The Times ''Bold and brilliant'' Observer ''Smith straddles the elegiac and the celebratory through this glorious novel'' Scotsman

From the acclaimed, award-winning author: Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we’ve read over our lives—our own personal libraries—make of us? What does the unraveling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith’s new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make. Woven between the stories are conversations with writers and readers reflecting on the essential role that libraries have played in their lives. At a time when public libraries around the world face threats of cuts and closures, this collection stands as a work of literary activism—and as a wonderful read from one of our finest authors.

In einem alten Hotel in einer schottischen Stadt treffen fünf sehr unterschiedliche Frauen aufeinander: die Journalistin Penny, die im Hotel übernachtet, die warmherzige Rezeptionistin Lise, die Obdachlose Else, die vor dem Hotel bettelt, und die junge Clare, die herausfinden will, was mit ihrer Schwester Sara wirklich passiert ist. Denn das fünfte weibliche Wesen, um das es hier geht, ist der Geist des Zimmermädchens Sara, das vor kurzem im Hotel verunglückt ist, und dieser Geist versucht starrsinnig, am Leben festzuhalten, was diese eine Nacht für alle fünf Frauen zu einer ganz besonderen macht ...

"A re-imagining of the wonderfully bonkers, truly innovative and still very much culturally relevant Don Quixote. With newly commissioned photography by Jacob Robinson and beautiful design by Fraser Muggeridge, here we champion the book for its progressive fantasy-laden story and collapsible narrative and celebrate Don Quixote as a contemporary classic cultural object." -- Publisher''s website.

A teenage girl finds unexpected sexual freedom on a trip to Amsterdam. A woman trapped at a dinner party comes up against an ugly obsession. The stories in Free Love are about desire, memory, sexual ambiguity and the imagination. In the harsh light of dislocation, the people in them still find connections, words blowing in the street, love in unexpected places. Ali Smith shows how things come together and how they break apart. She disconcerts and affirms with the lightest touch, to make us love and live differently.

Captain O is a pirate with a heart of gold. Read his adventures as he sails the seven seas, has adventures on land and sea and in space, often having to choose between making a friend or making a fortune. Captain O and the mermaid is the first book in a series of 20.

MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • A novel all about art''s versatility, borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take. "Cements Smith’s reputation as one of the finest and most innovative of our contemporary writers. By some divine alchemy, she is both funny and moving; she combines intellectual rigor with whimsy" —The Los Angeles Review of Books One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century How to be both is a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance. Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A NOTE TO THE READER: Who says stories reach everybody in the same order? This novel can be read in two ways, and the eBook provides you with both. You can choose which way to read the novel by simply clicking on one of two icons—CAMERA or EYES. The text is exactly the same in both versions; the narratives are just in a different order. The ebook is produced this way so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which icon you select, the book will read: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. (Your friend may be reading it the other way around.) Enjoy the adventure. (Having both versions in the same file is intentional.)

A wide-ranging collection of reflective essays, to mark the centenary of the conflict that changed the world.In this collection of essays, ten leading writers from different countries consider the conflicts that have informed their own literary lives. 1914-Goodbye to All That borrows its title from Robert Graves''s "bitter leave-taking of England" in which he writes not only of the First World War but the questions it raised: how to live, how to live with each other, and how to write.Interpreting this title as broadly and ambiguously as Graves intended, these essays mark the War''s centenary by reinvigorating these questions. The book includes Elif Shafak on an inheritance of silence in Turkey, Ali Smith on lost voices in Scotland, Xiaolu Guo on the 100,000 Chinese sent to the Front, Daniel Kehlmann on hypnotism in Berlin, Colm Toibin on Lady Gregory losing her son fighting for Britain as she fought for an independent Ireland, Kamila Shamsie on reimagining Karachi, Erwin Mortier on occupied Belgium''s legacy of shame, NoViolet Bulawayo on Zimbabwe and clarity, Ales Steger on resisting history in Slovenia, and Jeanette Winterson on what art is for.Contributors include: ;Ali Smith - Scotland ;Ales Steger - Slovenia ;Jeanette Winterson - England ;Elif Shafak - Turkey ;NoViolet Bulawayo - Zimbabwe ;Colm Toibin - Ireland ;Xiaolu Guo - China ;Erwin Mortier - BelgiumKamila Shamsie - Pakistan ;Daniel Kehlmann - Germany

Medardo Fraile, born in Madrid in 1925, is considered to be one of Spain''s finest short-story writers. The collection Cuentos de verdad (on which this anthology is based), won him the 1965 Premio Nacional de la Crítica. While his stories have appeared in translation in other story collections, this is the first complete anthology of his work to appear in English Like Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield, Medardo Fraile is a chronicler of the minor tragedies and triumphs of ordinary life, and each short tale opens up an entire exquisite world.

Rachel Kneebone (born 1973, Oxfordshire) is a London-based artist internationally renowned for her porcelain sculptures that intricately fuse human, natural, and abstract forms in ways that are simultaneously serene and cacophonous, beautiful yet grotesque, otherworldly yet full of humanity. Exploring themes such as sexual desire, mortality, anguish, and despair, Kneebone''''s sculptures are contemporary visions of eternal truths, conveyed with endless imagination and impressive artistry in equal measure. Launched in anticipation of ''''399 Days'''', Kneebone''''s latest presentation at White Cube, London, in summer 2014, this publication features works of art and installation documentation from the artist''''s acclaimed solo exhibition at Brooklyn Museum in 2012, which included eight of the artist''''s works in dialogue with fifteen bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin that she selected from the museum''''s collection. Curated by Catherine Morris, curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at Brooklyn Museum, the exhibition was Kneebone''''s debut museum show, highlighting the two artists'''' shared interest in the representation of mourning, ecstasy, death, and vitality in figurative sculpture as well as offering an illuminating comparison of the artists'''' materials and working processes. Featuring a foreword by Catherine Morris and a text by Ali Smith, the publication is lavishly illustrated by photographs of the works by Stephen White and installation photography by Jon Lowe. The centerpiece of the exhibition and a focal point of the publication is a work entitled ''''The Descent'''' (2008), which at the time of the Brooklyn Museum show was Kneebone''''s largest work to date. In part inspired by Dante''''s ''''Divine Comedy'''' and with engaging connections to Rodin''''s iconic set of bronze doors ''''The Gates of Hell'''' - itself inspired by Dante''''s ''''Inferno'''' - Kneebone''''s white porcelain sculpture depicts myriad small mutant figures standing in a circle on the rim of a strange orifice-like pit, as if staring into hell itself, teeming with wretched limbs on the slopes below. With references ranging from Bataille to Cormac McCarthy, this apocalyptic vision of humanity and its ungodly demise captures souls condemned to eternal damnation in a sculpture that is as affecting as it is unforgettable. Other sculptures by Kneebone included in the publication include ''''For Beauty''''s nothing but beginning of Terror we''''re still just able to bear'''' (2011), which takes the form of a two-tier configuration of human limbs, evocative of classical myths and a history of aberrations, metamorphoses, and carbon-based chimera; ''''Still Life Triptych'''' (2011), which presents the viewer with three tomb-like plinths enshrouded by mysterious spheres and various bodily appendages; and ''''Eyes that look close at wounds themselves are wounded'''' (2010), which renders a pitiable naked female form transmogrified through her evident anguish into an almost abstract pile of flesh, bones, and organs. Beautiful, disturbing, remarkable - the gleaming white porcelain surfaces of Kneebone''''s exquisite sculptures belie their dark, despairing iconography, unleashing an orgiastic nightmare of elegant depravity and classical desolation. ''''Am I the only person who sees past the dark, the classical desolation that critics like to see in Kneebone''''s work?'''' asks Ali Smith in her dynamic and thought-provoking text, which takes us from Apollo to Lacan on a mind-expanding journey that starts by skinning satyrs alive and ends by proclaiming the life force that can be found even in prehistory''''s primordial slime. Designed by Herman Lelie and Stefania Bonelli, this beautifully produced hardback publication - which contains over fifty color reproductions and has been developed with support from Brooklyn Museum - will undoubtedly leave many readers as intrigued and impressed as they are bemused and unsettled. Having undertaken a BA at UWE, Bristol, Rachel Kneebone graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2004. She is represented by White Cube, London, with whom she has had a number of solo exhibitions, and has also taken part in group shows including ''''The Library of Babel'''' at the Zabludowicz Collection, London (2010), ''''The Beauty of Distance'''' at the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010), ''''The Surreal House'''' at the Barbican, London (2010), ''''Living in Evolution ''''at the Busan Biennale (2010), and ''''The Best of Times, The Worst of Times'''' at the 1st Kiev Biennale (2012).

When cutting-edge portrait photographer and documentarian Ali Smith set out to explore contemporary motherhood, she was determined to capture not only its great joys but its conflicts, compromises, messiness, and unpredictable mix of emotions—and to allow a wide range of fascinating women to tell their stories in their own voices. The result is a cinematic blend of Smith’s bold photography and the enthralling words of real women caught in the midst of real life at its most intense. Among the mothers you’ll meet inMomma Loveare Oscar-nominated actress Amy Ryan, who talks about being a mother in image-obsessed Hollywood; rock musician Alyson Palmer, who has taken both of her children on tour for years for what she calls “road schooling”; and Deborah Kopaken Cogan, who traded her harrowing life as a war photographer for the challenges of motherhood—enduring criticism as a “quitter” from her colleagues and the media. They are just a few of Ali’s subjects, who come from a wide range of backgrounds and places but share a penchant for honest self-reflection. PerusingMomma Loveis like entering into an honest, gutsy conversation that women of all ages will want to join, whether they are just curious about motherhood; contemplating it in earnest, as the author was when she began her journey; or deep in the throes of it. It is also for fans of great documentary photography that sticks in the mind and heart forever.