Helen Phillips

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION * BEST OF 2019 SUMMER READING * THE NEW YORK TIMES * VANITY FAIR * O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE * ELLE * VULTURE * NYLON * OPRAHMAG.COM * THRILLIST * BUSTLE * NEWSWEEK * STAR TRIBUNE (MINNEAPOLIS) * MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL * LITHUB * BETTER HOMES & GARDENS “A profound meditation on the nature of reality…An extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven “Phillips is, as always, doing something at once wildly her own and utterly primal. Maybe it doesn't surprise me that the strangest book I've read about motherhood is also the best, but it does thrill me.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers “Spellbinding...both unsettling and irresistible. Phillips manifests the surreal, terrifying, and visceral experience of motherhood.” —Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others “An existential page-turner that captures, with perfect sharpness, the fierce delirium of motherhood, the longing to understand the workings of our universe, and the wondrous and terrifying mystery that is time.” —Laura Van Den Berg, author of The Third Hotel “An unforgettable tour de force that melds nonstop suspense, intriguing speculation, and perfectly crafted prose…this story showcases an extraordinary writer at her electrifying best.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Suspenseful and mysterious, insightful and tender, Phillips's new thriller cements her standing as a deservedly celebrated author with a singular sense of story and style… [A] superbly engaging read—quirky, perceptive, and gently provocative.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion. In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. Helen Phillips has been anointed as one of the most exciting fiction writers working today, and The Need is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives.

The Need

Becoming increasingly uneasy about suspicious activities at a new job she felt lucky to land, Josephine makes a terrible realization and is forced to confront dangerous and powerful elements in order to protect her loved ones.

A Novel

The Beautiful Bureaucrat

From the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance…but at what cost? In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family. Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”

In a spine-tingling new collection, the “unique”(NPR) and “wickedly funny” (New York Times) Helen Phillips offers an idiosyncratic series of “what-ifs” about our fragile human condition. Some Possible Solutions offers an idiosyncratic series of "What ifs": What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you? Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, Phillips' characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world. In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers--and with Phillips' characteristic smarts and imagination, we see that no one is quite who they appear. By turns surreal, witty, and perplexing, these marvelous stories are ultimately a reflection of our own reality and of the big questions that we all face. Who are we? Where do we fit? Phillips is a true original and a treasure.

Stories

Some Possible Solutions

***LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION*** “An extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel). The Need, which finds a mother of two young children grappling with the dualities of motherhood after confronting a masked intruder in her home, is “like nothing you’ve ever read before…in a good way” (People). When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion. In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. “Brilliant” (Entertainment Weekly), “grotesque and lovely” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice), and “wildly captivating” (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Need is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives and “showcases an extraordinary writer at her electrifying best” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

A young couple comes of age in a surreal world of apocalypse, delight, longing, and tenderness.

And Yet They Were Happy

Wizyta

Morten Kringelbach

Pain and Pleasure in the Brain

Emotion

When Mad and Roo receive The Very Strange and Incredibly Creepy Letter from their missing ornithologist father, the sisters set out to Costa Rica to investigate. With the help of a golden-eyed boy, some magic jungle flowers that grow on Roo's toes and tremendous bravery, the girls must fight to save their father.

Upside Down in the Jungle

Sisters, Madeline and Ruby, travel to a Central American jungle to help find their missing father, a renowned bird watcher, only to discover a nefarious plot that puts their lives in danger.

Here Where the Sunbeams Are Green

Dounia Bissar

Cécile Tschirhart

The third edition of this popular textbook for learning French, now in colour with an access to an interactive ebook.

Foundations French 1

While everyone is familiar with the legend of Robin Hood, few can speak as knowledgably about other British outlaws and their traditions. Uncovering a popular history that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, Bandit Territories takes as its main subject English, Welsh, and Scottish outlaws and considers their traditions in light of their unique landscapes, cultural histories, and adaptations into ballet, theatre, film and children's literature. Introducing figures such as Little John and William Wallace—the character portrayed by Mel Gibson in Braveheart—this volume explores the figure of the bandit, who lives between civil society and the wilderness, and offers an engaging portrait of his iconic masculinity and nationalist propaganda.

British Outlaw Traditions

Bandit Territories

Chaucer's writings (the 'Canterbury Tales', lyrics and dream poems and Troilus) are here freshly examined in relation to the religions, the religious traditions and the religious controversies of his era.

Chaucer and Religion

Flying with Prayer Mushrooms is a book about a vision of mushrooms coming up everywhere in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. This was followed by the vision of a huge mushroom, like an atomic cloud hanging over the city and then moving up to the north. When Helen Phillips asked God what these visions meant He said that the little mushrooms were small prayer groups in business, offices and factories and that she must find them, encourage them and start more all over the city and suburbs. Then God said that the power that would come from this prayer was in the atomic mushroom cloud which was going to save the city and as it moved up South Africa would bring salvation to Africa and Europe and the world. Excited but overawed Helen set out to fulfill this mission. The book also has other prophecies given for the end time revival starting in Cape Town and spreading all over the world. There are also stories of other prayer movements calling people to pray in other segments of society showing that the mushroom vision was part of a universal call from God to mobilize ordinary people from every walk of life, every race and nation to pray calling in the coming revival that will ultimately usher in the second coming of Christ. This is a book for NOW when evil appears to be in the ascendancy and secular modern humanism has lauded behavior which is called an abomination to God. The Bible is being discarded and any mention of God is prevented in public places and prayer is forbidden. This is time when children are killed as shootings take place in schools and in public places for no apparent reason. Integrity, honesty, and goodness are a thing of the past and NOW is the time we need to pray and call on God's help for our corrupt world. This is a book for everyone who would like to make a difference and does not know how. Praying is God's call for us to make a difference. We cannot change the world but God can. There are also tips on how to pray, and various types of prayer to defeat the devil and cast out the evil of satanism, witches and warlocks. This book calls us to save our world from evil by calling on God in prayer.

God's Call to Prayer

Flying with Prayer Mushrooms

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2015 NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by Time Out, Bustle, The Atlantic, Electric Literature, Kobo, Kirkus and more... "Riveting... thrillerlike...drolly surreal...Ultimately, The Beautiful Bureaucrat succeeds because it isn't afraid to ask the deepest questions." The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice "A joyride..." -Karen Russell NAMED A MUST READ OF THE SUMMER by the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Bustle, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, HelloGiggles and more... A young wife's new job pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in a first novel Ursula K. Le Guin hails as "funny, sad, scary, beautiful. I love it." In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings-the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread. As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder-luminous and new.

This collection of essays on the Robin Hood tradition explores both its medieval contexts and the evolution of the legend after the medieval period. They deal with Robin Hood in literature and drama, with local traditions, monuments and forgeries, with folkloric connections, and with the changing perspectives of antiquarian and modern studies of the Robin Hood material. Contents: Helen Phillips, Studying Robin Hood; Douglas Gray, Everybodyâ??s Robin Hood; Derek Pearsall, Little John and the ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk; Richard Firth Green, The hermit and the outlaw: new evidence for Robin Hoodâ??s death?; Roy Pearcy, The literary Robin Hood: character and function in Fitts 1, 2, and 4 of the Gest of Robin Hood; Thomas H. Ohlgren, Merchant adventure in Robin Hood and the Potter; Timothy S. Jones, Tristan, Malory, and the outlaw-knight; David Hepworth, A grave tale; Liz Oakley-Brown, Framing Robin Hood: temporality and textuality in Anthony Mundayâ??s Robin Hood plays; Stephen Knight, Meere English flocks: Ben Jonsonâ??s The Sad Shepherd and the Robin Hood tradition; Linda Troost, The noble peasant; Helen Phillips, Robin Hood, the priories of Kirkless and Charlotte BrontÃ«; Lois Potter, Robin Hood and the fairies: Alfred Noyesâ?? Sherwood; Michael Evans, Robin Hood in the landscape.

Medieval and Post-medieval

Robin Hood

palgrave foundations french 1 – a lively introduction for complete beginners • Designed for and used extensively on Institution-wide Language Programmes (IWLPs) including language options and electives, Open Learning Programmes and similar provision • 10 units fit the 20-24 week teaching year • Scripted and unscripted dialogues provide a diverse range of audio material • Integrated pair- and groupwork activities throughout • Contains a comprehensive self-study section for non-contact hours • Carefully reviewed and updated following extensive lecturer feedback • New photos and illustrations • CDs with every book Dounia Bissar is French Co-ordinator on the Open Language Programme at the London Metropolitan University. Helen Phillips is Deputy Director Applied Foreign Languages at the University of Bristol Language Centre. Cécile Tschirhart is Deputy Head of the Department of Education and formerly Director of the Open Language Programme at the London Metropolitan University. Tom Carty was Languages Programme Leader at Staffordshire University and the University of Wolverhampton Pic of 2 CDs as per cover image CD 2 audio CDs come with this book MP3 files and digital licences are available for institutions from Palgrave Macmillan. Visit http://www.palgrave.com/modernlanguages/license.asp#Digital

Nick Havely

Dream literature is regarded as one of the most important genres in medieval literature and is widely studied. This text provides a succinct and clear introduction to the five central poems that comprise Chaucer's Dream Poetry, and shows his role as a leading adapter of European Literary tradition into English Literature. The poems discussed are The Book of the Duchess, The Legend of Good Women, The Legend of Dido, The Parliament of Fowls and The House of Fame. Each have an introduction setting the poem within the context of Dream Poetry and Chaucer's own work. Appendices of proper names, pronunciation and criticism are also given. This volume is unique is presenting the poems together in an editorial and critical framework. The quality of annotation is unrivalled and will make this text a major addition to the literature suitable for those interested in the genre, literary, or more general history of the period.

Chaucer's Dream Poetry

Mit dem Mega-Grusel-Brief fing alles an. Mad und Ru wussten sofort, da stimmt was nicht. Nie und nimmer hätte Dad so einen pupsnormalen Brief geschrieben. Ru ist felsenfest davon überzeugt, dass es eine verschlüsselte Nachricht ist. Mad glaubt zwar nicht an einen Code, aber dass ihr Vater offenbar verrückt geworden ist, findet sie auch nicht gerade beruhigend. Jedenfalls sitzen sie jetzt im Flugzeug, zusammen mit Mum und ihrem neuen Begleiter Ken-Neth (würg), und sind auf dem Weg nach La Lava, um ihren Vater zu suchen. Dort finden die Schwestern nicht nur ihn und das grünste Wellness-Paradies der Welt, sondern auch noch eine Vogelfeder. Und die führt sie direkt in ein mysteriöses Dschungelabenteuer ...

Helen Phillips

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