Nick Laird

An award-winning author who writes with a wonderfully original and limber voice (The New York Times) a powerful, thought-provoking novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended Alison Donnelly has risked things for love, and suffered. Still stuck in the small Northern Ireland town of Ballyglass where she was born, working for her father s real estate agency, she hopes to pick up the pieces and get her life back together. Her older sister Liz, a prickly, fiercely independent college professor who lives in New York City, has just come home to find her boyfriend in bed with a man. Liz is about to return to Ballyglass for Alison s second wedding, before heading to an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea to make a TV show about the world s newest religion. Both sisters lives are about to be shaken apart. Alison wakes up the day after her wedding to find herself living in a nightmare, discovering on the front page of the paper that her new husband has a past neither of them can escape. In a rainforest on the other side of the planet, Liz finds herself becoming increasingly entangled in the eerie, charged world of Belef, the subject of her show, a charismatic middle-aged woman who is the leader of a cargo cult. Liz and Alison, as well as their parents Ken and Judith and their brother, Spencer, all find their lives wanting in some way. Laird s brave, original novel charts the intimacies and disappointments of a family trying to hold itself together, and the repercussions of trust, history, and faith in oneself."

Modern Gods

Nick Laird has been an assured and brilliant voice in contemporary poetry since his acclaimed debut, To a Fault, in 2005. Feel Free, his fourth collection, effortlessly spans the Atlantic, combining the acoustic expansiveness of Whitman or Ashbery with the lyricism of Laird's forebears Heaney, MacNeice and Yeats. With characteristic variety, invention and wit (here are elegies, monologues, formal poems and free verse) the poet explores the sundry patterns of freedom and constraint - the family, the impress of history, the body itself - and how we might transcend them. Feel Free is always daring, always renewing, and Laird's most remarkable work to date.

Feel Free

A powerful novel about two sisters who must reclaim themselves after their lives are dramatically upended, from an award-winning author with “a wonderfully original and limber voice” (The New York Times) “[Nick Laird’s] kinetic prose, full of insight about politics, history and religion, dazzles eye and ear." –The New York Times Book Review “Nick Laird takes two experiences poles apart and unites them in gorgeous language…[with] fierce tenderness. ” –Dave Eggers, author of Heroes of the Frontier Alison Donnelly has suffered for love. Still stuck in the small Northern Irish town where she was born, working for her father’s real estate agency, she hopes a second marriage will help her get her life back together. Her sister Liz, a fiercely independent professor who lives in New York City, is about to return to Ulster for Alison’s wedding, before heading to an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea to make a TV show about the world’s newest religion. Both sisters hope to write their own futures, but the past has other ideas. Alison wakes up the day after her wedding to find that her new husband has a past neither of them can escape. While Liz, in a rainforest on the other side of the planet, finds herself increasingly entangled in the eerie, charged world of Belef, the charismatic middle-aged woman she has come to film, the leader of a cargo cult. As Modern Gods ingeniously interweaves the stories of Liz and Alison, it becomes clear that both sisters must learn how to negotiate with the past, with the sins of fanaticism, and decide exactly what the living owe to the dead. Laird’s brave, innovative novel charts the intimacies and disappointments of a family trying to hold itself together, and the repercussions of history and belief.

A Novel

Zadie Smith

Celebrating the quiet power of being different, The Surprise is the children's debut from acclaimed authors Zadie Smith and Nick Laird, with art from exciting newcomer Magenta Fox. Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit--and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality. The Surprise is an endearing story about the quiet power of being different by two veteran writers, and introduces an exciting debut illustrator. Together they have created a picture book that adults and children alike will treasure.

The Surprise

Collects poems on such topics as fatherhood, marriage, mass destruction, and the cosmos.

Go Giants: Poems

Don Paterson

'So open it anywhere, then anywhere, then anywhere again. We're sure it won't be long before you find a poem that brings you smack into the newness and strangeness of the living present, just as it did us' (from the Introduction) In The Zoo of the New, poets Don Paterson and Nick Laird have cast a fresh eye over more than five centuries of verse, from the English language and beyond. Above all, they have sought poetry that retains, in one way or another, a powerful timelessness: words with the thrilling capacity to make the time and place in which they were written, however distant and however foreign they may be, feel utterly here and now in the 21st Century. This book is the condensed result of that search. It stretches as far back as Sappho and as far forward as the recent award-winning work of Denise Riley, taking in poets as varied as Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath and Gwendolyn Brooks along the way. Here, the mournful rubs shoulders with the celebratory; the skulduggerous and the foolish with the highfalutin; and tales of love, loss and war with a menagerie of animals and objects, from bee boxes to rubber boots, a suit of armour and a microscope. Teeming with old favourites and surprising discoveries, this lovingly selected compendium is sure to win lifelong readers.

A Book of Exceptional Poems from Sappho to Paul Muldoon

The Zoo of the New

A love triangle between two flatmates and an American artist fractures the lives of all three amid the London art scene--full of new money, intellectual pretension, and posh restaurants--in this contemporary and satirical romance novel.

Glover's Mistake

Celebrating the quiet power of being different, The Surprise is the children’s debut from acclaimed authors Zadie Smith and Nick Laird, with art from exciting newcomer Magenta Fox. Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit—and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality. The Surprise is an endearing story about the quiet power of being different by two veteran writers, and introduces an exciting debut illustrator. Together they have created a picture book that adults and children alike will treasure.

Winner of the 2005 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature; winner of the 2005 Ireland Chair for Poetry Award; the only poetry book long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award.

To a Fault

Zoo of the New

Meet Maud: a guinea pig who inexplicably wears a judo suit - and not everyone understands or approves. When Maud is thrown into a new and confusing situation, it takes brave decisions and serendipitous encounters for her to find her place and embrace her individuality. The charming characters of Magenta Fox, whose work is evocative of Raymond Briggs and Janet Ahlberg, perfectly offset Zadie and Nick's warm, wry prose. Weirdo is an endearing story about the quiet power of being different by two veteran writers, and introduces an exciting debut illustrator. Together they have created a picture book that adults and children alike will treasure.

Weirdo

A very funny, energetic, wonderfully engaging novel about where we're from and where we'd like to get to.Danny Williams is talented, upwardly mobile and has left his Northern Irish small town roots well behind him. In his mid-twenties he lives in a stylish London flat and has a job in a top London law firm. However, one innocuous Wednesday night his old mucker from home, Geordie Wilson, arrives at the door. On the run from a loyalist militia, whose operational funds he has taken, he manages to bring everything that Danny has been fleeing from right to his smart London doorstep.Taking place over an intense and gripping five-day period-set in both London and the fictional Irish town of Ballyglass-Nick Laird has written an hilarious, touching and ultimately redemptive novel about friendship.

Utterly Monkey

Wanneer David Pinner na jaren zijn voormalige docent, de Amerikaanse kunstenares Ruth Marks, weer ontmoet, denkt hij dat het wellicht wat tussen hen zal worden. Tot hij haar voorstelt aan zijn tien jaar jongere vriend en flatgenoot James Glover en tot zijn schrik merkt dat de twee verliefd op elkaar worden. Hij legt zich er niet bij neer en doet zijn uiterste best om de ontluikende liefdesrelatie te saboteren met steeds grovere middelen. Glovers vergissing, dat gesitueerd is in de Londense kunstscene, die beheerst wordt door nieuw geld en artistieke pretenties, is een portret van beschadigde mensen wier hart en hoofd te ver van elkaar af staan om echt gelukkig te zijn. Met humor en mededogen beschrijft Nick Laird een driehoeksrelatie die langzaam maar zeker escaleert wanneer vriendschap, verlangen, waarheid en jaloezie steeds meer door elkaar gaan lopen.

Nick Laird

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