The Fantastic Attic Dwellers

What happens to your toys when you grow up? What fate befalls them when they are exiled to a perilous roof space?The Fantastic Attic Dwellers tells the story of four such dolls: Mindy, a timid baby doll; Crazy, a tiny tot with the heart of a tiger; Barbarella, an ?absolutely fabulous? fashion doll, and Seamus, a wise and hardy leprechaun.Jo, their owner, has grown up and moved out of the family home. The dolls are banished to the attic and must learn to help one another or perish. Together they face hungry rats, spiders and cats but most importantly, will they learn the lessons of friendship and the truth of Seamus? magical story?

The first future dystopia in modern European literature, now available in English.

The English translation of Diario Delle Solitudini by Fausta Garavini. A journalist is involved in an accident. To recover, he takes refuge in an isolated house in the middle of a lagoon. From time to time, he is joined by Norberto, who brings him supplies. Soon, the big house begins to intrigue the journalist – and he starts to look for clues in the artefacts around him to reconstruct the life of its inhabitants. He discovers letters, photographs and newspaper clippings, which tell the story of a former family of the house; Rodolfo, married to Amanda and the father of Alvise, and Gualtieri married to Matilda and the father of Lavinia The House of Solitudes, the English translation of Garavini’s novel, is set in a house shrouded in mist and in the distant past, where young hearts are full of hopes and disappointments, loves and betrayals. Fausta Garavini animates the world she writes about. This is a gothic and historical novel.

An expanded edition of Kinoglasnost that examines the fascinating world of Soviet cinema during the yeas of glasnost and perestroika in the 1980s. In Before the Fall, Anna Lawton shows how the reforms that shook the foundations of the Bolshevik state and affected economic and social structures have been reflected in the film industry. A new added chapter provides a commentary on the dramatic changes that marked the beginning of democracy in Russia. Soviet cinema has always been closely connected with national political reality, challenging the conventions of bourgeois society and educating the people. In this pioneering study, Lawton discusses the restructuring of the main institutions governing the industry; the abolition of censorship; the emergence of independent production and distribution systems; the dismantling of the old bureaucratic structures and the implementation of new initiatives. She also surveys the films that remained unscreened for decades for political reasons, films of the new wave that look at the past to search out the truth, and those that record current social ills or conjure up a disquieting image of the future. “What makes Kinoglasnost pre-eminent among current studies of the subject is that sustained attention Lawton pays to changes in the formal organization of Soviet cinema and in the cinema industry.” —Julian Graffy, Sight and Sound “The author constructs a complex, multilayered narrative of a steady and significant movement toward radical change in Soviet society, an account of the growing anxiety and the hope experienced by Russian filmmakers and the intelligentsia.” —Ludmila Z. Pruner, Slavic and East European Journal

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

An examination of soviet cinema under Glasnost and Perestrokïa.

Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later. "Gilbert and Gubar have written a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World

A novel with echoes of timeless classics such as THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, THE BORROWERS and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Garry Kilworth's ATTICA reveals a twilight world of forgotten wonders, and extraordinary adventures - all happening just above our heads. Join Jordy, Alex and Chloe as they cross the portal from our world to a strange and wonderful other place, accessible for just a moment in time through the trap-door of the attic in their family home. From hat-stand forests, to towering hills of old musical instruments, deserts of old books and a great water-tank lake, the vast continent they stumble upon is one of limitless surprises - and that's before they meet the inhabitants: strange clans of small and lumpen people who live in homes constructed from all manner of found things and drive vehicles powered by old sewing-machine parts. It is against this remarkable backdrop that the three children will embark on a spellbinding adventure to recover a prized possession, save a life, and - somehow - find a way back home.