Faber and Faber To Catch A Cloud de Roo Elena

Marathons are no longer enough • Pain is to be relished, not avoided • Hallucinations are normal • Ultra running defies conventional logic. Yet this most brutal and challenging sport is now one of the fastest-growing in the world. Why is this? Is it an antidote to modern life, or a symptom of a modern illness? • Adharanand Finn travelled to the heart of the sport to find out – and to see if he could become an ultra runner himself. His journey took him from the deserts of Oman to the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies, and on to his ultimate goal, the 105-mile Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc • The Rise of the Ultra Runners is the electrifying, inspirational account of what he learned along the way. Through encounters with the sport’s many colourful characters and his experiences of its soaring highs and crushing lows, Finn offers an unforgettable insight into what can be found at the boundaries of human endeavour

After years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world’s biggest long-distance races, Runner’s World contributor Adharanand Finn set out to discover what it was that made them so fast – and to see if he could keep up. Packing up his family, he moved to Iten, Kenya, the running capital of the world, and started investigating. Was it running barefoot to school, the food, the altitude, or something else? At the end of his journey he put his research to the test by running his first marathon, across the Kenyan plains

Peter Carey’s novel of the undeclared love between clergyman Oscar Hopkins and the heiress Lucinda Leplastrier is both a moving and beautiful love story and a historical tour de force set in Victorian times. Made for each other, the two are gamblers – one obsessive, the other compulsive – incapable of winning at the game of love

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • ‘My only concern’, John McGahern once said, ‘is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply.’ • ‘The Country Funeral’ witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog – the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern’s stories take place – to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • A chance encounter leads a man to spend the afternoon with an older woman, now a widow, who escaped him fifteen years earlier. Neither of them doubts that the day will end in disgust, but for one intimate moment each finds a way to overcome mortality • Written in 1969, before Milan Kundera was known to English-speaking readers, this story renders male and female characters painful equals, and prompted Philip Roth to admire its ‘detached Chekhovian tenderness’ • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber’s bestselling hamster series is given a smart new livery, repositioning our favourite as a perennial classic character, sitting alongside the likes of Winnie the Pooh and Wind in Willows • Dear Friends, • When Og the Frog came to live in Room 26, I felt a little jealous. Still, I tried to be welcoming but I soon discovered that it’s HARD-HARD-HARD to make friends with a lumpy, bumpy frog! • Then I found out that my fellow students were having problems with their friends, too. A.J. and Garth had to deal with a bully named Mean Martin Bean. Heidi and Gail had a terrible argument, and Miranda-Golden had a new stepsister who wasn’t nice at all. Then there was the Poetry Festival, the magic show and the snowstorm! How could one small hamster solve all those problems? • Luckily, I wrote the whole story in my notebook so you could share my adventures

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • Between his second and third tours of duty, a soldier returns home • To his former home, that is, using an old key while the new tenant is at work. Is he re-entering his old life or borrowing someone else’s? Where is the line he will not cross? Each day is the same: he exists in a state of suspension, barely knowing how he passes the time – until someone else intrudes on the intruder • Adrian Tomine, graphic master of alienation and regret, expertly expands the form to express the unsaid and the unbearable in this unforgettable evocation of a post-traumatic life • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

To celebrate his tenth birthday the whole Humphrey series has a smart new livery, repositioning him alongside perennial favourites such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington • When Humphrey’s teacher, Mrs Brisbane, doesn’t come to school, he is unsqueakably worried. Then a supply teacher, the mysterious Mr E, arrives and everything changes. Class is fun, but are Humphrey’s classmates learning anything? And what had happened to their wonderful teacher? • Humphrey has his paws full as he tries to gather clues to solve the mystery, and then, on Halloween, everything is revealed

Faber’s bestselling hamster series is given a smart new livery, repositioning our favourite as a perennial classic character, sitting alongside the likes of Winnie the Pooh and Wind in Willows • The next in the bestselling According to Humphrey series, Humphrey and his friends in Room 26 learn about ancient Egypt. Mummies, pharaohs, pyramids and plenty of SHH-SHH-SHH secrets abound! Will Humphrey be able to solve the mysteries of the pharaohs…? • From award-winning author Betty G. Birney

And the black man and the white were like two men alone in the world … • Xuma will never forget the day he arrived in the Johannesburg slums: the charismatic woman who takes him in, the brutal police raids, the fights, friendships, dancing, drinking and romances – yet it soon feels like home. But when he becomes a leader in the city’s gold mines, he is shocked by the racist treatment of the labourers. And as he begins to question whether ‘man could be without colour’, Xuma stages an act of defiance that changes his life forever • In 1946, Peter Abrahams’ classic novel Mine Boy exposed South Africa’s fledgling racial apartheid system and townships to the world – and its wisdom, vividness and political power endures to this day

To celebrate his tenth birthday the whole Humphrey series has a smart new livery, repositioning him alongside perennial favourites such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington • Humphrey enjoys surprises as much as the next hamster, like his brand new hamster ball or a surprise part, but sometimes surprises can be bad… Like coming whisker to whisker with a cat (eek!) or having an alien from another planet move into Room 26! All this and lots-lots-lots more happens in Humphrey's new book of adventures, Surprises According to Humphrey

To celebrate his tenth birthday the whole Humphrey series has a smart new livery, repositioning him alongside perennial favourites such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington • When Humphrey hears about a sailing competition on Potter’s Pond, he longs for a BIG-BIG-BIGGER adventure. And believe us, he gets one . . . but it isn’t all smooth sailing. He helps out his classmates, takes an unsqueakably dangerous voyage of his own, and even comes face-to-face with a pirate!