Faber and Faber Welcome to Lagos Onuzo Chibundu

Welcome to Stanley Donwood’s fictional universe: a landscape of dark streets and high-rise concrete, creeping shadows and shifting perspectives; its citizens forever caught between boredom and paranoia, alive to the threat of menacing machines and Aliens from Outer Space. Here disappearances (people, things) are everyday. Relationships are unstable. Nature has turned unnatural. Unsettling dreams segue into waking nightmares • In Humor, Stanley Donwood reveals himself as a contemporary master of the micro-narrative, riffing on the four humors of the human body – sanguine, phlegm, choler and melancholy – to rummage beneath the veneer of sanity that passes for civilised society. Apocalyptic, funny and hallucinogenic in their intensity, these stories present a series of brief, haunting episodes in a world drained of meaning, sense and consequence

Welcome to a fantasy world where edible magic is the hottest commodity, traded between those who can pay or – in the case of Jude Ripon, the youngest thief in Farrowfell – those who can steal it! • An epic debut series from a FAB Prize winner • Twelve-year-old Jude Ripon has never been taken seriously by her family of magic-stealing masterminds. To them, she’s just the youngest, only good for keeping watch while they carry out daring heists • Desperate to prove her worth, Jude decides to steal valuable magic from the fanciest house in town • But Jude’s stolen prize was protected by a curse which threatens to wreak havoc on the family business • While attempting to untangle the mess she’s made (and wondering why anyone would want to curse an honest thief trying to earn a living), Jude discovers just how far her family will go to stay at the top of the criminal world

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

18 boyfriends. 23 jobs. One ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice. Welcome to the world of the Temporary • ‘There is nothing more personal than doing your job’. So goes the motto of the Temporary, as she takes job after job, in search of steadiness, belonging, and something to call her own. Aided by her bespoke agency and a cast of boyfriends – each allotted their own task (the handy boyfriend, the culinary boyfriend, the real estate boyfriend) – she is happy to fill in for any of us: for the Chairman of the Board, a ghost, a murderer, a mother. Even for you, and for me • Wild, hopeful, infinitely sad and infinitely funny, Temporary is the smartest, most humane story of what it is to work and live, here and now

This may not be a prison, and it may not purgatory, but it’s sure as hell not a paradise either… • Imagine a place populated by criminals – people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who’ve been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don’t know if they’ve perpetrated a crime or just witnessed one. All they do know is that they opted into the programme and that if they try to leave, they will end up dead • For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace – but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town’s residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her – and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, another future classic from Costa Winner Kate Saunders (Five Children on the Western Front) • Emily watched, in a trance of astonishment, as the bear opened the picnic basket, took out a tartan rug and spread it on Holly’s bed • And then the penguin spoke • Actually spoke • ‘What’s going on? This isn’t Pointed End!’ • The bear said, ‘It looks like a human bedroom. We must’ve come through the wrong door.’ • ‘But there aren’t any doors to the hard world in Deep Smockeroon! And we don’t have a human bedroom any more. We’re in a box in the attic.’ • What if there exists a world powered by imagination? • A world of silliness, where humans and their toys live on long after they’ve left the Hard World . . . and what if the door between that world and this one was broken? • Welcome to the Land of Neverendings

Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them the old green roads are being tarred, cars are being purchased, a way of life is about to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their hill in Kelsha, cherishing everything. When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London to find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister, are brought down to spend the summer with their grand-aunt • It is a strange chance of happiness for Annie. Against that happiness moves the figure of Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, threatening to drive Annie from her last niche of safety in the world. The world of childish innocence also proves sometimes darkened and puzzling to her, and she struggles to find clear ground, clear light - to preserve her sense of love and place against these subtle forces of disquiet

From the winner of the Blue Peter Best Story Book Award, the third instalment of Podkin’s epic battle against the Gorm • The bard looks up at the three figures. They have black hooded cloaks and long robes. From the holes in their masks, three pairs of eyes watch him: cold, calm, emotionless.‘Yes,’ says the bard. ‘They’re bonedancers. You don’t need to sound quite so excited, though. They have come to kill me.’ • And so it is that the bard and and his young apprentice Rue are taken to Spinestone, the temple warren of the bonedancers. It is here that the bard is ordered to retell the tale that has got him in so much trouble . . . and so to the next instalment in the astonishing tale of Podkin One-Ear • Podkin, Paz and Pook once again find their home under threat, but this time they are ready to fight! Podkin and the others leave for Sparrowfast to ask their uncle for the use of his magic bow

One night, when I am old, sick, right out of semen, and don’t need things to get any worse, I hear the noises growing louder. I am sure they are making love in Zenab’s bedroom which is next to mine • Waldo, a fкted filmmaker, is confined by old age and ill health to his London apartment. Frail and frustrated, he is cared for by his lovely younger wife, Zee. But when he suspects that Zee is beginning an affair with Eddie, ‘more than an acquaintance and less than a friend for over thirty years,’ Waldo is pressed to action: determined to expose the couple, he sets himself first to prove his suspicions correct — and then to enact his revenge • Written with characteristic black humour and with an acute eye for detail, Kureishi’s eagerly awaited novella will have his readers dazzled once again by a brilliant mind at work

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

The Tastemaker charts the singular life of a man who has been at the beating heart of music’s most iconic moments for over sixty years and features stories of his time working with everyone from the Beatles to the Ronettes and Elton John to the Rolling Stones • Leaving school at the age of sixteen to start his career in the music industry at Decca Records, Tony King would soon find himself becoming a close friend and confidante to some of the world’s biggest artists – a far cry from his childhood days in Eastbourne • Living in an era of seismic social, technological and cultural transformation, King experienced these defining moments as an influential figure in London and New York’s gay scenes. Despite his heady life in showbusiness, however, he would soon learn that a glittering career couldn’t shield him from heartbreak – witness to the AIDS crisis and the devastating consequences, his personal life was intermittently marked by tumult and turmoil

A swift flies two million kilometres in its lifetime. That’s far enough to get to the moon and back twice over – and then once more to the moon • A giraffe was once given to the King of France; she marched through the streets, dressed in the finest couture raincoat Paris could produce • A pangolin’s tongue is longer than its body. It keeps it neatly furled in a pouch near the hip • A lavishly illustrated collection of the lives of some of the Earth’s most astounding animals, The Golden Mole is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck – to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness