Featured Books

by Timothy Balding
(February 2024)

Roger P., a convicted double killer, escapes from custody, leaving a manuscript in his cell recounting fragments of his life and the events which result in his trial for murder. Entirely narrated by his inner voice, the document charts his rise and fall as star reporter of ‘The Daily Hack’, a scurrilous popular tabloid.

This contemporary social novel examines the poisoning of a nation’s psyche by tabloid media and the existential torments of one man struggling to escape his fate as both one of its villains and its victims.

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by Ulrike Draesner & Michael Eskin
(February 2024)

In Gespräch über Deutschland denken die Vielfalt-Deutschen Ulrike Draesner und Michael Eskin gemeinsam darüber nach, was es heute heißt, Deutsche:r zu sein – oder in Deutschland zu leben. Sie eröffnen einen persönlichen Denkraum, regen dazu an, unsere Bilder von uns und ›den anderen‹ zu befragen, und verschieben unsere Wahrnehmung. Analytisch und poetisch, traurig und humorvoll zugleich erzählt dieses Gespräch von Identität und Wandel, von Migration und Sprachvielfalt, von Biodeutschen und Deutschen mit Nazihintergrund. Auf dem Spiel stehen: Achtsamkeit, Verantwortung, Verletzlichkeit und Mitmenschlichkeit.

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by Michael Eskin
(October 2022)

Polemical and aiming at both the academic and general reader, this short and punchy book – a manifesto, manual of instruction, and inspirational romp through the history of philosophy – argues that what we typically take to be ‘philosophy’ these days is actually not philosophy in the strong or ‘true’ sense at all, but a mix of intellectual history, the history of philosophy, philosophical scholarship, and ‘academic’ philosophy.

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by Véronique Le Normand
(February 14, 2021)

Véronique Le Normand is a journalist and writer residing in Paris. In 2002, in the wake of a traumatic experience of loss, a doctor introduced her to Jin Shin Jyutsu, a Japanese art of healing that teaches us how to help ourselves simply through the use of our hands. In 2017, after fifteen years of study and practice, she set off for Japan to learn about the healer and samurai Jiro Murai, who had revived this physio-philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Accompanied by her friend Kyoko Watanabe, Véronique retraced the steps of the elusive master, accompanied in spirit by the presence of seventeenth-century Japanese poet Basho. The Square Light of the Moon is the journal of a journey from one world to another and a wonderful initiation into Japanese culture.

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by Timothy Balding
(November 2019)

“...‘the first-ever Donald Trump novel’ ... a free-wheeling farce, a three-ring circus ... politically pointed ... burlesque ... supremely silly and cheerful—think Kingsley Amis with all the black bile drained out ... moving quickly, amiably, wittily ... a fizzy romp with an inspired bit of slapstick near the end.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS

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by Jorge & Demián Bucay
(October 2019)

What happens when a father and a son, who both happen to be renowned psychiatrists (and a YouTube sensation) and who also both happen to be parents and children, discuss parenthood?
Emotionally packed, entertaining, profound and insightful, Of Parents and Children: Tools for Nurturing a Lifelong Relationship gets to the bottom of
• what it takes to be a good and responsible parent
• how to become an independent adult while maintaining a loving relationship with your parents
• and how to preserve this fundamental and lifelong bond as a source of strength and mutual renewal throughout your life.

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by Timothy Balding
(June 2019)

Wealthy London banker Ronald Chapman is found dead – a suicide, apparently, though the police are still on the case. Janet, his beautiful widow and sole heir to their fortune, finally freed from her loveless marriage, turns to her beloved Shakespeare for solace: “After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well; nothing can touch him further.” As she awaits the release of Ronald’s body for burial, there are arrangements to be made and appearances to uphold. She has only one problem: Ronald’s best friend, who is expected by family and friends to speak at the funeral … doesn’t actually exist. Can the Extra! agency – specialists in the rental of fake hecklers, phony cuckolds, inexistent relatives, sham boyfriends, and counterfeit job candidates – help? Extra!’s boss, Mike Fielding, is ready for anything that’s more or less within the law and might be approved by his alter ego, private-eye Philip Marlowe. The job falls on failed actor Will Power, who is buffeted between the dull reality of his own life and the exciting, romantic world of make-believe in this wicked comedy of deceit, treachery and love.

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by Timothy Balding
(January 2019)

Victor Andrews cannot decide whether thinking is a good thing or not. He has managed to escape it till now, too occupied with his career and the pursuit of his romantic and carnal ambitions. A heart operation and an inheritance suddenly change all that. He has time on his hands and new ambitions to invent for himself. If he starts thinking, will it take him forwards or backwards? he wonders. Will it lead him out of the confused labyrinth of his life and give it some new meaning before it’s too late? Or push him to join the company of the crazy people who chase endlessly the tails of their obsessions? His newly-acquired African grey parrot has, for the moment, one word alone to say about these and indeed all other questions on Victor’s mind: “Bollocks.” But Victor intends to change all that once he has conceived the parrot’s educational program. In the meantime, he finds himself increasingly attached to the great Emerson’s truth: “Life consists in what a man is thinking all day.” Yes, perhaps Victor too should start thinking and see what happens to his life? This black comedy recounts his adventure ...

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by Michael Eskin
(November 2018)

A sheer delight to read and think along with, these aphorisms and philosophical miniatures will astound, enliven, and inspire anyone ready and willing to risk a fresh, unflinching look at the world, humanity, and the often curious ways in which we think, act, and feel ... Like truffles that gradually dissolve on our tongue, suffusing us with the gustatory memory of their transient shape and texture, and leaving us desiring more ...

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by L. P. Yakubinsky
(April 2018)

Written between 1916 and 1931 and available in English for the first time, Yakubinsky’s seminal essays afford us an unprecedented view of the history of modern literary and cultural theory. Addressing central questions of poetics and (socio)linguistics, their insights and criticisms are as fresh and apposite today as they were a century ago.

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by Alexandre Jollien
(May 2017)

ALEXANDRE JOLLIEN, who is the first and only major thinker and spiritual teacher in the history of philosophy to have been born with cerebral palsy, tells the story of how he grew up in a home for the severely disabled and was destined to roll cigars; how he discovered philosophy, which changed his life forever, helping him to confront his fate, endow it with meaning, and turn his disability into a source of strength and creative energy; how, against all odds, he fought his way out of the home and into high school and university, where as an undergraduate he wrote In Praise of Weakness ... Imbued with human warmth and wisdom, this modern Socratic dialogue is a poignant testament to the inestimable value of friendship, the power of imagination, and the will to overcome. A book that inspires and gives courage.

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by Timothy Balding
(April 2017)

Half-drunk on the operating table as an indifferent surgeon cuts a hole in his wrist, Victor Andrews contemplates his impending death with dread and sorrow. It’s not dying that makes him distraught, he reflects, but the idea that he may quit his life, after all these years, having understood little or nothing about it. A few deathbed jokes at his own expense will be in order, of course. But what will he be able to say about his life that is true, original, essential? Victor decides, if the doctors don’t kill him, to embark on a forensic investigation through the dimly-lit corridors of his mind in search of answers. Murder, love, sex, truth, beauty ... the inquisition must begin. Few corners of a man’s mind and soul are left unexplored in this black comedy.

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by Andrea Köhler
(February 2017)

Graced with lyricism, Passing Time is a thoughtful and wide-ranging meditation on the ways in which human beings are compelled — and choose — to mark time, from earliest childhood to the final moments of life. This is an unsparing, yet often poetic, essay on the ordeals and pleasures inherent in the universal experience of waiting.

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by Wilhelm Schmid
(February 2016)

Learning to live with one’s own aging is the new task: making an art of what once was a given – growing older; turning our society’s anti-aging bias into a true art of aging that will enable us to live with rather than against the inevitable. In ten practical steps, this book teaches you how to welcome and embrace growing older with gelassenheit at any age.

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by Lajos Walder
(September 2015)

Arguably the most significant modern Hungarian poet, Lajos Walder was born in 1913 and died in 1945 in the Gunskirchen concentration camp, on the day it was liberated by the Allied forces. Exuberant and witty, poignant and severe, trenchant yet light-hearted, Lajos Walder's poems cut to the quick and stay with you. Reading them is like reliving an era long gone and, at the same time, learning to see our own world with new eyes. For Lajos Walder's "message" speaks to us as directly today as it did to his contemporaries almost a century ago: "... that apart from thieves and murderers // there are also human beings." For the first time, Lajos Walder's complete extant poetry is made available in English, superbly translated by the poet's daughter Agnes Walder, who also provides a beautiful afterword, and with a passionate foreword by Scots fellow poet Don Paterson.

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by Stephen Grant
(August/September 2014)


Set in contemporary London, A Moment More Sublime is the riveting story of Tom Phelps, a philosophy teacher and tennis buff, who finds himself unexpectedly embroiled in his union’s struggle against a corrupt school administration and its plans to cut jobs under the pretense of modernization and fiscal austerity, just as he and his partner Sofia are getting ready to buy a home and start a family. What Tom thought would be a routine academic year teaching Aristotle's Ethics and playing tennis at their local club with Sofia on the weekends, turns out to be a year of professional turmoil and strained commitments.

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Wilhelm Schmid
(August/September 2014)


Is not being happy really so bad? In High on Low: Harnessing the Power of Unhappiness, Wilhelm Schmid persuasively argues that far from preventing us from living a full and successful life, being unhappy - be it in terms of discontent, melancholy, sadness, or depressive mood - is an inherent part of well-rounded, active, and creative living. Rather than attempting to treat unhappiness as an unwelcome interloper on our perpetual quest for happiness, we should, Schmid suggests, draw on and harness the very power of not being happy.

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by Waltraud Riegger-Krause
(March 2014)


The physio-philosophy of JIN SHIN JYUTSU is a traditional Japanese healing art. In Health Is in Your Hands bestselling author Waltraud Riegger-Krause makes this art conveniently accessible as a hands-on practice, laying out a wide variety of treatments for a broad range of symptoms and conditions. What makes Health Is in Your Hands truly revolutionary and indispensable, however, is its comprehensive flash-card set for immediate hands-on use, which, owing to its visual aids and multicolored arrangement, allows you to quickly choose the appropriate cards for any given symptoms. Health Is in Your Hands is nothing less than a veritable Jin Shin Jyutsu First Aid Kit together with a thorough presentation of this healing art all in one.

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by Michael Eskin
(October 2013)


If parenthood were a function of biology, adoptive parents, for instance, ought not to be considered parents — which is absurd. Thus, it follows that biology cannot be an essential component of parenthood.  Concomitantly, if parenthood were merely a function of law, all those who have parented children without being their legal parents would be stripped of their de facto parenthood ... If, then, parenthood is neither a function of biology nor simply law — what is it? What does being a parent truly mean? Rooted in the author’s own experience as a father of three, The Wisdom of Parenthood is an insightful, original, and provocative philosophical meditation on the meaning, experience, and practice of parenthood.

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by Michael Eskin & Kathrin Stengel
(June 2013)

We are constituted to think and reflect, to query and question, to seek answers and not stop at the answers we find, pushing further and further on our quest for meaning and insight into the big and the small, into first things and last. In other words, we are philosophical creatures. How, then, can we achieve more satisfying, rich, creative, and fulfilled lives as creatures of thought and reflection, as fundamentally philosophical beings? This question lies at the heart of Yoga for the Mind – an intensely fruitful and enriching philosophical supplement to the daily diet of existence.

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by Durs Grünbein
Translated by Michael Eskin
(January 2013)

In this new collection of poems—his most philosophically probing and poetically revealing to date—Durs Grünbein takes us on a spiritual journey through the labyrinthine cosmos of the human soul and its manifold embodiments across the ages. Addressing us in his own voice as well as through the prisms of Seneca, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Pascal, Malebranche, Vermeer, and others, Grünbein subtly and lovingly traces the paradoxes of creatureliness—its joys and sufferings, its resilience and fragility—to remind us of the “mortal diamond from the hands of nature” that is life.

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The Vocation of Poetry

by Durs Grünbein

(February 2011)

2011 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER BOOK AWARD for Essay/Creative-Non-Fiction

What counts is the one, unattended second, the moment of inspiration that can never be forced and that decides all. It gives the beginning, it sets in motion the production of sense. The poem is the literary form that most purely captures this moment of inception. I might even go so far as to say that poetry is in large part born from the desire to start over as often as possible ...

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