I’ve spent decades reading books on the roles animals play in human cultures, but none have ever made me think, and feel, as much as this one. It’s a devastating meditation on our relationship to the natural world. It might be the best book on animals I’ve ever read. It’s also the only one that’s made me laugh out loud.

Stunning... Passarello’s keen wit is on display throughout as she raises questions about the uniqueness of humans.... A feast of surprising juxtapositions and gorgeous prose.

This phenomenal collection documents the lives of particular animals from a wide range of species… Passarello treats her subjects with dextrous care, weaving narratives together in a way that investigates, honours, and complicates her subjects… Passarello has created a consistently original, thoroughly researched, altogether fascinating compendium.

In Animals Strike Curious Poses Elena Passarello spins fantastic, wondrous, and true tall tales about species big and small. Her essays are dream-spaces of imagery and ideas…. This book will leave little doubt that Passarello is one our country’s most gifted young prose writers.

Animals Strike Curious Poses turns the bestiary inside out, holds the mummified mammoth heart up against our own, and, from the braided ventricles, springboards into intoxicating and animated meditations on our penchant for ownership via naming... This book is a gift to us from one of the best, most important, and most exciting essayists of the 21st century.

In 16 powerful, impressionistic essays, Elena Passarello gathers a multitude of these close encounters. From the “near-bestiary” roving ancient Europe to the brave new world of rewilding, she brilliantly explores the conflicts and cruelties inherent in our fascination with animal otherness.

Animals Strike Curious Poses is...about the nature of the human-animal bonds – and thus (scaringly and excitingly) about the nature of humans… This is no arid thesis. Passarello is sassy but tender; smart, angry, and wondering. She takes nothing at face value, which is as exhausting as a proper book should be… “Come here, Elena Marie,”, says a goat with a deformed horn. “Look into my eyes. Can you ever believe all the ways you and I were made for each other?” This urgent and uncomfortable questions runs throughout this profound and profoundly unsettling book. The more you don’t want to read the book, the more you need to do so.

Extraordinary… Although these animal case histories lodge under the label of “essay”, Passarello tests and stretches the form in thrilling ways. Particularly brilliant – but, honestly, they are all brilliant – is an extended fantasy written from the point of view of Harriet, the Galapagos tortoise who Darwin reportedly brought back on the Beagle… All this might come off as charming but essentially whimsical were it not for the fact that Passarello underpins her wild imagination and pyrotechnic prose with rigorous research. She doesn’t do footnotes, but an extensive bibliography of 255 sources bears witness to the huge accumulation of reading that has gone into her book.

In innovative hands, such as those of Claudia Rankine or Joanna Walsh, the essay can be more than simply a subjective non-fiction disquisition, and a suite of them can add up to far more than the sum of its parts. This is the case with Elena Passarello’s playful, shrewd and illuminating collection Animals Strike Curious Poses… She alludes to her reasons for turning her attention to animals, but thankfully avoids the irritating cliché of over-justifying the project with laboured reference to her own “story”. Passarello’s cultural perceptiveness and skill as an essayist, breathtaking at times, are justification enough… Passarello is at her best when subtly dissecting modern cultural mores and attitudes to animals… These essays dance along the margins of what is humanly possible when it comes to understanding other forms of life.

There’s a great depth of knowledge contained within, and you will come away from it with a lot of new questions as well as answers, so wide-ranging is Passarello’s curiosity about the natural world and our own psychology and behavior.

An arresting book of essays… Imagining the moments in our history when animals got into our collective neocortex, and how they transformed us and we transformed them.

[An] elegant, wonderfully entertaining series of essays

I think it's the best book on animals I've ever read. A joy

This narrative of the ship commanded by Captain Cook is illuminated by imagination and creativity. Particularly brilliant is the depiction of its context in 18th-century Britain, where the culture of intellectual enquiry we know as the Enlightenment prompted the Admiralty to support Cook, and he was accompanied by botanists, astrologers, artists and cartographers

What a truly remarkable book this is…entirely fresh and original…shows how this stalwart, unpretentious, little coal bark came to embody the Age of Exploration, of Enlightenment, of Empire, and of Revolution

[An] extraordinary story… [and] a fascinating period of history

Endeavour’s… story… [will] rarely be more engagingly recorded than here

Engrossing detail… written in an engaging literary style… [a] fine book

Publisher's description. A biography of the comic writer Anthony Powell, author of the million-word masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time, from renowned British biographer Hilary Spurling. An insightful and surprising look into what drove the writer widely regarded as the English Proust.

The adaptation by Ari Folman is refreshing, well researched and innovative. The art by David Polonsky is stunning, vivid, and rich. Altogether, it's a graphic novel that is more than essential reading

The illustrations in Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Novel have... [a] polished, often luminous effect.

Impressive. . . In an afterword, Ari Folman discusses some of the challenges of "editing" such an "iconic text." Their goal, he says, was "to honor and preserve the spirit of Anne Frank in each and every frame." This they have done to engaging effect.

As lively and vivid a novel as even the most demanding reader could wish for: epic in scope, deliciously meaty with its wide array of characters and milieux, and utterly convincing in its treatment of Cold War espionage and intrigue. This marvelous novel reads like the work of a mid-career master; what a wonderful surprise, then, to realize it's the opening salvo from a supremely gifted debut novelist. Lara Prescott is the real deal, and the evidence is right here on every page.

I was riveted by Lara Prescott’s new novel. I barely stirred from my chair for two days. How does one even begin to talk about this book? It’s all here—the KGB versus the CIA, the sexual office politics of Mad Men, a horrifying new look at the gulag, the tragic love affair between Boris Pasternak and his mistress, a brilliantly-drawn portrait of a time when a single book had the power to change history. I predict that The Secrets We Kept will be one of the most important books of the year.

Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept is trenchant, timely, and compulsively readable. The book thrillingly recalls the period detail of Mad Men, the complex characters of Patricia Highsmith, and the satisfying plots of John le Carre, but ultimately it’s Prescott’s distinctive voice and vision that feel most stirring and relevant. This is a first-rate novel, and it signals the arrival of a major new writer.

The whirl of trench coats and cocktails and midnight meetings on park benches has the heady whiff of classic old-fashioned spy storytelling, brilliantly filtered through Prescott’s thoroughly modern lens.

Sweeping between Russia and Washington, this captivating novel is so assured it’s hard to believe it’s a debut. And it is very easy to see why there’s such a huge buzz about it.

Wholly original and brilliantly realised, The Secrets We Kept hymns the subversive power of great prose whilst ratcheting up the tension with masterly technique.

This is a fascinating story... What is entirely Prescott's own is the story of Irina, and her fellow, more experience, spy Sally Forrester. Sally is a particularly affecting character, and, since this is a book about spies, there is the usual complement of lies and double crossings. Woven into the narrative intrigue are a number of touching love stories, including one which allows Prescott to explore how the McCarthyite "Red Scare" found echoes in a widespread paranoia about gays and lesbians in the US government.

A fascinating fictionalisation.

In this stylish and confident debut novel, we delve into the story behind the story, which is just as enthralling.

It draws the reader into the emotional lives of the characters and their ever-changing roles and personas.

All the pre-publication hype is fully justifiedas American author Prescott’s debut novel turns out to be a truly wonderful blend of historical romance, spy thriller and insights into the myriad aspects of love in troubled times… Loved it.

It transported me back in time and kept me utterly gripped from beginning to end.

An astonishingly accomplished debut: original, fiercely intelligent, pointedly witty, utterly thrilling and gripping. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this is an epic novel worthy of its topic – Dr. Zhivago and the CIA plot to publish the supposed subversive work in the USSR. The Secrets We Kept is an engrossing drama that works on so many levels. Part thriller, part love story, this reimagining of historical events is very convincing, fact and fictional creativity coalesce perfectly. The result is a beguiling read; the tragedy and iniquity of the story will drain you, but there are moments of joy and triumph too… Block out a couple of days and treat yourself to a wonderful read.

No mere spy thriller, it is, as the typists say of Dr Zhivago, both “a war story and a love story... but it was the love story we remembered most".

What a book!... riveting…This unusual story is both beautifully written and deeply compelling in equal measure…I was utterly swept away by Prescott’s vivid style of writing together with her cast of strong and wonderfully convincing characters. It is rich in historical detail and covers (for me) a fascinating period in history with astonishing lucidity. This really isn’t quite the run-of-the-mill, fast-paced, heart-in-the-mouth thriller I had expected; instead it is SO much more! It is thrilling, and it is pacy, yet it is also deeply emotional and full of zest.

The Secrets We Kept is a brilliantly told story, about a piece of relatively unknown history. It is tense, enthralling and has brilliant female characters. You’ll not be able to put it down and you will think about the characters long after you finish the book. This is one of my books of the year, for sure!

If you’ve read Doctor Zhivago, you’ll get a kick out of this.

Intriguing debut novel

The plot is complicated and the narrative even more so, owing to Prescott’s decision to use multiple first-person narrators in addition to the gossipy first-person-plural voice of the C.I.A.’s pool of female typists (which, incidentally, is highly effective). And Prescott pulls all this off… Prescott’s portrait of Sally Forrester, in particular, and Sally’s love for her colleague, Irina, is emotionally sincere and Prescott acutely captures the isolation inherent in Sally’s professional, social and sexual identity.

Engaging …This is a highly readable novel about the power of literature … The pen really is mightier than the sword

Lara Prescott has managed to summon a vanished world where novels mattered and women didn’t.

Lara Prescott's dazzling debut novel is a sweeping page turner, and now a global literary sensation.

Lara Prescott's absorbing take on the Cold War spy thriller ... doesn't disappoint … Sweeping and ambitious ... It is a tautly written masterclass in blending fiction and fact.

An entertaining read