Corvus: A Life With Birds
Esther Woolfson has been fascinated by corvids, the bird group that includes crows, rooks, magpies and ravens, since her daughter rescued a fledgling rook sixteen years ago. That rook - named Chicken - has lived with the family ever since. Other birds have also taken their place in the household - a magpie, starling, parrot and the inhabitants of an outdoor dovehouse. But above all, it has been the corvids (a talking magpie named Spike, Chicken the rook, and, recently, a baby crow named Ziki) that she has formed the closest attachments with, amazed by their intelligence, personality and capacity for affection. Living with birds has allowed Woolfson to learn aspects of bird behaviour which would otherwise have been impossible to know - the way they happily become part of the structure of a family, how they communicate, their astonishing empathy. We hear about Chicken's fears and foibles: her hatred of computers and other machines and her love of sitting on Woolfson's knee in the evening and having her neck scratched; the birds' elaborate bathing rituals, springtime broodiness, and tendency to cache food in the most unlikely places. Woolfson tells the darker story of way corvids have always been objects of superstition and persecution; and with the lightest of touches, she weaves in the science of bird intelligence, evolution, song and flight throughout. Her account of her experiences is funny, touching and beautifully written, and gives fascinating insights into the closeness human beings can achieve with wild creatures. August 2008 World volume rights : Granta

Piano Angel
An exceptional multi-layered debut novel set in contemporary New York and Glasgow, and Hungary in the 1950s. Daniel Blum, a successful photographer in his early sixties, is dealing with the aftermath, both practical and emotional, of the death of his brother. Following the recurrence of a brain tumour, Mark chooses to return to his native Glasgow to die, leaving behind in New York his architectural practice, and bewildered friends and family. The processes of illness oblige Mark to re-assess his life and to re-establish contact with Daniel. Much of the bitterness and jealousy in the brothers' relationship stemmed from their friendship as teenagers with a young refugee from Hungary, Anci Goldman. Anci, now a widow and a distinguished childrenÕs illustrator in London, reads of Mark's death in a newspaper, and finds her feelings of loss inseparable from her own past and from history. As she embarks on a new commission to illustrate the work of Hans Christian Anderson, she considers her childhood in post-Trianon Hungary, the precarious days of war and the siege of Budapest in 1945. She also thinks about her decision to escape by marrying Istvan Goldmann whose involvement in the secret police has remained unclear. Encouraged by her sons, she decides she will get in touch with Dan, just as he is ready, after forty years, to contact her. October 2008 Two Ravens Press