1. Harper Lee’s acclaimed To Kill a Mockingbird, which illuminates the complexities of human nature with unwavering honesty, is reborn as a graphic novel. Follow the lives of Scout, Jem, Boo Radley and Atticus Finch in the small US town of Maycomb, Alabama, all smartly realised and vividly illustrated by artist Fred Fordham.
2. Authored by Pulitzer-finalists Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, The Wall Street Journal journalists who broke the news of 1Malaysia Development Bhd’s troubles in 2015, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World focuses on businessman Jho Low, who “pulled off one of the biggest financial heists in history right under the nose of the global financial industry”.
3. Into the Jungle: Stories for Mowgli by Katherine Rundell is an illustrated, witty companion to Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 classic The Jungle Book. In this careful update, which is timed to coincide with the release of the film Mowgli in October, Rundell deftly explores the book’s timeless themes while still instilling empathy through its original characters such as Baloo, Bagheera and Mother Wolf.
4. Anyone longing to return to the richly imagined Middle Earth — a place of magnificent adventure seasoned with a quiet humour dreamt up by The Lord of the Rings creator JRR Tolkien— is in luck.The Fall of Gondolin, published 45 years after Tolkien’s death and edited by his son Christopher, sets the utmost evil of Morgoth against the sea-god Ulmo to take command of the hidden city of Gondolin.
5. Winter, alas, is not coming. The release of The Winds of Winter — George RR Martin’s long-awaited sixth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy series — has been delayed until next year. In the meantime, fans can revel in Fire and Blood, which chronicles the history of the Targaryens in Westeros 300 years before the events in A Game of Thrones.
6. Dig out your boots as Lonely Planet is introducing Epic Hikes of the World, a compilation of 50 incredible hiking routes across 30 countries, from New Zealand’s glacial landscapes to some of the world’s highest peaks in Africa and Asia. Each journey, brought to life through a first-person account, shares one defining feature: being truly epic.
7. Haruki Murakami’s English-translated Killing Commendatore is set to be a tour de force of love and loneliness, as well as an ode to The Great Gatsby. As usual, symbols, mystery, fierce imagination and unapologetically Japanese storytelling make up the signature pleasures of a Murakami plot.
This article appeared in Issue 839 (July 16) of The Edge Singapore.
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