Books by John Updike

Portrait of John Updike

John Updike was one of America's most perceptive chroniclers of twentieth‑century life, renowned for his elegant prose and acute observation of ordinary experience. His fiction often explores the complexities of love, faith, and ambition, revealing the tensions between personal desire and social expectation with wit and subtlety.

Across novels, short stories, and essays, Updike's craftsmanship and lyrical style earned him numerous accolades and a lasting place in modern literature. His work continues to captivate readers who appreciate finely tuned language and the quiet drama of everyday existence.

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100 products


  • Rabbit Run

    Penguin Books Ltd Rabbit Run

    Book SynopsisThe first book in his award-winning ''Rabbit'' series, John Updike''s Rabbit, Run contains an afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.It''s 1959 and Harry ''Rabbit'' Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, ''after you''ve been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate''.John Updike (1932-2009) was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a

    £9.49

  • Complete Shorter Fiction

    Everyman Complete Shorter Fiction

    3 in stock

    Book SynopsisHerman Melville (1819-91) brought as much genius to the smaller-scale literary forms as he did to the full-blown novel: his poems and the short stories and novellas collected in this volume reveal a deftness and a delicacy of touch that is in some ways even more impressive than the massive, tectonic passions of Moby-Dick. In a story like “Bartleby, the Scrivener” — one of the very few perfect representatives of the form in the English language — he displayed an unflinching precision and insight and empathy in his depiction of the drastically alienated inner life of the title character. In “Benito Cereno,” he addressed the great racial dilemmas of the nineteenth century with a profound, almost surreal imaginative clarity. And in Billy, Budd, Sailor, the masterpiece of his last years, he fused the knowledge and craft gained from a lifetime’s magnificent work into a pure, stark, flawlessly composed tale of innocence betrayed and destroyed. Melville is justly honored for the epic sweep of his mind, but his lyricism, his skill in rendering the minute, the particular, the local, was equally sublime.SEE LESS

    3 in stock

    £14.24

  • The Witches of Eastwick

    Penguin Books Ltd The Witches of Eastwick

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe air of Eastwick breeds witches - women whose powerful longings can stir up thunderstorms and fracture domestic peace. Jane, Alexandra and Sukie, divorced and dangerous, have formed a coven. Into the void of Eastwick breezes Darryl Van Horne, a charismatic magus of a man who entrances the trio, luring them to his mansions...

    1 in stock

    £9.49

  • Walden

    Princeton University Press Walden

    3 in stock

    Book SynopsisOne of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition--introduced by noted American writer John Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's matTrade Review"Walden is a self-help book, perhaps the ultimate self-help book, urging us to show up for our own lives, to have the courage to find our own convictions and to try to live them out... [Thoreau is] a writer of immense humanity, vitality and humor... One hundred fifty years after its publication, Walden also remains a practical, usable manual on how to lead a good, and just life... At its core, Walden is about the project of personal freedom, self-emancipation, which is where all pursuits of freedom must start."--Robert D. Richardson, Smithsonian Magazine "Each [volume] is preceded by a substantive, lively and idiosyncratic essay... Together, the essays are a mini-course in Thoreau and the trends he launched in American thought."--Nancy Szokan, Washington Post Book WorldTable of ContentsIntroduction by John Updike ix Economy 3 Where I Lived, and What I lived For 81 Reading 99 Sounds 111 Solitude 129 Visitors 140 The Bean-Field 155 The Village 167 The Ponds 173 Baker farm 201 Higher Laws 210 Brute Neighbors 223 House-Warming 238 Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors 256 Winter Animals 271 The Pond in Winter 282 Spring 299 Conclusion 320 Index by Paul O. Williams 335

    3 in stock

    £7.99

  • Rabbit Angstrom A Tetralogy: (Rabbit Run,Rabbit

    Everyman Rabbit Angstrom A Tetralogy: (Rabbit Run,Rabbit

    3 in stock

    Book SynopsisNewly revised by the author for this edition, and printed together in one volume for the first time, Updike's four Rabbit novels chronicle the history of a man and a nation from the 1950s to the 1980s. Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, athlete, is Mr Middle America. Dazzling in style, tender in feeling, often erotic in description and coruscating with realistic details which recreate a world in each novel, these books give a complete picture of their age.

    3 in stock

    £28.00

  • Rabbit at Rest

    Penguin Books Ltd Rabbit at Rest

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisIt''s 1989, and Harry ''Rabbit'' Angstrom is far from restful. Fifty-six and overweight, he has a struggling business on his hands and a heart that is starting to fail. His family, too, are giving him cause for concern. His son Nelson is a wreck of a man, a cocaine addict with shattered self-respect. Janice, his wife, has decided that she wants to be a working girl. And as for Pru, his daughter-in-law, she seems to be sending out signals to Rabbit that he knows he should ignore, but somehow can''t. He has to make the most of life, after all. He doesn''t have much time left ...

    4 in stock

    £11.69

  • Rabbit Redux Penguin Modern Classics

    Penguin Books Ltd Rabbit Redux Penguin Modern Classics

    3 in stock

    Book SynopsisIt''s 1969, and the times are changing. America is about to land a man on the moon, the Vietnamese war is in full swing, and racial tension is on the rise. Things just aren''t as simple as they used to be - at least, not for Rabbit Angstrom. His wife has left him with his teenage son, his job is under threat and his mother is dying. Suddenly, into his confused life - and home - comes Jill, an eighteen-year-old runaway who becomes his lover. But when she invites her friend to stay, a young black radical named Skeeter, the pair''s fragile harmony soon begins to fail ...

    3 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Mabinogion

    Everyman The Mabinogion

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisFirst assembled on paper in the fourteenth century, the eleven stories in The Mabinogion reach far back into the oral traditions of Welsh poetry. Closely linked to the Arthurian legends – King Arthur himself appears in one of the stories – they summon up a world of mystery and magic which is still evoked by the landscape so vividly described in them. Mingling fantasy with tales of chivalry, they prefigure the great romances of the Middle Ages but stand on their own merits as magnificent evocations of a golden age of Celtic civilization.

    2 in stock

    £10.44

  • The Power and the Glory

    Vintage Publishing The Power and the Glory

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisGraham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.Trade ReviewThe most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings -- V. S. PritchettThe power and energy of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, and ideal communism even more Christian than Communism. Its unit is the individual, not any class -- John UpdikeNo serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than did Graham Greene * The Times *Graham Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature * John Le Carre *Beautiful prose…melded with page-turning suspense… I defy anyone to read it without weeping * The Week *

    15 in stock

    £9.49

  • John Updike: Novels 1968-1975 (loa #326): Couples

    The Library of America John Updike: Novels 1968-1975 (loa #326): Couples

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisLibrary of America's definitive Updike collection continues with three masterful novels on the joys and discontents of the sexual revolution.

    2 in stock

    £34.39

  • My Fathers Tears and Other Stories

    Penguin Books Ltd My Fathers Tears and Other Stories

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisJohn Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming fr

    2 in stock

    £9.99

  • Rabbit is Rich

    Penguin Books Ltd Rabbit is Rich

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisJohn Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming fr

    4 in stock

    £9.99

  • The Complete Henry Bech

    Penguin Books Ltd The Complete Henry Bech

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisHenry Bech, the celebrated author of Travel Light, has been scrutinized, canonized and vilified by critics and readers across the world. Here, the experiences of this bemused literary icon, one of Updike''s greatest creations, are described in hilarious detail, as he travels the world struggling to break his writer''s block; returns to his native America to find new success with Think Big, his all-time blockbuster; and visits communist Czechoslovakia, where he is greeted by a dizzyingly adoring public. Brilliantly comic and deeply poignant, The Complete Henry Bech is one of the greatest of all explorations of the writing life and of what happens when an writer becomes a literary celebrity.

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • Olinger Stories

    Everyman Olinger Stories

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally published in The New Yorker and then in various collections before Vintage first put them together in one volume in 1964, as a paperback original. They follow the life of one character from the age of ten through manhood, in the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger (pronounced, according to Updike, with a long O and a hard G), which was loosely based on Updike's own hometown. "All the stories draw from the same autobiographical well," Updike explained, "the only child, the small town, the grandparental home, the move in adolescence to a farm." The selection was made and arranged by Updike himself, and was prefaced by a lovely 1,400-word essay by the author that has never been reprinted in full elsewhere until now.

    2 in stock

    £10.44

  • Couples

    Penguin Books Ltd Couples

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisAn intoxicating yet sensitive novel about the sexual experiences of ten couples from Tarbox, New England. Well-to-do, sociable, articulate but dangerously unfulfilled; they play word games in the evening and adultery all year round.

    15 in stock

    £9.99

  • Golf Dreams

    Penguin Books Ltd Golf Dreams

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisAs a golfer for almost forty years, John Updike has written frequently about the game. This gathering of his pieces covers everything from the peculiar charms of bad golf and the satisfactions of an essentially losing struggle to the camaraderie of good golf and its own attendant perils.

    1 in stock

    £14.39

  • Licks of Love

    Penguin Books Ltd Licks of Love

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisCollected with a dozen wonderful stories, all set in classic Updike territory, the short novel ''RABBIT REMEMBERED'' is a major work in its own right - a riveting return to Updike''s most celebrated fictional world. Janice and Nelson Angstrom, plus several other survivors of the irreducible Rabbit, fitfully entertain his memory while pursuing their own happiness over the edge of the millennium, as a number of old strands come together in entirely unexpected ways.

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • The Widows of Eastwick

    Penguin Books Ltd The Widows of Eastwick

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisWhen the three witches - now old, remarried and widowed - decide to go back to Eastwick to spend a summer together, many things have changed. Darryl Van Horne is gone. Their husbands and lovers have gone. The lithe and supple bodies with which they wrecked marriages and wreaked havoc many years before have gone - and have been replaced with the quiet aches and encumbrances of age. But a chemistry still crackles between the three and magic still lingers in the Eastwick air, and soon it becomes clear that there are those around them who remember them, and wish them ill. The Widows of Eastwick takes the mischief and enchantment of The Witches of Eastwick and reshapes it in a new emotional landscape, resulting in a sensitive study of the passing of youth and a darkly funny novel that shines with luminous sexual reminiscences and satirical observations about modern America.Trade Review'This isn't writing, it's magic. His sorcery is startlingly fresh, page upon page' New York Times Book Review 'Updike is the Master, and no fan of his will want to miss The Widows of Eastwick' Sunday Telegraph 'The facility with which Updike turns out those lovingly cadenced, alliterative sentences is an awe-inspiring spectacle' Guardian

    1 in stock

    £9.49

  • Endpoint and Other Poems

    Penguin Books Ltd Endpoint and Other Poems

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisJohn Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming fr

    1 in stock

    £8.54

  • The Poorhouse Fair Penguin Modern Classics

    Penguin Books Ltd The Poorhouse Fair Penguin Modern Classics

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisAt the Diamond County Home for the Aged, the inmates prepare for the annual ritual of the Poorhouse Fair, a summer celebration at which the old and infirm sell their produce on stalls to the people of the local town. Bitter, resentful and edging towards senility, the elderly residents of the Home take pride every year in the responsibility and self-respect they gain from this one day. But when the fair goes less well than the old folks had hoped, they are in no doubt who to blame: Conner, the new prefect of the home. Together, they begin to revolt against the younger man, and reassert their own independence.

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • Brazil

    Penguin Books Ltd Brazil

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisTristao Raposo, a nineteen-year old black child of the Rio slums, spies Isabel Leme, an eighteen-year-old upper-class white girl, across the hot sands of Copacabana Neach, and presents her with a ring. Their flight into marriage takes them from urban banality to the farthest reaches of Brazil''s wild west....

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • A Month of Sundays

    Penguin Books Ltd A Month of Sundays

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisUpdike''s seventh novel concerns a month of seven days, a month of enforced rest and recreation as experienced by the Reverend Tom Marshfield, sent west from his Midwestern church in disgrace.

    1 in stock

    £9.49

  • Villages John Updike Penguin Essentials 76

    Penguin Books Ltd Villages John Updike Penguin Essentials 76

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisOwen Mackenzie''s life story abounds with sin and seduction, domesticity and debauchery. His marriage to his college sweetheart is quickly followed by his first betrayal and he embarks upon a series of affairs. His pursuit of happiness, in a succession of small towns from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, brings him to the edge of chaos, from which he is saved by a rescue that carries its own fatal price.Trade ReviewHats off to the man for negotiating with aplomb the highly compartmentalised facets of the male psyche, and the grey no-go-zones of conjugal life -- Douglas KennedyEnergetic, funny and perceptive * Esquire *

    1 in stock

    £15.29

  • The Maples Stories

    Everyman The Maples Stories

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn 1956 John Updike wrote a short story about newly-weds Joan and Richard Maple. Over the next two decades he returned to this couple again and again, tracking their years together as they raise children and deal with the heartbreak of infidelity and estrangement. Gathered here for the first time in hardcover - and with the addition of a later story, 'Grandparenting', that shows us the Maples after their divorce - THE MAPLES STORIES offers a nuanced portrait of two deeply flawed but moving characters and their entwined lives.'Though the Maples stories trace the decline and fall of a marriage, they also illumine a history in many ways happy, of growing children and a million mundane moments shared. That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing really succeeds. The moral of these stories is that all blessings are mixed.'- From the Foreword by John Updike

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • A Life in Letters

    Penguin Books Ltd A Life in Letters

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe arc of literary giant John Updike's life emerges in these luminous daily letters to family, friends, editors, and lovers a remarkable outpouring over six decades, from his earliest consciousness as a writer to his final daysIn the words of his contemporary, Philip Roth, John Updike was Our time's greatest man of letters as brilliant a literary critic and essayist as he was a novelist and short-story writer'. Over the course of his long and immensely productive career, he also proved himself a brilliant correspondent, his letters filled with comic observations, opinions and personal news, told in his characteristically elegant and exquisitely fluid style. In this sparkling selection of his letters, edited by James Schiff, we can see Updike in real time, capturing every stage of his unspooling life, from Pennsylvania farm boy to Pulitzer prizewinner; and from young father negotiating his first book contract to the bestselling writer he became, following the international success of his novels Couples and the Rabbit sequence. Here are letters to family, friends, editors and lovers, a remarkable outpouring over six decades including, most movingly perhaps, the letters of his final year bidding farewell to children, colleagues and friends. Taken together, these missives make a page-turning life in letters' like no other an intimate testament to one of the greatest of all American writers. Nobody has a better understanding of the capriciousness of the human heart than John Updike' Daily TelegraphHe was the ideal son of a platonic union between John Cheever and J.D. Salinger, with Nabokov attending the christening as fairy godfather' James WoodJohn Updike mapped our desires, our wishes, our wise and unwise dreams, our uncertainties, with such elegant precision and for so many years' The Times

    10 in stock

    £39.00

  • Gertrude And Claudius

    Penguin Books Ltd Gertrude And Claudius

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisJohn Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming fr

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • Terrorist

    Penguin Books Ltd Terrorist

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisJohn Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming fr

    1 in stock

    £9.49

  • In the Beauty of the Lilies

    Penguin Random House Group In the Beauty of the Lilies

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisTaking its title from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, IN THE BEAUTY OF THE LILIES traces one family''s profound journey through four generations--and across the spiritual landscape of twentieth-century America. It is one of John Updike''s fullest and finest work of fiction.

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • Memories of the Ford Administration

    Penguin Books Ltd Memories of the Ford Administration

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisWhen a history professor - Alfred Clayton, the hero of John Updike''s fifteenth novel - is asked to record his impressions of the Ford Administration, he recalls a turbulent piece of personal history as well: his unfinished book on 19th-century president James Buchanan.

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • Of the Farm

    Penguin Random House Group Of the Farm

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisOf the Farm recounts Joey Robinson''s visit to the farm where he grew up and where his mother now lives alone. Accompanied by his newly acquired second wife, Peggy, and an eleven-year-old stepson, Joey spends three days reassessing and evaluating the course his life has run. But for Joey and Peggy, the delicate balance of love and sex is threatened by a dangerous new awareness.

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • The Centaur

    Penguin Books Ltd The Centaur

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life. Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and his own relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur is one of John Updike''s most brilliant and unusual novels.

    1 in stock

    £12.59

  • Marry Me

    Penguin Books Ltd Marry Me

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisSally is big, blonde and pampered. She's married to Richard. But she loves Jerry. Jerry loves Sally in return, but he's also still in love with his wife Ruth. Who's been sleeping with Richard As a hot, feverish summer of snatched weekends, secret phone calls and illicit lovemaking on the beach comes to a head, it turns out everyone knows more than they've been letting on. And that no one knows quite when to stop.

    1 in stock

    £11.40

  • Winesburg Ohio

    Random House USA Inc Winesburg Ohio

    7 in stock

    Book SynopsisSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all timeBefore Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and Richard Ford, there was Sherwood Anderson, who, with Winesburg, Ohio, charted a new direction in American fiction--evoking with lyrical simplicity quiet moments of epiphany in the lives of ordinary men and women. In a bed, elevated so that he can peer out the window, an old writer contemplates the fluttering of his heart and considers, as if viewing a pageant, the inhabitants of a small midwestern town. Their stories are about loneliness and alienation, passion and virginity, wealth and poverty, thrift and profligacy, carelessness and abandon. Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America, wrote H. L. Mencken. It is so vivid, so full of insight, so shiningly life-like and glowing, that the book is lifted into a category all its own.With Commentary by Sherwood Anderson, Rebecca West, and Hart Crane

    7 in stock

    £9.50

  • LUP - University of Georgia Press Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement An Anthology

    15 in stock

    Book SynopsisDuring the civil rights era, masses of people marched in the streets, boycotted stores, and registered to vote. Others challenged racism in ways more solitary but no less life changing. This work contains twenty-three stories that give a voice to the nameless, ordinary citizens without whom the movement would have failed.Trade ReviewI know of no other collection with the focus of this fine anthology. Readers who worked in the movement and who grew up during that era will find these stories especially fascinating. But Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the many perspectives on, and the myriad emotions behind, the historical events of one of the most transformative periods in American history. - Suzanne Jones, author of Race Mixing: Southern Fiction since the Sixties

    15 in stock

    £23.95

  • The House of God

    Penguin Putnam Inc The House of God

    Book SynopsisBy turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about what it really takes to become a doctor."The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon. Singularly compelling...brutally honest."-The New York TimesStruggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings. A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written.With an introduction by John Updike Trade ReviewPraise for The House of God“The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon. Singularly compelling...brutally honest.”—The New York Times“Bawdy, blistering...this is Catch-22 with stethoscopes.”—Cosmopolitan“Wonderfully wild, ribald, erotic, bitter, compassionate...in the same spirit as Catch-22.”—The Seattle Times“A wildly funny, sad, laugh-out-loud, frightening, outrageous, thought-provoking, moving book…a story of modern medicine rarely, if ever, told.”—The Houston Chronicle“Does for the practice of medicine what Catch-22 and M*A*S*H did for the practice of warfare.”—The Newark Star-Ledger “Mordantly funny, brilliantly ironic...A writer of outstanding substance and style.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    £17.20

  • Selected Letters of John Updike

    Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Selected Letters of John Updike

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe arc of literary giant John Updike's life emerges in these luminous daily letters to family, friends, editors and lovers—a remarkable outpouring over six decades, from his earliest consciousness as a writer to his final daysAs James Schiff writes in the introduction to this volume, of the writer who would eventually express himself in written form as copiously and as elegantly as any American writer before him, Updike needed to write the way the rest of us need to breathe or eat. With his stunning rhetorical gifts—allowing him to thrive in both fiction and nonfiction, in criticism as well as poetry—he was also a consummate letter writer. From his early writing attempts (he began submitting work to magazines as a teenager) to the 150 eye-opening letters home when he left the farm and family to go to Harvard, to the young adult correspondence with The New Yorker and other publications where his work began to appear, and on into the fullness of a long literary life, his correspondence, Schiff notes,figures not as an adjunct to but rather an integral part of his astonishing literary output.The intimacy and lucidity of these letters brings to the fore all matter of subjects and situations, notably the ardent feelings for his first love and wife, Mary, and later the heartbreaking but honestly accounted breakup of their marriage; the uncensored passion for other women, including the neighbor and friend of the Updikes who became his second wife; the concern for his children's path to adulthood; and the ongoing conversations with many literary peers, from Joyce Carol Oates to Philip Roth, as well as Knopf and New Yorker editors, publicists, and others in the lit business.Filled with comic observations, opinions, and personal news, told in the exquisitely fluid first-person voice of the writer himself, these missives, taken together, make a page-turning life in letters like no other.

    10 in stock

    £41.25

  • Childs Calendar 20th Anniversary Edition A

    Holiday House Inc Childs Calendar 20th Anniversary Edition A

    4 in stock

    Book SynopsisNewly available in hardcover, this 20th anniversary edition of a Caldecott Honor classic combines the star power of John Updike and Trina Schart Hyman.Celebrate the little moments that make each month special in this beautiful picture book featuring twelve poems about a family and the turn of the seasons. From the short, frozen days of January, through the light of summer, to the first snowflakes of December, Updike's poems rejoices in the familiar, wondrous qualities that make each part of the year unique. Hyman's award-winning paintings--modeled after her own daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren--depict an interracial family going about the business of their lives throughout the year: sledding in January, watching fireworks in July, and playing in the autumn leaves. Bold and colorful, they're filled with the intricate detail for which her art is famous-- including cameo appearances by the artist and her partner, Jean Aull. Featuring a redesigned cove

    4 in stock

    £14.24

  • Rabbit Run 1

    Random House USA Inc Rabbit Run 1

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis“A lacerating story of loss and of seeking, written in prose that is charged with emotion but is always held under impeccable control.”—Kansas City StarRabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.

    3 in stock

    £15.30

  • Rowohlt Taschenbuch Brasilien

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £8.99

  • The Early Stories

    Random House USA Inc The Early Stories

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £18.00

  • Marry Me A Romance

    Random House USA Inc Marry Me A Romance

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisFrom one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century—and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series: a novel set in 1962 in Greenwood, Connecticut, where Jerry Conant and Sally Mathias are in love and want to get married, though they already are married to others. A diadem of five symmetrical chapters describes the course of their affair as it flickers off and on, and as their spouses react, in a tentative late-summer atmosphere of almost-last chances. For this is, as Jerry observes, “the twilight of the old morality, and there’s just enough to torment us, and not enough to hold us in.”

    2 in stock

    £15.20

  • Rowohlt Taschenbuch Die Trnen meines Vaters und andere Erzhlungen

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £9.99

  • Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted

    The Library of America Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted

    10 in stock

    Book SynopsisOn September 28, 1960—a day that will live forever in the hearts of fans—Red Sox slugger Ted Williams stepped up to the plate for his last at-bat in Fenway Park. Seizing the occasion, he belted a solo home run—a storybook ending to a storied career.In the stands that afternoon was twenty-eight-year-old John Updike, inspired by the moment to make his lone venture into the field of sports reporting. More than just a matchless account of that fabled final game, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu is a brilliant evocation of Williams’ entire tumultuous life in baseball.Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the dramatic exit of baseball’s greatest hitter, The Library of America presents a commemorative edition of Hub Fans, prepared by the author just months before his death. To the classic final version of the essay, long out-of-print, Updike added an autobiographical preface and a substantial new afterword.

    10 in stock

    £13.50

  • John Updike: Novels 1978-1984: The Coup / Rabbit

    The Library of America John Updike: Novels 1978-1984: The Coup / Rabbit

    10 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    10 in stock

    £42.99

  • John Updike: Novels 1996–2000 (loa #365): In the

    The Library of America John Updike: Novels 1996–2000 (loa #365): In the

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £34.39

  • Rowohlt Taschenbuch Frühe Erzählungen

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £9.90

  • The Centaur

    Penguin Books Ltd The Centaur

    Out of stock

    Book SynopsisIn a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life. Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and his own relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur is one of John Updike''s most brilliant and unusual novels.

    Out of stock

    £999.99

  • Toward the End of Time

    Penguin Random House Group Toward the End of Time

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisBen Turnbull is a 66 year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. Nevertheless, Ben''s life, traced by his journal entries over the course of the year, retains much of its accustomed comforts. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history cuaght up in the dysjunctions and vagaries of the ''many universes''; his identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-shrouded existence move toward the end of time ...

    1 in stock

    £13.59

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