Contemporary fiction titles are those which focus on the present or near past. Stories rooted in the current cultural, social, and political landscape which feature characters we can all recognise.
Contemporary Fiction Books
Cornerstone A Sea of Troubles
Book Synopsis''Donna Leon goes from strength to strength ... This is her tenth novel but it''s as fresh and entertaining as the first'' ObserverWhen two clam fishermen are murdered on the island of Pellestrina, Commissario Brunetti is called to investigate. He has his work cut out for him - the people of Pellestrina are tight-knit, bound together by a code of loyalty and suspicious of outsiders. To break through, he enlists the help of his boss'' secretary Signorina Elettra, who visits the island as an undercover agent. Soon, Brunetti finds himself torn between his duty to solve the murders, concern for Elettra''s safety, and his not entirely straightforward feelings for her . . .''A splendid series . . . with a backdrop so vivid you can smell it'' Sunday TelegraphTrade ReviewThe arrival of a new Donna Leon book fills me with pleasurable anticipation. She tells a good story, including the best of all current police detectives, Commissario Brunetti, and locates it in a superbly described Venice. The plot is beautifully constructed. The climax is exciting and disturbing ... Brunetti is as irresistible as ever * The Scotsman *Donna Leon goes from strength to strength ... This is her tenth novel but it's as fresh and entertaining as the first * The Observer *Mesmerising * Express on Sunday *A splendid series ... with a backdrop so vivid you can smell it * Sunday Telegraph *Brunetti is hard to beat - Leon's tenth novel more than maintains the standard of its predecessors * TLS *
£9.49
Cornerstone The Appeal
Book SynopsisJohn Grisham is the author of forty works of fiction and one of non-fiction. His works are translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Virginia.Trade ReviewRecalling Dickens and other 19th century fiction... Riveting. * Sunday Times *What he does so well is to people his plots with clearly defined characters... He makes it riveting. * Mirror *A tense, thoughtful, absorbing read. * The Times *As usual Grisham is fantastically skilful at delineating the procedural ins and outs of the legal and business worlds in such a way that, as the reader, you feel rather clever yourself. * Daily Express *Reads both like an inspirational debut and a brilliant career masterpiece... Technically the book is a tour de force, the characters perfectly balanced and precisely drawn, the forward-thrusting chapters sculpted in size and rhythm... The Appeal is a blatant page turner but I guarantee you will hate reaching the end. * Sunday Express *
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Cornerstone The Brethren
Book SynopsisJohn Grisham is the author of forty works of fiction and one of non-fiction. His works are translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Virginia.Trade ReviewGrisham spins out a compelling, beautifully written thriller... it's all absolutely brilliant * Independent on Sunday *An engaging and fast-paced story of powerful men in high places and blackmail gone awry, it will hook you from the first page and won't let go * New York Post *Completely gripping * Mirror *
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Cornerstone The Firm
Book SynopsisJohn Grisham is the author of forty works of fiction and one of non-fiction. His works are translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Virginia.Trade Review"Slickly plotted... unputdownable" Mail on Sunday "A furiously paced thriller" Sunday Times "Enthralling characters and mesmeric plot" Time Out
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Cornerstone The King Of Torts
Book SynopsisJohn Grisham is the author of forty works of fiction and one of non-fiction. His works are translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Virginia.Trade ReviewPage-turningly compulsive * Daily Mail *Grisham reigns supreme... another tremendous tour de force * Sunday Express *A rollercoaster ride * The Times *This novel has incident to burn, a clean, pacy style and a conclusion that will blindside the reader * Telegraph *
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Cornerstone The Last Juror
Book SynopsisJohn Grisham is the author of forty works of fiction and one of non-fiction. His works are translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Virginia.Trade ReviewThe Last Juror sees Grisham at the absolute peak of his form – page-turning urgency * Mail on Sunday *Masterful – when Grisham gets in the courtroom he lets rip, drawing scenes so real they're not just alive, they're pulsating – quality thriller writing * Daily Mirror *The Last Juror does not need to coast on its author's megapopularity. It's a reminder of how the Grisham juggernaut began * New York Times *Wholly engrossing – Grisham's story-telling knack has not deserted him; and the hint that something more serious is at stake than the solution of a crime gives the narrative an extra depth * Evening Standard *
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Cornerstone The Street Lawyer
Book SynopsisA gripping legal thriller from the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author and creator of Sooley and The Judge''s List._______________________________________Michael Brock is a man in the fast lane.He''s a rising star at Drake & Sweeney, a giant Washington law firm. No time to waste, no time to help those in need. No time for a conscience.But when a violent encounter with a homeless man stops him cold, Brock is forced to confront the truth about who he really works for. What he finds is a shocking violation of the rights of the homeless, with Drake & Sweeney at the centre, and suddenly his conscience begins to stir.To do the right thing, Brock must put himself in the firing line and uncover his employer''s most dangerous secrets.But is he willing to risk it all?_______________________________________''A master at the art of deft characterisation and the skilful delivery of hair-raising crescendos'' - Irish Independent''John Grisham is the master of legal fiction'' - Jodi Picoult''The best thriller writer alive'' - Ken Follett''John Grisham has perfected the art of cooking up convincing, fast-paced thrillers'' - Telegraph''Grisham is a superb, instinctive storyteller'' - The Times''Grisham''s storytelling genius reminds us that when it comes to legal drama, the master is in a league of his own.'' - Daily Record''Masterful - when Grisham gets in the courtroom he lets rip, drawing scenes so real they''re not just alive, they''re pulsating'' - Mirror''A giant of the thriller genre'' - TimeOutTrade ReviewNo one does it better than Grisham. This latest novel is as unputdownable as ever. * Daily Telegraph *Fluent and fascinating. Few writers have so much to say, the skills to make reading what they say an irresistible pleasure -- and the clout to be able to say it to an audience of millions. * Independent *Compelling... Grisham is more adept at getting the reader to turn the page than almost any writer working today. * Daily Mail *
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Cornerstone Arcadia
Book Synopsis''Stunningly sensual and visceral'' NEW YORK TIMES''Smart, beautiful . . . paints a lyrical picture'' STYLIST''Groff is a sensuous writer'' GUARDIANIn the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land. Abe and Hannah''s only child, Bit, is born into the commune soon after its creation. He grows up there, becoming deeply attached to its way of life and everyone within it, in particular the beautiful but troubled Helle. While the commune rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. But when it''s time to find a way to live in the world beyond Arcadia, will he be able to let go of the past to forge a new start?''An exquisite tale of idealism and disintegration . . . Utterly absorbing'' MARIE CLAIRE''Intricately wrought . . . A powerful pean to the human desire to make the right sort of place live'' SUNTrade ReviewPowerful and affecting…Captures a five-year-old’s consciousness with rare, almost mystical intensity, this is a vivid, original and generous-hearted book. * Daily Mail *An exquisite tale of idealism and disintegration…Utterly absorbing. * Marie Claire *Richly peopled and ambitious and oh, so lovely, Lauren Groff's Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I've read in a long time. It's not possible to write any better without showing off.The raw beauty of Ms. Groff’s prose is one of the best things about Arcadia ... stunningly sensual and visceral in describing behaviour straight out of a time capsule… extraordinarily rich imagination, she writes about this life as if she has known it. * New York Times *Groff is a sensuous writer. * Guardian *Intricately wrought ... A powerful paean to the human desire to make the right sort of place to live. * Sunday Telegraph *Smart, beautiful, rooted in an earthy and glorious location ... Groff’s beautifully written Arcadia paints a lyrical picture ... You fall in love with Arcadia’s protagonist, Bit, and find yourself transported to a different time, place and lifestyle. * Stylist 5 stars *Arcadia, her second novel, cements all of Groff’s promise, and then some…Deft-structural and convincing authorial control…Wonderful stuff. * Mirror, Book of the Week *With Arcadia, Groff has woven her own tale, in eloquent prose that’s rich in sense of place and depth of feeling * Independent on Sunday *The novel’s greatest strength is its vision of the violent fecundity of nature…Groff excels in writing with a kind of fairy-tale lucidity…The book’s structure and imagery are full of delightful intricacies and cruel ironies. * Times Literary Supplement *One of our most talented writers, and Arcadia one of the most revelatory, magical and ambitious novels I've read in years.
£10.44
Cornerstone Delicate Edible Birds And Other Stories
Book Synopsis''Echoes the magic of gothic forebears'' FINANCIAL TIMES''Groff is a writer of rare gifts'' NEW YORK TIMES''Lauren Groff is a virtuoso'' Emily St John MandelDelicate Edible Birds is a short story collection from acclaimed writer Lauren Groff. Spanning from 1910s New York to Second World War France and contemporary America, these dazzlingly varied stories full of fervour and insight cement Groff as one of the foremost talents of her generation.''One of the most original voices in literature today'' ESQUIRE''A literary star'' i NEWSPAPERTrade Review...begins with a story set in the sort of mythical small town of plenty that Krasikov's characters might dream of...Here Groff peers behind the white picket fence to reveal a nastier underside; other stories take in World War II, and transpose the tale of Heloise And Abelard to New York in 1918. * Metro *Groff's first collection of stories, Delicate Edible Birds, demonstrates the often surprising ways that quality can bear fruit. Bringing together nine stories, it moves almost effortlessly through different locales, from Templeton to Argentina, post-first world war New York to contemporary America ... in her strongest writing, Groff echoes the magic of her gothic forebears * Financial Times *Delicate Edible Birds is wonderfully imaginative, subtle and precise, brimming over with brave and fascinating women... A dazzling collection to make all those readers who are wary of short stories think again. * New Books *
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Cornerstone Coupland D Generation A
Book SynopsisIn the near future bees are extinct - until five unconnected individuals, in different parts of the world, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated searately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together, and their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991''s Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defences we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world. Like much of Coupland''s writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday, apocalyptic paranoia, and is his most ambitious and entertaining novel to date.Trade Review[A] visionary author . . . rock'n'roll yet deadly serious, a caustic social commentator and delineator of the near future . . . He's caught midway between technophilia and technophobia . . . there's no better place to be for a contemporary prophet * The Sunday Times *A shrewd observer of modernity . . . His latest novel is a quirky glance into the near future . . . an earnest plea for authentic communication in an evermore isolated world . . . Coupland touches on an ambitious array of topics . . . enlivened by observations about the banalities of popular culture * The Observer *A paean to good old-fashioned storytelling, of which the novel itself is an inventive and unexpectedly moving example * Daily Mail *[An] intoxicating cocktail of literary influences . . . Coupland [is] a joy to read . . . A globally ambitious novel, and all the better for it * The Guardian *Fans of Coupland will rejoice . . . Coupland's audacious flights of fancy, his laugh-out-loud dialogue and his magnificent ability to bring it all back to storytelling and orange-flavour tang, they're all here . . . Such a treat * Independent on Sunday *
£9.49
Cornerstone Worst. Person. Ever.
Book SynopsisA razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt and gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is Douglas Coupland''s gloriously filthy, side-splittingly funny and unforgettable novel.Meet Raymond Gunt. A decent chap who tries to do the right thing. Or, to put it another way, the worst person ever: a foul-mouthed, misanthropic cameraman, trailing creditors, ex-wives and unhappy homeless people in his wake. Men dislike him, women flee from him. Worst. Person. Ever. is a deeply unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social value. Gunt, in the words of the author, is a living, walking, talking, hot steaming pile of pure id. He''s a B-unit cameraman who enters an amusing downward failure spiral that takes him from London to Los Angeles and then on to an obscure island in the Pacific where a major American TV network is shooting a Survivor-style reality show. Along the way, Gunt suffers multiple comas and unjust iTrade ReviewAn outrageous comic riot, delivered as a tear-inducing funny and pitch-black farce ... For every laugh here, there’s a haunting, echoing scream in the distance. The plot is unbridled romp ... It is hard to describe, out of context, quite how funny Coupland’s novel can be. * Sunday Times *Worst. Person. Ever. is very much a return to form. It had me laughing out loud on the bus to work. * Irish Times, Books of the Year *There are gloriously unquotable remarks and fantastically lurid images on every page. Gunt’s mind is a super-sewer in which it is a pleasure to swim. You can’t help giggling, constantly. Worst. Person. Ever. may be a raging bonfire of inanities but it contains some of Coupland’s finest writing since Shampoo Planet. * Evening Standard *There are some clever plot twists and fine comedy set pieces. * Scotland on Sunday *A comic riot of a novel. * Sunday Times - Must Reads *
£9.49
Cornerstone This Storm
Book Synopsis________________________''Ellroy writes with raw power undeniably one of the most influential crime writers of our time'' THE TIMES''a tangled fever-dream Ellroy offers a grandiose, Wagnerian vision of wartime LA'' SUNDAY TIMES________________________A brilliant historical crime novel, set in Los Angeles and Mexico during the pulse-pounding aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor.January, '42. L.A. reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops tag it a routine dead-man job. They're wrong. It's an early-warning signal of Chaos. There's a murderous fire and a gold heist exploding out of the past. There's Fifth Column treason at this moment, on American soil. There are homegrown Nazis, commies and race racketeers. There's two dead cops in a dive off the jazz-cluTrade ReviewEllroy writes with raw power … James Ellroy writes big … Ellroy is undeniably one of the most influential crime writers of our time. But can the raw energy of his fiction outweigh the disgustingness and balderdash? Yes; if you see his novels as antidotes to the fake sunshine that Los Angeles, via the big screen, has blown in the world’s face for a century. * The Times *James Ellroy is one of America’s greatest living crime novelists … This Storm [is] a tangled fever-dream set in 1942 Los Angeles … Good, unclean fun … Ellroy offers a grandiose, Wagnerian vision of wartime LA … Packed with almost every Ellroy obsession under the sun: murder, robbery, rape and torture; small-time corruption and big-time history; sexual intrigue and moral ambivalence; lust, yearning, racism, alcoholism, degeneracy and drug abuse; plastic surgery, prostitution, policemen and paedophilia; scandal, sodomy and sin … I will live and die an Ellroy fanboy. * Sunday Times *Ellroy remains one of the most exciting literary stylists in the English language … It’s been five years since the last novel from the self-described “Demon Dog” of American letters, but it’s worth the wait. Like all good jazzmen, Ellroy works very hard indeed to make his music flow so easily. * Guardian *James Ellroy writes coarse, prurient, paranoid novels that often turn out to be masterpieces ... Truffling for atrocities in the dirty reality of crime seems to inspire him with a demonic energy that his distinctive telegraphic style is the perfect instrument to convey … There are some terrific stretches – including an account of the “Battle of Los Angeles”, the night in 1942 when a mass delusion arose that the city was under aerial attack – that ranks among his best setpieces. * Daily Telegraph *Ellroy has never been a five-pages-before-bed kind of writer; his vision is more the fever dream after lights out. * Observer *
£9.49
Cornerstone Disputed Land
Book SynopsisBorn in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon, left school at sixteen and had countless menial jobs before studying at the National Film and Television School. He is the author of six previous novels, including In the Place of Fallen Leaves, which won the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award, In a Land of Plenty, which was made into a ten part drama series for the BBC, and, most recently, Landed. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children.Trade ReviewPacks a real emotional punch...Pears, who could not write an ugly sentence if he tried ... His portrait of a family at a time of change is also a lament for a country which is losing its environmental way. * Mail on Sunday *Beautifully understated...A low-key family gathering in the Welsh Marches blossoms into an elegiac meditation on our relationship with the land we inhabit. -- David Robson * Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year *'Delightful ... Pears has terrific fun with his cast and is highly skilled at drawing out foibles and grudges -- James Urquhart * Independent *Very sympathetic, intelligent and moving ... Pears's depiction of enduring married love is beautifully done ... Pears is so adept at the illuminating detail, writes so beautifully of the pleasures of life ... it is a warm and affirmative novel, one which offers incidental joys on every page. It is perhaps the finest book he has written yet. -- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *A thorough examination of nostalgia itself. * Daily Mail *
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Cornerstone Angelmaker
Book SynopsisNick Harkaway is the author of The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker, and of an even better and more exciting novel whose name will probably end up being Tigerman, or possibly Man, Island, Boy. Contrary to what you may have heard, the title really is the hard part. When he's not writing, he spends his time being the husband of a brilliant lawyer and the dad of two small children who are secretly bent on world domination. He likes Italian red wine and lives in a bit of London where the taxis still have a horse at the pointy end.Trade ReviewAngelmaker is another cracking book from Nick Harkaway. It’s a mix of sci-fi, steampunk, adventure and romance and the mix of genres work really well together … Harkaway’s Angelmaker is a brilliant piece of escapism. It’s a wonderful example of how an irreverent approach to much loved genres can lead to a truly great story. * Nudge *Splendid cornucopia of a novel * The Big Issue (Wales) *Nick Harkaway's joyfully reckless invention is as intricate as clockwork ... Edie has a tangled history, the uncovering of which is one of the chief pleasures of Nick Harkaway's novel ... is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in ages ... brilliantly entertaining, and the last hundred pages are pure, unhinged delight. What a splendid ride. -- Patrick Ness * Guardian *What kind of a mind dreams up Angelmaker … It could only be Nick Harkaway: bonkers, brilliant and hilarious … clever and entirely fantastic. * Sunday Times *An entertaining tour-de-force that demands to be adored. * Independent on Sunday *
£10.44
Cornerstone Player One
Book SynopsisDOUGLAS COUPLAND is the author of the international bestseller JPOD and twelve other novels including the era-defining GENERATION X and, most recently, GENERATION A. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. He is also a visual artist and sculptor, furniture designer and screenwriter. He lives and works in Vancouver.Trade ReviewA work of genius * Independent on Sunday *A tense, utterly compelling story * The Times *Enjoyable . . .The way Coupland moulds his fiction from the throwaway debris of North American popular culture is quite brilliant . . . Coupland has always been a highly compassionate writer, concerned mainly with the ways in which affluent people's lives are cheapened by popular culture -- Scarlett Thomas * Guardian *The pulse quickens as his principal characters hunker down for some besieged truth-telling...Dynamic engagement is the real meat of this slim but provocative novel * Independent *As always with Coupland, the ideas come thick and fast, they're quirky, often funny and frequently profound * Daily Mail *
£9.49
Cornerstone The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Book Synopsis_______________________________On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into her mother''s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother''s emotions in the slice. All at once her cheerful, can-do mother tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal.Rose''s gift forces her to confront the truth behind her family''s emotions - her mother''s sadness, her father''s detachment and her brother''s clash with the world. But as Rose grows up, she learns that there are some secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about the pain of loving those whom you know too much about, and the secrets that exist within every family. At once profound, funny, wise and sad, this is a novel to savour._______________________________Now available to preorder: Aimee BendeTrade ReviewIntriguing and poignantly written * PA Life *A book with such beautiful writing that sometimes I have to stop and taste a sentence a second time -- Jodi Picoult * Grazia *A wonderful metaphor for the child's sense of things that are never mentioned, and Bender writes with wit, warmth and insight * The Times *Quirky, engaging tale of a family endowed with unlikely gifts, the ties that bind people barely conceal the chasms that divide them * Guardian *The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake has at its heart an intriguing and poignant comment on the perils of childhood ... Bender brilliantly dovetails Rose's condition into a parable of the dangers of knowing too much about people, especially your family ... it is fresh and beautifully written * The Sunday Times *
£9.49
Cornerstone Sail
Book SynopsisAs Peter Carlyle, a smooth-talking, super-successful lawyer, waved his family off on a sailing holiday, all they had in mind was lying back and relaxing. But as a violent storm broke out, an explosion caused the boat to vanish without a trace and the family were lost, presumed dead. Until now. When a message in a bottle is washed up on a shore, it becomes apparent that there must have been at least one survivor.But all is not as it seems. The race is on to rescue the Carlyles, but does everyone looking for the family really want to find them alive? Survival may be the least of their concerns. In fact, being found may be the last thing they should be hoping for.Trade ReviewThis gripping novel by the world's bestselling thriller author will have you on the edge of your deckchair. * Daily Express *
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Cornerstone Recipe for Love
Book SynopsisKatie Fforde lives in the beautiful Cotswold countryside with her family, and is a true country girl at heart. Each of her books explores a different profession or background and her research has helped her bring these to life. She's been a porter in an auction house, tried her hand at pottery, refurbished furniture, delved behind the scenes of a dating website, and she's even been on a Ray Mears survival course. She loves being a writer; to her there isn't a more satisfying and pleasing thing to do. She particularly enjoys writing love stories. She believes falling in love is the best thing in the world, and she wants all her characters to experience it, and her readers to share their stories. To find out more about Katie Fforde step into her world at www.katiefforde.com, visit her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @KatieFforde.Trade ReviewDeliciously enjoyable! * Woman & Home *Charming, fun and undeniably romantic, this is perfect reading for a lazy spring afternoon. * 4 stars, Closer *Katie Fforde fans will love her latest novel Recipe for Love. * Yours *This fun and witty novel combines mouth watering recipes, a beautiful location and an intriguing love story and is an absolute must read for all Fforde fans. * No.1 Magazine *A treat! * Star Magazine *
£8.54
Vintage Publishing Noahs Compass
Book SynopsisAnne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grown-ups, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Clock Dance, Redhead by the Side of the Road and French Braid.In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road was longlisted for the Booker Prize.Trade ReviewAs exquisitely observed and quietly brilliant as the rest of Tyler's fiction * Guardian *Anne Tyler draws a comedy that is not so much brilliant as luminous - its observant sharpness sweetened by a generous understanding of human fallibility * Daily Telegraph *Noah's Compass is immensely readable. It displays many of Tyler's finest qualities: her sharp observation of humanity, her wry comedy; the luminous accuracy of her descriptions... a novel by Anne Tyler is cause for celebration * Sunday Telegraph *Anne Tyler is a novelist who has elevated pitch-perfect observation of everyday detail into an art form... a beautifully subtle book, an elegant contemplation of what it means to be happy and the consequences of a defensive withdrawal from other people * Observer *One of my favourite authors, one of the very few I rush out to buy in hardback. * Mail on Sunday *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Green Road
Book SynopsisAnne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has written two collections of stories, published together as Yesterday's Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and eight novels, including The Gathering, which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. Other award include the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for The Forgotten Waltz, the Irish Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award and Novel of the Year (which she has won twice), the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature and the Seamus Heaney Award for Arts and Letters. In 2015 she was appointed as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction. Most recently she won the 2024 Writers' Prize for Fiction and the 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.Trade ReviewConfirms her as one of the most significant writers of her generation.... A master. She has certainly produced a masterly work. * Sunday Times *The Green Road is true and rueful, as terribly adult in its clarity as its battered Madigans. -- James Wood * New Yorker *Enright is a shape-shifter who gets into the nerve centres of her creations; the power of her prose lies in its absence of ego. The Green Road is a devastating novel about home and how savage a place it can be. -- Frances Wilson * New Statesman *This novel should confirm Enright’s status as one of our (their?) greatest living novelists. I hope she can be persuaded to do a sequel. -- John Sutherland * The Times *[A] brilliant, devastating, radical novel. -- Kate Clanchy * Guardian *
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Vintage Publishing Beneath the Lions Gaze
Book SynopsisMaaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, she was named "New Literary Idol" by New York Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Ninth Letter and 42opus, has been translated and published into German and Romanian for Lettre International, and can be found in the Seal Press anthology Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place and Time. She has received fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo. She currently lives in New York.Trade ReviewEthiopia's 1974 revolution tears a family in half in this striking debut. Mengiste is as adept at crafting emotionally delicate moments as she is deft at portraying the tense and grim historical material, while her judicious sprinkling of lyricism imbues this novel with a vivid atmosphere.That the novel subjects the reader to the same feelings of hopelessness and despair that its characters grapple with is a grand testament to Mengiste's talent. * Publisher's Weekly *An arresting, powerful novel that works on both personal and political levels. * Kirkus *Lucid and compelling... Beneath the Lion's Gaze is an extraordinary novel, which assembles a dauntingly broad cast of characters and, through them, tells stories that nobody can want to hear, in such a way that we cannot stop listening. Although set more than thirty years ago, Mengiste's novel is timely and vital. Its illumination of a world unfamiliar to most shows us how individuals will fight to retain their humanity in the face of atrocity. * Bookforum *Beneath the Lion's Gaze is an important novel, rich in compassion for its anguished characters * New York Times Book Review *Both brilliant and overwhelmingly powerful * New African Woman *
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Vintage Publishing Before She Met Me
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewA short and brutally brilliant novel about a relationship ruined by jealousy, this is packed with acute observations about the nature of love * Metro *Frighteningly plausible... stunningly well done * Guardian *Funny, sad and faintly ominous...making jealousy tangible and dangerous * Spectator *An intelligent and addictive entertainment... Mr Barnes has succeeded in writing one of those books that keep us up until 2am reading just one chapter more... few will be able to resist its easy humour and almost insidious readability * New York Times Book Review *Compelling * Daily Express *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing A History of the World in 10 12 Chapters
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewFrequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic, and a delight to read. Barnes is like a worldly, secular reincarnation of a medieval gloss-writer on sacred texts, and what he offers us is the novel as footnote to history, as subversion of the given, as brilliant, elaborate doodle around the margins of what we think about what we think we know * Observer *You will want to read it again and again, and why not? - there's nothing around to touch it * Literary Review *There is more moral and intellectual fodder, and more jokes, here than you will read in a month of Sundays... storytelling and teaching which captivate, liberate, and above all, enchant * Financial Times *This is a novel like no other - provocative, superbly funny, a wonderful and most original work...gives the reader a sense of ebullient, whooping joy * Guardian *
£11.69
Vintage Publishing Talking It Over
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewFew writers think and talk so beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving * Independent on Sunday *Quicksilver clever and allusive * The Times *Scintillating... It's funny, quick on the draw, and knows when to soften the gaze. It reads so smoothly, the pages seem to flip themselves * Observer *A writer of rare intelligence. He catches the detail of contemporary life with an uncanny forensic skill... He is, as always, a superb ironist, a connoisseur of middling, muddling, modern England * London Review of Books *A wonderfully wistful and funny novel * Daily Telegraph *
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Vintage Publishing The Porcupine
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewCritics have overlooked his tenderness, underestimated his intelligence, and denied his wisdom... The Porcupine is a superbly accomplished novella * Nick Hornby *A minor masterpiece of political satire: compelling, funny and frightening * Robert Harris *The Porcupine is a new indisputable proof of Mr Barnes's creative power, yet what really astonished me, the Prosecutor, was the amazing precision of the intellectual's view of a socialist dictator, which so accorded with Zhivkov's true character * Prosecutor Zhekov, official prosecutor of the deposed Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov *The neatness of the novel's structure is complemented by the rampageous energy of the characters for which it is the cage * Daily Telegraph *
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Vintage Publishing Cross Channel
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewAlways intelligent and perceptive, but so beautifully written that it's easy to understand. * Week *Crisp with witty, urbane intelligence. * Sunday Times *Wonderfully ironic, perceptive and at times tender... Barnes has created something unique in his work, a particular way of looking at life, at words, at relationships, which is the mark of every true stylist * Financial Times *His writing demonstrates the billowing lightness of imagination... reading these stories, you perceive and love France afresh... Cross Channel is characterised by the intelligence, irony and wit you associate with his writing, but it is also suffused with feeling, deeply seasoned with affection * Independent *A glittering collection of stories... His marvellously supple and exact prose is matched with subjects that powerfully stir his creativity... It's impossible to imagine a fictional panorama of Britain's long relationship with France realized with more cordial understanding * Sunday Times *
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Vintage Publishing Love Etc
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewThe triangle of deeply believable characters and the story of betrayal and revenge are so engrossing that you almost fail to notice the usual Barnesian fusillade of wit and brilliance * Sunday Times *The real wonder of this book is its apparent simplicity, its apparent slowness, the exactness and delicacy of its observations, the absolute firness of the form for the story. Of its kind - and I still don't dare to say what that kind might be - it's perfect * Daily Telegraph *This wonderfully entertaining novel... A work as skilled and satisfying as this can be nothing other than affirming: Barnes' delicate balance between laughter and despair lifts his entertainment into art * The Times *
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Vintage Publishing What the Day Owes the Night
Book SynopsisYasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulessehoul, who took a female pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for approval by the army. He is the author of four other books published in English, including the acclaimed bestseller Swallows of Kabul. He lives in France.Trade ReviewA book in which you may lose yourself in reading and find yourself when you put it aside; an enriching work... sympathetic and humane. The narrative is compelling and there is a rich cast of well observed, or remembered, characters... He presents life as it is, and hints at what it might be * Scotsman *This tale of family, love and war unfolds in Algeria before and during the armed revolt that led to independence. Caught between two worlds, its hero, Younes, is a sympathetic witness to the doctrines that divide people, and to the passions that may reunite them * Independent *Includes brilliant descriptions of the city's slums and the beauties of the countryside * Times Literary Supplement *Moving... This story is about the power of the individual to stand up to history * Daily Telegraph *Khadra's novel, set almost entirely in Algeria, has wonderful lyrical passages and is distinguished by its sympathetic intelligence...Khadra writes with a beautiful lucidity * Scotsman *
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Vintage Publishing Inheritance
Book SynopsisWhat would you do if you suddenly and unexpectedly inherited 17million? This is what happens to Andy Larkham, recently jilted lover, and resentfully underpaid publishing minion. Arriving late to the funeral of his favourite schoolteacher, he ends up in the wrong chapel with one other mourner, too embarrassed to leave. Pressured to sign the register, little does he realise what effect that signature will have upon his life.The extraordinary story that follows tells of one man''s failed love, the temptations of unanticipated wealth, the secrets of damaged families and the price of being true to oneself. It is a romance for our times.Trade ReviewOne of our best and truest novelists * The Times *Enviably good -- Louis de Bernières * Sunday Times *Thoughtful and beautifully observed... Never predictable, this novel combines a remarkable narrative force with the lightest of touches. A book to savour and pass on * The Economist *Utterly absorbing and enjoyable...a romance which moves with assurance from wild improbability to a reconciliation with things as they may truly be * Scotsman *Completely riveting and very funny indeed. Shakespeare at his empathetic best, as he mines the fragile seam of our desire to be loved for who we are * Sunday Telegraph *
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Vintage Publishing Small Wars
Book SynopsisHal Treherne is a soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. Impatient to see action, his other commitment in life is to his beloved wife, Clara, and when Hal is transferred to Cyprus she and their twin daughters join him. But the island is in the heat of the emergency; the British are defending the colony against Cypriots - schoolboys and armed guerillas alike - battling for union with Greece.Clara shares Hal''s sense of duty and honour; she knows she must settle down, make the best of things, smile. But action changes Hal, and the atrocities he is drawn into take him not only further from Clara but himself, too; a betrayal that is only the first step down a dark path.Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.Trade ReviewJones is fabulous at this, offering titbits of danger and discord while keeping a cool, matter of fact tone for the big horrors... This is, at heart, a moving love story * Sunday Times *Jones's first novel, The Outcast, winner if the Costa First Novel Award, was a very hard act to follow. Her second, however, is even better... Jones's research is impeccable, and her emotional intelligence outstanding -- Kate Saunders * The Times *In this exciting novel that resonates with contemporary parallels, Jones is unusual among women writers in focusing as much on the thrills and terrors of frontline action as its psychological fall out...it's a movie waiting to happen -- Emma Hagestadt * Independent *Ambitious...uncannily good at the evocation of charged moments * Guardian *Here Jones's talent really shows... In an excellent encounter with a military psychiatrist, the dialogue breaks like dry twigs -- Stephanie Cross * Times Literary Supplement *
£999.99
Vintage Publishing Summertime
Book SynopsisJ.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace, Summertime, The Childhood of Jesus and, most recently, The Schooldays of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.Trade ReviewWonderful stuff. But then, Coetzee is wonderful: edgy, black, remorselessly human, witty, and often outright funny... Summertime is offbeat and deliberate, elusive and truthful * Irish Times *The cumulative effect of Coetzee's unblinking honesty and his never-wavering seriousness is an understanding of the creation of a great writer * Sunday Telegraph *A subtle, allusive meditation: an intriguing map of a weak character's constricted heart struggling against the undertow of suspicion within South Africa's claustrophobic, unpoetic, overtly macho society * Financial Times *A poignant, cubistic portrait...It is not essential, however, that one know anything of Boyhood, Youth, or his other works to appreciate its rich offerings as an imaginatively distorted and distorting portrait of the artist as outsider * TLS *Compelling, funny, moving and full of life * Observer *
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Vintage Publishing Flauberts Parrot
Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewBarnes manages to be erudite but extremely funny too… You never know what Barnes is going to do next and I admire that.’ -- Caroline Rees * Daily Express *Delightful and enriching... A book to revel in! -- Joseph HellerEndless food for thought, beautifully written... A tour de force -- Germaine GreerA gem: an unashamed literary novel that is also unashamed to be readable, and broadly entertaining. Bravo! -- John IrvingJulian Barnes' wry and graceful book, part novel, part stealthy literary criticism, traces the marks Flaubert made on a forgetting world. The writing is unfailingly sharp and often very funny, and among the best prose I have read in years * Sunday Times *
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Vintage Publishing Hrabal B Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
Book SynopsisThis ebullient, gallivanting novel encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic's best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal's cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties.Trade ReviewThe beauty of Hrabal's book is how he is able to make this tightly-wound object move...what Hrabal has created is an informal history of the indomitable Czech spirit. And perhaps...the human spirit * The Times *First-hand experience informs Hrabal's work with a wonderful detail, irascibility and charm * Los Angeles Times *Hrabal has invented some of the most memorable characters in world literature * Los Angeles Times *
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Vintage Publishing Captain Corellis Mandolin
Book SynopsisLouis de Bernières is the best-selling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. His most recent novels are Birds Without Wings and A Partisan's Daughter.Trade ReviewA wonderful epic novel * The Times *Louis de Bernières is the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh... His novel will give pleasure to all sorts of readers -- A.S. Byatt * Evening Standard *An emotional, funny, stunning novel which swings with wide smoothness between joy and bleakness, personal lives and history... It's lyrical and angry, satirical and earnest * Observer *A master of haunted realism. His best novel yet. He deals with death and love and tragedy... This is a novel to be prized * Daily Mail *Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a wonderful, hypnotic novel of fabulous scope and tremendous, iridescent charm - and you can quote me -- Joseph Heller
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Vintage Publishing The WindUp Bird Chronicle
Book SynopsisIn 1978, Haruki Murakami was 29 and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, which turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon. His books became bestsellers, were translated into many languages, including English, and the door was thrown wide open to Murakami's unique and addictive fictional universe.Murakami writes with admirable discipline, producing ten pages a day, after which he runs ten kilometres (he began long-distance running in 1982 and has participated in numerous marathons and races), works on translations, and then reads, listens to records and cooks. His passions colour his non-fiction output, from What I Talk About WhTrade ReviewMurakami writes of contemporary Japan, urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery, and in this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work * Independent *Deeply philosophical and teasingly perplexing, it is impossible to put down * Daily Telegraph *Murakami weaves these textured layers of reality into a shot-silk garment of deceptive beauty * Independent on Sunday *Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon - a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original * New York Times *Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original * The Times *
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Random House The Power and the Glory
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 *The Power Tnd The Glory's nameless whisky priest blends seamlessly with his tropical, crooked, anticlerical Mexico. Roman Catholicism is intrinsic to the character and terrain both; Greene's imaginative immersion in both is triumphant * John Updike *
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Vintage Publishing Scenes from Village Life
Book SynopsisA teenage son shoots himself under his parents'' bed. They sleep that night unaware he is lying dead beneath them.A stranger turns up at a man''s door to persude him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house.An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night. As each story unfolds, Amos Oz, builds a portrait of a village in Israel. It is a surreal and unsettling place. Each villager is searching for something, and behind each episode is another, hidden story. In this powerful, hynotic work Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives and gives us a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence.By the winner of the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize, previous winners of which include Philip Roth, Ivan Klima, Elfriede Jelinek, Harold Pinter and John Banville.Trade ReviewThis is a dark book, with a dark vision of contemporary Israel… The whole, rich, disturbing mixture makes one feel as if something dark is digging away at the foundations, something unnameable ready to emerge. It is one of the most powerful books you will read about present-day Israel. -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *These stories have both force and mystery, and they cast a quiet spell * Scotland on Sunday *A powerfully bleak portrait of loneliness, confusion and cracked bonds * The Times *These stories, in their humanity, may do more for Israel than any of the decisions we have been led to expect of its leaders in the months to come * New Statesman *I enjoyed Amos Oz's Scenes From Village Life a great deal... it explores what is universal, what is entirely idiosyncratic, about daily life in Israel away from the obvious conflicts -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *
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Vintage Publishing The Beautiful and Damned
Book SynopsisFrancis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published in 1920 and was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night . He was working on The Last Tycoon when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.Trade ReviewThe Jazz Age chronicler's first great novel * The Times *No one has written more elegiacally about America than F. Scott Fitzgerald...a sense of lost time and the irretrievability of the past gave much of his work - indeed, his life - an ineradicable undertone of mourning * Guardian *If Francis Scott Fitzgerald had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him. Seldom has there been a character who personified, as well as chronicled, an age with such dexterity and verisimilitude * Sunday Times *None was more beautiful, none more damned, than Fitzgerald himself * Independent on Sunday *
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Vintage Publishing Tender is the Night
Book SynopsisFrancis Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published in 1920 and was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night . He was working on The Last Tycoon when he died, in Hollywood, in 1940.Trade ReviewA tragedy backlit by beauty * Daily Express *For Fitzgerald desolation is a precondition of the lyrical. Hence the most distinctive impression of Tender: a beautiful novel about failure * Independent *It is one of those books that you read and feel a shift...the story is told so poetically and eloquently. It is one of those books that you read and think: if I could only remember that sentence - it is so beautiful -- Sam Taylor-WoodNo one has written more elegiacally about America... Fitzgerald, like his revered Keats, was a compulsive nostalgic, locating happiness in the search for sensation rather than in its realisation; in the dream of desire, not in its fulfilment * Guardian *In just a snatch of dialogue or a few lines of description, Fitzgerald can evoke the happy, troubled and perilous balance of a group of friends... He has an acute eye and ear for the nuances of character... an exquisitely crafted piece of fiction -- Melissa Benn * Independent *
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Vintage Publishing See Under Love
Book SynopsisMomik, the only child of two survivors, is brought up in Israel by a family seeking to ignore the past. But through the stories his great-uncle tells him-the same stories he told the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp-Momik, too, becomes "infected with humanity."Trade ReviewOne of the most ambitious, generous, beautiful, indispensable books I've been fortunate enough to read -- Jonathan Safran Foer * Guardian *See Under: Loveis one of the most disturbing novels I've ever read...When I was already well into it, I'd circle it warily before picking it up again . . . then fall instantly under its spell, for it is wickedly readable -- Edmund WhiteThis novel is so innovative, yet at the same time so readable, that I can only say that it gives the lie to that critical cliche. It is a tour de force of pure storytelling, and a demonstration of both the need for story and the limits of all particular stories. I consider it a triumph * Guardian *
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Cornerstone Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Apocalypse
Book SynopsisIn the stunning finale of the epic Fate of the Jedi series, Jedi and Sith face off - with Coruscant as their battlefield. For the Sith, it''s the chance to restore their dominance over the galaxy that forgot them for so long. For Abeloth, it''s a giant step in her quest to conquer all life everywhere. For Luke Skywalker, it''s a call to arms to eradicate the Sith and their monstrous new master once and for all.In a planetwide strike, teams of Jedi Knights take the Sith infiltrators by swift and lethal surprise. But victory against the cunning and savage Abeloth, and the terrifying endgame she has planned, is anything but certain. And as Luke, Ben, Han, Leia, Jaina, Jag and their allies close in, the devastating truth about the dark side incarnate will be exposed - and send shoch waves through the Jedi Order, the galaxy, and the Force itself.
£16.19
Cornerstone Star Wars Shadow Games
Book SynopsisStranded on Tatooine with a broken-down hyperdrive, Dash Rendar and crew--his Nautolan copilot, Eaden Vrill, and a droid named Leebo--have to find a way to raise credits. It comes in the lovely form of Javul Charn, a multi-talented human holostar being stalked by an over-zealous fan. She needs bodyguards to protect her during her tour along the Corellian Run; Dash needs credits. It''s aperfect match...until things begin to go wrong--seriously and dangerously wrong. By the time Dash realizes that the threat to Javul is not what it seems, he''s in up to his neck in a conspiracy that goes much deeper than anything he would have signed up for. Even with the help of his hated rival--Han Solo--will Dash be able to protect this spoiled entertainer, all the while being reminded that he couldn''tprotect his own family?
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Cornerstone Star Wars Riptide
Book SynopsisIn the process of vanquishing a shipload of Sith from the distant past, Jedi Knight Jaden Korr uncovered the frozen results of a horrific cloning experiment: insane Jedi-Sith clones. Only some of those clones thawed...and now they''re loose in a galaxy that has enough to deal with under the tightening grip of the evil Darth Caedus. Jaden Korr will have to hunt them down, and if he can''t save them, he will have to destroy them!
£14.39
Vintage Publishing Collected Stories
Book SynopsisThis is a collection of the very best of William Faulkner's short stories. Included are classics of short-form fiction such as A Bear Hunt', A Rose for Emily', Two Soldiers' and The Brooch'. Faulkner's ability to compress his epic vision into narratives of such grace and tragic intensity defines him as one of the finest and most original writers America has ever produced.
£15.29
Vintage Publishing To The End of the Land
Book SynopsisOra, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is about to celebrate her son Ofer''s release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. Instead of waiting at home for the ''notifiers'' who could arrive at any moment to tell her of her son''s fate, she sets off for a hike in Galilee, leaving no forwarding address. If a mother is not there to receive the news, a son cannot die, can he?Recently estranged from her husband, Ora drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, the man who in fact turns out to be her son''s biological father. As they sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, Ora recounts, step by step and word by word, the story of her son''s birth, life and possible death, in one mother''s magical, passionate and heartbreaking attempt to keep her son safe from harm.Trade ReviewExtraordinary, impassioned... To the End of the Land is without question one of the most powerful and moving novels I have ever read -- Jacqueline Rose * Guardian *It is tricky to set out the scale of Grossman's achievement without resorting to reviewers' clichés. He has aimed as high as it is possible to do in a novel which deals with the great questions of love, intimacy, war, memory and fear of personal and national annihilation-and has overwhelmingly achieved everything. -- Linda Grant * Independent *This is a great novel, a rare example of a book that lives up to its billing, its emotional depth and humanity balanced by formidable formal control and pacing of the chronological sequence, the text rendered into an English that mostly finds the cadence and associative range of the original Hebrew... To The End Of The Land is, quite literally, unforgettable -- Brian Morton * Sunday Herald *This is a book of overwhelming power and intensity, David Grossman's masterpiece. Flaubert created his Emma, Tolstoy made his Anna, and now we have Grossman's Ora - as fully alive, as fully embodied, as any character in recent fiction. I devoured this long novel in a feverish trance. Wrenching, beautiful, unforgettable -- Paul AusterThere are some writers in whose words one recognizes the texture of life. David Grossman is such a writer. He is a master of the emotionally accurate and significant. His characters don't so much lie on the page as rise before the reader's eyes, in three dimensions, their skin covered in prose that both stabs with insight and shines with compassion -- Yann Martel
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Vintage Publishing The Dead Republic
Book SynopsisWe last saw Henry Smart, his leg severed in an accident with a railway boxcar, crawl into the Utah desert to die - only to be discovered by John Ford, who''s there shooting his latest Western. The Dead Republic opens in 1951. Henry is returning to Ireland for the first time since his escape in 1922. With him are the stars of Ford''s latest film, John Wayne and Maureen O''Hara, and the famous director himself, who has tried to suck the soul out of Henry and turn it into Hollywood gold-dust.Ten years later Henry is in Dublin, working in Ratheen as a school caretaker. When he is caught in a bomb blast, he loses his leg for the second time. He is claimed as a hero, and before long Henry will discover he has other uses too, when the peace process begins in deadly secrecy...Trade ReviewBrilliant * Mail on Sunday *Told with pace and verve and bitter, black humour... Magnificent * Financial Times *Doyle's tenth novel might be called The Dead Republic, but its vision of what Smart calls "the green thing" is as alive as any he has given us * Independent on Sunday *There is lovely, brutal detail, as well as a grand swoop over the timeline of Ireland and America, just like the kind of film they just don't make anymore * Financial Times *This is Ireland's most famous living writer tackling one of the most crucial periods in history * Guardian *
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Vintage Publishing Satin Island
Book SynopsisU. is a ''corporate anthropologist'' who, while working on a giant, epoch-defining project no one really understands, is also tasked with writing the Great Report on our society. But instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions. Is there a secret logic holding all these images together? Once cracked, will it unlock the master-meaning of our era? Might it have something to do with the dead parachutists in the news? Perhaps; perhaps not.Trade ReviewSmart, shimmering and thought-provoking…McCarthy isn’t a frustrated cultural theorist who must content himself with writing novels; he’s a born novelist, a pretty fantastic one, who has figured out a way to make cultural theory funny, scary and suspenseful — in other words, compulsively readable. * New York Times *Should you read the new Tom McCarthy book? (A: Yes. Always yes.) * Huffington Post *Dazzling and elusive… a magisterial ethnographic portrait of our overstimulated, interconnected, simulacra-addicted times. * Atlantic *The kind of strange and ambitious fiction that you feared might have died with J. G. Ballard. ...Provokes and beguiles and, at the point of revelation, it withholds. On finishing it you will have the powerful urge to throw it across the room, then the powerful urge to pick it up to read again. And that’s what’s so brilliant. -- Duncan White, 5 stars * Daily Telegraph *Confusing, clever and about to be massive. * Stylist *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Book SynopsisZachary Mason is the author of the New York Times bestsellingnovel The Lost Books of the Odyssey and, more recently, Void Star, which has been optioned for film.He lives in California.Trade ReviewA subtle, inventive and moving meditation on the nature of story and what Louis MacNeice calls 'the drunkenness of things being various' -- John BanvilleDazzling...an ingeniously Borgesian novel that's witty, playful, moving and tirelessly inventive. Mr. Mason has found a supple, lyrical voice in these pages that captures the spirit of the original Odyssey and at the same time feels freshly contemporary...a stunning and hypnotic novel * New York Times *Spellbinding. In his versions of these ancient myths Mason twists and jinks, renegotiating the journey to Ithaca with all the guile and trickery of Odysseus himself -- Simon ArmitageA small triumph...the invention on display is beguiling...He offers the reader a book of intellectual fireworks that also manages to be wonderfully entertaining * Sunday Times *Impressive * Guardian *
£13.49
