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
Vintage Publishing The Cement Garden
Book SynopsisIan McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen books. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; and Nutshell, which was a Number One bestseller. Atonement and Enduring Love have both been turned into award-winning films, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach are in production and set for release this year, and filming is currently underway for a BBC TV adaptation of The Child in Time.Trade ReviewA macabre but unforgettable tale * Guardian *One of his very best… Deliciously disturbing. * Big Issue in the North *A macabre but unforgettable tale * Guardian *One of his very best… Deliciously disturbing. * Big Issue in the North *An unforgettable tale * Guardian *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Loaded
Book SynopsisDiscover the explosive first novel from the author of The Slap Ari is nineteen, Greek, gay, unemployed, looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. Torn between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs and drugs and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only way he knows how. ''One of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today'' Colm Tóibín''An addictive read'' StylistTrade ReviewAn addictive read... Loaded is a must for your suitcase * Stylist *Loaded is a high-octane, drug- and sex-fuelled romp through 24 hours in the life of Ari, a 19-year-old Greek-Australian gay man living on the margins of society. ... there is such a remarkable energy about Ari's narrative in Loaded, and so much self-aware humour and pathos, that it is utterly absorbing, and reminiscent in that respect of such debut novels as Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero or Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Loaded is a glorious, almighty "fuck you" to Australian society, a primal howl of angst and anguish. -- Doug Johnstone * Independent on Sunday *Praise for The Slap: Nothing short of a tour de force. Tsiolkas outs a microscope to family life and presents us with a vision both of unflinching honesty and great tenderness. Here is a novel of immense power and scope, reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Don De Lillo's Underworld -- Colm Toibin
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Beloved
Book SynopsisToni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She was the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, Paradise and Love. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour, in 2012 by Barack Obama. Toni Morrison died on 5 August 2019 at the age of eighty-eight.Trade Review'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all'‘I adored her honesty. I admired the way she occupied her space in the world. I believed her’‘[Toni Morrison] led and we followed, and she showed us the beauty of the language, and the power that was unleashed when that beauty was allied to a great heart and a ferocious mind’‘No other writer in my lifetime, or perhaps ever, has married so completely an understanding of the structures of power with knowledge of the human heart’‘Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known’‘Morrison is, to me, the best writer the English-speaking world has ever seen’‘Morrison’s legacy in commemorating slavery’s survivors will endure and uplift for centuries to come'‘Her every word a caress, her every sentence an embrace, her every paragraph, a cupping of her hands around our faces that said: I know you, I see you, we are together’‘I have never read anyone else like her . . . She was an opener of doors, doors that seemed they might always be shut, doors shut so tight they seemed not to be doors at all’‘Her legacy is total excellence . . . she is magnificent, her emotional intelligence is second to none and her bravery was equal to her artistry’‘Morrison almost single-handedly took American fiction forward in the second half of the twentieth century’‘[Toni Morrison’s] irreverence was godly’ * Guardian *A beautiful book and it's beautifully written -- Kit de Waal * Good Housekeeping UK *My favourite book of all time -- Sareeta Domingo * Good Housekeeping *Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo -- Trevor Phillips * Sunday Times *[A] beautiful, haunting novel -- Stig Abell * Sunday Times *More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it -- Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR * Guardian *A triumph -- Margaret Atwood * New York Times Book Review *A magnificent achievement... An American masterpiece -- A. S. Byatt * Guardian *There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you * New Yorker *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing A Book Of Memories
Book SynopsisA second memoir, alternating with the first, is a novel the narrator is composing about a refined Belle Epoque aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions seem like emotionally overcharged versions of the narrator's own experiences.Trade ReviewOriginal and exhilarating work that demands to be read again * Sunday Times *The greatest novel written in our time, one of the great books of the century -- Susan SontagOne of the most important novels of our time * Times Literary Supplement *The monumental event of recent Hungarian history, the fated uprising of 1956, is accounted for in the most affecting manner imaginable in these haunted pages * Daily Telegraph *What makes this Book of Memories so memorable is the sheer quality of the prose, its subtlety and intelligence, which shines through what seems an elegant and unobtrusively American translation * The Times *
£13.49
Vintage Publishing Cry The Beloved Country
Book SynopsisCry the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its contemporaneity, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.Trade ReviewA beautiful novel, rich, firm and moving-its writing is so fresh, its projection of character so immediate and full, its events so compelling and its understanding so compassionate, that to read the book is to share intimately, even to the point of catharsis, in the grave human experience treated. * New York Times *The greatest novel to emerge out of the tragedy of South Africa and one of the best novels of our time * The New Republic *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Song of Solomon
Book SynopsisToni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She was the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, Paradise and Love. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour, in 2012 by Barack Obama. Toni Morrison died on 5 August 2019 at the age of eighty-eight.Trade ReviewToni Morrison makes me believe in God. She makes me believe in a divine being, because luck and genetics don’t seem to come close to explaining her * Guardian *The poetry of the language. The vernacular and the rhythms of speech... It's eavesdropping on a slice of life. You care for every character. You love them, you bleed for them. It's a masterclass in narrative fiction. It's a book that not only makes me want to be a better writer, but a better person as well -- Sarah Winman * Good Housekeeping *Stunningly beautiful... Full of magnificent people... They are still haunting my house. I suspect they will be with me forever * Washington Post *Song of Solomon…profoundly changed my life * Guardian *A rhapsodic work... Intricate and inventive * New Yorker *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Einsteins Monsters
Book SynopsisAn ex-circus strongman, veteran of Warsaw, 1939, and Notting Hill rough-justice artist, meets his own personal holocaust and ''Einsteinian'' destiny; maximum boredom and minimum love-making are advised in a 2020 epidemic; a virulent new strain of schizophrenia overwhelms the young son of a ''father of the nuclear age''; evolution takes a rebarbative turn in a Kafkaesque love story; and the history of the earth is frankly discussed by one who has witnessed it all. The stories in this collection form a unity and reveal a deep preoccupation: ''Einstein''s Monsters refers to nuclear weapons but also to ourselves,'' writes Amis in his enlightening introductory essay, ''We are Einstein''s monsters: not fully human, not for now.''Trade ReviewA phenomenal writer. He has style as quick and efficient as a flick-knife, and a gift for the grotesque that makes other people's nightmares look like Victorian watercolours * Sunday Times *Amis is first-rate; arguing inventing, demonstrating, parodying, being funny and shocking in the same breath * Observer *Amis's introduction to these five stories is a beautifully judged piece of polemic; a carefully reasoned emotionally charged attack on the unthinkable folly of nuclear war - an elegant, funny, moving book * Daily Telegraph *
£8.54
Vintage Publishing Other People a Mystery Story
Book Synopsis''Other People had me purring with pleasure'' The TimesLike a ghost or a fugitive, Mary roams through London - pursuing and pursued by memory and forgetting, by the compelling Amy Hide and the charming Mr Wrong...Martin Amis sustains an unnervingly high degree of suspense as Mary and the reader yearn to grasp what has happened to Mary''s past and ponder what its loss has gained her. Unfolding is a metaphysical thriller where jealousy guarded secrets jostle with startling insights. Other People is ambitious and accomplished, heralding for Amis an unexpected new direction as a novelist and for the rest of us an experience not to be missed.Trade ReviewFor all its savagery - Other People is a funny book - an achievement light years ahead of his earlier novels * The Times *Powerful and electrifying... Other People is a metaphysical thriller, Kafka reshot in the style of Psycho * J. G. Ballard *One of the most gifted novelists of his generation * Time *Amis is a force unto himself... There is, quite simply, no one else like him * Washington Post Book World *Other People is "about" a descent into Hell, Hell being "other people" - it's a very strange and impressive performance * Observer *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Viceroy of Ouidah
Book SynopsisIn 1812, Francisco Manoel da Silva, escaping a life of poverty in Brazil, sailed to the African kingdom of Dahomey, determined to make his fortune in the slave trade. Armed with nothing but an iron will, he became a man of substance in Ouidah and the founder of a remarkable dynasty. His one remaining ambition is to return to Brazil in triumph, but his friendship with the mad, mercurial king of Dahomey is fraught with danger and threatens his dream.Trade ReviewA masterpiece which everybody should read...It deserves to become a classic -- Auberon WaughNo lunacy too weird, no irony too oblique, heart too tender, mischief too black, to dodge the sharp angle of his eye. He slips from the hilarious to the macabre, he celebrates the comedy and plumbs the tragedy of Francisco's life - and of Africa - in prose that grabs you with its precision * Observer *Outstanding, finely written * Independent *It is hard to know how posterity will regard this remarkable writer, but his terse, honed language was built to last -- Colin Thubron * Sunday Times *Magnificent. The beautiful, succinct prose is so incredibly visual, vibrant and visceral -- Bernardine Evaristo * Independent *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing American Pastoral
Book SynopsisPhilip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey on 19 March 1933. The second child of second-generation Americans, Bess and Herman Roth, Roth grew up in the largely Jewish community of Weequahic, a neighbourhood he was to return to time and again in his writing. After graduating from Weequahic High School in 1950, he attended Bucknell University, Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he received a scholarship to complete his M.A. in English Literature.In 1959, Roth published Goodbye, Columbus a collection of stories, and a novella for which he received the National Book Award. Ten years later, the publication of his fourth novel, Portnoy's Complaint, brought Roth both critical and commercial success, firmly securing his reputation as one of America's finest young writers. Roth was the author of thirty-one books, including those that were to follow the fortunes of Nathan Zuckerman, and a fictional narrator named Philip Roth, through which he explored and gave voice to the complexities of the American experience in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Roth's lasting contribution to literature was widely recognised throughout his lifetime, both in the US and abroad. Among other commendations he was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the International Man Booker Prize, twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and presented with the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal by Presidents Clinton and Obama, respectively.Philip Roth died on 22 May 2018 at the age of eighty-five having retired from writing six years previously.Trade ReviewMarvellous... Raging and elegaic * Guardian *Full of insight, full of sharp ironic twists, full of wisdom about American idealism, and full of terrific fun... A profound and personal meditation on the changes in the American psyche over the last fifty years * Financial Times *A tragedy of classical proportions...a magnificent novel * The Times *Wonderful, rich...entirely gripping * Sunday Telegraph *A momentous novel * Observer *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Deception
Book Synopsis''This swift, elegant, disturbing novel...stands at the extreme of contemporary fiction'' New York Times Book ReviewHe is a middle-aged American writer called Philip; she is an articulate, well-educated Englishwoman trapped in a loveless and humiliating marriage. In Philip''s London studio, this play of voices - sharp, tender and inquiring - reveals both their past lives with startling clarity. Deception is fiendishly clever, as it dances with the conventions of the novel, and redefines the boundaries between fiction and reality.Trade ReviewThis swift, elegant, disturbing novel...stands at the extreme of contemporary fiction * New York Times Book Review *Deception is itself deceptive, as elegant and ingenious as anything in The Ghost Writer or The Prague Orgy * New Republic *Lively, shiny, glazed with wit -- James Wood * Guardian *An amazing feast... He's invented the purest speech, the most convincing cadences, of any American novelist * Hudson Review *A fiendishly clever piece of work...an amazing feat... He's invented the purest speech, the most convincing cadences, of any American novelist * Hudson Review *
£999.99
Vintage Publishing Friend of My Youth
Book SynopsisRead Alice Munro's dark and powerful exploration of the human heart in this ten-story collection.Brilliant at evoking life''s diversity and unpredictability...an unrivalled chronicler of human nature under a vast span of aspects, moods, and pressures' Sunday TimesA woman haunted by dreams of her dead mother. An adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial excitement ends, and the pain begins. A widow visiting a Scottish village in search of her husband''s past - and instead, discovering unsettling truths about a total stranger. The ten stories in this collection not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience.Winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureWinner of the Man Booker International Prize 2009Trade ReviewRead not more than one of her stories a day, and allow them to work their spell: they are made last * Observer *Alice Munro's stories, Friend of My Youth, are wonderful: intricate, deep, full of absorbing and funny detail, and opening into painful and tender memories with cunningly concealed skill * Independent on Sunday *She is our Chekhov, and is going to outlast most of her contemporaries -- Cynthia OzickBrilliant at evoking life's diversity and unpredictability...an unrivalled chronicler of human nature under a vast span of aspects, moods and pressures * Sunday Times *The particular brilliance of Alice Munro is that in range and depth her short stories are almost novels * Daily Telegraph *
£13.49
Vintage Publishing Babel Tower
Book SynopsisA.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.Trade ReviewTartly funny, emotionally engrossing and headily intelligent * Sunday Times *A formidable feast of a book... A. S. Byatt can use her extraordinary mind to probe passional conflicts more hair-raisingly well than any thriller-writer * Daily Telegraph *In this exuberant and vastly ambitious novel, A. S. Byatt has made both an intellectual chronicle and an intimate history... This book is about the life of art and the art of living, and its prose is charged with powerful images * Harpers & Queen *A remarkable book, of exceptional gravity and serious charm... it balances an acute sense of the values of art and intellect with an imaginative sympathy. Its ambition is almost unique in the English novel * Spectator *
£13.49
Vintage Publishing Breakfast of Champions
Book SynopsisKurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922 and studied biochemistry at Cornell University. An army intelligence scout during the Second World War, he was captured by the Germans and witnessed the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers, an experience which inspired his classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. After the war he worked as a police reporter, an advertising copywriter and a public relations man for General Electric. His first novel Player Piano (1952) achieved underground success. Cat's Cradle (1963) was hailed by Graham Greene as 'one of the best novels of the year by one of the ablest living authors'. His eighth book, Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969 and was a literary and commercial success, and was made into a film in 1972. Vonnegut is the author of thirteen other novels, three collections of stories and five non-fiction books. Kurt Vonnegut died in 2007.Trade ReviewVonnegut performs considerable complex magic... Fresh, funny, outrageous...he very nearly levitates * New York Times *He’s just so fucking amazing. Everyone should read Vonnegut. -- Tim MinchinA great deal of wit and playfulness...an entire universe of disorder is distilled * Guardian *Outrageous, witty, thought-provoking, unputdownable, scintillating, invigorating, ennobling, enlightening and masterly * Spectator *Brilliant... It seems, at times, as if Voltaire has returned to satirise the horrors of plastic, disposable America * Sunday Times *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Shadow of the Sun A Novel xvi
Book SynopsisIt is the height of summer. After she is expelled from boarding school, Anna Severell returns to the strict, orderly house of her father, a celebrated novelist. The family is soon joined by Oliver Canning, a talented young academic who urges her to take control of her future. As autumn begins and Anna enters university, the pair grow closer. A single mistake, however, could put her newfound independence at riskTrade Review"A.S.Byatt's first novel, written in her early twenties, is simultaneously a rehearsal of the themes of her later fiction and a major work in its own right. Her concern with precise nuances of thought and feeling and their representation in prose is almost unparalleled in contemporary writing. The Shadow of the Sun is a tremendous achievement" -- DJ Taylor "In her very first novel, The Shadow of the Sun, A.S. Byatt showed herself to be that rarity, and English writer unafraid of the novel of ideas. Yet she is also the most sensuous of novelists - fictions made flesh are her passion" -- Christopher Hope "Byatt is a wonderful writer, constantly engaging wherever she takes us" The Times
£15.29
Cornerstone Fiesta
Book SynopsisErnest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899 as the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his craft. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.Trade ReviewRemarkable, startling, disquieting * Spectator *Some of the finest and most restrained writing that this generation has produced * New York World *Hemingway captures atmosphere by reticence and breathes life into his characters by pages left unsaid... It is American; it is literature; and it is a first novel by a genius * Evening News *It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame . . . This novel is unquestionably one of the events of an unusually rich year in literature * New York Times (1926) *Hemingway captures atmosphere by reticence and breathes life into his characters by pages left unsaid ... It is American; it is literature; and it is a first novel by a genius * Evening News *
£8.54
Cornerstone The Snows Of Kilimanjaro And Other Stories
Book SynopsisMen and women of passion and action live, fight, love and die in scenes of dramatic intensity. From haunting tragedy on the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro to brutal sensationalism in the bullring; from rural America with its deceptive calm to the heart of war-ravaged Europe, each of the stories in this classic collection is a feat of imagination, and a masterpiece of description. The Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of the best known and loved collections of stories by one of the greatest literary novelists of the twentieth century.Trade ReviewStamped with the urgency of Hemingway's style ... revealing tenderness of feeling beneath descriptions of brutality * The Guardian *An excellent story-teller, intense and skilful in planning and bringing off his effects * Daily Telegraph *
£8.54
Cornerstone To Have and Have Not
Book SynopsisHarry Morgan was hard - the classic Hemingway hero - rum-running, gun-running and man-running from Cuba to the Florida Keys in the Depression. He ran risks, too, from stray coastguard bullets and sudden double-crosses. But it was the only way he could keep his boat, keep his independence, and keep his belly full...This classic novella was turned into a brilliant film by Howard Hawks - the film in which Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall met - and remains an important work by one of the greatest American novelists of the twentieth century.Trade ReviewThis active, passionate life on the verge of the tropics is perfect material for the Hemingway style, and the reader carries away from the book a sense of freshness and exhilaration * New Statesman *Absorbing and moving. It opens with a fusillade of bullets, reaches its climax with another, and sustains a high pitch of excitement throughout * Times Literary Supplement *Its tragic scenes are rendered with an economy of words and a power that might well be the despair of a lesser writer * Scotsman *Absorbing and moving. It opens with a fusillade of bullets, reaches its climax with another, and sustains a high pitch of excitement throughout * Times Literary Supplement *Its tragic scenes are rendered with an economy of words and a power that might well be the despair of a lesser writer * Scotsman *
£8.54
Cornerstone Green Hills of Africa
Book Synopsis''I remember seeing the lion looking yellow and heavy-headed and enormous against a scrubby-looking tree in a patch of orchard bush and P. O. M. kneeling to shoot him. Then there was the short-barrelled explosion of the Mannlicher and the lion was going to the left on a run, a strange, heavy-shouldered, foot-swinging cat run. I hit him with the Springfield and he went down...''Returning to his love of the African continent and its wildlife, Hemingway captures brilliantly the thrill and excitement of the hunt for big game. In some of the most vivid, intense and evocative travel writing, and memoir of his career, he describes the vastness of Africa and the brutality of its ''sports'', showing even in this slim volume why he was one of the great American writers of the twentieth century.Trade ReviewA fine book on death in the African afternoon. . .The writing is the thing; that way he has of getting down with beautiful precision the exact way things look, smell, taste, feel, sound * New York Times *If he were never to write again, his name would live as long as the English language, for Green Hills of Africa takes its place beside his other works on that small shelf in our libraries which we reserve for the classics * Observer *This book is an expression of a deep enjoyment and appreciation of being alive - in Africa. There is more to it than hunting; it is the feeling of the dew on the grass in the morning, the shape and colour and smell of the country, the companionship of friends ... and the feeling that time has ceased to matter * TLS *
£8.54
Cornerstone Across the River and into the Trees Arrow Classic
Book SynopsisThe War is just over. In Venice, a city elaborately and affectionately described, the American Colonel, Richard Cantrell, falls passionately in love with Renata, a young Italian countess who has ''a profile that could break your or anyone else''s heart''. Cantrell is embittered, war-scarred and old enough to be Renata''s father, but he is overwhelmed by the selflessness and freshness of the love she is offering. But this is no fairy tale. The fighting may be ended, but the wounds of war have not yet healed. And for some, the longed-for peace has come too late. A lesser known classic by one of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Across the River And Into The Trees is still vintage Hemingway.Trade ReviewHe can perform prodigies. He can fascinate us by pure evocation, by the tensity of the situation * Times Literary Supplement *The most important author since Shakespeare * New York Times *He can perform prodigies. He can fascinate us by pure evocation, by the tensity of the situation * Times Literary Supplement *The most important author since Shakespeare * The New York Times Book Review *
£8.54
Cornerstone Winner Take Nothing
Book SynopsisWritten when Hemingway was at the height of his creative powers, the stories in Winner Take Nothing glow with the mark of his unique talent.Hunters, wives, old men of wisdom, waiters, fighters, women loved, women lost: they are all here, living on the raw edge, making love, facing the inevitable reality of death.The characters, the dialogue, the settings, the remarkable insight could have come only from Hemingway''s imagination. As an introduction to his work, or as an overview of the themes he developed at greater length in his novels, it is a stunningly successful collection. From one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.
£8.54
Vintage Publishing Bullet Park
Book SynopsisJohn Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1978 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature.Trade ReviewIn a class by itself, not only among Cheever's work but among all novels I know -- Joseph HellerCheever's deepest, most challenging book * New York Times *John Cheever's prose is always a pleasure to read because it is both graceful and governed * Chicago Tribune *A master American storyteller * Time *Cheever writes a restrained, half -mocking hymn to the delusions of comfortable America which is a pleasure to read * Guardian *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Tyler A Saint Maybe
Book Synopsis''Compulsively readable, realistic, funny, touching'' The TimesWhen eighteen-year-old Ian Bedloe pricks the bubble of his family''s optimistic self-deception, his brother Danny drives into a wall, his sister-in-law falls apart, and his parents age before his eyes. Consumed by guilt Ian finds the hope of forgiveness at the Church of the Second Chance, and leaves college to cope with the three children he has inherited and his own embarrassing religion.Twenty years on, Ian''s prospects of a second chance are receding fast when, out of the heart of the domesticity that has engulfed him, strides a new figure who will bring him new life.**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**''Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing'' Rachel Joyce''She knows all the secrets of the human heart'' Monica Ali ''A masterly author'' Sebastian Faulks''I love Anne Tyler. I''ve read every single book she''s written'' Jacqueline WilsonTrade ReviewAnne Tyler likes to break America's heart, and she will do it again in Saint Maybe * New York Times *Compulsively readable, realistic, funny, touching * The Times *Saint Maybe shows Anne Tyler at the peak of her power - a real slice of middle America, blessed with equal amounts of humour, pathos and compassion that will ensure heartfelt devotion from all her readers * Time Out *A brilliant writer of emotionally sophisticated novels, funny, tragic, wiseOne of the truest writers alive * Sunday Times *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Book SynopsisThrough every family run memories which bind it together - despite everything. The Tulls of Baltimore are no exception. Abandoned by her husband, Pearl is left to bring up her three children alone - Cody, a flawed devil, Ezra, a flawed saint, and Jenny, errant and passionate. Now, as Pearl lies dying, the past is unlocked and with it its secrets.Trade ReviewHer best novel * Guardian *Anne Tyler is a brilliant writer * Observer *A book to be settled into fully, tomorrow be damned. Funny, heart-hammering, wise…superb * New York Times Book Review *The most impressive American novelist of her generation * Sunday Telegraph *A classic of contemporary Americana…variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving * Los Angeles Times *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Famished Road
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use' The narrator, Azaro, is an abiku, a spirit child, who in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria exists between life and death. He is born into a world of poverty, ignorance and injustice, but Azaro awakens with a smile on his face. Nearly called back to the land of the dead, he is resurrected. But in their efforts to save their child, Azaro''s loving parents are made destitute. The tension between the land of the living, with its violence and political struggles, and the temptations of the carefree kingdom of the spirits propels this latter-day Lazarus''s story. Despite belonging to a spirit world made of enchantment, where there is no suffering, Azaro chooses to stay in the land of the Living: to feel it, endure it, know it and love it. This is his story.In a magnificent feat of sustained imaginative writingTrade ReviewThis is a book to generate apostles. People will be moved and, with stars in their eyes, will pass on the word * Time Out *Okri is incapable of writing a boring sentence. As one startling image follows the next, The Famished Road begins to read like an epic poem that happens to touch down just this side of prose... When I finished the book and went outside, it was as if all the trees of South London had angels sitting in them -- Linda Grant * Independent on Sunday *In a magnificent feat of sustained imaginative writing, Okri spins a tale that is epic and intimate at the same time. The Famished Road rekindled my sense of wonder. It made me, at age 50, look at the world through the wide eyes of a child -- Michael PalinOverwhelming - just buy it for its beauty * New Statesman *The Famished Road is a masterpiece if one ever existed -- Jay Parini * Boston Sunday Globe *
£10.44
Cornerstone Sleeping With The Enemy
Book Synopsis''Sara slept with the enemy but survived. She was one of the lucky ones. Any woman contemplating leaving a violent relationship would do well to read this book'' ERIN PIZZEYShe is a stranger in a small town. She changed her name. Her looks. Her life. All to escape the most dangerous man she ever met. Her husband.Trade ReviewWonderfully gripping * Deborah Moggach *
£14.39
Vintage Publishing Wise Children
Book SynopsisAngela Carter was born in 1940 and read English at Bristol University, before spending two years living in Japan. She lived and worked extensively in the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965, followed by the Magic Toyshop in 1967, which went on to win the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She wrote a further four novels, together with three collections of Short Stories, two works of non-fiction and a volume of collected writings. Angela Carter died in 1992.Trade ReviewWise Children is Angela Carter's best book. It deserves many prizes and, better than that, the affection of generations of readers * Times Literary Supplement *Inventive and brilliant * The Times *A funny, funny book, Wise Children is even better than Nights at the Circus. It deserves all the bouquets, diamonds and stage-door Johnnies it can get * Independent on Sunday *Wonderful writing...there is not much fiction around that is as good as this * Daily Telegraph *Delightful...this is rich prose which demands thought. It's also wickedly funny and a great read * thebookbag.co.uk *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing Night And Day
Book SynopsisWITH INTRODUCTIONS BY ANGELICA GARNETT AND JO SHAPCOTTIn Night and Day, Virginia Woolf portrays her elder sister Vanessa in the person of Katharine Hilbery - the gifted daughter of a distinguished literary family, trapped in an environment which will not allow her to express herself. Looking at questions raised by love and marriage, Night and Day paints an unforgettable picture of the London intelligensia before the First World War, with psychological insight, compassion and humour.Trade ReviewVirginia Woolf stands as the chief figure of modernism in England and must be included with Joyce and Proust in the realisation of experimental achievements that have completely broken with tradition * New York Times *Virginia Woolf was one of the great innovators of that decade of literary Modernism, the 1920s * Guardian *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Voyage Out
Book SynopsisWITH INTRODUCTIONS BY FRANCES SPALDING AND ERICA WAGNERA party of English people board the Euphrosyne bound for South America. Among them is Rachel Vinrace, young, innocent and wholly ignorant of the world of politics and society. She is a free spirit, half-caught, momentarily and passionately, by Terence Hewet, an aspiring writer. But their engagement is to end abruptly, not in marriage but in tragedy. Published in 1915, The Voyage Out was Virginia Woolf''s first novel.Trade ReviewDone with something startling like genius - in its humour and its sense of irony, the occasional poignancy of its emotions, its profound originality * Observer *It is absolutely unafraid... Here at last is a book which attains unity as surely as Wuthering Heights, though by a different path -- E. M. Forster
£10.44
Vintage Publishing Lies of Silence
Book SynopsisBrian Moore was born in Belfast. He emigrated to Canada in 1948 and then moved to California. He twice won the Canadian Governor General's Award for Fiction and has been given a special award from the United States Institute of Arts and Letters. He won the Author's Club First Novel Award for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Great Victorian Collection. The Doctor's Wife, The Colour of Blood - winner of the Sunday Express 1988 Book of the Year - and Lies of Silence were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Five of his novels have been made into films - The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Catholics, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Cold Heaven and Black Robe. Brian Moore died in 1999.Trade ReviewAn armchair time bomb * Mail on Sunday *This is a novel to mirror the disintegration of our times, the unstated irony of which is that a politics so provincial can breed a writer and an art so universal * Observer *A gripping read which you will find impossible to put down * Literary Review *Very much the thinking person's thriller - utterly tense and riveting, but also posing an acute moral dilemma for an ordinary person caught up in the troubled politics of Northern Ireland * Daily Express *It insists on being read at a sitting, for it is imperative to know what happens next * Financial Times *
£9.49
Vintage Publishing The Game
Book SynopsisA.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children's Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her inspiring contribution to life writing' and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.Trade ReviewComplex and thoughtful * Times Literary Supplement *One of our finest living novelists, who manages to tease and to satisfy both the intellect and the imagination * Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Graduate
Book SynopsisCharles Webb was born in 1939 in San Francisco. He was educated at Williams College, Massachusetts, where he graduated in American history and literature. The Graduate was his first novel, and was made in to a hugely successful film. His other novels include Love, Roger, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (also filmed), The Abolitionist of Clark Gable Place and Elsinor.
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Penguin Books Ltd A Kestrel for a Knave
Book SynopsisBilly Casper is a boy with nowhere to go and nothing to say; part of the limbo generation of school leavers too old for lessons and too young to know anything about the outside world. He hates and is hated. His family and friends are mean and tough and they''re sure he''s going to end up in big trouble. But Billy knows two things about his own world. He''ll never work down the mines and he does know about animals. His only companion is his kestrel hawk, trained from the nest, and, like himself, trained but not tamed, with the will to destroy or to be destroyed. This in not just another book about growing up in the north - it''s as real as a slap in the face to those who think that orange juice and comprehensive schools have taken the meanness out of life in the raw working towns.
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd Spanish Short Stories
Book SynopsisContains diverse writing from the Spanish-speaking world. This book explores stylistic contrasts and gives an insight into the cultural and social milieu of the Spanish-speaking world. It includes notes on unusual Spanish words and phrases and is suitable for English students of the language as well as Spanish-speaking students of English.Table of ContentsThe man who repented, Ana Maria Matute; after the procession, Jorge Edwards; Amalia, Mario Vargas Llosa; the thunderbox, Jorge Onetti; the cost of living, Carlos Fuentes; Capitan Descalzo, Norberto Fuentes; share and share alike, Norberto Fuentes; Balthazar's marvellous afternoon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez; the disued door, Julio Cortazar.
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd The Mosquito Coast
Book SynopsisWinner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020The Mosquito Coast - winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize - is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux. Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he abandons civilisation and takes the family to live in the Honduran jungle. There his tortured, messianic genius keeps them alive, his hoarse tirades harrying them through a diseased and dirty Eden towards unimaginable darkness.''Stunning. . . exciting, intelligent, meticulously realised, artful'' Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times''An epic of paranoid obsession that swirls the reader headlong to deposit him on a black mudbank of horror'' Christopher Wordsworth, Guardian''Magnificently stimulating and exciting'' Anthony BurgessAmerican travel wri
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Penguin Books Ltd The Road To Lichfield
Book SynopsisPenelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won bo
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Penguin Books Ltd Captain Hornblower R.N.
Book SynopsisFollow the thrilling and exciting adventures of Horatio Hornblower''s life at sea in the Royal Navy, in these three classic stories. Hornblower and the AtroposSkippering the flagship for Nelson''s funeral on the Thames is not Hornblower''s idea of thrilling action. But soon his orders come, and he sets sail for the Mediterranean in the Atropos. Battle, storm, shipwreck, disease - what were the chances that he would never come back again?The Happy ReturnHornblower sails the South American waters and comes face to face with a mad, messianic revolutionary in this gripping adventure. A Ship of the Line Commando raids, hurricanes at sea, the glowering menace of Napoleon''s onshore gun batteries - Hornblower must deal with them all as he sails his ship to the Spanish station.
£12.34
Penguin Books Ltd The Young Hornblower Omnibus Mr. Midshipman
Book SynopsisThe seventeen year old Hornblower became infamous as soon as he stepped on board ship as the midshipman who was seasick in the Spithead, but things were soon to change. Amid battle, action and adventure he proves himself time and time again - courageous in danger, resourceful in moments of difficulty and decisive in times of trouble.
£15.29
Penguin Books Ltd Hideous Kinky
Book SynopsisThe thirtieth anniversary edition of a twentieth century classic - an unforgettable journey through 1960s Morocco, based on the author''s own childhoodFor fans of Gerald Durrell''s My Family and Other Animals, Laurie Lee''s Cider With Rosie and Elizabeth Gilbert''s Eat Pray LoveQuirky, charming and suffused the footloose spirit of the sixties, this is the irresistible story of an English woman who decides on a whim to move herself and her two young daughters to Morocco. The ensuing adventure takes them through richly perfumed markets, dilapidated hotels and mystical Sufi retreats, via friendships and feuds, romances with nomadic street performers, hitch-hiking and nights camping by the coast - all seen through the eyes of a precocious five-year-old girl. Rediscover this transporting modern classic about the spirit of freedom, filled with the sights, smells and textures of twentieth century Morocco.Trade ReviewA tour de force * London Review of Books *Whimsical, evocative, heartfelt... Synthesizing a blur of images, Hideous Kinky is a song of childhood exile, a paean to the troublesome beauty of life on the run * New York Times *Funny and appealing... It has a delightful lightness of being * Times Literary Supplement *Just open the book and begin, and instantly you will be charmed, then intrigued and finally moved by this fascinating story * Spectator *Genuine and endearing... Esther Freud is adroit at capturing the way adult follies appear to a child [and] she has a gift for unstated hilarity... Like the sword swallowers in the marketplace, she manages to make it look effortless * Los Angeles Times *
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Quincunx The Inheritance of John Huffam
Book SynopsisThe Quincunx is an epic Dickensian-like mystery novel set in 19th century England, and concerns the varying fortunes of young John Huffam and his mother. A thrilling complex plot is made more intriguing by the unreliable narrator of the book - how much can we believe of what he says? First published in 1989, The Quincunx was a surprise bestseller and began a trend for pastiche Victorian novels. It remains one of the best.
£18.00
Penguin Books Ltd Helena Penguin Modern Classics
Book SynopsisThe Empress Helena made the historic pilgrimage to Palestine, found pieces of wood from the true Cross, and built churches at Bethlehem and Olivet. Her life coincided with one of the great turning-points of history: the recognition of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. The enormous conflicting forces of the age, and the corruption, treachery, and madness of Imperial Rome combine to give Evelyn Waugh the theme for one of his most arresting and memorable novels.Trade ReviewMr Waugh is a master of narrative: every sentence compels you to reads its successor -- Raymond Mortimer * Sunday Times *It goes without saying that Helena is amusing, shapely, and well-written, and it also contains some extremely witty incidents * New Statesman *Helena was Waugh's most intentional statement about the truth of Christianity and about vocation as the heart of Christian discipleship -- George Weigel
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd Going To Meet The Man
Book SynopsisBorn in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, social critic, and the author of more than twenty books. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collection The Fire Next Time was a bestseller that made him an influential figure in the civil rights movement. Baldwin spent many years in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in 1987.
£9.49
Penguin Books Ltd The Painter of Signs
Book SynopsisR.K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, in 1906, and educated there and at Maharaja's College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts, are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi and are only two out of the twelve novels he based there. In 1958 Narayan's work The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country's highest literary honor. In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including A Horse and Two Goats, Malguidi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree, two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the re-told legends Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Narayan died in 2001.
£12.59
Penguin Books Ltd Winesburg Ohio
Book SynopsisGeorge Willard is a young reporter on the Winesburg Eagle to whom, one by one, the inhabitants of Winesburg, Ohio, confide their hopes, their dreams, and their fears. This town of friendly but solitary people comes to life as Anderson's special talent exposes the emotional undercurrents that bind its people together. In this timeless cycle of short stories, he lays bare the life of a small town in the American Midwest.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Trade Review"When he calls himself a 'poor scribbler' don't believe him. He is not a poor scribbler . . . he is a very great writer."--Ernest Hemingway"Winesburg, Ohio, when it first appeared, kept me up a whole night in a steady crescendo of emotion."--Hart Crane"As a rule, first books show more bravado than anything else, unless it be tediousness. But there is neither of these qualities in Winesburg, Ohio. . . . These people live and breathe: they are beautiful."--E. M. Forster"Winesburg, Ohio is an extraordinarily good book. But it is not fiction. It is poetry."--Rebecca West
£7.99
Penguin Books Ltd Summer
Book SynopsisA tale of forbidden sexual passion and thwarted dreams played out against the lush, summer backdrop of the Massachusetts Berkshires, Edith Wharton called Summer her 'hot Ethan.' In their rural settings and their poor, uneducated protagonists, Summer and Ethan Frome represent a sharp departure from Wharton's familiar depictions of the urban upper class. Charity Royall lives unhappily with her hard-drinking adoptive father in an isolated village, until a visiting architect awakens her sexual passion and the hope for escape. Exploring Charity's relation to her father and her lover, Wharton delves into dark cultural territory: repressed sexuality, small-town prejudice, and, in subtle hints, incest.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the se
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Penguin Books Ltd The House of Mirth
Book SynopsisA black comedy of manners about vast wealth and a woman who can define herself only through the perceptions of others. The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. But her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man. Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.Trade ReviewWith an introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick,Contemporary Reviews, and LettersBetween Edith Wharton and Her Publisher" A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys."--Edith WhartonLily Bart knows that she must marry--her expensive tastes and mounting debts demand it--and, at twenty-nine, she has every artful wile at her disposal to secure that end. But attached as she is to the social world of her wealthy suitors, something in her rebels against the insipid men whom circumstances compel her to charm. "Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape," Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, "on the bare chance that he might ulti-mately do her the honor of boring her for life?" Lily is distracted from her prey by the arrival of Lawrence Selden, handsome, quick-witted, and penniless. A runaway bestseller on publication in 1905, The House of Mirth is a brilliant romantic novel of manners, the book that established Edith Wharton as one of America's greatest novelists." A tragedy of our modern life, in which the relentlessness of what men used to call Fate and esteem, in their ignorance, a power beyond their control, is as vividly set forth as ever it was by Aeschylus or Shakespeare." --The New York TimesEdith Wharton (1862-1937) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in1920 for The Age of Innocence. But it was the publication of The House of Mirth in 1905 that marked Wharton's coming-of-age as a writer.
£9.25
Penguin Books Ltd Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser Penguin Modern
Book Synopsis“When a girl leaves home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.” With Sister Carrie, first published in 1900, Theodore Dreiser transformed the conventional “fallen woman” story into a genuinely innovative and powerful work of fiction. As he hurled his impressionable midwestern heroine into the throbbing, amoral world of the big city, he revealed, with brilliant insight, the deep and driving forces of American culture: the restless idealism, glamorous materialism, and basic spiritual innocence.Sister Carrie brought American literature into the twentieth century. This volume, which reprints the text Dreiser approved for publication during his lifetime and includes a special appendix discussing his earlier, unedited manuscript, is the original standard edition of one of the gr
£999.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Age of Innocence Penguin Great Books of the
Book SynopsisEdith Wharton’s acclaimed novel of love, duty, and half-known truths in Gilded Age New York society, with a foreword by bestselling author Elif BatumanDutiful Newland Archer, an eligible young man from New York high society, is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a suitable match from a good family, when May’s cousin, the beautiful and exotic Countess Ellen Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of perceived scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her worldliness, disregard for society’s rules, and air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland, despite his enthusiasm about a marriage to May and the societal advantages it would bring. Almost against their will, Newland and Ellen develop a passionate bond, and a classic love triangle takes shape as the three young people find themselves drawn into a poignant and bitter conflict betweeTrade Review“Wharton is not generally viewed as one of literature’s great optimists, and yet, by the last chapter of The Age of Innocence, people are a little less hypocritical, a little more willing to see and accept the world. ... A larger life and more tolerant views: that’s the greatest promise the novel holds out to us, and it’s as necessary now as it was when Edith Wharton put it into words.”—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot, from the foreword“Will writers ever recover that peculiar blend of security and alertness which characterizes Mrs. Wharton and her tradition?”—E. M. Forster
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