Contemporary Fiction Books

Book SynopsisIn this unique collection of short stories composed between 1910-62, Evelyn Waugh''s early juvenilia are brought together with later pieces, some of which became the inspirations for his novels. ''Mr Loveday''s Little Outing'' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident; ''Cruise'' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naïve young woman as she travels with her family; ''A House of Gentlefolks'' observes a group of elderly eccentric aristocrats and their young heir; and in ''The Sympathetic Passenger'' a radio-loathing retiree picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.

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Book SynopsisAt Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage in the English countryside, five elderly people live together in rancorous disharmony. Adela Bastable bosses the house, as her brother Bernard passes his days thinking up malicious schemes against the baby-talking Marigold and secret drinker Shorty, while kindly George lies bedridden upstairs. The mismatched quintet keep their spirits alive by bickering and waiting for grandchildren to visit at Christmas. But the festive season does not herald goodwill to all at Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage. Disaster and chaos, it seems, are just around the corner ...Told with Amis''s piercing wit and humanity, Ending Up (1974) is a wickedly funny black comedy of the indignities of old age.

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Book SynopsisBrimming with gluttony, booze and lust, Roger Micheldene is loose in America. Supposedly visiting Budweiser University to make deals for his publishing firm in England, Roger instead sets out to offend all he meets and to seduce every woman he encounters. But his American hosts seem made of sterner stuff. Who will be Roger''s undoing? Irving Macher, the young author of an annoyingly brilliant first novel? Father Colgate, the priest who suggests that Roger''s soul is in torment? Or will it be his married ex-lover Helene? One thing is certain - Roger is heading for a terrible fall.Outrageously funny and irreverent, One Fat Englishman (1963) is a devastating satire on Anglo-American relations.Trade Review'Few have been as perceptive or funny about bad behaviour as Amis' * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisIn Kingsley Amis''s Take A Girl Like You, twenty year old Jenny Bunn is supernally beautiful and stubbornly chaste, which is why Patrick Standish, an arrogant schoolmaster, wants her so much. This perceptive coming of age novel about a northern girl who moves south, wants to fit in and yet wants to preserve her principles, challenges our assumptions about the battle of the sexes and classes in Britain. It is a story about ''the squalid business of the man and the woman'' and ''the most wonderful thing that had ever happened'' to Jenny Bunn.Few twentieth century novelists have explored our preoccupation with sex like Kingsley Amis. The results are surprising and often hilarious.Kingsley Amis''s (1922-95) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of World War II. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include T

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Book SynopsisIn this surreal comedy of soldiers and spies, Lieutenant James Churchill and his colleagues find themselves questioning their purpose. Are they for death or against it? These men of action will travel between the barracks, the lunatic asylum and the house of an aristocratic nymphomaniac in search of answers. For while few know the awful truth about Operation Apollo, the mission they are being trained for, fewer still understand the motives of the powerful psychiatrist Dr Best, who thinks he is surrounded by repressed homosexuals, and none know the identity of the secret agent among them. When the Anti-Death League is founded they are at last offered the chance to rebel and perhaps escape ...Trade ReviewTo have said so much about the human condition with such lightness of touch ... is an extraordinary achievement * Sunday Telegraph *Amis amazes at every turn * The Times *

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Book SynopsisHarry Caldecote is the most charming man you''ll ever meet, a convivial academic who devotes his life to others. He is on call when his alcoholic niece falls into strange hands, when his brother threatens to emulate Wordsworth, when his son''s lesbian lodger is beaten up by her girlfriend. He endures misplaced seductions, swindles and aggressive dogs just to keep the peace at the King''s pub in Shepherd''s Hill. But when the Adams'' Institute of Cultural and Commercial History in America offers him the opportunity to do ''whatever he wanted to do'' in a picturesque lakeside town, he faces a choice between freedom or responsibility - and whether to take charge of his own life.Trade ReviewLike Waugh he is a consummate writer of sentences, a mordant practitioner of perfected English prose ... Amis's gift for outrage is as alert as ever * Independent *Sometimes sharply funny, sometimes bluntly genial, altogether the most successful book he has written for years * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThe short story is one of the most varied and exciting genres in American literature. This collection brings together many of its finest examples from the early nineteenth century to the present. It contains a richly diverse cast of characters, including convicts, artists, farm labourers, slaves, soldiers and salesmen, witches and ghosts, families and lovers. Their stories are told by some of America''s most celebrated writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Raymond Carver) and a few, like Fanny Fern or Charles W. Chestnutt, who may be less familiar. The collection offers a stimulating combination of acknowledged classics, including Mark Twain''s hilarious ''Jim Smiley''s Jumping Frog'' and Edgar Allan Poe''s chilling ''The Tell-Tale Heart'', and some remarkable pieces that deserve a wider audience, such as Ernest Hemingway''s story of miscommunication, ''Out of Season'', or Lorrie Moore''s tale of modern love and wit, ''Starving Again''.Kasia Boddy''s introduction trac

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Book SynopsisThe short stories of Kingsley Amis - the great master of post-war comic prose - are dark, playful, moving, surprising and extremely funny. This definitive collection gathers all Amis''s short fiction in a single volume for the first time and encompasses five decades of storytelling. In ''The 2003 Claret'', written in 1958, a time machine is invented for the weighty task of sending a man to 2010 to discover what the booze will taste like. In ''Boris and the Colonel'' a Cambridge spy is unearthed in the sleepy English countryside with the help of a plucky horse, while In ''Mason''s Life'' two men meet inside their respective dreams. The collection spans many genres, offering ingenious alternative histories, mystery and horror, satirical reflections and a devilishly funny attacks. Amis''s stories reveal the scope of his imagination and the warmth beneath his acerbic humour, and they all share the unmistakable style and wit of one of Britain''s best loved writers.Kingsley Amis''Trade ReviewA key figure in postwar British culture, whose importance and influence cannot be measured ... distinctive and original -- David Lodge'Among the English comic masters of the twentieth century' * Guardian *A ceaselessly fresh and adorable body of work ... exasperation made poetry -- Julie BurchillKingsley Amis was a big, humane novelist, interested in all manner of people very unlike himself -- Philip Hensher

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Book SynopsisSet against the backdrop of Europe''s slide into Fascism, Blue of Noon is a blackly compelling account of depravity and violence. As its narrator lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters, his internal collapse mirrors the fighting and marching on the streets outside. Exploring the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization, this is a novel torn between identifying with history''s victims and being seduced by the monstrous glamour of its terrible victors, and is one of the twentieth century''s great nihilist works.Trade ReviewThere's a kind of exhilaration in this - and a kind of terror -- Will Self

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Book SynopsisIn these three works of erotic prose Georges Bataille fuses sex and spirituality in a highly personal and philosophical vision of the self. My Mother is a frank and intense depiction of a young man''s sexual initiation and corruption by his mother, where the profane becomes sacred, and intense experience is shown as the only way to transcend the boundaries of society and morality. Madame Edwarda is the story of a prostitute who calls herself God, and The Dead Man, published in 1964 after Bataille''s death, is a startling short tale of cruelty and desire. This volume also contains Bataille''s own introductions to his texts as well as essays by Yukio Mishima and Ken Hollings.Trade ReviewThe power of Bataille's prose is still impressive, his capacity to shock still compelling * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisHubert Selby, Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1928. At the age of 15, he dropped out of school and went to sea with the merchant marines. While at sea he was diagnosed with lung disease. With no other way to make a living, he decided to try writing: 'I knew the alphabet. Maybe I could be a writer.' In 1964 he completed his first book, Last Exit to Brooklyn, which has since become a cult classic. In 1966, it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK. His other books include The Room, The Demon, Requiem for a Dream, Song of the Silent Snow, The Willow Tree and Waiting Period. In 2000, Requiem for a Dream starred Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn and was directed by Darren Aronofsky. Hubert Selby Jr died in Highland Park, Los Angeles, California in April 2004.Trade ReviewSelby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America * New York Times Book Review *An urgent tickertape from hell * Spectator *Selby deploys street slang, common speech, argot and scatology to create a high poetic art...it seems to derive from the greatest American poetry--Whitman, Pound, Williams, and Olson * The Nation *

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Book SynopsisOne of the greatest and most overlooked novels of the twentieth century, by an author championed by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, The Time Regulation Institute appears here in English for the first time-more than fifty years after its original publication in Turkish.This is the story of the misadventures of Hayri Irdals, an unforgettable antihero who, along with an eccentric cast of characters (a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman empire, the life-artist Halit), founds The Time Regulation Institute. The institute''s quixotic quest: to make sure all the clocks in Turkey are set to Western time. Thus begins a brilliant satire about the calamitous arrival of Western and corporate values in tradition-bound Turkey.An uproarious tragicomedy that is still startlingly relevant, The Time Regulation Institute illuminates the collision of East and West, tradition and modernity, that has been playing out in Turkey since the early twentieth century.AHMET HAMDI TANPINAR (1901-1962) was a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, literary historian, and professor. He is considered one of the most significant Turkish novelists of the 20th century. Deeply influenced by Valéry and Bergson, he created a unique cultural universe in his work, bringing together a European literary voice and the sensibilities of the East.MAUREEN FREELY (translator) is the principal translator of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist. She lives in England.ALEXANDER DAWE (translator) is an American translator of French and Turkish. He lives in Istanbul.PANKAJ MISHRA (introducer) is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose writing appears frequently in the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books. He lives in London and India.Trade ReviewAhmet Hamdi Tanpinar is undoubtedly the most remarkable author in modern Turkish literature. With The Time Regulation Institute, this great writer has created an allegorical masterpiece, which makes Turkey's attempts to westernize and its delayed modernity understandable in all its human ramifications -- Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for LiteratureChosen by Boyd Tonkin * Independent – Best Fiction in Translation *

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Book SynopsisJohn le Carré''s first post-glasnost spy novel, The Russia House captures the effect of a slow and uncertain thaw on ordinary people and on the shadowy puppet-masters who command themBarley Blair is not a Service man: he is a small-time publisher, a self-destructive soul whose only loves are whisky and jazz. But it was Barley who, one drunken night at a dacha in Peredelkino during the Moscow Book Fair, was befriended by a high-ranking Soviet scientist who could be the greatest asset to the West since perestroika began, and made a promise. Nearly a year later, his drunken promise returns to haunt him. A reluctant Barley is quickly trained by British Intelligence and sent to Moscow to liaise with a go-between, the beautiful Katya. Both are lonely and disillusioned. Each is increasingly certain that if the human race is to have any future, all must betray their countries ...If you enjoyed The Russia House, you might like le Carré''s The Secret Pilgrim, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''Classic le Carré'' Sunday TimesTrade ReviewClassic le Carré * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThe eighth of John le Carré''s espionage novels to feature his most enduring and well-loved character, George Smiley, and a gripping feat of narrative brilliance, The Secret Pilgrim is published in Penguin Modern Classics with an afterword by the author.The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures, in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this late Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers.If you enjoyed The Secret Pilgrim, you might like le Carré''s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,

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Book SynopsisStella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doilies and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. Smiley knows that Stella feared her husband would murder her, but as he probes further beneath Carne''s respectable veneer, he uncovers far more than a simple crime of passion. In his second novel, le Carré moves outside the world of espionage to reveal the secrets at the heart of another particularly English institution. The result is a pitch-perfect murder mystery, with George Smiley as master detective.THE SECOND GEORGE SMILEY NOVEL''Beautifully intelligent, satiric and witty'' Daily TelegraphTrade ReviewBeautifully elegant, satiric and witty * Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisA Cold War thriller from the master of spy fiction, John le Carré''s The Looking Glass War is a gripping novel of double-crosses, audacious bluffs and the ever-present threat of nuclear war, published in Penguin Modern Classics.When the Department - faded since the war and busy only with bureaucratic battles - hears rumour of a missile base near the West German border, it seems like the perfect opportunity to regain some political standing in the Intelligence market place. The Cold War is at its height and the Department is dying for a piece of the action.Swiftly becoming carried away by fear and pride, the Department and her officers send deactivated agent Fred Leiser back into East Germany, armed only with some schoolboy training and his memories of the war. In the land of eloquent silence that is Communist East Germany, Leiser''s fate becomes inseparable from the Department''s.If you enjoyed The Looking Glass War, you might like le Carré''s The Secret Pilgrim, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.''A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies'' New York Herald Tribune''A book of rare and great power'' Financial TimesTrade ReviewA book of rare and great power * Financial Times *A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies * New York Herald Tribune *

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Book SynopsisMargaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. In this collection of her complete short fiction from across four decades, she examines the intense private worlds and passions of everyday people.From one man''s honeymooning epiphany in ''Hassan''s Tower'' to the journeying fantasies of ''A Voyage to Cythera'', and from the sharp joy of ''The Merry Widow'' to the bloody reality of the collection''s title story, these are moving, witty and provocative tales, exploring cruel and loving relationships, social change and personal obsessions, and confirming her status as a leading practitioner of the art of the short story.Trade ReviewBrims with sharply observed life and the author's seemingly infinite sympathy for "ordinary women" -- Joyce Carol OatesDrabble writes so penetratingly about the female condition that it is impossible not to laugh, wince and admire -- Amanda Craig * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisA powerful story of the shattering effects of the First World War on both a family and a country - from Hans Fallada, bestselling author of Alone in Berlin''This remarkable work, now complete after 76 years, could well be one of the finest novels any of us will ever read'' Irish TimesGustav Hackendahl''s will is law. Known as ''Iron Gustav'', he runs his family and his Berlin carriage business with stern, unyielding discipline. But his children have wills of their own, and soon they slip from his control - some to better lives, some towards disaster. As war breaks out and Gustav''s beloved Germany is devastated by hardship and violence, he finds everything he believes in destroyed. Can the man of iron endure, or even change?Brutal and moving, written with Hans Fallada''s gift for capturing the small tragedies of ordinary lives, Iron Gustav is a heartbreaking family chronicle and an unflinching portrayal of the First World War and its aftermath.Trade ReviewEvery so often you come across a book so finely wrought that you have no doubt about its status as a literary classic. Iron Gustav is one ... The writing is visual, vivid and visceral, the irony delicate, and even when it is cynical the novel doesn't sneer ... Fallada's descriptions of material degradation and squalor equal those of Dickens and Dostoyevsky. He has the gift for complex narrative of Thomas Mann combined with the page-turning powers of great thriller writers such as Raymond Chandler, and the structural control of a great painter or composer ... This [Penguin Modern Classics edition] is the first authentic version of not just a classic, but a masterpiece of world literature -- Paul Levy * Wall Street Journal *A powerful portrayal of the devastating effects of the first world war on a family and a country ... The project went through a tortuous journey, with rewrites ordered by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, which have been taken out of the new edition ... this new edition is as close as possible to Fallada's original * Observer *Fallada captures the small tragedies of family life, the loss of dignity caused by unemployment, squalid housing and the misery of seeing civilized values destroyed. This anti-war book, censored by Goebbels in the Thirties, is a gripping addition to modern German history * Daily Mail *There is a serious cause for celebration: one of the finest German-language works of the 20th century is now available as it was intended to be read ... A vivid, atmospheric portrait of Berlin ... Fallada's literary genius rests not only in how he can sustain a multithreaded narrative but in how he, apparently effortlessly, develops characters through chronicling their actions ... the book triumphs as a study of ordinary Berliners faced with dire adversity; Fallada celebrates them repeatedly, their wariness, their humour, their toughness, their blunt kindness and, above all, their conversation ... This remarkable work, now complete after 76 years, could well be one of the finest novels any of us will ever read. Hans Fallada really was that most rare creature, a born novelist who was also a witness * Irish Times *The 'hundreds of deep rifts' that tear defeated Germany apart play out in microcosm within [Iron Gustav's] family ... Fallada shuffles melodrama, farce and documentary realism ... This, as even Dr Goebbels must have seen, is laughter in the dark -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *A powerful novel ... this new version is something of a publishing coup as it is the first time we have the novel in its entirety in English ... Iron Gustav acutely highlights the chequered fortunes of the ordinary 'little man' against the larger picture of Germany's moral and economic breakdown ... [this is] a saga with the same reach and depth as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks ... a chronicle of Berlin in those turbulent early decades of the 20th century. Key events appear like milestones: war, Versailles, lawless street-fighting, hyperinflation, Weimar hedonism and the first dark shoots of Nazism ... This is a social history writ large and mercifully free of sanctimonious preaching or soft-focus distortions ... Fallada's voice is as beguilingly lucid as ever, his images clear to the point of stark, his blighted and resilient Berliners ringing astoundingly true * National *

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Book SynopsisPrivate detective Lew Archer has better things to do than take on an investigation for Alex Kincaid, a young man claiming that his new bride, Dolly, has gone missing. Snapped by a hotel photographer on the day of their wedding, the beautiful girl vanished only hours after and Alex has heard nothing since. But when Archer begins digging, he finds evidence that links Dolly to brutal murders that span two decades, and a terrible secret. In this byzantine and compelling tale, Ross Macdonald explores the darkest experiences that can bind a family together - and tear it apart.Ross Macdonald''s Lew Archer mysteries rewrote the conventions of the detective novel with their credible, humane hero, and with Macdonald''s insight and moral complexity won new literary respectability for the hardboiled genre previously pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. They have also received praise from such celebrated writers as William Goldman, Jonathan Kellerman, Eudora Welty Trade ReviewA master of structure and story... a writer of immense grace, sensitivity and insight -- Jonathan KellermanA more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were -- Eudora WeltyAmerica's greatest crime writer -- Elmore LeonardRoss MacDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books -- James EllroyThe finest series of detective novels ever written by an American -- William Goldman

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Book SynopsisWhen Maude Slocum - beautiful, frightened and angry - comes to Lew Archer's office with a poison pen letter intended for her husband, he reluctantly agrees to help her. As he follows the Slocums around, Archer finds that Mrs Slocum might have the least of the family's troubles. But why is their handsome ex-chauffeur still hanging around?Trade ReviewThe American private eye, immortalised Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald * The New York Times Book Review *

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Book SynopsisIsaac Bashevis Singer''s work explores humanity in all of its guises. This collection of forty-seven short stories, selected by Singer himself from across the whole of his career, brings together the best of his writing. From the supernatural ''Taibele and Her Demon'' to the poignant ''The Unseen'', and from gentle humour in ''Gimpel the Fool'' to tragedy with ''Yentl the Yeshiva Boy'', these tales explore good and evil, passion and restraint, religious fervour and personal failings, within the traditional shtetls of pre-war Eastern Europe and post-war America.Trade ReviewThere are whole fistfuls of masterpieces in this one volume: a cornucopia of invention... The Collected Stories, when all is said and done, is an American Master's 'Book of Creation'. * The New York Times Book Review *Sparkling and triumphant, Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories are filled with wonder, gratitude, humour, irony and a wry eroticism that manages to exalt the pleasures of the flesh and the soul at the same time * Washington Post Book World *

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Book SynopsisFeatures stories ranging from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don't know what to do with themselves.Trade ReviewOne of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century -- Colm TóibínLispector reads with lively intelligence and is terrifically funny. Language, for her, was the self's light -- Lorrie MooreAn emblematic twentieth-century artist who belongs in the same pantheon as Kafka and Joyce -- Edmund WhiteLispector's Complete Stories is a remarkable book, proof that she was - in the company of Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo and her 19th-century countryman Machado de Assis - one of the true originals of Latin American literature * New York Times *Plenty of writers inspire fierce devotion in their readers... but no one converts the uninitiated into devout believers as suddenly and as vertiginously as Clarice Lispector, the Latin American visionary, Ukrainian-Jewish mystic, and middle-class housewife and mother so revered by her Brazilian fans that she's known by a single name: "Clarice"... You will not be disappointed if you read The Complete Stories. It might even become your bible * New Republic *Translated beautifully and with a vigorous pulse by Katrina Dodson, The Complete Stories is bound to become a kind of bedside Bible or I Ching for readers of Lispector, both old and new. Wherever one opens the book, there is a slice of life to confront. In one of her later stories Lispector recalls the writer Sergio Porto, her friend, who was once asked by a stewardess on a plane if he wanted coffee. To which he replied: "I'll take everything I have a right to." We can approach this volume in a similar spirit: take everything * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisJacob, a Jewish slave held in a mountain village after escaping a massacre by Cossacks, will be killed if he tries to escape. The one saving grace is his love for his master''s daughter, Wanda. They begin a secret affair, trying to avoid the cruelty of the other villagers, until one day Jacob''s fortunes unexpectedly change. Now he must choose between his need to be with his people and his love for Wanda, who in turn will also discover the meaning of brutality. In The Slave, published in 1962, Isaac Bashevis Singer creates a dreamlike portrayal of isolation, rejection, love and the meaning of sacrifice.Trade ReviewA burningly radiant, intensely beautiful book. Singer is answering his age like a prophet -- Ted HughesA peerless storyteller ... The Slave has the strength and authority of a timeless folktale * Saturday Review *I cannot think of any book that catches so magically the pure intensity of the love of simple folk close to nature ... it's a beautiful story -- Terence de Vere WhiteThe tale is tragic and warmhearted, full of mellow wisdom learned through suffering * Yorkshire Post *

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Book SynopsisEdward Venn-Thomas lives in the twentieth century but has been mysteriously transported to the future, and the apparently idyllic society of New Create, where there is no hunger, no war and no dissatisfaction. However Venn-Thomas is starting to find life among the New Cretans rather dull. He comes to realize that their perfect existence, inspired by the poets and magicians of their strange occultic religion, lacks one fundamental thing - evil. So Venn-Thomas sees it as nothing less than his duty to introduce them to the darker side of life. First published in 1949 and also known as Watch the North Wind Rise, Graves''s novel is a thrilling blend of utopian fantasy, science fiction and mythology.Trade ReviewNo one else offers his precise combination of eroticism, nightmare and epigram * Guardian *

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Book Synopsis''He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language'' Anthony Burgess''Look at the harlequins ... Play! Invent the world! Invent reality''. This is the childhood advice given by an aunt to Russian born writer Vadim Vadimovich, who emigrates to England, then Paris, then Germany and then the US, and, now dying, reconstructs his past. He remembers Iris his first wife, Annette his long-necked typist and Bel his daughter, as well as his own bizarre ''numerical nimbus syndrome''.Trade Review'He did us all an honour by electing to use, and transform, our language'

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Book SynopsisJack Kerouac called Doctor Sax, the enigmatic figure who haunted his boyhood imagination, ''my ghost, personal angel, private shadow, secret lover''. In this extraordinary autobiographical account of growing up in Lowell, Massachussetts, told through his fictional alter ego Jack Duluoz, he mingles real people and events with fantastical figures to capture the accents, scents, sights and texture of his childhood: playing among the river weeds and railroad tracks, going to church, witnessing life and death on the street corners. Written when he was staying with William Burroughs in Mexico in 1952, Doctor Sax was Kerouac''s favourite of all his books: a dark, vivid and magical evocation of a boy''s vibrant inner life.Trade ReviewKerouac's best book * Time *Spooky and tender with stretches of sheer phosphorescent fantasy, Doctor Sax has a vigour and a thirst for life ... one of the gems of modern literature * Rolling Stone *

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Book SynopsisIn 1960 Jack Kerouac was near breaking point. Driven mad by constant press attention in the wake of the publication of On the Road, he needed to ''get away to solitude again or die'', so he withdrew to a cabin in Big Sur on the Californian coast. The resulting novel, in which his autobiographical hero Jack Duluoz wrestles with doubt, alcohol dependency and his urge towards self-destruction, is one of Kerouac''s most personal and searingly honest works. Ending with the poem ''Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur'', it shows a man coming down from his hedonistic youth and trying to come to terms with fame, the world and himself.Trade ReviewKerouac's grittiest novel... sensual and uninhibited * The New York Times *Stunning and vivid * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisIn these dark, dreamlike love stories with a twist, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya tells of strange encounters in claustrophobic communal apartments, ill-fated holiday romances, office trysts, schoolgirl crushes, tentative courtships, rampant infidelity, tender devotion and terrifying madness. By turns sly and sweet, earthy and sublime, these fables of flawed love blend black humour and macabre spectacle with transformative moments of grace.Trade ReviewOne of Russia's best living writers ... her tales inhabit a borderline between this world and the next * The New York Times *Petrushevskaya proves that the literary tradition that produced Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Babel is alive and well * The Daily Beast *

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Book SynopsisThe companion novel to Mrs Bridge, this is a pitch-perfect portrayal of marriage and family life and a poignant dissection of the unexamined life.Walter Bridge, husband to India and father to three, is a successful lawyer in a Kansas suburb. The daily dramas of his life only serve to illuminate his narrow prejudices and complacent outlook, yet he is also troubled by existential doubts, dark undercurrents of desire and a yearning for something forever out of his reach. In Mr Bridge, Evan S. Connell gives us a moving, satirical and poetic portrayal of a man who cannot escape his limitations and of a couple growing old together but unable, ultimately, to connect.The companion novel, Mrs Bridge, telling the story from the other side of the marriage, is published in Penguin Modern Classics.''With a delicate and subtle irony, Mr Connell shows us, first from her, then from his point of view, the little daily dramas of this ordinary family. ITrade ReviewAn exquisite tragedy in miniature -- Lionel ShriverMr Bridge is a tour-de-force of contemporary American realism, a beautiful work of fiction * Life *With a delicate and subtle irony, Mr Connell shows us, first from her, then from his point of view, the little daily dramas of this ordinary family. It is very, very funny, often moving and sad, and written with an uncompromising realism that one rarely comes across. To me the Bridges were a revelation: I cannot recommend them too highly * Daily Telegraph *Mr. and Mrs. Bridge are forever human, forever vulnerable, forever pitiable. In spare, whimsical, ironic prose, Connell exposes each and every one of their wrinkles and then, in the end, offers them to us as human beings to be cherished -- Jonathan Yardley

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Book SynopsisThe Penguin English Library Edition of Dubliners by James Joyce''Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears ... But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work''From a child grappling with the death of a fallen priest, to a young woman''s dilemma over whether to elope to Argentina with her lover, to the dance party at which a man discovers just how little he really knows about his wife, these fifteen stories bring the gritty realism of existence in Joyce''s native Dublin to life. With Dubliners, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighte

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Book SynopsisDark Back of Time is a compelling story of the way in which reality blurs into fiction by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. It is translated by Esther Allen in Penguin Modern Classics. ''We lose everything because everything remains except us'', says the mysterious narrator of this extraordinary novel, which meditates on the transience, chance and fragility of life. As a man called Javier Marías recalls the strange events and people that shaped his past, including ghostly literary figures, a pilot, an adventurer, a brother who died as a child and the king of an island in the Caribbean, we begin to question the nature of time, memory and reality itself. Here the writer is both a keeper of memories and a purveyor of illusions, destined to be lost in the dark back of time.Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essayTrade ReviewDark Back of Time is one of the best Spanish novels of the twentieth century * Julia Ortega, Brown University *It leaves you with an impression of having been haunted: the most complex, perfect and outstanding of Marias' novels * Reforma *Neither essay nor novel, Javier Marías' most recent book is, quite simply, magnificent. As a book, it is funny, even hilarious, and at times profound, obsessive, and overwhelming. * Le Monde *The author knows how to dive into the formidable chasms of life, fate and death * El Pais *I was enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies -- Marina Warner * Guardian *Shows sensitivity in exploring an entire shadowland of human experience just beyond the reach of words, and could be said to be a culminating point in the author's career * The Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisA Heart so White is the breathtaking international bestseller and IMPAC Award-winning masterpiece by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013. This Penguin Modern Classics edition features a new Introduction by Jonathan Coe. A Heart so White begins as, In the middle of a family lunch Teresa, just married, goes to the bathroom, unbuttons her blouse and shoots herself in the heart. What made her kill herself immediately after her honeymoon? Years later, this mystery fascinates the young newlywed Juan, whose father was married to Teresa before he married Juan''s mother. As Juan edges closer to the truth, he begins to question his own relationships, and whether he really wants to know what happened. Haunting and unsettling, A Heart So White is a breathtaking portrayal of two generations, two marriages, the relentless power of the past and the terrible price of knowledge.Trade ReviewThe most subtle and gifted writer in contemporary Spanish literature * Boston Globe *I was enthralled * Marina Warner, Guardian *Marías' challenging and seductive technique reaches its pinnacle in A Heart So White * The New York Times *The work of a supreme stylist ... It is brilliantly done * James Woodall, The Times *As unique as it is brilliant... an entertaining and intelligent novel * Washington Post *

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Book SynopsisReason to Breathe by Rebecca Donovan is a US bestselling phenomenon.An utterly addictive and heartbreaking novel that will leave readers breathless and desperate for more. All fans of Jodi Picoult and new adult author fiction such Colleen Hoover''s Slammed, Tammara Webber''s Easy and Abbi Glines'' Vincent Boys will love Rebecca Donovan''s incredible writing. A must-read.A passionate love. A brutal betrayal. Unwavering hope.In a town where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She''s more concerned with feigning perfection, pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises. Emma doesn''t want anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is. When Emma unexpectedly finds love, it challenges her to recognize her own worth - but at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she''s desperate to hide.Praise for Reason to Breathe:''Trade ReviewEmotionally intense and heart-achingly beautiful, Reason to Breathe will linger in your thoughts long after you turn the last page. * Tracey Garvis-Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island *

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Book SynopsisBarely Breathing by Rebecca Donovan is a US bestseller and the incredible sequel to Reason to Breathe.An utterly addictive and heartbreaking YA novel that will leave readers breathless and desperate for more. All fans of Jodi Picoult and new adult fiction such Colleen Hoover''s Slammed, Tammara Webber''s Easy and Abbi Glines'' Vincent Boys will love Rebecca Donovan''s incredible writing. A must-read.Unanswered questions. Burning desire. Heartbreaking consequences.The scandalous secrets of Emma''s abuse are revealed, but she still has so much to learn out about her past. Why did her mother leave her all those years ago? What really happened the night Emma''s father died? Were her memories of being happy just a dream? The repercussions of one horrific night has affected the lives of everyone involved. But with the promise of true love and new relationships, will Emma let it ruin hers for good?Praise for BareTrade ReviewRaw, honest, unflinching, and unforgiving, Barely Breathing will take your emotions for a ride and deliver an ending you didn't see coming * Tracey Garvis-Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island *

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Book SynopsisRoald Dahl''s wickedly funny novels have turned him into the world''s number 1 storyteller. In this collection five splendiferous stories are brought to life by the author himself.Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Abridged)Willy Wonka''s famous chocolate factory is opening at last!James and the Giant Peach (Abridged) A little magic can take you a long wayFantastic Mr. Fox (Unabridged) Nobody outfoxes Fantastic Mr. Fox!The Enormous Crocodile (Unabridged) This greedy crocodile loves to guzzle up little boys and girlsThe Magic Finger (Unabridged) Horrible neighbors learn their lesson from a little girl with powerful magic!

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Book SynopsisThe Man of Feeling is a story of love and memory by Javier Marías, whose highly-anticipated new novel The Infatuations is published in 2013.On a train journey from Paris to Madrid a young opera singer becomes fascinated by those in his compartment: a middle-aged businessman, his alluring wife and their male travelling companion. Soon his life of constant travel, luxury hotels, rehearsal and performance will become entangled with these three people, and the singer will find himself fatefully consumed by Natalia''s beauty. The Man of Feeling is the haunting story of the birth and death of a passion, told in retrospect. Intricately interweaving desire and memory, it explores the nature of love, and asks whether we can ever truly recall something that no longer exists.Trade ReviewMarías is one of the best contemporary writers * J. M. Coetzee *Stylish, cerebral ... Marías is a startling talent * The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisIn these short, capricious and irreverent portraits of twenty-six great writers, from Joyce to Nabokov, Sterne to Wilde, Javier Marías, winner of the Dublin IMPAC prize and author of the bestselling A Heart So White, throws unexpected, and very human, light on authors too often enshrined in the halo of artistic sainthood. Revealing that Conrad actually hated sailing and Emily Brontë was so tough she was known as ''The Major'', among many other stories of eccentricity, drunkenness and even murder, this joyful book uses unusual angles and peculiar details to illuminate writers'' lives in a new way.Javier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish oTrade ReviewNo one else, anywhere, is writing quite like this * Daily Telegraph *Marias is a deeply necessary writer, a crusader, funny, pungent, full of wrath and love * Guardian *Anybody who doesn't read Marías is doomed * Nation *You are dazzled by the author's intelligence and understanding of human nature * Scotsman *

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Book Synopsis''About as close to flawless as any reader could ask for'' The New York Times Book Review''For anyone who has ever felt the contempt of a self-righteous world, this book will resonate within you like a gospel choir. For anyone who hasn''t, this book will be an education'' Barbara Kingsolver Carolina in the 1950s, and Bone - christened Ruth Anna Boatwright - lives a happy life, in and out of her aunt''s houses, playing with her cousins on the porch, sipping ice tea, loving her little sister Reece and her beautiful young mother. But Glen Waddell has been watching them all, wanting her mother too, and when he promises a new life for the family, her mother gratefully accepts. Soon Bone finds herself in a different, terrible world, living in fear, and an exile from everything she knows. Bastard Out of Carolina is a raw, poignant tale of fury, power, love and family.This editon contains an introduction by the author. Dorothy Allison wasTrade ReviewFor anyone who has ever felt the contempt of a self-righteous world, this book will resonate within you like a gospel choir. For anyone who hasn't, this book will be an education * Barbara Kingsolver *Dorothy Allison has an elegantly unpretentious style, raw intensity, and a great big heart. In Bastard out of Carolina she tells a horrific story without malice or self-pity. I read her work with admiration and respect -- Blanche McCrary Boyd

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Book SynopsisBorn in 1902, Isaac Bashevis Singer grew up among fellow Jewish families in Poland. In response to the growing Nazi threat in neighbouring Germany, Singer emigrated to America. Settling in New York, he worked as a journalist for a Yiddish-language newspaper, The Forward. Singer was insistent that even after the Second World War, a wide audience remained for Yiddish texts, and each of his novels were originally written in his native language. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Since Singer's death on July 24 1991 his name has been used in honour for a street in Surfside, Florida, and for the full academic scholarship for undergraduate studies at the University of Miami.Trade ReviewSinger is a writer of far greater than ordinary power * The New York Times *Singer is a master storyteller * Chicago Tribune Book World *

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Book SynopsisShirley Jackson''s Hangsaman is a story of lurking disquiet and haunting disorientation, inspired by the real-life, unsolved disappearance of a female college student.''Shirley Jackson''s stories are among the most terrifying ever written'' Donna Tartt, author of The GoldfinchNatalie Waite, daughter of a mediocre writer and a neurotic housewife, is increasingly unsure of her place in the world. In the midst of adolescence she senses a creeping darkness in her life, which will spread among nightmarish parties, poisonous college cliques and the manipulations of the intellectual men who surround her, as her identity gradually crumbles.This Penguin edition includes a Foreword by Francine Prose.Shirley Jackson''s chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird''s Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.''An amazing writer'' Neil Gaiman''The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse'' A. M. Homes''Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders'' Dorothy ParkerTrade ReviewA masterclass in the unearthly and the opaque -- Julie Myerson * Spectator *The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable ... It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse -- A. M. HomesShirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers ... whose work exerts an enduring spell -- Joyce Carol Oates

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Book SynopsisReminiscent of her classic story ''The Lottery'', Jackson''s disturbing and darkly funny first novel exposes the underside of American suburban life.''Her books penetrate keenly to the terrible truths which sometimes hide behind comfortable fictions, to the treachery beneath cheery neighborhood faces and the plain manners of country folk; to the threat that sparkles at the rainbow''s edge of the sprinkler spray on even the greenest lawns, on the sunniest of midsummer mornings'' Donna TarttIn Pepper Street, an attractive suburban neighbourhood filled with bullies and egotistical bigots, the feelings of the inhabitants are shallow and selfish: what can a neighbour gain from another neighbour, what may be won from a friend? One child stands alone in her goodness: little Caroline Desmond, kind, sweet and gentle, and the pride of her family. But the malice and self-absorption of the people of Pepper Street lead to a terrible event that will destroy the community of which they are so proud. Exposing the murderous cruelty of children, and the blindness and selfishness of adults, Shirley Jackson reveals the ugly truth behind a ''perfect'' world.Shirley Jackson''s chilling tales have the power to unsettle and terrify unlike any other. She was born in California in 1916. When her short story The Lottery was first published in The New Yorker in 1948, readers were so horrified they sent her hate mail; it has since become one of the greatest American stories of all time. Her first novel, The Road Through the Wall, was published in the same year and was followed by five more: Hangsaman, The Bird''s Nest, The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, widely seen as her masterpiece. Shirley Jackson died in her sleep at the age of 48.''An amazing writer'' Neil Gaiman''Shirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers ... whose work exerts an enduring spell'' Joyce Carol Oates''An unburnished exercise in the sinister'' The New York TimesTrade ReviewAn unburnished exercise in the sinister * The New York Times *Her books penetrate keenly to the terrible truths which sometimes hide behind comfortable fictions, to the treachery beneath cheery neighborhood faces and the plain manners of country folk; to the threat that sparkles at the rainbow's edge of the sprinkler spray on even the greenest lawns, on the sunniest of midsummer mornings -- Donna TarttShirley Jackson is one of those highly idiosyncratic, inimitable writers ... whose work exerts an enduring spell -- Joyce Carol Oates

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Book SynopsisA searing, unflinchingly realist novel about life at war, written during the First World War''Men are made to be husbands, fathers - men, in short! Not animals that hunt one another down'' Under Fire follows the fortune of a French battalion during the First World War. For this group of ordinary men, thrown together from all over France and longing for home, war is simply a matter of survival, and the arrival of their rations, a glimpse of a pretty girl or a brief reprieve in hospital is all they can hope for.Based directly on Henri Barbusse''s experiences of the trenches, Under Fire is the most famous French novel of the First World War, starkly evoking the mud, stench and monotony of an eternal battlefield. It is also a powerful critique of inequality between ranks, the incomprehension of those who have not experienced battle, and of war itself.Trade ReviewOne of the most influential of all war novels * History Today *

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Book SynopsisMulk Raj Anand''s extraordinarily powerful story of an Untouchable in India''s caste system, with a new introduction by Ramachandra Guha, author of GandhiBakha is a proud and attractive young man, yet none the less he is an Untouchable - an outcast in India''s caste system. It is a system that is even now only slowly changing and was then as cruel and debilitating as that of apartheid. Into this vivid re-creation of one day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, Anand pours a vitality, fire and richness of detail that earn his place as one of the twentieth century''s most important Indian writers.''One of the most eloquent and imaginative works to deal with this difficult and emotive subject'' Martin Seymour-Smith''It recalled to me very vividly the occasions I have walked ''the wrong way'' in an Indian city, and it is a way down which no novelist has yet taken me'' E. M. ForsterTrade ReviewOne of the most eloquent and imaginative works to deal with this difficult and emotive subject -- Martin Seymour-SmithIt recalled to me very vividly the occasions I have walked 'the wrong way' in an Indian city, and it is a way down which no novelist has yet taken me -- E. M. Forster

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Book SynopsisThe Haunted Life is the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin, a college track star determined to idle away what he knows will be one of his last innocent summers in his tranquil New England home town. But with the war escalating in Europe and his two closest friends both plotting their escapes, he realizes how sheltered his upbringing has been. As he surveys the competing influences of his youth, he struggles to determine what might lead to an intellectually authentic life. The Haunted Life is ultimately a meditation on intellectual truth, male friendship and the desire for movement - all themes that would dominate Kerouac''s later work.

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Book Synopsis“One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century . . . Simenon was unequaled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories.” —The GuardianThe first-ever English publication of Georges Simenon’s compelling novel about summer escape and elusive obsessions“The island itself. Its throbbing heat as if in a belljar under the sun, the scorpion in his son’s bed, the deafening sound of cicadas.”During his first holiday on the island of Porquerolles, Dr. Mahé caught a glimpse of something irresistible. As the memory continues to haunt him, he falls prey to a delusion that may offer an escape from his conventional existence—or may destroy him. Taut, insightful, and impossible to put down, this is the first English translation of The Mahé Circle, Simenon’s dark, malevolent depiction oTrade ReviewOne of Georges Simenon's most powerful roman durs - the non-Maigret novels in which ordinary lives are suddenly, and at times seemingly inexplicably, unsettled and irrevocably changed. Written in Simenon's spare signature style, it's unputdownably gripping -- John Gray * Guardian *Sublime . . . as good, in its unforced and unemphatic way, as anything in Proust or even Flaubert . . . a sort of masterpiece -- John Banville * New York Review of Books *Extraordinary . . . Simenon is one of the most important writers of the 20th century . . . In 150 high-pressure pages, it gives insights into the world, the mind and the horrible frustration of a French country doctor that most writers would struggle to convey with 10 times the word-count -- Sam Jordison * Independent *

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