Search results for ""VIRAGO""

Originally published in the 1930s and 1940s and never before collected, these stories by the incomparable Angela Thirkell relate merry scenes of a trip to the pantomime, escapades on ice, a Christmas Day gone awry, and an electrifying afternoon for Laura Morland and friends at Low Rising, not to mention the chatter of the arty set at a London private view. Charming, irreverent and full of mischievous humour, they offer the utmost entertainment in any season of the year.

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'Bears Highsmith's unique, unsurpassed mixture of unsettling psychological insights' THE TIMES 'The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense' MARK BILLINGHAM 'Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night' NEW YORKER Sydney Bartleby has killed his wife. At least, he has thought about it, compulsively, repeatedly, plotting schemes, designing escapes, forging alibis. Of course he has; he's a thriller writer. He even knows how to dispose of her body. But when Alicia takes a long, unannounced holiday, Sydney descends into the treacherous world of his own fantasy.A masterpiece of noir fantasy in which Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday life.

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF BLACK NARCISSUS AND THE RIVER 'A haunting tale . . . the whole book burns with the beauty and poetry' EVENING STANDARD'Powerful adult themes underlie the novel's glimmering surface' ROSIE THOMAS, GUARDIAN 'One of our best and most captivating novelists' PHILIP HENSHERSophie Barrington Ward, without a husband, with two children and very little income, is faced with making a new life. She arrives in the Eden of Himalayan Kashmir to set up home in a tumbledown cottage surrounded by flowers and herbs. Settling down to live quietly, frugally and peacefully with her new neighbours, she is unaware of the turmoil her arrival provokes as the villagers compete fiercely for her patronage. Sophie is determined to live with the Indians and like it. Pundit Pramatha Kaul, her wise landlord, shakes his head. Profit David, her merchant friend, warns her. But when Sophie's cook makes a drastic bid to secure his position, the unwanted consequences are catastrophic . . .Mesmerising and thoughtful, this Godden's lesser-known classic evokes India's uniquely beautiful landscape amidst a timeless tale of misunderstanding.

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INTRODUCED BY JANE GARDAM'A small Gothic masterpiece . . . I have read it many times, and with every re-read I marvel again at its many qualities' SARAH WATERS'It projects its fantastic story with a tangible realness . . . A wonderful and original novel' ALAN HOLLINGHURST'She shows mastery of the structures of a fast-moving narrative and a consistent backdrop to the ecstasies and agonies of the human condition' JANE GARDAM, SPECTATOR Growing up in Edwardian South London, Alice Rowlands longs for romance and excitement, for a release from a life that is dreary, restrictive and lonely. Her father, a vet, is harsh and domineering; his new girlfriend brash and lascivious. Alice seeks refuge in memories and fantasies, in her rapturous longing for Nicholas, a handsome young sailor and in the blossoming of what she perceives as her occult powers. A series of strange events unfolds that leads her, dressed in bridal white to a scene of ecstatic triumph and disaster among the crowds on Clapham Common. The Vet's Daughter is a uniquely vivid, witty and touching story of love and mystery.

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A seminal fiction collection that stretches from Gertrude Stein to Grace Paley, from Edith Wharton to Angela Carter, from Mae West to Margaret Atwood, from Zora Neale Hurston to Joyce Carol Oates. Add to this another ninety-two brilliant writers a reader can relish the thought of careering between - and all collected together in the one anthology. An international celebration of extracts that chart our time: stories of poverty and wealth, work and play, tales of changing environments - both urban and rural, in peace and wartime. A book of Virago authors with every year of the twentieth century represented by groundbreaker after literary groundbreaker. Brilliant Careers gathers all the energies and circumstances of twentieth-century women writers into the one book, covering ten decades from the century closest to all our hearts, swinging from one end to the other of a hundred years of history and change via the very best of twentieth century fiction.

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Named by the Guardian as one of 'the 100 best novels,' and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont is a humorous and compassionate look at friendship between an old woman and a young man from a 'magnificent...writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' (David Baddiel, Independent)On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel.'Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds' -Robert McCrum 'the 100 best novels', Guardian

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INTRODUCED BY SARAH WATERS'Every one of her books is a treat and this is my favourite, because of its wonderful cast of characters, and because of the deftness with which Taylor's narrative moves between them ... A wonderful writer' SARAH WATERSIn the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Beautiful divorcee Tory is secretly involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory's best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence is aware, however, and is appalled by the treachery she observes. Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, constantly prodding her daughters for news of the outside world. And Lily Wilson, a lonely young widow, is frightened of her own home. Into their lives steps Bertram, a retired naval officer with the unfortunate capacity to inflict lasting damage while trying to do good.'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' - ELIZABETH BOWEN'Always intelligent, often subversive and never dull, Elizabeth Taylor is the thinking person's dangerous housewife. Her sophisticated prose combines elegance, icy wit and freshness in a stimulating cocktail' - VALERIE MARTIN'A magnificent and underrated mid-20th-century writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' - DAVID BADDIEL

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'Beneath the folk rhythms and the lyrical simplicities, Nichols's poems preach disquiet' OBSERVER'Not only rich music, an easy lyricism, but also grit, and earthy honesty, a willingness to be vulnerable and clean' GWENDOLYN BROOKS'Grace Nichols has wit, acidity, tenderness, any number of gifts at her disposal' JEANETTE WINTERSONCelebrating five decades of the feminist publisher, each of the Five Gold Reads represents an iconic moment in Virago's history, from the 1970s to today.A stunning collection of poems from Grace Nicholas, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2021 Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors. In other sequences of this collection, Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'.

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By the bestselling author of Black Narcissus and The Battle of the Villa Fiorita'This is an absolutely heart-warming read, which will make you laugh, cry and love it' GUARDIAN 'Her craftsmanship is always sure' NEW YORK TIMES'Godden's expert narration, her beguiling setting and her heartening celebration of love and happy endings' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'Never forget, Charlotte, you were born to be a dancer . . . Never forget. Promise.'Before her ballet teacher died, Lottie promised Madame Holbein to be the dancer her mother never lived to become. Orphaned at birth, Lottie has been brought up by her aunt, and though she is loved, she is lonely. Then she finds Prince, a spaniel puppy, and discovers a love and loyalty that is boundless. When Lottie passes the tough audition for Queen's Chase, Her Majesty's Junior Ballet School, everybody is thrilled - except, surprisingly, Lottie. She will have to board at school, and what will happen to her beloved dog? To choose between the two is breaking her heart.

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By the author of Black Narcissus and The River'One of our best and most captivating novelists' PHILIP HENSHER'She has distilled in simple, luminous prose the experiences of expatriate India, of childhood and its innocence' LUCY HUGHES-HALLET, SUNDAY TIMES '[Godden has] a genius for storytelling' EVENING STANDARD For Emily Pool, India is a magical place where she has the freedom to escape her mother's suffocating influence. Her days are spent exploring the canals and gardens of East Bengal, and admiringly observing her glamorous, dignified neighbours, the Nikolides. But just as the cracks in Emily's family home are papered over, the Pools strive to maintain an outward impression of respectability, and it is through the Nikolides that Emily is exposed to a world of adult deceit and attrition. And when her beloved dog dies, the event forces a confrontation and reveals to Emily that nothing in the town is quite as it seems . . .

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When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind: the seedy underworld of Berlin, involving kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy's protector as friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all. The Boy Who Followed Ripley is followed by Ripley Under Water.

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Having freed the city of Athens from the onerous tribute demanded by the ruler of Knossos - the sacrifice of noble youths and maidens to the appetite of the Labyrinth's monster - Theseus has returned home to find his father dead and himself the new king. But his adventures have only just begun: he still must confront the Amazons, capture their queen, Hippolyta, and face the tragic results of Phaedra's jealous rage. Piecing together the fragments of myth and using her deep understanding of the cultures reflected in these legends, Mary Renault has constructed an enthralling narrative of a time when heroes battled monsters and gods strode the earth.

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'Comyns's world is weird and wonderful . . . a neglected genius' LUCY SCHOLES, OBSERVER'A curious hybrid: a mixture of domestic disaster, social commentary, comedy, and romance . . . ' KATHERINE A. POWERS, BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW 'I defy anyone to read the opening pages and not to be drawn in, as I was . . . Quite simply, Comyns writes like no one else' MAGGIE O'FARRELL Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s where poverty, babies (however much loved) and husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic and comes to regret her marriage and her affair. But in this case virtue is more than its own reward, for repentance brings an abrupt end to the cycle of unsold pictures, unpaid bills and unwashed dishes . . .

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By the author of Black Narcissus and The River'Rumer Godden's novels have a timeless shimmer' GUARDIAN 'Touching, amusing, enchanting . . . an exceptional work' OBSERVER'Her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty' NEW YORK TIMES In a crumbling Calcutta mansion, with faded frescos and a jasmine-covered garden, the Lemarchant family live, clinging to the fringes of respectability: neither Indian nor English, they are accepted by no one and exploited by all.After only a day in India, Stephen Bright meets Rosa Lemarchant. In an ill-fitting dress once belonging to her sister, she is awkward, shy and couldn't be more different from the stories he has heard of fast 'Eurasian' girls. Ignorant of Calcutta's strict codes of conformity, he falls in love with Rosa and becomes enchanted by the building in which she lives, determined to uncover its secrets.Mystery pervades this story of a memory-haunted house in old Calcutta, as secret as a sundial in a ruined garden.

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Elsie, sheltered and naive, is seventeen and unhappy. Stifled by life with her bickering parents in a bleak Cornish village, she falls in love with the first presentable young man she meets - Peter, an ambitious London doctor. On his advice she runs away from home and goes to live with her sister Leonora, who escaped eight years earlier. But there are surprises in store for conventional Elsie as her sister has a rather bohemian lifestyle: not only does Leo live in a houseboat on the Thames where she writes Westerns for a living, she shares her boat - and her bed - with Helen. When Peter pays a visit, turning his attention from one 'friendly young lady' to the next, he disturbs the calm for each of them - with results unforeseen by all . . .Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in 1943 partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. The result is this witty and stylish social comedy.

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With a Haynes Manual, you can do it yourself, from simple maintenance to full repairs. Every Manual is based on a complete stripdown of the bike. Our authors and technicians work out the best methods to do a job and present this with the home mechanic in mind. Our Manuals have clear instructions and hundreds of photographs that show each step. Whether you're a beginner or a competent mechanic, you can save money with Haynes., Each Manual includes:, Clear and easy to follow page layout, Full procedures written from hands-on experience, Easy-to-follow photos, Faultfinding information, How to make special tools, Colour wiring diagrams (where available)

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Little Tales of Misogyny is Highsmith's legendary, cultish short-story collection. With an eerie simplicity of style, Highsmith turns our next-door neighbours into sadistic psychopaths, lying in wait among white picket fences and manicured lawns. In these darkly satirical, often hilarious, sketches you'll meet seemingly familiar women with the power to destroy both themselves and the men around them. 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times

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Joyce Marlow presents a fascinating and varied collection of women's writing on the Great War drawn from diaries, newspapers, letters and memoirs from across Europe and the States. Starting with material from 1914, she outlines the pre-war campaigns for suffrage and then the demand from women eager to be counted amongst those in action. Contemporary accounts and reports describe their experience on the field and reactions to women in completely new areas, such as surgery as well as on the home front. The words of women in the UK, America, France and Germany display a side to the war rarely seen. Familiar voices such as those of Vera Brittain, Millicent Fawcett, May Sinclair, Alexandra Kollontai, the Pankhurst family and Beatrice Webb, as well as the unknown, make this anthology a truly indispensable guide to the female experience of a war after which women's lives would never be the same.

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Athens and Sparta, the mighty city states of ancient Greece, locked together in a quarter century of conflict: the Peloponnesian War. Alexias the Athenian was born, passed through childhood and grew to manhood in those troubled years, that desperate and dangerous epoch when the golden age of Pericles was declining into uncertainty and fear for the future. Of good family, he and his friends are brought up and educated in the things of the intellect and in athletic and martial pursuits. They learn to hunt and to love, to wrestle and to question. And all the time his star of destiny is leading him towards the moment when he must stand alongside his greatest friend Lysis in the last great clash of arms between the cities.

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Joanna Burton was born in South Africa but sent by her missionary father to be raised in Yorkshire. There she dreams of the far-off lands she will visit and adventures to come. At eighteen, tall and flaxen-haired, she meets Teddy Leigh, a young man on his way to the trenches of the First World War. Joanna has been in love before - with Sir Walter Raleigh, with the Scarlet Pimpernel, with Coriolanus - but this is different. Teddy tells her he's been given the world to wear as a golden ball. Joanna believes him and marries him, but the fabled shores recede into the distance when, after the war, Teddy returns in ill health. The magic land turns out to be the harsh reality of motherhood and life on a Yorkshire farm. Yet still she dares to dream.

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'Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece' - Robert McCrum, Guardian, 'The Best 100 Novels''An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth' - SARAH WATERS 'Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabath Bowen - soul-sisters all' ANNE TYLEROn a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unlikely friendship with an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who sees her as inspiration for his novel.'Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds' -Robert McCrum 'the 100 best novels', Guardian

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAINCompleted just months before Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995, Small g explores the labyrinthine intricacies of passion, sexuality, and jealousy in a charming tale of love misdirected.'It has a serenity rarely found in Highsmith's world' GEOFFREY ELBORN, GUARDIAN 'What is most remarkable in this novel is the empathy . . . with which Highsmith writes about gay men' FRANCIS KING, SPECTATOR 'Like Ripley, [Highsmith's characters] burn in a reader's memory' LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW At the 'small g', a Zurich bar known for its not exclusively gay clientele, the lives of a small community are played out one summer.Rickie Markwalder is a designer whose lover Petey was brutally murdered. Rickie and his performing dog Lulu are regulars at the bar, as are vindictive Renate, a seamstress, and her teenage apprentice Luisa. Into their lives comes Teddie, impressionable and beautiful, and a catalyst for the series of events that will change everything.Patricia Highsmith's final novel is an intricate exploration of love and sexuality, the depths of spite and the triumph of human kindness. It is a work that, in the tradition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, shows us how bizarre and unpredictable love can be. Small g, in the words of her biographer Andrew Wilson, is an 'extended fairy tale suggesting that . . . happiness is precarious and . . . romance should be embraced'.

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''Spellbinding . . . Probably her best fiction'' - Sunday TimesThe soldier returns from the front to the three women who love him. His wife, Kitty, with her cold, moonlight beauty, and his devoted cousin Jenny wait in their exquisite home on the crest of the Harrow-weald. Margaret Allington, his first and long-forgotten love, is nearby in the dreary suburb of Wealdstone. But the soldier is shell-shocked and can only remember the Margaret he loved fifteen years before, when he was a young man and she an inn-keeper''s daughter. His cousin he remembers only as a childhood playmate; his wife he remembers not at all. The women have a choice - to leave him where he wishes to be, or to ''cure'' him. It is Margaret who reveals a love so great that she can make the final sacrifice.Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'Venomously accurate' SUNDAY TIMES 'A border zone of the macabre, the disturbing, the not quite accidental . . . Highsmith achieves the effect of the occult without any resources to supernatural machinery' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying' VOGUE People Who Knock on the Door is a tale about blind faith and the slippery notion of justice that lies beneath the peculiarly American veneer of righteousness.In a pitiless story of prying suburban self-righteousness, Patricia Highsmith introduces the Alderman family as they descend into moral crisis. When small-town insurance salesman Richard Alderman becomes a born-again Christian, his once tight-knit family quickly begins to rip apart at the seams. He and his youngest son, Robbie, embrace their newfound faith, while his elder son Arthur rejects it. Caught in the middle of the ensuing web of lies, his wife, Lois, tries to keep the family together, but when the church elders start to interfere in Arthur's love life, events spiral toward violence. In this masterful late work, Highsmith weaves a powerful tale about blind faith and the peculiar ideas of justice that lie underneath the veneer of respectability.

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INTRODUCED BY SARAH WATERS'Every one of her books is a treat and this is my favourite, because of its wonderful cast of characters, and because of the deftness with which Taylor's narrative moves between them ... A wonderful writer' SARAH WATERS'Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one's own experience' ELIZABETH BOWENIn the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Beautiful divorcee Tory is painfully involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory's best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence is aware, however, and is appalled by the treachery she observes. Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, constantly prodding her daughters for news of the outside world. And Lily Wilson, a lonely young widow, is frightened of her own home. Into their lives steps Bertram, a retired naval officer with the unfortunate capacity to inflict lasting damage while trying to do good.Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

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By the author of Black Narcissus and The River'Rumer Godden's novels have a timeless shimmer' GUARDIAN 'One hundred years after her birth, Rumer Godden's novels still pulse with life' MATTHEW DENNISON, TELEGRAPH 'Her craftsmanship is always sure' NEW YORK TIMES 'The motto was Pax but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort . . .'Bruised by tragedy, Philippa Talbot leaves behind a successful career with the civil service for a new calling: to join an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns. In this small community of fewer than one hundred women, she soon discovers all the human frailties: jealousy, love, despair. But each crisis of heart and conscience is guided by the compassion and intelligence of the Abbess and by the Sisters' shared bond of faith and ritual. Away from the world, and yet at one with it, Philippa must learn to forgive and forget her past . . .

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BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'One of our best and most captivating novelists' PHILIP HENSHER '[Godden] writes with grace and a cheerfully lilting prose' KIRKUS REVIEWS 'Her craftsmanship is always sure' NEW YORK TIMES A revered effigy of the God, Shiva, is missing from the Patna Hall Hotel on south India's exquisite Coromandel coast. Was it stolen, and to whom does it belong? Young lawyer Michael Dean, sent from London to argue the case for the defence, falls under the spell of Artemis, a graceful archaeologist who is staying at the hotel; but she proves as elusive as the mystery of the theft he is working on. Her final novel, Cromartie vs The God Shiva is a magical, evocative exploration of art, love, class and greed set in Godden's beloved southern India.

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' THE TIMES 'I love Highsmith so much . . . What a revelation her writing is' GILLIAN FLYNN 'No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying' VOGUE 'Ramón had done it. Obviously! He thought about Ramón, his Catholic soul trapped in his passion for Lelia. He'd find Ramón and see that he paid with his life for what he had done.'In A Game for the Living, threads of sexual jealousy and guilt are shot through with all Patricia Highsmith's uncanny talent for the unexpected.Ramón mends furniture. Theodore paints. A devout Catholic, Ramón lives in Mexico City, not far from where he was born into poverty. Theodore, a rich German transplanted to a country where money buys some comfort but no peace, believes in nothing at all. You'd think the two had nothing in common. Except, of course, that both had slept with Lelia. The two were good friends, so neither minded sharing her affections. They did mind, however, when Lelia was found raped, murdered, and horribly mutilated. The two friends, suspects both, twist in a limbo of tension and doubt, each seeking his own form of solace and truth.A thrilling, psychologically complex novel, rich with setting, A Game for the Living is Highsmith at her best.

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'The moment I got my job at Virago in 1978 I knew it would be a long time before I would leave. I certainly wouldn't have had the brazen hope then-only twenty-five and very recently new to Britain-that I would ever become the Publisher, but I did know that I had found my home: where books, ideas, politics, imagination, feminism, and business was the air we breathed . . .' A Bite of the Apple is part-memoir, part history of Virago, and part thoughts on over forty years of feminist publishing. This is the story of how the authors and staff who, driven by passion, conviction and excitement, have made Virago Press one of the most important and influential English-language publishers in the world. Lennie Goodings has been with the iconic press founded by Carmen Callil almost since the start. First a publicist and then for over twenty years, publisher and editor, she has worked with extraordinary authors: Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, Sarah Waters, Linda Grant, Natasha Walter, Naomi Wolf and Maya Angelou among many others. Virago has been a life-changer for Lennie Goodings - but certainly not only for her. Following the chronology of the press and the enormous breadth of the Virago titles published over these years, she sets her story in the context of feminism, and segues into thoughts on editing, post-feminism, reading, breaking boundaries, and the Virago Modern Classics. Virago lives within the tension between idealism and pragmatism; between sisterhood and celebrity; between watching feminism wax and wane at the same time as knowing so many of the battles are still to be won. This book is about how it felt to be there. A Bite of the Apple is a celebration of writing, of publishing, and of reading.

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Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to India. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling. But Alexander's legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams.

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The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander's life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas is sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but finds freedom with Alexander the Great after the Macedon army conquers his homeland. Their relationship sustains Alexander as he weathers assassination plots, the demands of two foreign wives, a sometimes mutinous army, and his own ferocious temper. After Alexander's mysterious death, we are left wondering if this Persian boy understood the great warrior and his ambitions better than anyone.

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Alexander's beauty, strength and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son's loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle's tutoring provoked his mind and Homer's Iliad fuelled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon's cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander's skills had grown to match his fiery ambition.

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'The moment I got my job at Virago in 1978 I knew it would be a long time before I would leave. I certainly wouldn't have had the brazen hope then-only twenty-five and very recently new to Britain-that I would ever become the Publisher, but I did know that I had found my home: where books, ideas, politics, imagination, feminism, and business was the air we breathed . . .' A Bite of the Apple is part-memoir, part history of Virago, and part thoughts on over forty years of feminist publishing. This is the story of how the authors and staff who, driven by passion, conviction and excitement, have made Virago Press one of the most important and influential English-language publishers in the world. Lennie Goodings has been with the iconic press founded by Carmen Callil almost since the start. First a publicist and then for over twenty years, publisher and editor, she has worked with extraordinary authors: Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, Sarah Waters, Linda Grant, Natasha Walter, Naomi Wolf and Maya Angelou among many others. Virago has been a life-changer for Lennie Goodings - but certainly not only for her. Following the chronology of the press and the enormous breadth of the Virago titles published over these years, she sets her story in the context of feminism, and segues into thoughts on editing, post-feminism, reading, breaking boundaries, and the Virago Modern Classics. Virago lives within the tension between idealism and pragmatism; between sisterhood and celebrity; between watching feminism wax and wane at the same time as knowing so many of the battles are still to be won. This book is about how it felt to be there. A Bite of the Apple is a celebration of writing, of publishing, and of reading.

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A range of beautifully produced products celebrating the heritage of the Virago Modern Classics list.

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A delicious detective story set in 1930s New York, and the winner of the inaugural Virago/The Pool New Crime Writer Award.

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Using the cover artwork of our much-loved Virago Modern Classics hardback range, these elegant notebooks celebrate three of our most popular titles: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; Excellent Women by Barbara Pym and Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. They are a must-have for all Virago fans, and are surely the most stylish way of collecting notes on your favourite books. Or maybe it will inspire you to write a novel of your own . . . Each notebook features a ribbon bookmark, high-quality paper and matching endpapers. Rebecca and Excellent Women feature artwork by award-winning textile designer Neisha Crosland: www.neishacrosland.com Valley of the Dolls features artwork by textile designer and founder of Biba, Barbara Hulanicki: www.barbarahulanickidesign.com

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From the bestselling author Patricia Highsmith comes a brilliantly gripping psychological thriller about the fine line between love and obsession. Now reissued as part of the Virago Modern Classics Green Spines design.

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Using the cover artwork of our much-loved Virago Modern Classics hardback range, these elegant unlined notebooks celebrate three of our most popular titles: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; and Good Behaviour by Molly Keane. These beautiful notebooks are a must-have for all Virago fans - surely the most stylish way of collecting notes on your favourite books. Or maybe they will inspire you to write a novel of your own . . . Each notebook features a ribbon bookmark, high-quality paper and matching endpapers.The Talented Mr Ripley and The Magic Toyshop feature artwork by vintage textile designers Marian Mahler and Jacqueline Groag. Good Behaviour features a cover by award-winning designers Eley Kishimoto: http://www.eleykishimoto.com/

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Hubo un tiempo no muy lejano en que los cuentos de hadas no estaban destinados a los niños. Los relatos incluidos en este mítico volumen, recogidos por Angela Carter para la editorial Virago, donde durante años han sido uno de sus longsellers, tampoco son para niños. En ellos encontramos sangre, humor, sexo y muerte. No hay princesas ñoñas ni hadas maravillosas, sino jóvenes astutas, ancianas taimadas, chicas malas, hechiceras, parteras vengativas, mozas ladronas, novias rastreras, madres, hijas y hermanas raras. Solo una escritora tan radical como Angela Carter podría haber sido capaz de recopilar esta antología de relatos, todos protagonizados por mujeres, una celebración del universo femenino a través de los tiempos, ilustrado con los grabados originales de la edición inglesa.Por fin en castellano la mítica colección de cuentos maravillosos que Angela Carter recopiló para Virago Press y que se convirtió en un auténtico longseller.

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Using the cover artwork of our much-loved Virago Modern Classics hardback range, these elegant porcelain mugs celebrate three of our most popular titles: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; Excellent Women by Barbara Pym and Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. They are a must-have for all Virago fans, and are surely the most stylish way to enjoy your morning coffee! Each mug is presented in a beautiful gift-box with corresponding artwork. The mugs are dishwasher and microwave safe. Rebecca and Excellent Women feature artwork by award-winning textile designer Neisha Crosland: www.neishacrosland.com Valley of the Dolls features artwork by textile designer and founder of Biba, Barbara Hulanicki: www.barbarahulanickidesign.com

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The first book by a black women to sell over one million copies - this gripping novel from 1946 is as prescient and powerful today as when it was first published. Now reissued as part of the Virago Modern Classics Green Spine design.

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