Современная проза на английском языке [T], часть 2

The new novel in English from one of Norway s most celebrated writers.

T Singer confronts indomitable loneliness in Solstad s classic, heartbreaking yet darkly comic style.

Singer, a thirty-four-year-old recently trained librarian, arrives by train in the small town of Notodden to begin a new and anonymous life. He falls in love with Merete, a ceramicist, and moves in with her and her young daughter. After a few years together, the relationship starts to falter, and as the couple is on the verge of separating a car accident prompts a dramatic change in Singer s life

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Years on from Trainspotting Sick Boy is back in Edinburgh after a long spell in London. Having failed spectacularly as a hustler, pimp, husband, father and businessman, Sick Boy taps into an opportunity which to him represents one last throw of the dice. However, to realise his ambitions within the Adult industries, Sick Boy must team up with old pal and fellow exile Mark Renton. Still scheming, still scamming, Sick Boy and Renton soon find out that they have unresolved issues to address concerning the unhinged Begbie, the troubled, drug-addled Spud, but, most of all, with each other.

T2 Trainspotting was previously published as Porno.

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Ann Patchett's second novel to be published in the UK, following the Orange Prize-shortlisted 'The Magician's Assistant'.
John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. When his son is taken away to Miami by his mother, Nickel is left with nothing but Muddy's, the Memphis blues bar that he manages. Then he hires Fay Taft, a young white waitress from east Tennessee who has a volatile brother, Carl, in tow. They spell nothing but trouble for Nickel. Fay stirs up both romantic and paternal impulses in him and Carl is clearly a no-good.

But Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft, Fay and Carl's dead father, and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met but whose place he has taken.

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In 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 The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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After an eventful start to his first ever teaching post in the sleepy village of Risingdale, Tom Dwyer is hoping for a bit of calm. Nursing a broken heart after a romantic disappointment, he just wants to keep his head down and get on with his job.

But it is not to be. A beautiful London artist sets tongues wagging when she moves into the village, and her precocious yet frail son is in Tom's class. On top of that, his colleague's malicious ex-husband is back, determined to create mischief, and a tragedy on one of the winding country roads sends the village reeling. And all this alongside a class of children who still seem to know more about farming than fractions.

With its colourful mix of characters both old and new and its many laugh-out-loud moments, Tales Out of School is a warm, humorous portrayal of life in a small Yorkshire village.

Серия: Top of the Dale

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After an eventful start to his first ever teaching post in the sleepy village of Risingdale, Tom Dwyer is hoping for a bit of calm. Nursing a broken heart after a romantic disappointment, he just wants to keep his head down and get on with his job.

But it is not to be. A beautiful London artist sets tongues wagging when she moves into the village, and her precocious yet frail son is in Tom's class. On top of that, his colleague's malicious ex-husband is back, determined to create mischief, and a tragedy on one of the winding country roads sends the village reeling. And all this alongside a class of children who still seem to know more about farming than fractions.

Серия: Top of the Dale

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In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time . . .

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes Tales from the Cafe, a story of four new customers each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula's time-travelling offer.

Among some faces that will be familiar to readers of Toshikazu Kawaguchi's previous novel, we will be introduced to:

The man who goes back to see his best friend who died 22 years ago
The son who was unable to attend his own mother's funeral
The man who travelled to see the girl who he could not marry
The old detective who never gave his wife that gift . . .

This beautiful, simple tale tells the story of people who must face up to their past, in order to move on with their lives. Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

Серия: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

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The village is bedevilled by talk and all is not as it seems in the village of Turnham Malpas ...

Does pushy newcomer Venetia have her eye on Peter, the handsome rector Is Jeremy, her husband, really making a success of the new health club And why does Willie's new love set a vicious tongue wagging In the Royal Oak, the usual banter has turned to bitter wrangling as the rector's wife Caroline makes a challenge over an ancient country tradition and splits the village her husband had so recently united.

As the people of the village use the power of words to reconcile or divide, Peter finds it is what isn't talked about that threatens to cause madness, confusion and tragedy.

Серия: Turnham Malpas

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An extraordinary bond develops between an angry teenage runaway and a middle-aged woman running a large farm on her own, as they work the land and slowly heal the sublime, achingly beautiful debut that everyone is talking about
Teenager Sally has just run away from a clinic where she to be treated for anorexia. She's furious with everything and everyone, and wants to be left in peace.
Liss is in her forties, living alone on a large farm that she runs single-handedly. She has little contact with the outside world, and no need for other people.
From their first meeting, Sally realises that Liss isn't like other adults; she expects nothing of Sally and simply accepts who she is, offering her a bed for the night with no questions asked.
That night becomes weeks and then months, as an unlikely friendship develops and these two damaged women slowly open up - connecting to each other, reconnecting with themselves, and facing the darkness in their pasts through their shared work on the land.
Achingly beautiful, profound, invigorating and uplifting, Tasting Sunlight is a story of friendship across generations, of love and acceptance, of the power of nature to heal and transform, and the goodness that surrounds us, if only we take time to see it

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It's 1977 and Jack Sheffield is appointed headmaster of a small village primary school in North Yorkshire. So begins Jack's eventful journey through the school year and his attempts to overcome the many problems that face him as a young and inexperienced headmaster.

The many colourful chapters include Ruby the 20 stone caretaker with an acute spelling problem, a secretary who worships Margaret Thatcher, a villager who grows giant carrots, a barmaid/parent who requests sex lessons, and a five-year-old boy whose language is colourful in the extreme. And then there's also beautiful, bright Beth Henderson, who is irresistibly attractive to the young headmaster...

Warm, funny and nostalgic, Teacher, Teacher is a delightful read that is guaranteed to make you feel better, whatever kind of day you've had.

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As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there, longtime friends, band mates and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the sketchy yet freewheeling borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland, on the quintessential East Bay avenue that gives the book its title. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary nurse midwives who have welcomed, between them, more than a thousand little citizens into the world. Archy and Gwen are expecting their first baby; Nat and Aviva have a teenaged son, Julius.

When ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fourth-richest black man in America, announces plans to go forward with the construction of his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby neglected stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. What they don't know is that Goode's announcement marks the climax of a decades-old secret history, encompassing a forgotten crime of the Black Panther era, the tragedy of Archy's own deadbeat father a long-faded Blaxploitation star named Luther Stallings and the perpetual shining failure of American optimism about race. As their husbands struggle to mount a defense, at Berkeley Birth Partners Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to their already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenaged son Archy has never acknowledged, and the love of Julius Jaffe's life.

An intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet.

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A hauntingly beautiful novel about an unforgettable new heroine, and a story of undying love

Nives has recently lost her husband of fifty years. She didn t cry when she found him dead in the pig pen, she didn t cry at the funeral, but now loneliness has set in. When she decides to bring her favourite chicken inside for company, she is surprised to discover that the chicken s company is a more than adequate replacement for her dead husband.

But one day, Giacomina goes stiff in front of the tv. Unable to rouse the paralysed chicken, Nives has no choice but to call the town veterinarian, Loriano Bottai, an old acquaintance of hers. What follows is a phone call that seems to last a lifetime, a phone call that becomes a novel. Their conversation veers from the chicken to the past to the life they once shared, the secrets they never had the courage to reveal, wounds that never healed.

Tell Me About It reverberates with the kinds of stories we tell ourselves at night when we cannot sleep: stories of love lost, of abandonment, of silent and heart-breaking nostalgia, of joy, laughter, and despair. With delicate yet sharp prose and raw, astonishing honesty, Naspini bravely explores the core of our shared humanity.

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In 2022, American Jews face an increasingly unsafe and anti-Semitic landscape at home. Against this backdrop, the Jacobson family gathers for Passover in Los Angeles. But their immediate problems are more personal than political, with the three adult children, Mo, Edith and Jacob, in various states of crisis; the result, each claims, of a lifetime of mistreatment by their father, Julian.

The siblings have begun to suspect that Julian is hastening their mother Roz's demise, and years of resentment boil over as they debate whether to go through with the real reason for their reunion: an ill-considered plot to end their father's iron rule forever. That is, if they can put their bickering, grudges, festering relationships and distrust of one another aside long enough to act. And God help them if their mother finds out . . .

Tell Me How This Ends Well presents a blistering vision of near-future America, turning the exploits of one very funny, very troubled family into a rare and compelling exploration of the state of America itself.

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Jem is a joyful mystery to Alice: a whirl of glamour, subversion and literary references. And when she disappears from Alice's life, as suddenly as she entered it, Alice is left bereft.

But then she meets Giovanni, presumptuous and hectoring, passionate and beautiful, who leads her back to her childhood friend and the mystery and chaos still surrounding her. Alice finds herself being seduced all over again...

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18 boyfriends. 23 jobs. One ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice. Welcome to the world of the Temporary.

There is nothing more personal than doing your job . So goes the motto of the Temporary, as she takes job after job, in search of steadiness, belonging, and something to call her own. Aided by her bespoke agency and a cast of boyfriends each allotted their own task (the handy boyfriend, the culinary boyfriend, the real estate boyfriend) she is happy to fill in for any of us: for the Chairman of the Board, a ghost, a murderer, a mother. Even for you, and for me.

Wild, hopeful, infinitely sad and infinitely funny, Temporary is the smartest, most humane story of what it is to work and live, here and now.

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When Gabby first met Elliott she knew he was the man for her.

In twenty years of marriage she has never doubted her love for him - even when he refused to give her the one thing she still wants most of all.

But now their two daughters are growing up Gabby feels that time and her youth are slipping away.

And then she meets Matt . . .

Intoxicated by the way this young, handsome and successful man makes her feel, Gabby is momentarily blind to what she stands to lose on this dangerous path.

And in one reckless moment she destroys all that she holds dear.

Consumed by regret, Gabby does everything she can to repair the home she has broken. But are some betrayals too great to forgive?

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The Mafia and the Ten Commandments meet in these interlinked short stories about the undebelly of Naples. Ten uncovers the raw heart of a city, telling the stories of ordinary people forced to make extraordinary compromises in a place permeated by crime.

We encounter a son who finds that he is capable of a terrible act when faced with his mother s suffering 'because someone had to do it'; a girl whose only outlet for the horrors of an adult s abuse is to confide in a stuffed toy; an ancient nightclub singer whose ambition has led him to become a drug tester for a Mafia boss; and Ray-Ban who, during a night of mayhem with his friends, manages to steal the wrong car and pays dearly for it.

Each comes to life with painful precision in the hands of Andrej Longo their fears, regrets, energy and grace. In direct and sometimes brutally raw prose, he conjures a searing new vision of Naples. With the lightest of brush strokes, Longo builds a vivid portrait of a city, its people, and their dreams of escape.

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When Wolf's recently-estranged wife Miriam dies from cancer, his entire world is turned upside down. Wolf and his daughter, Ruth, travel to New York from London to scatter Miriam's ashes in the Hudson River. During the ten High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur they connect up with Miriam's conservative Jewish family, who are adamantly against Miriam's choice of burial. Battling the antagonism of Miriam's Orthodox family, Wolf is also coming to terms with his own hopes to put right wrongs before it's too late.
A tenderly written story of time, grief and memory, Ten Days delves deep into the complicated love between a father and daughter and the bonds of marriage over older family ties.

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Spanning one torrential paragraph, Ten Storey Love Song follows Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and decline into horrific drug psychosis, Johnnie's attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed, and Alan Blunt, a forty-year-old container driver who spends a worrying amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school.

Bobby - the so-called 'love-child of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat', holed up in a Middlesbrough tower block - works on his canvases under the influence of pills-on-toast, dirt-cheap cider and dream pop. When Bent Lewis, an art dealer from London appears, Bobby and friends are sent on a breakneck adventure of self-discovery, hedonism and violence, their frayed lives and assorted addictions - sex, money, fame, pick-'n'-mix and, above all, love - bleeding together in one glorious, ferocious slab of technicolour concrete prose.

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Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

Adrienne is living in a puritanical age, when the best compliment a childless woman can get is: You d make a terrific mother . That s when she goes to her friends Labor Day picnic and accidentally kills their baby.

The shock of this scene is expertly packed into two brief paragraphs. What follows is Adrienne s retreat from life and her attempt to return to it.

Her sharp scepticism about the people around her is achingly funny. Yet beyond derision there is forgiveness and something along the lines of love.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

Серия: Faber Stories

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Witty yet elegant, Territorial Rights is a celebration of human imperfection and complexity, with as many shifting identities, wardrobe changes, and sumptuous settings as a comic opera.

Robert wants nothing more than to become a serious art historian. But his hopes for an academic life are put on hold when he's driven from London to Venice to escape one lover and seek out another: the enigmatic Bulgarian refugee Lina Pancev. In Venice, Robert encounters a grand carnival of lust, lies, blackmail, cocktail parties and regicide. As he chases Lina, his heart's desire, the city itself provides a priceless education in love, art and beauty.

Серия: Virago Modern Classics

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It is Spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light, streaming through the windows, so bright you have to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness; becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go, and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.

At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.

Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.

Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter, in her first year of separation from her husband. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time, and remains one of Yuko Tsushima's most beloved works.

Серия: Little Clothbound Classics

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Provocative, dazzling and compassionate, Anita Shreve's new novel explores important issues to do with privacy and teen behaviour.

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voice - those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal - that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.

A gripping emotional drama with the pace of a thriller, Anita Shreve's TESTIMONY explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.

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A special reissue from Head of Zeus's bestselling anthology collection of the 100 finest short stories ever written.

Profound, lyrical, shocking, wise: the short story is capable of almost anything. This collection of 100 of the finest stories ever written ranges from the essential to the unexpected, the traditional to the surreal. Wide in scope, both beautiful and vast, this is the perfect companion for any fiction lover.

Here are childhood favourites and neglected masters, twenty-first century wits and national treasures, Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates.

Featuring an all-star cast of authors, including Kate Atkinson, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, V.S. Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon, Muriel Spark and Colm Toibin, That Glimpse of Truth is the biggest, most handsome collection of short fiction in print today.

Chosen by David Miller.

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A brilliant novel from Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain .

That Old Ace in the Hole is a richly textured story of one man's struggle to make good in the inhospitable ranch country of the Texas panhandle, told with razor-sharp wit and a masterly sense of place.

Some folks in the Texas panhandle do not like hog farms. But Bob Dollar, the newly hired hog site scout for Global Pork Rind, intends to do his job. Bob must contend with tough men and women like ancient Freda Beautyrooms, who controls a ranch he covets, and Ace Crouch, the windmiller who defies the hog farms. As Bob settles in at La Von Fronk s bunkhouse and lends a hand at Cy Frease s Old Dog Cafe, he is forced to question everything.

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That They May Face the Rising Sun was the last novel from John McGahern, one of Ireland s greatest novelists.

Joe and Kate Ruttledge have come to Ireland from London in search of a different life. In passages of beauty and truth, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters that move about them unfolds through the action, the rituals of work, religious observances and play. We are introduced, with deceptive simplicity, to a complete representation of existence an enclosed world has been transformed into an Everywhere.

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In That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis, competition is stiff for the position of sub-librarian in Aberdarcy Library. For John Lewis, the situation is complicated by the attentions of daunting and desirable village socialite, Elizabeth Gruffyd-Williams, who is married to a member of the local Council. Pursuing an affair with her whilst keeping his job prospects alive is John's predicament, as he finds himself running down Welsh country lanes at midnight in a wig and dress, resisting the advances of local drunks and suffering the long speeches of a 'nut-faced' clergyman.

At times tenderly satirical and at times riotously slap-stick, Amis sends up an array of rural stereotypes in this story about a man who doesn't know what he wants.

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 The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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On a New England campus, Viennese housewife Utchka and her aspiring writer husband live a rather placid life with their two children.Until, that is, they meet Severin Winter, Professor of German and wrestling coach, and his delicate wife Edith at a faculty party. Utchka and Severin are rather taken with one another, and, conveniently, their spouses appear to be similarly smitten.A bizarre menage a quatre is the result of these convoluted desires, and what starts out as a bit of fun is soon subject to the darker machinations of obsession...

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Roland Barthes is knocked down in a Paris street by a laundry van. It s February 1980 and he has just come from lunch with Francois Mitterrand. Barthes dies soon afterwards. History tells us it was an accident.

But what if it were an assassination? What if Barthes was carrying a document of unbelievable, global importance? A document explaining the seventh function of language an idea so powerful it gives whoever masters it the ability to convince anyone, in any situation, to do anything.

Police Captain Jacques Bayard and his reluctant accomplice Simon Herzog set off on a chase that takes them from the corridors of power to backstreet saunas and midnight meetings. What they discover is a worldwide conspiracy involving the President, murderous Bulgarians and a secret international debating society.

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The Accidental Woman is a wickedly funny novel from bestseller Jonathan Coe

For Maria, nothing is certain. Her life is a chain of accidents. Untouched by friendship, unimpressed by devoted Ronny and his endless marriage proposals, she lives in a world of her own, but not of her own making. Even as she stumbled on through university, work, marriage and motherhood, Maria finds it hard to see what all the fuss is about.

Will our heroine ever be able to control the direction of her life, or will it end, as it began, by accident? What does chance next have in store for her?

From the author of the award-winning The Rotters' Club and What a Carve Up!, The Accidental Woman will be enjoyed by readers of Nick Hornby and William Boyd and centres on a quirky and highly individual woman who is still struggling to find her place in life.

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The characters in this extraordinary book are often - on the surface - depraved, vicious, cowardly and manipulative, but their essential humanity is never undermined. Two professors of philosophy turn pugilists; Leith removal men become the objects of desire for Hollywood goddesses; God turns Boab Coyle into a house-fly; and in the novella, 'A Smart Cunt', the drug-addled young hero spins off on a collision course with his past. The Acid House is a bizarre, disturbing and hilarious collection from one of the most uncompromising and original writers around.

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From the wickedly funny author of Submarine comes a hilarious new tragicomedy - a screwball tale of millennial angst, pre-midlife crises and one man's valiant quest to come of age in his thirties.

Ray is not a bad guy. He mostly did not cheat on his heavily pregnant wife. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. His career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal but he dreams of making a difference one day. But Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse.

Brace yourself for an encounter with the modern everyman. Enter the world of ironic misanthropy and semi-ironic underachievement, of competitively sensitive men, catastrophic open marriages, and lots of Internet righteousness. With lacerating wit and wry affection, Joe Dunthorne dissects the urban millennial psyche of a man too old to be an actual millennial.

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Meet The Adults.

Claire and Matt are divorced but decide what's best for their daughter is to have a 'normal' family Christmas with them all together.

Claire brings her new boyfriend Patrick, a seemingly eligible Iron-Man-in-Waiting. Matt brings the new love of his life Alex, funny, smart, and extremely patient. Scarlett, their daughter, brings her imaginary friend Posey. He's a rabbit.

Together the five (or six?) of them grit their teeth over Organized Fun activities, drinking too much after bed time, oversharing classified secrets about their pasts and, before they know it, their holiday is a powder keg that ends - where this story starts - with a call to the police...

But what happened? They said they'd all be Adults about this...

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Chinua Achebe is considered the father of African literature in English, the writer who 'opened the magic casements of African fiction' for an international readership. Following the 50th anniversary of the publication of his ground-breaking Things Fall Apart, Everyman republish Achebe's first and most famous novel alongside No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God, under the collective title The African Trilogy.
In Things Fall Apart the individual tragedy of Okonkwo, 'strong man' and tribal elder in the Nigeria of the 1890s is intertwined with the transformation of traditional Igbo society under the impact of Christianity and colonialism. In No Longer at Ease, Okonkwo's grandson, Obi, educated in England, returns to a civil-service job in colonial Lagos, only to clash with the ruling elite to which he now believes he belongs. Arrow of God is set in the 1920s and explores the conflict from the two points of view - often, but not always, opposing - ofEzuelu, an Igbo priest, and Captain Winterbottom, a British district officer.
In spare and lucid prose, Achebe tellsa universal tale of personal and moral struggle in a changing world which continues to resonate in Africa today and has captured the imaginations of readers everywhere.

Серия: Everyman`s Library Classics

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A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life s path and, above all, follow your dreams.

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

With Paulo Coelho s visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people s lives.

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A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life s path and, above all, follow your dreams.

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

With Paulo Coelho s visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people s lives.

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In the seaside town of Tramore, County Waterford, visitors arrive in waves with the tourist season, reliving the best days of their childhoods in its caravan parks, chippers and amusement arcades.

Local teenager Helen Grant is indifferent to the charm of her surroundings; she dreams of escaping to art college with her glamorous classmate Stella Swaine and, from there, taking on the world. But leaving Tramore is easier said than done. Though they don't yet know it, Helen and Stella's lives are pulled by tides beyond their control.

Following the Grant and Swaine families and their neighbours over three decades, The Amusements is a luminous and unforgettable story about roads taken and not taken - and a brilliantly observed portrait of a small-town community.

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In the seaside town of Tramore, County Waterford, visitors arrive in waves with the tourist season, reliving the best days of their childhoods in its caravan parks, chippers and amusement arcades.

Local teenager Helen Grant is indifferent to the charm of her surroundings; she dreams of escaping to art college with her glamorous classmate Stella Swaine and, from there, taking on the world. But leaving Tramore is easier said than done. Though they don't yet know it, Helen and Stella's lives are pulled by tides beyond their control.

Following the Grant and Swaine families and their neighbours over three decades, The Amusements is a luminous and unforgettable story about roads taken and not taken - and a brilliantly observed portrait of a small-town community.

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Sylvie and Gabe meet and fall in love at boarding school in Northern California when they are just teenagers. Their headmaster is the enigmatic and mysterious Dr Keller, a man obsessed with the idea that people's waking stress and trauma can be cured in their dreams. The young couple can't help but be drawn into his magnetic pull and slowly become involved in his research.

Years later, Sylvie and Gabe are once again working on Dr Keller's experiments and Sylvie slowly begins to realise there is more both to her employer and her lover than meets the eye, and that the line between dreams and reality has become dangerously blurred.

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The Angel Esmerelda is Don DeLillo's first collection of short stories, written between 1979 and 2011; in it he represents the wide range of human experience in contemporary America - and forces us to confront the uncomfortable shadows lurking in the background.

His characters are plagued by their own deep, often unconscious, longings; they are subjected to shocking violations, exposed to unexpected acts of terror. No matter whether he is focused upon the slums of New York or astronauts in orbit around the Earth, DeLillo chooses never to turn away from the unsettling manner in which humans are brought together.

These nine stories describe the extraordinary journey of a great American writer who changed the literary landscape.

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Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
Her former professor, Patrick is much older than J.B.. But when they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all new gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and J.B. is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them.
Then a storm hits and Patrick falls off the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick and the truth about their marriage begins.

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Emily should be happy. She has a nice husband (even if they rarely speak to each other, let alone sleep in the same bed), two little boys she loves (even if a full night's sleep is a distant memory) - and now, a brand-new house in which they can live out all of the bourgeois fantasies she knows she should be ashamed of. But still she aches for something more.

Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.

As riotously funny as it is painfully moving, this is a novel about disappointment and yearning; about parenting and growing up; and the search for love, meaning and connection.

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Emily should be happy. She has a nice husband (even if they rarely speak to each other, let alone sleep in the same bed), two little boys she loves (even if a full night s sleep is a distant memory) and now, a brand-new house in which they can live out all of the bourgeois fantasies she knows she should be ashamed of. But still she aches for something more.

Enter Alathea and Elliott, their new neighbours, and also parents of two young boys. Alathea is intimidatingly confident and beautiful, but also disarmingly open and friendly. And Elliott Elliott is intriguing. Dishevelled, talented, charming and a little lost, he seems as fascinated by Emily as she is by him, and soon their friendship has reached an intensity neither of them seem able to control.

As riotously funny as it is painfully moving, this is a novel about disappointment and yearning; about parenting and growing up; and the search for love, meaning and connection.

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When faced with betrayal, can you find peace?

Hope and Jack Langley's marriage gets off to a promising start: they spend their honeymoon in a primitive Cornish cottage called Widdershins and Hope falls in love with the place on sight - even though half of it has fallen down, water has to be pumped by hand and there are no sea views.

Soon after they return home to begin married life in a small village outside Gloucester, Hope discovers she is pregnant. And, almost simultaneously, the glamorous Petersens, Henrik and Mandy, move in as new neighbours. Local rumour about the couple is rife: they are rich, they are Norwegian, they aren't married, they give crazy parties. To Hope and Jack, they seem reassuringly normal and kind and soon the two couples became close.

With the birth of their second daughter, the Langleys' happiness seems complete. But appearances can be deceptive.

The challenges that eventually confront Hope are almost overwhelming, and the only place that offers refuge and peace is her beloved Widdershins.

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There are many reasons to bake: to feed; to create; to impress; to nourish; to define ourselves; and, sometimes, it has to be said, to perfect. But often we bake to fill a hunger that would be better filled by a simple gesture from a dear one. We bake to love and be loved.

In 1966, Kathleen Eaden, cookery writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes.

Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs Eaden. There's Jenny, facing an empty nest now her family has flown; Claire, who has sacrificed her dreams for her daughter; Mike, trying to parent his two kids after his wife's death; Vicki, who has dropped everything to be at home with her baby boy; and Karen, perfect Karen, who knows what it's like to have nothing and is determined her fa ade shouldn't slip.

As unlikely alliances are forged and secrets rise to the surface, making the choicest choux bun seems the least of the contestants' problems. For they will learn - as Mrs Eaden did before them - that while perfection is possible in the kitchen, it's very much harder in life.

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Nessa McCormack's marriage is coming back together again after her husband's affair. She is excited to be in charge of a retrospective art exhibit for one of Ireland's most beloved and enigmatic artists, the late sculptor Robert Locke. But the arrival of two outsiders imperils both her personal and professional worlds: a chance encounter with an old friend threatens to expose a betrayal Nessa thought she had long put behind her, and at work, an odd woman comes forward claiming to be the true creator of Robert Locke's most famous work, The Chalk Sculpture.

As Nessa finds the past intruding on the present, she must decide whether she can continue to live a lie - or whether she's ready to face the consequences once everything is out in the open. In this gripping debut, Danielle McLaughlin reveals profound truths about love, power, and the secrets that rule us.

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Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience - classics which will endure for generations to come.

Henry Skrimshander, newly arrived at college, shy and out of his depth, has a talent for baseball that borders on genius. But sometimes it seems that his only friend is big Mike Schwartz - who champions the talents of others, at the expense of his own. And Owen, Henry's clever, charismatic, gay roommate, who has a secret that could put his brilliant college career in jeopardy.

Pella, the 23-year-old daughter of the college president, has returned home after a failed marriage, determined to get her life in order. Only to find her father, a confirmed bachelor, has fallen desperately in love himself.

Then, one fateful day, Henry makes a mistake - misthrows a ball. And everything changes

Серия: Collins Modern Classics

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A wonderful, warm novel from a major new American voice.

Henry Skrimshander, newly arrived at college, shy and out of his depth, has a talent for baseball that borders on genius. But sometimes it seems that his only friend is big Mike Schwartz - who champions the talents of others, at the expense of his own. And Owen, Henry's clever, charismatic, gay roommate, who has a secret that could put his brilliant college career in jeopardy.

Pella, the 23-year-old daughter of the college president, has returned home after a failed marriage, determined to get her life in order. Only to find her father, a confirmed bachelor, has fallen desperately in love himself.

Then, one fateful day, Henry makes a mistake - misthrows a ball. And everything changes

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Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: he thinks and feels in nearly human ways. He has educated himself by watching extensive television, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. Through Denny, Enzo realizes that racing is a metaphor: that by applying the techniques a driver would apply on the race track, one can successfully navigate the ordeals and travails one encounters in life.

Enzo relates the story of his human family, sharing their tragedies and triumphs. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations as a dog, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family.

The Art of Racing in the Rain is a testament to a man's life, given by his dog. But it is also a testament to the dog, himself. Though Enzo cannot speak, he understands everything that happens around him as he bears witness to his master's problems. His enforced muteness only refines his listening ability, and allows him to understand many of life's nuances that are lost on most humans. With humour, sharp observation, and a courageous heart, Enzo guides the reader to the bittersweet yet ultimately satisfying conclusion: there are no limitations to what we can achieve, if we truly know where we want to be.

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A special reissue from Head of Zeus's bestselling anthology collection of the very best Irish short stories, selected by Sinead Gleeson, author of Constellations, winner of the Irish Book Award Non Fiction Book of the Year 2019.

There have been many anthologies of the short story as it developed in Ireland, but never a collection like this.

The Art of the Glimpse is a radical revision of the canon of the Irish story, uniting classic works with neglected writers and marginalised voices - women, Traveller folk-tales, neglected 19th-century authors and the first wave of 'new Irish' writers from all over the world now making a life in Ireland. Sinead Gleeson brings together stories that range from the most sublime realism to the downright bizarre and transgressive, some from established literary figures and some that have not yet been published in book form.

The collection draws on a tremendous spectrum of experience: the story of a prank come good by Bram Stoker; Sally Rooney on the love languages of the new generation; Donal Ryan on the pains of ageing; Edna O'Brien on the things we betray for love; James Joyce on a young woman torn between the familiar burdens and oppression of her home and the dangerous lure of romance and escape; and the internal monologue of a woman in a coma by Marian Keyes. Here too are vivid and less familiar stories by Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, Oein De Bharduin, Blindboy Boatclub and Melatu Uche Okorie.

Sinead Gleeson's anthology is a marvellous representation of a rich literary tradition renewing itself in the 21st century.

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A brilliant and rather transgressive collection of short stories from the double Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light.

Including a new story The School of English .
Nothing is as it seems. Childhood cruelty is played out behind bushes. Both the living and the dead commute to Waterloo station. Staying in for the plumber turns into a potentially fatal waiting game. And in The School of English , panic grips a household behind the stucco facade of a Notting Hill mansion. All that is clear and constant in these bracingly subversive stories is Hilary Mantel s distinctive style and wit.

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At eighteen, Somlata married into the Mitras: a once noble Bengali household whose descendants have taken to pawning off the family gold to keep up appearances.

When Pishima, the embittered matriarch, dies, Somlata is the first to discover her aunt-in-law's body - and her sharp-tongued ghost.

First demanding that Somlata hide her gold from the family's prying hands, Pishima's ghost continues to wreak havoc on the Mitras. Secrets spilt, cooking spoilt, Somlata finds herself at the centre of the chaos. And as the family teeter on the brink of bankruptcy, it looks like it's up to her to fix it.

The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die is a frenetic, funny and fresh novel about three generations of Mitra women, a jewellery box, and the rickety family they hold together.

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From the master of historical fiction, this book follows an unforgettable family after the Second World War.

Some bonds are hard to break...

Daniel Pitt was an RAF fighter in the First World War and an espionage agent for the SOE in the Second. Now the conflicts he faces are closer to home.

Daniel's marriage has fractured beyond repair and Daniel's relationship with his son, Bertie, has been a failure since Bertie was a small boy.

But after his brother Archie's death, Daniel is keen for new perspectives. He first travels to Peshawar to bury Archie in the place he loved best, and then finds himself in Canada, avoiding his family and friends back in England. Daniel and Bertie's different experiences of war, although devastating, also bring with them the opportunity for the two to reconnect.

If only they can find a way to move on from the past...

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, explores the loneliness of power in Autumn of the Patriarch.

'Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside'

As the citizens of an unnamed Caribbean nation creep through dusty corridors in search of their tyrannical leader, they cannot comprehend that the frail and withered man lying dead on the floor can be the self-styled General of the Universe. Their arrogant, manically violent leader, known for serving up traitors to dinner guests and drowning young children at sea, can surely not die the humiliating death of a mere mortal?

Tracing the demands of a man whose egocentric excesses mask the loneliness of isolation and whose lies have become so ingrained that they are indistinguishable from truth, Marquez has created a fantastical portrait of despotism that rings with an air of reality.

Серия: Marquez 2014

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The Bachelors displays the best of Sparkian satire, placing her at the heart of a great literary tradition alongside Waugh and Trollope, Wilde and Wodehouse. It demands rediscovery.

Серия: The Canons

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A man of devilish charm and enterprising spirit, Dougal Douglas is employed to revitalize the ailing firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley. He succeeds, but not quite in the way his employer intended. Strange things begin to happen as Dougal exerts an uncanny influence on the inhabitants of Peckham Rye and brings lies, tears, blackmail and even murder into the lives of all he meets, from Miss Merle Coverdale, head of the typing pool, to Beauty, the resident femme fatale, and even Mr Druce, the unsuspecting Managing Director himself.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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Elizabeth Reegan, after years of freedom and loneliness marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not her own; her husband is straining to break free from the servile security of the police force; and her own life, threatened by illness, seems to be losing the last vestiges of its purpose. Moving between tragedy and savage comedy, desperation and joy, John McGahern s first novel is one of haunting power.

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In this remarkable trilogy, Richard Ford creates one of the most enduring and empathetic characters in contemporary American fiction. When we meet Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over, drawing us into a life that has been irrevocably changed by the loss of a child, a marriage and a career. We then follow Frank, ever laconic and observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, witnessing his fortune s rise and his family s fragmentation and reintegration. With his finely honed prose and an eye that captures the most subtle nuances of the human condition in all its pathos, humour and strangeness, Richard Ford transforms an ordinary man s life into a riveting parable of modern existence.

Серия: Everyman`s Library

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A gripping and beautiful novel from Elif Shafak, Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have an abortion', she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life.

Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early forties, so it is a house of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. And when Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge.

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One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have an abortion', she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life.

Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early forties, so it is a house of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. And when Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge.

Серия: Penguin Essentials

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'It was at Millie's party, on that Friday evening, that she met her second husband, my stepfather-to-be, and thus changed both our lives . . .'

Zoe is delighted when her widowed mother marries Simon, a generous older man who owns a villa in Nice. However, the long enchanted visits to France she enjoys come to an abrupt end when Simon suffers a bad fall. Zoe and her mother, finding themselves surrounded by well-meaning strangers, must learn how and how not to trust appearances . . .

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The scene is Naples, against whose ancient and fantastic background the modern action takes place.

Among the protagonists is Jenny, young and pretty, who has come to Naples in flight from a sombre drama, unaware that a larger drama waits her there.

She has an introduction to a Neapolitan woman, and one day she idly follows it up. This is her leap through the looking glass.

Серия: Virago Modern Classics

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This book is 86 pages long.
The perfect summer short story from bestselling novelist and broadcaster, Fern Britton.
Ed and Charlotte have been married for fifteen years, but they have been drifting apart and now Ed suspects that Charlotte may be involved with another man.
He decides a family holiday is just what they need and rents a cottage on the cliffs near the picturesque Cornish village of Pendruggan. He is desperate not to lose Charlotte and hopes that the holiday will bring them closer together again, but Charlotte is wondering what happened to the man she fell in love with.
So into their car they all pile, including their teenage daughter Alex, her younger brother, Sam and their enormous Bearded Collie will their Cornish escape be the holiday to make them or break them?

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An enchanting and classic novel of a young woman's voyage of discovery across the Midwest.

Plucky Taylor Greer grows up poor in rural Kentucky with two goals: to avoid pregnancy and to get away. She succeeds on both counts when she buys an old car and heads west. But midway across the country motherhood catches up with her when she becomes the guardian of an abandoned baby girl she calls Turtle. In Tuscon they encounter an extraordinary array of people, and with their help, Taylor builds herself and her sweet, stunned child a life.

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They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail's most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina's chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun and already Nina's debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis: the haphazard manifestations of her powers have long made her the subject of gossip - malicious neighbours even call her the Witch of Oldhouse.

But Nina's life is about to change, for there is a new arrival in town: Hector Auvray, the renowned entertainer, who has used his own telekinetic talent to perform for admiring audiences around the world. Nina is dazzled by Hector, for he sees her not as a witch, but ripe with magical potential. Under his tutelage, Nina's talent blossoms - as does her love for the great man.

But great romances are for fairy-tales, and Hector is hiding a secret bitter truth from Nina - and himself - that threatens their courtship.

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At Edinburgh's Department of Environmental Health, hard-drinking, womanising officer Danny Skinner wants to uncover secrets: 'the bedroom secrets of the master chefs', secrets he believes might just help him understand his self-destructive impulses. But the arrival of the virginal, model-railway enthusiast Brian Kibby at the department provokes an uncharacteristic response in Skinner, and threatens to throw his mission off course. Consumed by loathing for his nemesis, Skinner enacts a curse, and when Kibby contracts a horrific and debilitating mystery virus, Skinner understands that their destinies are supernaturally bound, and he is faced with a terrible dilemma.

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From one of our greatest comic novelists and the author of Skippy Dies comes a funny, thought-provoking story of one family desperately clinging on as their world falls apart . . .

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under - but rather than face the music, he's spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman.

His wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil?

Can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written - is there still time to find a happy ending?

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Two young girls.
One hot, long, sultry summer.
And a rambling old English manor house where nothing is as it seems . . .

A successful London barrister, Catherine Christophe, goes missing the day before her wedding anniversary. The clue to her disappearance, it seems, lies buried thirty years in the past.

Somerset, 1989. Janey Lestrange arrives to stay for the summer at the grand old house of the Hunter family. But something is wrong behind the beautiful fa ades of Vanes. Janey's childhood friend, Kitty Hunter, her brother and their eccentric parents - once so welcoming - do not seem to want her there.
It is only as the night of an ancient and mysterious family ritual looms closer that Janey comes to realise they need her . . .

Decades later, the tragic events of that unforgettable summer still cast the darkest shadow. Can the truth about what happened that night ever be brought into the light?

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Two young girls.
One hot, long, sultry summer.
And a rambling old English manor house where nothing is as it seems

A successful London barrister, Catherine Christophe, goes missing the day before her wedding anniversary. The clue to her disappearance, it seems, lies buried thirty years in the past.

Somerset, 1989. Janey Lestrange arrives to stay for the summer at the grand old house of the Hunter family. But something is wrong behind the beautiful fa ades of Vanes. Janey's childhood friend, Kitty Hunter, her brother and their eccentric parents - once so welcoming - do not seem to want her there.
It is only as the night of an ancient and mysterious family ritual looms closer that Janey comes to realise they need her

Decades later, the tragic events of that unforgettable summer still cast the darkest shadow. Can the truth about what happened that night ever be brought into the light?

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The Benefactor is Susan Sontag's first book and first novel. It was originally published in 1963, and introduced a unique writer to the world. In the form of a memoir by a latter-day Candide named Hippolyte, The Benefactor leads us on a kind of psychic Grand Tour, in which Hippolyte's violently imaginative dream life becomes indistinguishable from his surprising experiences in the 'real world'.

Серия: Penguin Modern Classics

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This collection brings together the four plays that feature Ionesco s everyman protagonist Jean Berenger. In The Killer , he comes across a radiant city , an ideal civilization which is being terrorized by a killer, whom he tries to help apprehend. In Rhinoceros , he is the only person in a provincial town who is not affected by a condition that turns its victims into the eponymous horned beast. In Exit the King , he is the powerful King Berenger the First, who refuses to accept that he is dying. And in A Stroll in the Air he acquires the capacity of flight and sees another world lying beyond the clouds.

While each play in the Berenger cycle is unique, they are all prime examples of Ionesco s conception of the theatre of the absurd, and touch on themes that preoccupied the author throughout his career, such as mortality, alienation, freedom and the evils of Fascism. This volume constitutes a perfect introduction to one of the twentieth century s most original and influential playwrights.

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Bertie's respite from his overbearing mother, Irene, is over. She has returned from the middle-east, only to discover that her son has been exposed to the worst evils of cartoons, movies and Irn Bru, and her wrath falls upon her unfortunate husband, Stuart. Meanwhile, Bruce has fallen in love with someone other than himself; Big Lou wants to adopt her beloved Finlay; Matthew and Elspeth host the Duke of Johannesburg for supper and Bertie decides he wants to move out of Scotland Street altogether and live with his grandmother, Nicola.

Can Irene and Stuart's marriage survive? Will Bruce's newfound love last? And will Bertie really leave Scotland Street? Find out in the next instalment of this charming, beloved series.

Серия: 44 Scotland Street

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The McKenzies are your average complicated family: knotted together by in-jokes, arguments and a few closely-guarded secrets. Thirty-something sisters Leni and Alice became inseparable following the divorce of their parents, Belinda and Tony, with younger brother Will always trying to keep up. They're not perfect, but they love each other - most of the time, anyway.

But then one ordinary summer day, an accident changes the family forever. Questions arise, guilt surfaces and secrets begin to emerge. Scattered by grief and seeking comfort in the unlikeliest of places, can the McKenzies find their way back to each other?

Set over the course of one life-changing year, The Best Days of Our Lives is a warm, big-hearted and poignant story, full of hope, heartache and love.

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An unsettling, gripping and original novel by Jessica Fellowes, author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning Mitford Murders series, telling the story of a toxic friendship.

Kate and Bella, Bella and Kate. From childhood they were inseparable yet polar opposites: Bella sensible and cautious, Kate gregarious and just a little dangerous.

Then men came into their lives and things changed: a black seed was set in in the heart of their relationship. Over decades, acts of both cruelty and love feed that seed until one shocking event leads to further tragedy. Neither will escape unscathed.

In her first standalone novel, Jessica Fellowes explores the darkest corners of female friendship, a place where loyalty and betrayal become one.

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