Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business.
Douglas Yandell, a young-ish music critic, is enlisted by Kitty Vandervane to keep an eye on her roving husband - the eminent conductor and would-be radical Sir Roy - as he embarks on yet another affair. Roy, meanwhile, wants Douglas as an alibi for his growing involvement with Sylvia, an unsuitably young woman who loves nothing more than to shock and provoke. Life soon becomes extremely complicated as Douglas finds himself caught up in a frantic, farcical tangle of relationships, rivalry and scandal.Girl, 20 is a merciless send-up of 1970s London's permissive society from a master of uproarious comedy.With a new introduction by Howard Jacobson.
Infamous for the murder of Maria Iribarne, the artist Juan Pablo Castel is now writing a detailed account of his relationship with the victim from his prison cell: obsessed from the first moment he saw her examining one of his paintings, Castel had become fixated on her over the next months and fantasized over how they might meet again. When he happened upon her one day, a relationship was formed which swiftly convinced him of their mutual love. But Castel's growing paranoia would lead him to destroy the one thing he truly cared about...Sabato's first novel El T nel (translated as 'The Outsider' or 'The Tunnel'), written in 1948, is framed as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him. Sabato's novels were praised by authors such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene.
'This delicious confection will work its magic on all' Daily TelegraphThe discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed 'To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine', offers a small medieval castle for rent, above a bay on the Italian Riviera. Four very different women - the dishevelled and downtrodden Mrs Wilkins, the sad, sweet-faced Mrs Arbuthnot, the formidable widow Mrs Fisher and the ravishing socialite Lady Caroline Dester - are drawn to the shores of the Mediterranean that April. As each, in turn, blossoms in the warmth of the Italian spring and finds their spirits stirring, quite unexpected changes occur.The Enchanted April, published in 1922, is a witty and delightful depiction of what it is like to rediscover joy.'Brims with magic and laughter' Amanda Craig, GuardianIncludes a new introduction by Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet's Angel
'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil can literature communicate fully and intensely. These literary profiles of eight authors and their work, including Emily Bront 's Wuthering Heights, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and the writings of Sade, Kafka and Sartre, explore subjects such as violence, eroticism, childhood, myth and transgression, in a work of rich allusion and powerful argument.
This landmark new collection brings together the best of the poetry of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and author of Lolita and Pale Fire. It includes an extensive number of poems that have never appeared in English before, newly translated from the Russian by his son Dmitri Nabokov.These masterly poems span the decades of Nabokov's career, from 'Music', written in 1914 and probably Nabokov's first recorded poem, to the short, playful 'To Vera', composed in 1974. 'The University Poem', one of Nabokov's major poetic works, is here in English for the first time: an extraordinary autobiographical poem looking back at his time at Cambridge, with its dinners, games, girls and memories, it is suffused with rich description, wit and verbal dexterity. Included too are the surreally comic 'A Literary Dinner', the enchanting, lyrical 'Eve', the wryly humorous 'An Evening of Russian Poetry' and a meditation on the act of creation, 'Tolstoy', as well as verse written on America, lepidoptery, sport, love and Nabokov's Russian homeland.
From pre-First World War Warsaw to the New York of the 1930s, this title traces the early years of the author's life. It presents his bookish boyhood as the son of an Orthodox rabbi, equally absorbed in science, philosophy and cabbala. It chronicles the intricacies of his first love affairs.
As Joana, endlessly mutable, moves through different emotional states, different inner lives and different truths, this impressionistic, dreamlike and fiercely intelligent novel asks if any of us ever really know who we are. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown.
Features letters that cover the activities of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac in the years that gave birth to the "Beat Generation". Written mostly to Ginsberg or Kerouac, this title includes letters that provide a glimpse into Burroughs' psyche, revealing his struggle with drug addiction, and his confusion over his sexual identity.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World''Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past' Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.
THE PEARL is Steinbeck's flawless parable about wealth and the evil it can bring. When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting simplicty and lyrical simplicity, THE PEARL sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.
A cultural landmark and the most shocking novel in the English language, Naked Lunch is an exhilarating ride into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. An unnerving tale of an addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, Naked Lunch's formal innovation, formerly taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution has exerted its influence authors like Thomas Pynchon and J. G. Ballard; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media in general.
With three husbands in her past, one in her present and a numberless army of children, Mrs Armitage is astonished to find herself collapsing one day in Harrods.
A 50th anniversary edition of the classic crime novel that inspired the Oscar-winning film starring Sidney Poitier.'They call me Mr Tibbs!'A small southern town in the 1960s. A musician found dead on the highway. It's no surprise when white detectives arrest a black man for the murder. What is a surprise is that the black man - Virgil Tibbs - is himself a skilled homicide detective from California, whom inexperienced Chief Gillespie reluctantly recruits to help with the case. Faced with mounting local hostility and a police force that seems determined to see him fail, it isn't long before Tibbs - trained in karate and aikido - will have to fight not just for justice, but also for his own safety.The inspiration for the Academy Award-winning film starring Sidney Poitier, this iconic crime novel is a psychologically astute examination of racial prejudice, an atmospheric depiction of the American South in the sixties, and a brilliant, suspense-filled read set in the sultry heat of the night.
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES 'Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.'America, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The winning Axis powers have divided their spoils: the Nazis control New York, while California is ruled by the Japanese. But between these two states - locked in a cold war - lies a neutal buffer zone in which legendary author Hawthorne Abendsen is rumoured to live. Abendsen lives in fear of his life for he has written a book in which World War Two was won by the Allies. . .
As the first world war broke out across Europe, Shackleton's expedition to the South Pole became trapped by ice. Their ship, the Endurance, was crushed and the men were forced to survive in and escape from one of the world's most hostile environment. This book tells their story.
'Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light'Enraptured by a young woman's account of the landscapes of Greece, Henry Miller set off to explore the Grecian countryside with his friend Lawrence Durrell in 1939. In The Colossus of Maroussi he describes drinking from sacred springs, nearly being trampled to death by sheep and encountering the flamboyant Greek poet Katsumbalis, who 'could galvanize the dead with his talk'. This lyrical classic of travel writing represented an epiphany in Miller's life, and is the book he would later cite as his favourite. 'One of the five greatest travel books of all time' Pico Iyer
Published after Ellison's death, this follow-up to Invisible Man is a thunderous epic of memory, faith, loss and identity. 'Words are your business, boy. Not just the Word. Words are everything' 'Tell me what happened while there's still time,' demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate black baptist minister he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young orphan, Sunraider was taken in and raised by Hickman, before reinventing himself as a racist politician. Now, as the two men confront the truth about their shared past in a final reckoning, Ellison's masterly novel takes in memories of a southern childhood, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and the richness of the African-American experience.'Majestic' Toni Morrison
Raw, lyrical and blazing with intensity, these short stories are a potent distillation of the genius of Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man.'He saw the dark bird glide into the sun and glow like a bird of flaming gold'Ranging from the Jim Crow South to a Harlem bingo parlour, from the hobo jungles of the Great Depression to Wales during the Second World War, they all display the musically layered voices, soaring language and sheer ebullience that made Ellison a giant of twentieth-century American writing. Written early in Ellison's career, several of these fourteen stories were unpublished in his lifetime, including 'A Storm of Blizzard Proportions' which features in this collection for the first time. 'Approach the simple elegance of Chekhov' Washington Post
'This selection is a ceaseless delight ... there is a treat on almost every page' Daily TelegraphGeorge Orwell wrote, in his words, from 'a desire to see things as they are'. This new collection of his journalism and other writings, including articles, essays, broadcasts, poems, book and film reviews from across his career, shows his unmatched genius for observing the world. Whether discussing Polish immigration or Scottish independence, railing against racism, defending the English language or holding an imaginary conversation with Jonathan Swift, these pieces reveal a clear-eyed, entertaining and eternally relevant chronicler of his age.Edited with an introduction by Peter Davison'Orwell's luminous gift was for seeing things, for noticing what others missed, took for granted or simply found uninteresting, for discovering meaning and wonder in the familiarity of the everyday... Nothing escaped or seemed beneath his notice, which was what made him such a good reporter... Seeing Things As They Are is intended to be a collection first and foremost of his journalism, with preference given to lesser-known pieces and reviews as well as some of the poems he wrote. It is full of interest and curiosities' Jason Cowley, Financial Times'Peter Davison gives us a feast of [Orwell's] shorter writings, showing how from such hesitant beginnings he evolved into the writer of enduring importance we know, committed to decency, equality and political honesty, who could nevertheless wax lyrical over the first signs of spring or an imaginary English pub' Gordon Bowker, Independent
Steven Runciman's triumphant three-volume A History of the Crusadesremains an unsurpassed account of the events that changed the world and continue to resonate today. This final volume of the trilogy begins with the glamorous Third Crusade and ends with the ruinous collapse of the crusader states and the degeneration of their ideals, which reached its nadir in the tragic destruction of Byzantium.
'How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times' Washington PostHannah Arendt's chilling analysis of the conditions that led to the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes is a warning from history about the fragility of freedom, exploring how propaganda, scapegoats, terror and political isolation all aided the slide towards total domination. 'A non-fiction bookend to Nineteen Eighty-Four' The New York Times'The political theorist who wrote about the Nazis and the 'banality of evil' has become a surprise bestseller' Guardian
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