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What happens when you find love, but life keeps getting in the way?When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and – he insists – half an inch taller than the average British male. His charming four-year-old daughter, Zora, only adds to his appeal.And yet ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam (though let’s face it, mostly Coralie) have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dre...

Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura, her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arriv...

'Insistently asks the question: What would you do? Would you fight, or acquiesce, or collaborate? ... Karski was deeply patriotic and ludicrously brave ... an astonishing testament of survival' Ben Macintyre, author of Operation Mincemeat It is 1939. Jan Karski, a brilliant young Polish student, enjoys a life of parties and pleasure. Then war breaks out and his familiar world is destroyed. Now he must live under a new identity, in the resistance. And, in a secret mission that...

In 1939 Miller left Paris and headed out with his friend Lawrence Durrell to explore the Grecian countryside, recording their travels and discoveries. A flock of sheep nearly tramples the two as they lie naked on a beach, the Greek poet Katsmbalis stirs every rooster within earshot of the Acropolis, cold hard-boiled eggs are warmed in a village's single stove, and they stay in hotels that "have seen better days, but which have an aroma of the past". A classic in travel litera...

Frantz Fanon's seminal work on the trauma of colonization made him the leading anti-colonialist thinker of the twentieth century. Written at the height of the Algerian war for independence from French colonial rule and first published in 1961, it analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for freedom. Fanon, himself a psychotherapist, makes clear the economic and psychological degradation inflicted by imperialism. Showing how decolonizatio...

Reading Brodsky's essays is like a conversation with an immensely erudite, hugely entertaining and witty (and often very funny) interlocutor' Wall Street JournalWatermark is Joseph Brodsky's witty, intelligent, moving and elegant portrait of Venice. Looking at every aspect of the city, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures its magnificence and beauty, and recalls his own memories of the place he called home for many wi...

A husband forms gruesome plans for his new fridge; a government employee has a haunting experience on his commute home; prisoners serve as entertainment for wealthy party guests; an army officer suffers a monstrous tropical illness. These short stories contain some of the most groundbreaking and innovative writing in Dutch literature from 1915 to the present day, with most pieces appearing here in English for the first time. Blending unforgettable snapshots of the realities o...

The Hearing Trumpet is the story of 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, who is given the gift of a hearing trumpet only to discover that what her family is saying is that she is to be committed to an institution. But this is an institution where the buildings are shaped like birthday cakes and igloos, where the Winking Abbess and the Queen Bee reign, and where the gateway to the underworld is open. It is also the scene of a mysterious murder. Occult twin to Alice in Wonderland, The...

Four sisters live in dilapidated houses, the daughters of a once-great merchant family of Osaka.Each of the women navigates her own complex relationship to the fading lustre of the Makioka family name, in the years leading up to the Second World War. Rich with breathtaking descriptions of ancient customs and an ever-changing natural world, Tanizaki evokes in poignant detail a long-lost way of life even as it withers under the harsh glare of modernity.‘An exquisite novel about...

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoine...

How the world’s best actors communicate with gravitas – and how you can, too.‘The theatre stars’ voice guru’ Daily MailActing is all about charisma. Whether you’re an A-list star or an extra, when you’re on stage you need to perform in a way that makes your audience listen.That stage presence is something we can all learn from. Every time you speak up in a meeting, recount an anecdote, or tell a joke, it’s essential to communicate with gravitas.Jeannette Nelson knows a thing ...

We're not Christians, Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli.' Exiled to a remote and barren corner of Italy for his opposition to Mussolini, Carlo Levi entered a world cut off from history and the state, hedged in by custom and sorrow, without comfort or solace, where, eternally patient, the peasants lived in an age-old stillness and in the presence of death - for Christ did stop at Eboli.

The first book in the hilarious new series for children by the bestselling creator of Hurrah For Gin.Lottie Brooks is 11 ľ and her life is already officially over - not only is she about to start high school without any friends or glamorous swooshy hair, she's just discovered she's too flat-chested to wear A BRA! She might as well give up now and go into hibernation with her hamsters Sir Barnaby Squeakington and Fuzzball the Third.Lottie navigates the many perils of growing u...

In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Standing in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime . . .Now wid...

Acclaimed on first publication and today considered one of the defining works of the sociology, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life is Erving Goffman's extraordinary analysis of the structure of our social interactions.Blurring the line between workaday life and theatrical performance, Goffman argues that our behaviour with others is defined by how we wish to be perceived - resulting in displays bearing a startling similarity to those of an actor on the stage. From ...

'The new playbook for building the future. A concise, actionable masterclass on design and strategy.' Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedInEver had a good idea but didn’t know how to begin? The New York Times bestselling authors of Sprint reveal the smart way to start ambitious projects.Every big project – whether it’s technology, sneakers or a neighbourhood café – requires a big investment to get going. Unfortunately, most of them flop. Too many teams waste time, money and op...

Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New York. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out......

Harry Goldfarb, heroin addict and son of lonely widow Sara, cares only about enjoying the good life with girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone C Love, and making the most of all the hash, poppers and dope they can get. Sara Goldfarb sits at home with the TV, dreaming of the life she could have and struggling with her own addictions - food and diet pills. But these four will pay a terrible price for the pleasures they believe they are entitled to. A passionate, heart-break...

‘One of the masters of the short story’ GuardianThese six stories of obsession, secrets, delusions and desires from one of the greatest European writers show individuals caught up in forces beyond their control – whether an art dealer agreeing to a heartbreaking deception, a soldier destroyed by war, a servant infatuated with her employer or a young boy witnessing illicit adult passions. Portraying innocence lost and lives crushed by history, each tale is a psychologically ac...

'Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it'At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, we see the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the world of the theatre lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. And everywhere there is the ang...

One of the most scandalous and influential books of the 20th century, Tropic of Cancer redefined the novel. Set in Paris in the 1930s, it features a starving American writer who lives a bohemian life among prostitutes, pimps, and artists. Promptly banned in the US and the UK because it was considered pornographic, Tropic of Cancer continued to be distributed in France and smuggled into other countries. When it was first published in the US in 1961, it led to more than 60 obsc...

The subject of this book is the life of the former cement-worker and haulier Franz Biberkopf in Berlin. As our story begins, he has just been released from prison, where he did time for some stupid stuff, and now he is back in Berlin, determined to go straight.To begin with, he succeeds. But then he gets involved in a set-to with an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. To see and hear this will be worthwhile for many readers who, like Franz Biberko...

When Caitlin accepts a new high-powered job at Aurora, she can't possibly realise what she's letting herself in for.On the one hand, the senior team she’s joining is full of big personalities, never happier than when nursing a bitter grudge or pursuing an illicit affair.On the other, the company is up for sale, and if they can just hold it together at their glamorous corporate retreat, each is set to make millions.But when the group heads out on the first night of the trip, e...

One of the premier Japanese novels in the twentieth century, THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where they are pressed into shovelling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.