If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour.Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight's Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor.These five dazzling works of f...
Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France.Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe. But just as she is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Sadie becomes caught in the crossfire between the past and the future… ...
A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Fitzgerald's glittering Jazz Age masterpiece with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon.The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby’s party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between sips of champagne his guests speculate about their mysterious host. Some say he’s a bootlegger. Others swear he was a German spy during the war. They lean in and w...
A beautiful deluxe gift edition of classic Sherlock Holmes stories with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon.Discover Sherlock Holmes's most memorable and intriguing cases, including adventures with mysterious masked strangers, ingenious heists, murderous plots and hidden jewels. From Holmes's lodgings at 221B Baker Street, the famous detective and his faithful sidekick Dr Watson unravel the shadiest crimes taking pl...
A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Austen’s satirical swipe at the gothic novel with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon.Catherine Morland is a young girl with a very active imagination. Her naivety and love of sensational novels lead her to approach the fashionable social scene in Bath and her stay at nearby Northanger Abbey with preconceptions that have embarrassing and entertaining consequences....
A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Austen’s unsung masterpiece with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon.Fanny Price's rich relatives offer her a place in their home so that she can be properly brought up. However, Fanny's childhood is a lonely one as she is never allowed to forget her position. Her only ally is her cousin Edmund. When her cousins befriend two glamorous new young people who have arrived in the area, ...
School should equip children for adulthood. In reality, it means one thing: exams.Exam Nation sets out a better way – and, crucially, shows us how we might get there.Educationalist and Head of School Sammy Wright argues that grades, rankings and Ofsted reports all miss the point of school, and together they are undermining our whole approach to education. Rather than sorting pupils into winners and losers, we need to think differently about what our schools are actually for –...
A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Carroll's magical masterpiece with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon.Bored on a hot afternoon, Alice, a bright and inquisitive child, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit-hole, and finds herself in Wonderland, a very odd place indeed. This unique story mixes satire and puzzles, comedy and anxiety, Mock Turtles and Gryphos to provide an astute description of the experience of chil...
'Deliciously dark, razor-sharp, and unapologetically wrong in all the right ways' C.J. Skuse, author of SWEETPEAHe wasn’t afraid of me. That was his first mistake.Read the cult word-of-mouth hit readers are obsessed with:‘Such an incredible read!’‘Holy hell this book was fun!’‘Included all the things I like in fiction…vigilantism/revenge, cold, calculating women, themes of obsession, queer desire’‘Amazing twists!’‘You guys NEED TO READ THIS!’Scarlett Clark is an exceptional E...
Prizewinning Yan Lianke returns with a campus novellike no other following a young Buddhist as she journeys through worldly temptationYahui is a young Buddhist at university. But this is no ordinary university. It is populated by every faith in China: Buddhists, Daoists, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims who jostle alongside one another in the corridors of learning, and whose deities are never far from the classroom.Her days are measured out making elaborate religious paperc...
What if you could rewrite your relationship, again and again, until it worked out?‘A cause for celebration’GEORGE SAUNDERS‘A stunner of a debut’NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH'Hilarious, heart-rending, grotesque, delightful, utterly brilliant' DAISY JOHNSON‘Exhilaratingly good’ KELLY LINKWhen Myriam and Allison fall in love at a show in a run-down punk house, their relationship begins to unfold through a series of hypotheticals:What if they became mothers by finding a baby in an all...
What we experience during adolescence shapes us for life, but psychologist Lucy Foulkes shows that too often we fear, dismiss or even try to prevent aspects of it that are crucial to our development. Drawing on decades of psychological research, and including profoundly moving interviews, Coming of Age gets beneath the recent myths and age-old stereotypes of adolescence to reveal the reasons why teens behave the way they do.Above all, Foulkes shows that adolescents have an ex...
'This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met' J K Rowling'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up.Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist f...
THE NEXT SENSATION FROM THE AUTHOR OFI WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MENThere’s a voice in Aline’s head: a voice that wants out.Brash, boisterous and sexually adventurous, this voice seems to be the antithesis of Aline, a prim literature professor for whom each day promises to be as quiet and conventional as the last.That is until, after thirty-five years of imprisonment, her alter ego breaks free.Taking on a life of his own, Orlanda – Aline’s second self – slips into the taut, rugged...
At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, survivor – is finally living her life.A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” – Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind.Ove...
PARIS, 1885. On an otherwise ordinary night, Aubry Tourvel – spoiled, stubborn and nine years old – is suddenly struck down by a mysterious illness at the family dinner table. When a visit to a doctor only makes her worse, Aubry flees to the outskirts of the city, where she realises that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. She has no choice: she must run from this curse. And so begins her incredible lifelong journey across the world. But with risk at every t...
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PAULA HAWKINS, AUTHOR OF GIRL ON A TRAIN"Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?"From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities. The psychologists would call it folie a deux...Strangers on a Train was Patricia Highsmith's first novel, and...
Cunning Folk transports us to a time when magic was used to solve life’s day-to-day problems – as well as some of deadly importance.‘A brilliant book, written with wit and vigour’ MALCOLM GASKILL, author of The Ruin of All Witches‘Absolutely fascinating’ IAN MORTIMER, author of The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval EnglandIt’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re l...
'Marvellously, insanely readable... Highsmith has done it again' The Times"There's no such thing as a perfect murder... That's just a parlor game, trying to dream one up."Tom Ripley is enjoying his wealthy lifestyle in France, until an associate asks him to kill someone again. But Ripley detests murder, unless it is absolutely necessary. Someone else should do the dirty work for them - yes, someone with no criminal record could earn a very generous fee for doing a couple of s...
Discover how 15 minutes a day can awaken your creative magic and spark joyHave you ever been so absorbed in writing, drawing, cooking, dancing, yoga, music or crafting that you lost track of time? In neuroscience, this is known as ‘flow’, a focused state where the mind and body are at their most serene. Former dancer and neuroscientist Julia Christensen reveals why you experience overthinking and shares a 7-step method for creating a reliable pathway to flow to effortlessly u...
A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Poe's most macabre and irresistible stories with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. Edgar Allan Poe's stories uncover the deeply unnerving strangeness lurking within us all. His genius for horror and suspense went on to influence the world, from Freud to Hollywood. This complete collection of his best short stories contains the well-known works 'The Pit and the Pendulum' and 'The...
Silas Marner lives a friendless and isolated existence near the country village of Raveloe, hoarding his gold. One night his fortune is stolen and Silas loses everything he holds dear. But then the golden-haired child Eppie appears in his home, and Silas begins to reform bonds of faith and human connectedness that he once renounced forever.
