Unrivalled in scope and brimming with human drama, A People's Tragedy is the most vivid, moving and comprehensive history of the Russian Revolution available today. A modern masterpiece (Andrew Marr). The most moving account of the Russian Revolution since Doctor Zhivago (Independent). Opening with a panorama of Russian society, from the cloistered world of the Tsar to the brutal life of the peasants, A People's Tragedy follows workers, soldiers, intellectuals and villagers a...
"I was wowed and moved." (Tracy Chevalier). Anne Bronte is the forgotten Bronte sister, overshadowed by her older siblings - virtuous, successful Charlotte, free-spirited Emily and dissolute Branwell. Tragic, virginal, sweet, stoic, selfless, Anne. The less talented Bronte, the other Bronte. Or that's what Samantha Ellis, a life-long Emily and Wuthering Heights devotee, had always thought. Until, that is, she started questioning that devotion and, in looking more closely at E...
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… ...
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 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, ...
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....
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 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...
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...
Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novels. Home from college on his summer break, the narrator spends his time drinking beer and smoking with his friend nicknamed the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers. Three years later he has moved to Tokyo to work as a translator and live with indistinguishable twin girls. But the Rat has remained behind. Haunted by memories of the ...
Murakami's surreal, mind-bending masterpiece: a sci-fi pastiche and a Utopian fantasy novel ingeniously woven together.A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan. Unicorn skulls and voracious librarians. John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story, post-modern manifesto. All this rolled into one rip-roaring novel,End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami’s internat...
'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...
Julio Cortazar's crazed masterpiece, the forbearer of the Latin Boom in the 1960s'Cortazar's masterpiece. This is the first great novel of Spanish America... A powerful anti-novel but, like deeply understood moments in life itself, rich with many kinds of potential meanings and intimations'Times Literary SupplementDazed by the disappearance of his muse, Argentinian writer Horatio Oliveira wanders the bridges of Paris, the sounds of jazz and the talk of literature, life and ar...
'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 man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big blank.His girlfriend has perfectly formed ears, ears with the power to bewitch, marvels of creation. The man receives a letter from a friend, enclosing a seemingly innocent photograph of sheep, and a request: place the photograph somewhere it will be seen. Then, one September afternoon, the phone rings, and the adventure begins. Welcome to the wild sheep chase.
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...
Wonderfully engaging, expansive and ambitious, Sound Tracks tells the history of our relationship with music in sixty detective stories, each focusing on the discovery of a musical instrument - or its fragments - in archaeological digs around the world. Taking us from the present day - finding a 100-year-old wax cylinder recording on a flea market - all the way back to the dawn of time - the thrilling discovery of a prehistoric flute - long-lost music is itself reconstructed ...
On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day...
Two or three times a day I think to myself: maybe I’ll die today.While recovering from a stroke, seventy-seven-year-old Utsugi turns to his diary to wryly record his struggle with his ageing body. Though impotent and in pain he notes down his growing desire for his beautiful daughter-in-law Satsuko, a chic, Westernised dancer with a shady past. Written when the author himself was an old man and shining with self-effacing humour, Tanizaki’s last novel is a tragicomedy about de...
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...
Wealthy, esteemed, and deeply rooted in tradition, the Buddenbrook family epitomises nineteenth-century German bourgeois values.But as the tides of modernity and change sweep through Europe, their once-stable world begins to crumble, along with the tenets on which the Buddenbrooks built their success. Spanning four generations, this semi-autobiographical family epic records the transition of genteel Germanic stability to a very modern uncertainty.'Perhaps the first great nove...
Love, money, revenge and betrayal - this is the Jazz Age novel that became the great American classic. 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 whisper ‘he killed a man once’. Just where is Gatsby from and what is the obsess...
