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A classic collection of tales by the acclaimed Russian playwright and author universally recognized as a master of the modern short story. In “The Bet,” partygoers strike up a debate regarding the humanity of capital punishment versus life imprisonment, which causes a two-million-ruble wager to be struck between a lawyer and a banker. The lawyer, arguing in favor of life imprisonment, agrees to spend fifteen years in total isolation in a guest room on the banker's property. Granted only basic necessities, he staves off loneliness and depression by reading, studying, playing piano, and drinking wine. Meanwhile, the banker experiences the follies of fortune, leading him to a desperate and dastardly decision... Other stories in this volume include “A Tedious Story,” “The Fit,” “Misfortune,” “After the Theatre,” “That Wretched Boy,” “Enemies,” “A Trifling Occurrence,” “A Gentleman Friend,” “Overwhelming Sensations,” “Expensive Lessons,” “A Living Calendar,” and “Old Age.”

Classic tales of changing lives and loves from one of Russia's greatest playwrights, a master of the modern short story. Morality, philosophy, and science merge in “The Duel,” the classic tale of transformation in which educated Russian aristocrat Ivan Andreitch Laevsky falls in love with the married Nadya Fyodorovna and runs off to the Black Sea with her. As their passion wanes, Nadya turns to other men for comfort, while Ivan indulges in heavy drinking and gambling. When he receives word that Nadya's husband has died, freeing them to marry, Ivan hides it. He knows he cannot marry a woman he no longer loves but struggles with the idea of leaving Nadya penniless and alone. Soon Ivan's conundrum becomes the topic of conversation around a doctor's dinner table. When their discussion touches on evolution, one of the doctor's boarders—a zoologist—states that someone with Ivan's moral failings should not be allowed to reproduce. As events unfold, setting Ivan and the zoologist on a path to confrontation, the character of each man will be revealed—for better and for worse. Other short stories collected in this volume include “Excellent People,” “Mire,” “Neighbours,” “At Home,” “Expensive Lessons,” “The Princess,” and “The Chemist's Wife.”

“A wonderful, melodramatic tale-of-the-times, by a master of his craft. It begins in satire and finally resolves into entertaining social comedy.” —The Guardian A classic satirical novel by the author of the Chronicles of Baretshire series, The Way We Live Now exposes the financial impropriety, greed, and dishonesty that pervaded all aspects of English society at the time it was published, in 1875. “One of the last examples of the three-volume serialized Victorian novel. If the genre seems nearly as alien to contemporary American readers as the Renaissance epic poem, the world that Trollope portrays is not so remote. Trollope's London is a satirical distortion of the city that he found upon returning from eighteen months of overseas travel: the luxurious center of a vast empire floating on limitless credit, a society defined entirely by commercial interest, a hothouse of financial speculation and status competition, a place where relationships have become purely transactional.... Trollope has the advantage of being unafraid, which gives his social criticism its vivid power. This, he tells us, is what extremely civilized people become when the money gets too big.” —The New Yorker “Recognized as Trollope's masterpiece... As a savage commentary on mid-Victorian England by a marvelously addictive writer steeped in every aspect of an extraordinary society, it could hardly be bettered.” —The Guardian

Two young Londoners enter the world of business and politics while still making time for cricket in this comic novel by the creator of Jeeves and Wooster. Mike Jackson, who'd hoped to continue his cricket career at Cambridge, is devastated to learn he must instead work in the mail room of New Asiatic Bank. Worse, he'll be reporting to John Bickersdyke, a man who's had it in for Mike ever since they first met on the cricket field. But Mike's good friend Psmith (the P is silent) will be working at the bank too. And Psmith intends to make sure they never experience a dull moment. A dandy with an irrepressible wit, Psmith knows just how to get the best of Bickersdyke. From disrupting their boss's campaign for Parliament to making a scene at the Senior Conservative Club and even dabbling in a bit of blackmail, Mike and Psmith discover that the working life isn't all bad—especially when they can cut out early for cricket. First published in 1910, Psmith in the City continues the adventures of two of author P. G. Wodehouse's most beloved characters, who previously appeared in the school novel Mike and Psmith.

There's no kind of trouble Wooster can get into that Jeeves can't fix in this classic collection of stories featuring the iconic English valet. Meet Reginald Jeeves, the consummate gentleman's gentleman and personal valet to the wealthy young idler Bertie Wooster. First appearing in the Saturday Evening Post in 1915, Jeeves became one of the most beloved characters in modern English fiction as, time and again, he helped Wooster and his friends out of various messes—including a number of unwise or unwanted engagements. My Man Jeeves collects four of Wodehouse's most memorable Jeeves and Wooster stories and pairs them with four comic tales of Wodehouse's original man-about-town, Reggie Pepper. From Jeeves's unconventional solution for handling an unwanted houseguest to Reggie Pepper's attempt to save a forgetful friend's marriage, Wodehouse demonstrates his signature tongue-in-cheek wit in these eight charming stories.

An Englishwoman is taken in by a duplicitous suitor in this “constantly surprising work” from the Whitbread Award–winning author of Love and Summer (John Updike, The New Yorker). Forty-seven-year-old widow Julia Ferndale can't believe her good luck—she's about to remarry. What's more, her fiancé, Francis Tyte, is a charming actor and magazine model fourteen years her junior. Her daughters are thrilled. Her mother is suspicious. But unfortunately for Julia, she keeps those suspicions to herself. After the wedding, Francis reveals a past that includes an abandoned wife, a mistress and child, and the many others he's used and left behind to deal with his wreckage. Finding herself suddenly added to their number, Julia is shocked out of her dream and onto a sobering journey that leads into the savage realities of the world. “Pungent with the sense of evil and corruption.” —John Updike, The New Yorker “All the gifts that were obvious in Mr. Trevor's earlier books are even more apparent here.... A book filled with narrative surprise and shrewd social observation, and has, in addition, an edge of genuine moral interest.” —The New York Times “Trevor is a master of both language and storytelling.” —Hilary Mantel on Felicia's Journey

From the award-winning author of Love and Summer: A short novel about coming of age in WWII-era provincial Ireland that “certainly lingers in the mind” (Harriet Waugh, Spectator). At fifty-eight, Harry is a lifelong bachelor who never left the Irish village where he was born. But he will never forget the beautiful Englishwoman, and her much older German husband, who brought a new world into view when they escaped Hitler's Germany to come and live at Cloverhill. To fifteen-year-old Harry, Frau Messinger was a vision of elegance and culture unlike any he'd ever known. Ignoring his family's suspicions, he was happy to fetch her packages in exchange for time spent in her company. But it wasn't only the horrors of history that drove Herr and Frau Messinger to Harry's village. And when Herr Messigner begins building a lavish art cinema, the Alexandra, as a gift to his dying wife, the project becomes Harry's lifelong obsession.

A lyrical “groundbreaking work” of the Harlem Renaissance, praised by writers from Langston Hughes to Maya Angelou and Alice Walker (The Washington Post). “It would be good to hear their songs... reapers of the sweet-stalked cane, cutters of the corn... even though their throats cracked, and the strangeness of their voices deafened me.” —“Harvest Song,” Jean Toomer Published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane has long been recognized as a pioneering work in African American literature. Employing a modernist, nontraditional structure of thematically linked prose vignettes, poems, and dialogue presented in evocative, often mournful lyrical tones, Toomer created a unique impressionistic mosaic of the inner lives of African Americans in the early twentieth century, encompassing the rural South and the urban North. Deeply felt and beautifully expressed, Toomer's masterpiece continues to resonate almost a century after it was written. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Inspired by a true story, artfully told by the author of Searching for Bobby Fischer: A Bahamian island becomes a battleground for a savage private war. Charismatic expat Bobby Little built his own funky version of paradise on the remote island of Rum Cay, a place where ambitious sport fishermen docked their yachts for fine French cuisine and crowded the bar to boast of big blue marlin catches while Bobby refilled their cognac on the house. Larger than life, Bobby was really the main attraction: a visionary entrepreneur, expert archer, reef surfer, bush pilot, master chef, seductive conversationalist. But after tragedy shatters the tranquility of Bobby's marina, tourists stop visiting and simmering jealousies flare among island residents. And when a cruel, different kind of self-made entrepreneur challenges Bobby for control of the docks, all hell breaks loose. As the cobalt blue Bahamian waters run red with blood, the man who made Rum Cay his home will be lucky if he gets off the island alive... When the Ebb Tide cruises four hundred miles southeast from Fort Lauderdale to Rum Cay, its captain finds the Bahamian island paradise he so fondly remembers drastically altered. Shoal covers the marina entrance, the beaches are deserted, and on shore there is a small cemetery with headstones overturned and bones sticking up through the sand. What happened to Bobby's paradise?

This masterpiece of modern literature by the author of Orlando is an intimate and probing account of a single day in the life of a London society woman. It's the spring of 1923 and Clarissa Dalloway must prepare her Westminster home for the guests she will receive this evening. As the wife of a Parliament Minister, proper decorum is of upmost importance, and she decides to buy the flowers herself. Walking through the streets of London, Clarissa's entire life swirls through her mind as Big Ben tolls out the passing hours of the day. On her journey, Clarissa will encounter friends and memories; regrets and dreams of what might have been. From her happy youth to the realities of World War I and the very logical reasons for marrying her husband, her stream of consciousness is evoked with lucidity and depth by one of the twentieth century's most important literary stylists. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is “conceived so brilliantly, dimensioned so thoroughly and documented so absolutely that her type, in the words of Constantin Stanislavsky, might be said to have been done ‘inviolably and for all time'” (The New York Times). “Virginial Woolf is one of the few writers who changed life for all of us. Her combination of intellectual courage and painful emotional sensitivity created a new way of perceiving and living in the world.” —Margaret Drabble This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The acclaimed author of Mapp and Lucia introduces the beloved Miss Elizabeth Mapp, a devious social climber, in this charming British comedy of manners. In the English seaside village of Tilling, Miss Elizabeth Mapp keeps a thorough notebook about everyone's business, including her servants. Whatever information she can't collect through gossip, she discovers with the aid of opera glasses. Looking out from her window over High Street, she pays especially avid attention to her neighbor, Maj. Benjamin Flint, whom she has been planning for years to marry. The second novel in E. F. Benson's popular Mapp and Lucia series, which has been adapted for BBC television, offers a biting satire of post-WWI English village life, complete with a cast of colorful characters who all fall under the knowing gaze of “Old Mappy.” This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

“As poignant as anything in modern fiction”: An English girl comes of age on a journey to South America in this debut novel by the author of Mrs. Dalloway (E. M. Forster). Aboard her father's cargo ship, young Rachel Vinrace meets Helen and Ridley Ambrose, her aunt and uncle, who invite her to join them at a South American resort for the winter. Shy and introspective, Rachel tentatively agrees, and soon finds herself on a voyage of liberation and self-discovery as she experiences the excitement and calamity of young love. With an appearance by Clarissa Dalloway—and a fateful encounter between her husband and Rachel—Virginia Woolf's debut novel anticipates the groundbreaking brilliance of her later works while displaying all their wit, insight, and heartbreaking sensitivity. “For all its tragic interest, The Voyage Out is not low-keyed; it even has a slight buoyancy of tone, as if clear perception itself brought a continual zest to its writer. Woolf has the diversity of power which makes the great writer of narrative.” —New Republic This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

A Wisconsin man rejects his middle-class life in this controversial 1923 novel of madness and sexual freedom by the celebrated author of Winesburg, Ohio. This is the story of one John Webster, a quiet, prosperous washing machine manufacturer, nearing forty. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, Mary, and their seventeen-year-old daughter, Jane. They are in many ways the ideal American family... until a certain madness takes hold of John; a madness that may in fact be the sudden dawning of sanity. Like so many men and women, John has dreams that he feels compelled to crush in order to function in his quiet, prosperous life. But down within his body, something is beginning to affect him—an irrepressible feeling of not being himself. It comes over him with all the excitement of springtime, and soon enough it will change him, and his life, forever. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

An artist watches his son go to the frontlines of WWI in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. Paris, 1914. An American painter living abroad, John Campton is excited to spend a month traveling with his son George. But their plans are cut short when war breaks out across Europe. Raised by his mother in the United States, George is American through-and-through. But he is technically a French citizen—and now he is called upon to fight for France. As John reconnects with his ex-wife in an attempt to keep George from the front, George makes a shocking decision that leaves John struggling to understand his role—as both an artist and a parent—in a time of war. Written in 1923, Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front offers heartbreaking drama as well as biting satire in its knowing depiction of life behind the frontlines of World War I. “Wharton movingly portrays those left behind during war—not the wives and children but the devastated parents, who are forced to go on living at the cost of their own flesh and blood. Heartrending, tragic, powerful, this is not to be missed.” —Publishers Weekly This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

“The immortal comic duo of ditsy Bertram Wooster and his unflappable valet Reginald Jeeves” are at it again in this hilarious follow-up to My Man Jeeves (The Washington Post). As Evelyn Waugh said of him, P. G. Wodehouse “satisfies the most sophisticated taste and the simplest.” His second collection to feature British butler Jeeves and his frivolous aristocratic employer, Bertie Wooster, contains some of his best loved stories, including “The Great Sermon Handicap,” in which bets are placed on which parson will preach the longest Sunday sermon. Many of these linked stories feature the romantic misadventures of Bertie's friend Bingo Little—who falls in love with everyone from a parson's niece, a romance novelist, and a Communist to Bertie's own fiancée. Bertie also struggles with willful Aunt Agatha and the formidable and athletic Honoria Glossop, who just may be a bit too much woman for him. As always, Jeeves steps in to set things right. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

All-new stories featuring the “wonderful, real, lovable characters” of St. Jude's, in the series that inspired the beloved British sitcom Bless Me, Father (James Herriot). Based on the author's real-life experiences as a young clergyman, the five books in the Bless Me, Father series offer a sweet-natured, humorous look at Catholicism in the 1950s. Father Neil's adventures at St. Jude's parish in London with its raucous congregation full of Irish immigrants proved so popular they were adapted into a long-running British sitcom. Now, in these eleven previously unpublished stories, readers have the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with young Father Neil, the irascible Father Duddleswell, the sharp-tongued housekeeper Mrs. Pring, and more colorful parishioners. A young couple hoping to adopt twins gets more they bargained for; a foundling is abandoned like Moses—in a confessional; an honored infantry sergeant returns from the battlefield physically, emotionally, and spiritually scarred; a modern-thinking new curate creates a distraction by being far too handsome; and an unexpected new addition disrupts St. Jude's: Mario the monkey, who can test the patience of a saint. “Carry on, Father!” cheers the Dublin Evening Herald. And he does, with the same inspiring heavenly humor that has made Neil Boyd's long-running series such “hilarious and compulsive reading” (Catholic Herald).

One man wants to publish, so another must perish, in this darkly witty philosophical novel by “a spectacularly gifted comic writer” (Newsweek). The Third Policeman follows a narrator who is obsessed with the work of a scientist and philosopher named de Selby (who believes that Earth is not round but sausage-shaped)—and has finally completed what he believes is the definitive text on the subject. But, broke and desperate for money to get his scholarly masterpiece published, he winds up committing robbery—and murder. From here, this remarkably imaginative dark comedy proceeds into a world of riddles, contradictions, and questions about the nature of eternity as our narrator meets some policemen with an obsession of their own (specifically, bicycles), and engages in an extended conversation with his dead victim—and his own soul, which he nicknames Joe. By the celebrated Irish author praised by James Joyce as “a real writer, with the true comic spirit,” The Third Policeman is an incomparable work of fiction. “'Tis the odd joke of modern Irish literature—of the three novelists in its holy trinity, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien, the easiest and most accessible of the lot is O'Brien.... Flann O'Brien was too much his own man, Ireland's man, to speak in any but his own tongue.” —The Washington Post

An indolent college student creates a chaotic fictional world in this classic of Irish literature: “A marvel of imagination, language, and humor” (New Republic). In this comic masterpiece, our unnamed narrator—a student at University College, Dublin, who spends more time drinking and working on his novel than attending classes—creates a character, a pub owner named Trellis, who himself is devoted mainly to writing and sleeping. Soon Trellis is collaborating with an author of cowboy romances, and from there unspools a brilliantly unpredictable adventure that James Joyce himself called “a really funny book.” “'Tis the odd joke of modern Irish literature—of the three novelists in its holy trinity, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien, the easiest and most accessible of the lot is O'Brien.... Flann O'Brien was too much his own man, Ireland's man, to speak in any but his own tongue.” —The Washington Post “As with Scott Fitzgerald, there is a brilliant ease in [O'Brien's] prose, a poignant grace glimmering off every page.” —John Updike “One of the best books of our century.” —Graham Greene

Alone together in a London hospital ward, four women take stock of their lives in this “deeply moving novel” by the award-winning author of The Old Boys (The New York Times). At forty-one, the news that she requires a hysterectomy strikes Elizabeth Aidallbery as something of a nonevent. But from her bed at Cheltenham Women's Hospital, the divorced mother of three comes to realize that she is at a crossroads. She meets two other women admitted for the same operation: Young Sylvie Clapper, who is preoccupied with her dishonest boyfriend; and poor Miss Samson, with her disfiguring birthmark, who runs a Christian boarding house. In the ward with them is Lily Drucker, determined to have a child despite insurmountable difficulties. With compassion and wry humor, these very different women share their lives, concerns, and regrets. Elizabeth faces a lonesome life that includes a childhood friend turned hapless suitor, and a teenage daughter who has run off to a commune. But there is a hard-won grace in the companionship these women find in Trevor's “finely observed, gently sensitive comedy” that is “delightful to read” (Daily Telegraph).

The “wryly entertaining” debut novel of old grudges and petty power struggles from the Whitbread Award–winning author of Love and Summer (The New York Times). Graduates of an elite English public school, the septuagenarian members of the Old Boys Association have convened in London to decide who shall be their next president. Mr. Jaraby has been proposed, and unless there is an objection from his circle of peers, he will assume the position automatically. It seems like little more than an excuse to get together and reminisce about old pranks played on the headmaster. But while none of their boyhood bonds have been forgotten, neither have their old cruelties been forgiven. Mr. Nox certainly remembers Jaraby's behavior from their time as schoolmates. And when he decides to oppose Jaraby for the presidency, the conflict unleashes decades of buried rivalries, regrets, failures, and the savage nature hidden just beneath good English manners. “The elemental value of Mr. Trevor's wryly entertaining story lies less in its grubby specifics than in its illuminating generalities. It reminds us that at every level of every society there are groups of Old Boys cocooned in smug insularity.” —The New York Times

The Whitbread Award–winning author “demonstrates a master's touch” in this tale of an aristocratic Irish family's ruinous path toward modernity (The New York Times). An island estate off the coast of county Cork, Carriglas has been in the Rolleston family for centuries. Sarah Pollexfen, a distant relation of little means, remembers the magical summer she spent there as a child in 1904. But much has changed in Ireland since then. And when Sarah returns nearly thirty years later, she finds Carriglas much changed as well. World War I and the Irish Troubles have taken their toll on the Rollestons. Sarah's cousins, who once seemed to sparkle with beauty and wit, have grown dour and withdrawn. And as Sarah uncovers the tragedies they've endured, she'll also discover the terrible truth about that seemingly idyllic summer in 1904.

A London boarding-house becomes a battle ground in this “dazzling display of character-led fiction” from the award-winning author of The Old Boys (The Independent). William Wagner Bird spent his life collecting lost souls—dispossessed immigrants, lonely old ladies, and the simply half-mad—to live in his London boarding-house. But when he dies, the true intent of his work is revealed in his diary. Bird had been watching them all closely, keeping notes on their sad and peculiar circumstances. And then there's the matter of his will, in which he leaves the house to the two tenants who most despise each other, the petty thief Mr. Studdy and the equally nasty Nurse Clock. In this “rhapsody to misanthropy” Whitbread Award winner William Trevor paints a fascinating group portrait of society's outcasts, each of whom sees their small life unravel “in a manner somewhere between Dubliners and Grimm's fairy tales” (The New York Times).

The denizens of a crumbling Dublin hotel are the subject of a meddling photographer in this Booker Prize–shortlisted “masterpiece” (Irish Times). Once a flourishing establishment, O'Neill's Hotel has fallen on hard times. The same could be said for the people who live there. Among them are Mrs. Sinnott, the elderly, deaf, and mute proprietor; her drunkard son, Eugene; Morrissey, a small-time pimp; and the grim, lone porter O'Shea. But what might sound bleak to some holds irresistible allure for globetrotting photographer Ivy Eckdorf. Hearing stories of O'Neill's Hotel from an ocean liner barman, Eckdorf catches the unmistakable whiff of human interest. Surely some tragic story hides within this crumbling corner of Ireland. Now she intends to uncover that story, frame it just so, and turn it into her next coffee table book. Though she has no connection to these hard-luck souls, she has arrived. And no one's life will be the same—not even hers. “An astounding richness of pathos, humour and tragedy.” —Francis King “A small work of art [that] reaches antic heights.” —The New York Times

The beloved classic novel of an English housewife bravely enduring WWII—the basis for the Academy Award–winning film starring Greer Garson. Winston Churchill once remarked that Mrs. Miniver, the fictional British housewife featured in Jan Struther's newspaper columns about quotidian English life, did more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. As tensions rose across Europe, Mrs. Miniver's domestic concerns expanded from automobiles and Christmas shopping to include gas masks, keeping calm, and carrying on. An international sensation when it was first published, this novelized collection of those columns won America's heart—and broad public support for entering WWII. Mrs. Miniver's story was so essential to Allied morale that when William Wyler's film adaption was made, President Roosevelt ordered it rushed to theaters.

Sharply observed literary fiction from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Group and a “delightfully polished writer” (The Atlantic Monthly). New York Times–bestselling author Mary McCarthy wrote with “an icily honest eye and a glacial wit that make her portraits stingingly memorable” (The New York Times). From a trenchant portrait of marriage to an academic satire to an unconventional thriller, the three novels in this collection show the range of an author possessed of “an uncanny flair for fastening on detail that has an electric impact on the reader” (The Atlantic Monthly). A Charmed Life: In this New York Times bestseller, former actress and budding playwright Martha Sinnott longs to recapture the “charmed life” she abandoned when she divorced her first husband. So she returns to her beloved New England artists'colony with her second spouse. But her arrogant ex, Miles, lives dangerously close by with his new wife. And in a pervasive atmosphere of falsehoods and self-delusions, the biggest lie of all is Martha's belief that her reunion with Miles won't somehow wreak terrible havoc on all she holds dear. “A glittering tragedy.” —The New York Times The Groves of Academe: College instructor Henry Mulcahy embarks on a fanatical quest to save his job—and enact righteous revenge—in this “brilliantly stinging” satire of university politics during the early Cold War years (The New York Times). “Brilliant... Bitterly tongue-in-cheek.” —The New Yorker Cannibals and Missionaries: En route to Iran, a plane is hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists intent on holding hostage the politicians, religious leaders, and activists on a mission to investigate charges of human rights violations by the Shah. Soon the kidnappers discover a greater treasure onboard: prominent art collectors with access to some of the world's most valuable paintings—which could fund global terrorism. As both captors and captives confront bitter truths about their conflicting values and ideologies, the clock races toward an explosive endgame. “Tense, intelligent entertainment.” —Chicago Tribune

Two family novels from an international bestselling British writer “with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit” (The Observer). Armistead Maupin says of Patrick Gale: “Few writers have grasped the twisted dynamics of family the way Gale has. There's really no one he can't inhabit, understand, and forgive.” In both novels presented in this collection, Gale explores the complex dynamics of family with dead-on observation and generous compassion. A Sweet Obscurity: Dido, a nine-year-old orphan, lives with her aunt Eliza, who adopted the girl after her mother died. A depressed musicologist unable to balance her brilliant academic career with motherhood, Eliza ruined her marriage with an affair. Her estranged husband, Giles, is an opera singer whose girlfriend, Julia, uncovers a shocking secret while concealing one of her own. As Dido shuttles between Eliza's squalid flat and Giles's elegant townhouse, she acts as both tactful diplomat and insightful analyst to the adults who act like children. Until something happens that powerfully impacts her young life. “This is arguably Gale's most questioning, troublesome work. It amuses, startles and occasionally bewilders. A Sweet Obscurity is worth every minute of your time.” —The Independent The Cat Sanctuary: Deborah Curtis's husband, a diplomat in an African principality, was killed by a car bomb, and months later she is still recovering from the assassination. Her estranged sister Judith, an author who lives with her American lover, Joanna, in Cornwall, insists Deborah come to her farmhouse to grieve in peace. But unresolved wounds between the sisters bleed into the present, and a history of abuse comes to light. Forced to confront painful memories, the women's secrets and lies collide in a shattering climax. “A dark tale of loss, sex and mistrust... A sensitive, thoughtful novel with a conclusion that is both unsettling and consistent.” —Time Out London

Three irreverent comic novels from an international bestselling British writer “with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit” (The Observer). “A clever, original writer with a sharp eye for social comedy and an equally sharp ear for dialogue,” Patrick Gale is able to find the comic irony as well as the all-too-human drama in our foibles. In his first three novels, collected here, he mines a rich vein of comedy in characters such as a playwright who reinvents herself, a teenage violin prodigy eager to meet the man of his dreams, a lesbian police inspector rediscovering her libido, and a teacher who surprises himself with an irrepressible paternal instinct (The Washington Post). Ease: An award-winning but world-weary playwright, Domina Tey takes on a fake name and a bedsit in Bayswater, then one of London's seedier districts, to find her muse again. Soon she finds herself getting involved with her fellow tenants: a wannabe actress, a gay Frenchman, and a devout member of the local Greek Orthodox Church. They show Domina a side of life she's never seen before, and she learns that before she can start writing again, she will have to live. “Captivating... a novel that pleads to be read at a single sitting.” —Publishers Weekly The Aerodynamics of Pork: Gale's “sad, funny, deeply searching” debut novel follows two parallel love stories that ultimately intersect in a surprising way: Fifteen-year-old violin prodigy Seth Peake is secretly attracted to men and looking for romance at a summer music festival in Cornwall, and closeted lesbian police inspector Maude Faithe is trying to solve a mysterious series of burglaries that target astrologists in London, even as she engages in her own star-crossed infatuation (Publishers Weekly). “Gale's concoction is irresistible: modern relationships with period charm. I couldn't have liked it more.” —Armistead Maupin Kansas in August: Stood up by his lover, Rufus, on his birthday, unhappy English teacher Hilary Metcalfe discovers a frightened, abandoned baby boy in a London tube station. Drunk and lonely, Hilary brings the baby home to his Shepherd's Bush flat, and soon finds he cannot live without the child. As Rufus falls into a romantic encounter with, of all people, Hilary's sister, the three are caught in a bizarre love triangle—with a baby in the middle. “The bawdy narrative strands are cleverly woven together with witty and urbane dialogue and piquant characterization, so that the reader is thoroughly absorbed in this irreverent tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly

Three keenly observant and profoundly moving novels from an international bestselling British writer “with heart, soul, and a dark and a naughty wit” (The Observer). “Patrick Gale writes with the understated fluency that is the hallmark of contemporary British fiction, and with the irony that usually accompanies it.” In the three novels collected here, the author of the international bestseller Notes from an Exhibition explores the complexities and ironies of men who have removed themselves from society and painful situations, only to find there's no escaping their inner turmoil as they follow individual journeys of growth (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post). Little Bits of Baby: Robin retreated to a remote island monastery after his childhood playmate, Candida, became engaged to Jake, their irresistibly sexy mutual friend. Now Candida is a mother, and she wants her long-lost friend to be the child's godfather. When he returns to London after his five-year exile, Robin finds the city overwhelming and unfamiliar, but he must fight through his feelings if he is to conclude the unfinished business that originally caused him to flee, and take his place in the world once again. “[A] blithe, original, engaging satire.” —The New York Times Facing the Tank: For American academic Evan Kirby, the English city of Barrowcester—pronounced “Brewster”—is a welcome escape from the US and his brutal divorce. A historian of angels and demons, he has come to explore the cathedral library, but he will find there are no angels in this peculiar little village. From the agnostic bishop and his cannabis cookie–addicted mother to the sex-mad cardinal and the schoolboy with a very unusual relationship with his spaniel, every Barrower has a secret, each more shocking than the last. “[A] ridiculously crazy tour de force... If E. F. Benson, Iris Murdoch and Fay Weldon were to produce a story in some mad collusion, the result might be something like this.” —Publishers Weekly Tree Surgery for Beginners: Armistead Maupin has said of Patrick Gale: “There's really no one he can't inhabit, understand, and forgive.” That certainly applies to the arborist Lawrence Frost in this epic redemptive novel, who is forced into a journey of self-searching after being accused of killing his wife. Following Frost's pilgrimage to the Caribbean and eventually to the redwoods of northern California, Gale compassionately chronicles the healing of “a man whose work as a tree surgeon is a metaphor for the growth of his soul and family” (Publishers Weekly). “Playful and wise. In prose of sparkling precision, Gale serves up misadventures—satirical, farcical and tragic.” —The New York Times

These memorable novels show the range of the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, “one of the best English writers” (The New York Times). British novelist Alan Sillitoe “powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class” in his best-known works of fiction (The Washington Post). Both The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were international bestsellers and made into acclaimed films. The prolific, award-winning author wrote over fifty books, including the three novels collected in this volume: a hard-won love story, a father-son tale of love and war, and a dystopian satire. Her Victory: Finally leaving her brutish husband, Pam flees to London, where she takes refuge in a lonely, sparsely furnished room. With a twist of the wrist, she turns on the gas and resigns herself to death, only to be saved by a neighbor, Tom, a former sailor in the Merchant Navy, who carries scars of his own. Both fighting despair, these two unlikely lovers attempt to begin a new life together and find a reason to go on. “Engrossing... Interesting and affecting.” —The New York Times The Widower's Son: Leaving the coal mines for the army, Charlie Scorton never looked back. After his wife died, the career military man raised his son to be a soldier as well. Like his father, William finds a home in the army, performing heroically at Dunkirk. But soon he will be forced to answer the question his father never could: What does a soldier do when war is over? “Earnest, tenacious... Sillitoe retains his commendable honesty.” —Kirkus Reviews Travels in Nihilon: In Sillitoe's biting satirical novel, Nihilon is a country where honesty is outlawed, drunk driving is mandatory, and nihilism reigns supreme. Five researchers are sent into the midst of this chaos to compile a new guidebook about the peculiar, unexplored land and its all-powerful leader, President Nil. They arrive as tourists, but they'll soon find out it's a lot easier to enter Nihilon than it is to escape. “Diabolically witty.” —The New York Times

As his laugh-out-loud secret diary extends into his later teens and young adulthood, everyone's favorite angsty Brit remains “a brilliant comic creation” (The Times, London). Continue to commiserate with “one of literature's most endearing figures”—a sharp-witted, pining, and achingly honest underdog of great expectations and dwindling patience who knows all (or believes he does) and tells all (The Observer). Having endured the agony of adolescence (just), Adrian now careens into his later teens, torturous twenties, and utterly disappointing thirties in these three hilarious sequels by “one of Britain's most celebrated comic writers” (The Guardian). From the not-so-humble origins of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and ¾, Adrian's chronicle of angst has sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, spawned seven sequels, been adapted for television, and staged as a musical—truly “a phenomenon” (The Washington Post). The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole: What's happening to Adrian Mole? On the one hand, he's entering the cusp of adulthood and burgeoning success as a published poet. On the other, he still lives at home, refuses to part with his threadbare stuffed rabbit, and has lost his job at the library for a shocking act of impudence: He shelved Jane Austen under Light Romance. Even worse, someone named Sue Townsend stole his diaries and published them under her own name. Of course they were bestsellers. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years: At 23¾ years old, Adrian is now technically an adult and almost prepared. On the upside: He's fallen for a perfectly lovely Nigerian waitress; he's seeing a therapist so as to talk about himself without interruption; and he's added vowels to his experimental novel-in-progress (so much more accessible to the masses!). The downside? Pandora is probably history; a pea-brained rival has been published before him to great acclaim; and worse—Adrian has come to the devastating realization that he may not be uncommon after all. Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years: At 34¾, impotent intellectual Adrian Mole is soon to be divorced; he hasn't a clue what to do with his semi-stardom as a celebrity chef; his parents have become swingers (with whom is too shocking to go into now); his epic novel is still unpublished; his ex-flame Pandora is running for political office; and his younger sister has rebelled in the most distressingly common ways. There is one upside: Adrian's son has inherited his mother's unblemished skin. “Townsend's wit is razor sharp” (Daily Mirror) as she shows us the world through the older and (possibly?) wiser eyes of her “achingly funny anti-hero” (Daily Mail), proving again and again why she's been called “a national treasure” (The New York Times Book Review).

Two powerful novels from “a superb storyteller”: An Oprah's Book Club selection and New York Times bestseller plus a National Book Award–nominated debut (The Washington Post). The highly acclaimed novelist Mary McGarry Morris has been hailed as “a credible heir to Carson McCullers... a wise, unsentimental portraitist of the lonely, the damned, the desperate and the incomplete” (The New York Times Book Review). Morris's gift for emotionally powerful, often bleak but always compassionate stories set in the small towns of New England is on display in the two novels collected here: the Oprah's Book Club Selection and New York Times bestseller, Songs in Ordinary Time, and the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, her debut novel, Vanished. Songs in Ordinary Time: In the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont, Marie Fermoyle is raising three children on the edge of poverty, with no help from her alcoholic ex-husband. Desperately lonely, Marie is easy prey for a con man like Omar Duvall. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Alice, is involved with a local priest; her sixteen-year-old son, Norm, is a hothead; and twelve-year-old Benjy is hiding a secret about Duvall that could shatter all her hopes. “Teeming with incident and characters, often foolish, even nasty, but always alive.” —The New Yorker “Deep and thick as a long, hot summer... The narrative of a town reminiscent of the collective ache of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” —The Boston Globe Vanished: Aubrey Wallace is a simple laborer, the kind of man no one notices. Dotty Johnson is the kind of woman no man can ignore. The day after they both disappear from their small Vermont town, a toddler is taken from her home. For the next five years, Aubrey, Dotty, and the kidnapped child are trapped in a nomadic existence, terrified of discovery. But when Dotty decides she's had enough, she hooks up with an ex-convict and the wheels of the little girl's return to her parents are wrenched fatally into motion. “An impressive debut... unusual and rich.” —San Francisco Chronicle “[Hums] with both the authenticity of real life and the mythic power of fable.” —The New York Times

These later novels from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, “one of the best English writers,” reflect his imaginative scope (The New York Times). British novelist Alan Sillitoe “powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class” in his best-known works of fiction (The Washington Post). Both The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were international bestsellers and made into acclaimed films. The prolific, award-winning author wrote over fifty books, including the three novels collected in this volume: a coming-of-age story about a young man who reinvents himself, a thriller featuring a blind veteran who thwarts a high-seas heroin heist—for love, and a seafaring search for Nazi treasure. The Broken Chariot: Class and identity are lifelong struggles for Herbert Thurgarton-Strang, born in India but sent away at seven to a boarding school in England. At seventeen, the rebellious young man finally breaks free from school and heads into the industrial slums of Nottingham, where he reinvents himself as “Bert Gedling”—a working-class lathe man, a drinker, a womanizer, and eventually a soldier. He continues to adapt his character on his tour of duty, and when he returns to England he transforms once again—but this time the fictions he constructs will follow the truth of his heart. “[Tackles] the issue of class in a way that is often surprising and always entertaining.” —Yorkshire Post The German Numbers Woman: Blinded in the war, RAF veteran Howard views the world through radio waves, eavesdropping on global affairs and secret transmissions with his mastery of Morse code. But when he becomes obsessed with the voice of a female sailor and her mysterious communications, his own relationship with his wife begins to dissolve. To bring her husband back, she introduces him to Richard, a fellow code-breaking buff. But when Richard's dealings in the black market send the female sailor on a dangerous drug run, Howard sets off to save her. “Sillitoe still effectively portrays the psychological idiosyncrasies of British reserve with chilling detail and a tender appreciation for obsessive loners.” —Publishers Weekly The Lost Flying Boat: A top-secret mission sends a crew of Royal Air Force veterans from South Africa to the subarctic Kerguelen Islands. At the helm of the seaplane Aldebaran sits the monomaniacal Captain Bennett, a man hell-bent on unearthing a treasure buried by the Germans in the final days of World War II. On the seaplane's radio is the young wireless operator Adcock, a man whose morals are soon put to the test as machine guns are mounted on the flying boat's turrets and the thirst for gold may cost the crew their lives. “Remarkably credible... [Sillitoe's] treasure-seekers are well-observed human beings.” —The Sunday Telegraph

In London during the Blitz, an amnesiac must outwit a twisted Nazi plot in this “master thriller” of espionage, murder, and deception (Time). On a peaceful Sunday afternoon, Arthur Rowe comes upon a charity fete in the gardens of a Cambridgeshire vicarage where he wins a game of chance. If only this were an ordinary day. Britain is under threat by Germany, and the air raid sirens that bring the bazaar to a halt expose Rowe as no ordinary man. Recently released from a psychiatric prison for the mercy killing of his wife, he is burdened by guilt, and now, in possession of a seemingly innocuous prize, on the run from a nest of Nazi spies who want him dead. Pursued on a dark odyssey through the bombed-out streets of London, he becomes enmeshed in a tangle of secrets that reach into the dark recesses of his own forgotten past. And there isn't a soul he can trust, not even himself. Because Arthur Rowe doesn't even know who he really is. “A storyteller of genius,” Graham Greene composed his serpentine mystery of authentic wartime espionage—and one the author's personal favorites—while working for MI6 (Evelyn Waugh). But The Ministry of Fear “is more than a mere thriller... [it's a] hypnotic moonstone of a novel” (The New York Times).

A famous architect struggling with a crisis of faith escapes to a leper colony in the Congo, in Graham Greene's “greatest novel” (Time). Querry is a world-renowned architect noted for his magnificent churches, each designed not for the glory of God, but for the satisfaction of self. Suddenly infected with indifference, he has abandoned his pursuit of pleasure. Now he has reached the end of desire at the end of the world—a colony of lepers in the remote jungles of Africa. Here, under the guidance of Doctor Colin, a fellow atheist, Querry's consideration of the sick could be something close to a cure for his own suffering. So too, it first seems, could a local plantation owner's lonely and abused wife—Querry's unlikely confessor. But when Querry reluctantly agrees to build a hospital and his good intentions brand him a modern-day saint, all the intrusive and dangerous piety of civilization returns. And this time it could be inescapable. From “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety” comes Graham Greene's celebrated novel about the consequences of conviction, the sickness of the soul, and the tenuous endurance of the human spirit (William Golding).

A teenage sociopath rises to power in Britain's criminal underworld in this “brilliant and uncompromising” thriller (The New York Times). Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised amid the casual violence and corruption in the dire prewar Brighton slums, has left his final judgment in the hands of God. On the streets, impelled by his own twisted moral doctrine, he leads a motley pack of gangsters whose sleazy little rackets have most recently erupted in the murder of an informant. Pinkie's attempts to cover their tracks have led him into the bed of a timid and lovestruck young waitress named Rose—his new wife, the key witness to his crimes, and, should she live long enough, his alibi. But loitering in the shadows is another woman, Ida Arnold—an avenging angel determined to do right by Pinkie's latest victim. Adapted for film in both 1948 and 2010 and for the stage as both a drama and musical, and serving as an inspiration to such disparate artists as Morrissey, John Barry, and Queen, “this bleak, seething and anarchic novel still resonate[s]” (The Guardian).

Strangers in Port-au-Prince are united in the corruption, fear, and revolt of Duvalier-era Haiti in “the most interesting novel of [Greene's] career” (The Nation). Haiti, under the rule of Papa Doc and his menacing paramilitary, the Tontons Macoute, has long been abandoned by tourists. Now it is home to corrupt capitalists, foreign ambassadors and their lonely wives—and a small group of enterprising strangers rocking into port on the Dutch cargo ship, Medea: a well-meaning pair of Americans claiming to bring vegetarianism to the natives; a former jungle fighter in World War II Burma and current confidence man; and an English hotelier returning home to the Trianon, an unsalable shell of an establishment on the hills above the capital. Each is embroiled in a charade. But when they're unsuspectingly bound together in this nightmare republic of squalid poverty, torrid love affairs, and impending violence, their masks will be stripped away. “While Mr. Greene... specialized in chronicling the moral and political murkiness he encountered in the third world... nowhere did he produce a more topical or damning work of fiction than [in The Comedians]” (The New York Times). Banned in Haiti, and condemned by Papa Doc Duvalier, it was adapted by Greene into a 1967 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

A hapless salesman in Cuba is recruited into Cold War spy games in Greene's classic “comical, satirical, atmospherical” novel (The Daily Telegraph). James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country club, all to create the perfect picture of intrigue. But when MI6 dispatches a secretary to oversee his endeavors, Wormold fears his carelessly fabricated world will come undone. Instead, it all comes true. Somehow, he's become the target of an assassin, and it's going to take more than a fib to get out of Cuba alive. Her Majesty's man in Havana may have to resort to spying. Named one of the 20 Best Spy Novels of All Time by the Telegraph and adapted into the classic 1959 comedy starring Alec Guinness, Our Man in Havana is “high-comic mayhem... weirdly undated... [and] bizarrely prescient” (Christopher Buckley, New York Times–bestselling author).

A retired London bank manager is yanked out of the suburbs by his eccentric aunt for a “cheerfully irreverent” romp across Europe (The Guardian). Now that the dullish Henry Pulling has left his job with an agreeable pension and a firm handshake, he plans to spend more time weeding his dahlias. Then, for the first time in fifty years, he sees his aunt Augusta at his mother's funeral. Charging into her seventies with florid abandon, not a day of her life wasted, and her future as bright as her brilliant red hair, Augusta insists that Henry abandon his garden, follow her, and hold on tight. With that, she whisks her nephew out of Brighton and boards the Orient Express bound for Paris and Istanbul, then on to Paraguay, and down the rabbit hole of her past that swarms with swindlers, smugglers, war criminals, and rather unconventional lovers. With each new stop, Henry discovers not only more about his aunt and her secrets but also about himself as well. Pulsing with “the tragic and comic ironies of love, loyalty and belief” Graham Greene's deceptive lark of novel was made into the 1972 film starring Maggie Smith (The Times, London).

Two novels and two collections of poetry, all powerful reflections on the AIDS experience, from the National Book Award–winning author of Becoming a Man. Afterlife: Three men bond after their lovers die of AIDS, all within a week of one another in the same Los Angeles hospital. Each of the men react differently to the situation he's in, but no matter the path each takes, they are all searching for a way to live and love again. Halfway Home: After being diagnosed with AIDS, Tom moves to a California beach house to live out the rest of his life in peace. But the unexpected reappearance of his troubled brother quickly changes everything in this novel about anger, reconciliation, love, and danger. Love Alone: Following his partner Roger Horwitz's death from AIDS in 1986, Paul Monette threw himself into these elegies. Writing them, he says, “quite literally kept me alive.” Both beautifully written and deeply affecting, every poem is full of resentment, sorrow, tenderness, and a palpable sense of grief—but also love. West of Yesterday, East of Summer: This stunning career-spanning collection includes Monette's early work as well as the beautiful and wrenching poems borne out of immense loss. Written with characteristic wit, these poems deftly traverse humor, rage, love, and mourning.

Three epic and acclaimed historical novels from “a first-rate storyteller” (People). From Mongol conquests to the Knights Templar and the Crusades to a speculative saga of how the monoliths of Stonehenge rose in primitive Great Britain, this collection of novels reveals the breadth and depth of an author who “has the unique ability to make most any historical period her own” (Sarah Johnson, Solander, Historical Novel Society). Until the Sun Falls: Set against the backdrop of the conquest of Russia and eastern Europe by the Mongol horde in the thirteenth century, Holland's sweeping novel follows Mongol general Psin, whose battles against the enemies of the Kha-Khan sometimes seem easier than his struggles with his wives and his son. Wise, brave, and bloody-minded, Psin embodies the passions and dreams of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. “Cecilia Holland belongs to that small band of writers who can still show us what distinction the historical novel can attain.” —The Times Literary Supplement Jerusalem: Set in the Holy Land in 1187 A.D., this “vivid and deeply felt” novel of the Knights Templar masterfully explores the conspiracies and political maneuvers leading up to the Third Crusade (The New York Times Book Review). Following a stunning victory at the Battle of Ramleh, Norman Templar Rannulf Fitzwilliam must negotiate a truce with the enemy and determine the order of succession to the throne of Baudouin, the young Christian king dying of leprosy. However, Rannulf's instincts are for battle, not diplomacy. Temptation and betrayal await him at every turn. “[Holland] brings as much suspense to political intrigue as to the sprawling battle scenes at which she excels.” —The New York Times Book Review Pillar of the Sky: In this “intelligently and lushly developed saga,” Holland imagines primitive England and the origin of the breathtaking and mysterious monoliths known as Stonehenge (Booklist). In a time before recorded history, Moloquin, the Unwanted One, dreams of a pathway to the heavens. Cast out as a child, he survives on the fringes of tribal society and grows into manhood driven by one powerful and unshakable ambition: to build a link between the earthly and spiritual worlds through the raising of an impossible structure. “[An] engrossing narrative... Holland succeeds in stretching our imagination; she has breathed new life into those forty-ton monoliths that for all these centuries have been standing so mutely on the Salisbury Plain.” —Los Angeles Herald Examiner

A powerful five-volume story of a working-class Irish Catholic family in England by a “novelist of distinction and originality” (E. M. Forster). In five novels, published between 1935 and 1958, James Hanley chronicled the struggles of an Irish Catholic family of seafarers in a fictional port city based on Liverpool, evoking the harsh realities and frustrated longings of Britain's working class. The complete saga offers abundant proof that Hanley “is that rarity of rarities: a genuine original” (The New York Times Book Review). The Furys: As matriarch Fanny Fury struggles to hold her family together, youngest son Peter returns from seminary in disgrace—dashing her hopes for him—and her other son Desmond becomes involved in union organizing and a violent strike, in this “novel of turbulent power” (The New York Times). The Secret Journey: Fanny Fury continues to sink deeper in debt to moneylender Anna Ragner, who has a grip on all the families in this port city. But it is Peter's involvement with the woman—complicated by his affair with his brother's wife—that will lead to a violent end. Our Time Is Gone: As World War I tears Europe apart, the Fury family is disintegrating as well. With her husband gone back to sea and her beloved son Peter imprisoned, Fanny collapses. Slowly she is able to pull herself up by doing service as a cleaner for troopships. Winter Song: After Denny Fury's ship was reported torpedoed, his wife staggered into St. Stephen's Hospice, prepared to die. But when the shipwrecked old man appears, the reunited couple decides to finally return to Ireland, no matter how difficult the journey. An End and a Beginning: After serving fifteen years in prison, Peter Fury has been released. With his parents gone, there is nothing left for him in England. A pilgrimage to Ireland to see their final resting place will start him on his new life where he may finally find freedom.

Three satires of academia by the beloved British critic, teacher, and novelist—including his “outstanding” comic masterpiece, The History Man (The Guardian). “A satirist of great assurance and accomplishment,” Malcolm Bradbury remains one of the sharpest comic novelists of the twentieth century (The Observer). In Rates of Exchange and Stepping Westward, as “in almost all of Bradbury's novels, the most frequently recurring theme is that of the slightly naïve, liberal innocent, usually an academic, hilariously abroad in an unfamiliar, and occasionally slightly threatening, context” (The Guardian). In The History Man, the tables are turned, and the professor himself is the threat, resulting in “grim wit, chill comedy and a fictional energy which is as imaginative as the tale is shocking” (A. S. Byatt). Rates of Exchange: University lecturer and seasoned international traveler Angus Petworth is unprepared for the oddities of culture and circumstance that await him on the other side of the iron curtain—in the eastern European nation of Slaka. In two eventful weeks, the professor gives an incendiary interview, is seduced by a femme fatale, and becomes embroiled in a plot of international intrigue. Satirizing everything from critics and diplomats to Marxism and academia, Rates of Exchange is a witty and lighthearted novel of cultural interchange at the height of the Cold War, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. “Explosively funny.” —The Daily Telegraph The History Man: Bradbury's classic skewering of 1970s academia and ideological hypocrisy centers around Professor Howard Kirk, who prides himself on being the most highly evolved teacher on campus. But beneath Kirk's scholarly bohemianism and studied cool is a ruthless, self-serving Machiavellian streak. Kirk is vain and bigoted, dismissing female students and colleagues while releasing vitriol against those who contradict him, particularly his clever, wayward wife, Barbara, the long-suffering mother of his two children. Someone needs to teach him a lesson... “[A] genuinely comic novel.” —The New York Times Stepping Westward: At the height of the swinging sixties, mediocre British writer James Walker accepts an academic post in America for a year he'll never forget. As Benedict Arnold University's writer in residence, he finds himself something of a celebrity—his work, though met with shrugs at home, is the subject of vibrant scholarly criticism among American academics. But the buttoned-up professor is about to take a crash course in culture shock taught by spirited advocates of free love and aggressively ambitious colleagues. “Highly entertaining.” —Margaret Drabble, The Sunday Times

Sharp-witted novels and social commentary by the beloved British critic, teacher, and author of the “outstanding” comic masterpiece, The History Man (The Guardian). “A satirist of great assurance and accomplishment,” Malcolm Bradbury remains one of the sharpest comic minds of the twentieth century (The Observer). Cuts and Doctor Criminale—like “all Bradbury's novels, for all their surface wit and comedy, have serious moral and philosophical subtexts” (The Guardian), as do his barbed and brilliant observations on 1950s culture shock in Great Britain in All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go. Taken together, these three volumes illustrate the myriad ways “Bradbury dazzles” (Kirkus Reviews). Cuts: In Bradbury's “outrageously funny” satire set in Thatcher-era Great Britain, a media tycoon, looking to strike it rich with television gold, recruits an unassuming novelist and academic to script his small-screen epic, with disastrous—and hilarious—consequences (Publishers Weekly). “It is funny, exact—and pretty bloody serious.” —The Observer All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go: In this nonfiction social commentary, Bradbury confronts a curious moment in British history. After teaching abroad for a year in the 1950s, he returned to find that his native country had become nearly as mystifying to him as the American Midwest. As Britain marched toward a new decade, much of the country was changing rapidly, its agrarian past paved over by suburban developer and its quiet traditionalism replaced by beehive hairdos and shiny, glass-walled office buildings. With wry wit, he reacts to this uncomfortable transition to mid-twentieth-century modernism. “A master not only of language and comedy but of feeling too.” —The Sunday Times Doctor Criminale: “Playful, smart and entertaining,” Bradbury's comic novel follows enterprising young reporter Francis Jay as he attempts to navigate the chaotic world of post–Cold War Europe in pursuit of the specter of literary legend Bazlo Criminale, a mysterious novelist and thinker known for his extreme elusiveness (The New York Times Book Review). “Bradbury writes with splendid energy and a fertile mind.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

A quartet of the British novelist's finest works of fiction, including “Lowry's masterpiece,” Under the Volcano (Los Angeles Times). Malcolm Lowry was an author who poured his soul into his prose, including his struggle with his own demons. Of his most famous work, Under the Volcano, Dawn Powell wrote: “You love the author for the pain of his overwhelming understanding.” In the New YorkHerald Tribune, Mark Schorer commented that few novels “convey so feelingly the agony of alienation, the infernal suffering of disintegration.” D. T. Max wrote in the New Yorker: “[Lowry's] portrait of an unravelling drunk was unnervingly intimate.” Honored by the Modern Library as one of the one hundred best English language novels of the twentieth century, Under the Volcano is widely acknowledged as “Lowry's masterpiece” (Los Angeles Times). In this novel and the other works of fiction gathered here, the reader follows Lowry as he confronts the abyss, but also shares in his eternal hope for transcendence. Ultramarine: Lowry's debut novel, and the only book, other than Under the Volcano, published in his lifetime, is the coming-of-age story of Dana Hilliot, who escapes the bourgeois provincialism of his upper-class British upbringing by joining a crew of weathered, world-weary sailors on a freighter bound for South Asia. Part Moby-Dick, part A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ultramarin draws on Lowry's own early experience on the sea. Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place: Published posthumously, these seven stories and novellas include “Through the Panama,” in which a burned-out, alcoholic writer on a voyage from Vancouver to Europe tries to make sense of the literature that has kept him afloat, while the pulse of his life grows harder to distinguish, and “The Forest Path to Spring,” about a couple that has been through hell finding new life in the beauty and seclusion of a vast forest. “[These] stories and novellas afford glimpses of the whole toward which Lowry was striving.” —The New York Times Under the Volcano: Former British consul Geoffrey Firmin lives alone with his demons in the shadow of two active volcanoes in South Central Mexico. Drowning in alcoholism, Geoffrey makes one last effort to salvage his crumbling life when his estranged wife, Yvonne, arrives in town on the Day of the Dead, 1938. “One of the towering novels of [the twentieth] century.” —The New York Times October Ferry to Gabriola: Edited by Lowry's widow and frequent collaborator, and released more than a decade after his untimely death, October Ferry to Gabriola is the story of a married couple striving for renewal, sanity, and transcendence in the deep seclusion of the British Columbian forest. “What awaits [the reader] is worth the effort: a species of ecstatic, lyrical prose that has all but gone out of existence.” —The New York Times

Three unforgettable novels from a New York Times–bestselling author—including Black Narcissus, which “bears comparison with A Passage to India” (Arthur Koestler). With Black Narcissus, her novel of five nuns in a remote Himalayan convent struggling against nature—both physical and human—Rumer Godden established her impeccable literary reputation. TheNew York Times wrote of her work: “Her craftsmanship is always sure; her understanding of character is compassionate and profound; her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty.” Having spent her formative years in colonial India, she would continue to return to that setting for inspiration in several subsequent novels, each of them “beautifully and simply wrought by a woman of depth and sensitivity” (Los Angeles Times). Black Narcissus: Led by Sister Clodagh, the youngest Mother Superior in the history of their order, the European Sisters of the Servants of Mary take up residence in an abandoned palace in the foothills of the Himalayas, where an Indian general once housed his harem. The sisters hope to establish a school and clinic to combat superstition, ignorance, and disease. But the isolation and mountain altitude, the ghosts and lurid history, and one young nun's unhealthy obsession with their royal benefactor's agent, Mr. Dean, threaten to undermine the best intentions of the purest hearts. Black Narcissus was made into an Academy Award–winning film starring Deborah Kerr and directed by Michael Powell. “A very remarkable novel.” —The Observer Breakfast with the Nikolides: As the Nazi juggernaut rolls through occupied France, Louise Poole is forced to flee Paris with her two daughters and return to East Bengal and the husband she left. Despite Louise's hatred of rural India, eleven-year-old Emily is intrigued by her exotic new home, left free to explore—and enjoy the hospitality of her glamorous neighbors, the Nikolides. But as the cracks in her parents'marriage become more obvious, an act of thoughtless cruelty ultimately shatters the tenuous bonds of family, violently disrupting the lives of the Pooles and the community. “A fascinating book... It is absorbing and as original... as Black Narcissus.” —Kirkus Reviews The River: The Second World War seems very far away for eleven-year-old Harriet, the daughter of a British businessman, and her home in Bengal, India, along the Ganges River—until the arrival of a handsome wounded soldier. Harriet is entranced by their new neighbor, Captain John, but unprepared for the rush of unfamiliar emotions he stirs up in her: longing, jealousy, and infatuation. Inspired by the author's personal experiences growing up in India, The River is an evocative and bittersweet coming of age story. The River was made into a film directed by Jean Renoir. “So intense, so quietly demanding of attention, that at the time there will be nothing in your thoughts but a small girl in India, and the people and places that were her world.” —Saturday Review

Four evocative and moving works of fiction set in India from the New York Times–bestselling author of Black Narcissus—including her final novel. Having spent her formative years in colonial India, British novelist Rumer Godden would continue to return to that setting for inspiration throughout her career—from her best known work about five nuns in a Himalayan convent, Black Narcissus, to her final novel, Cromartie vs. the God Shiva. The four novels in this volume each reveal in their own way Godden's “magical skill in conjuring up with a few suggestive details a veritable panorama of Indian life” (The New York Times). And, like all of Godden's fiction, they “have one important thing in common: They are beautifully and simply wrought by a woman of depth and sensitivity” (Los Angeles Times). Cromartie vs. the God Shiva: In Godden's final novel, inspired by a real event, the theft of a precious statuette of the Hindu god Shiva from a hotel in India leads to love, intrigue, death, and legal complications. Even as Sydney Cromartie, the Canadian now in possession of the statue, fights to retain ownership, British barrister Michael Dean is dispatched to Patna Hall on the Coromandel Coast (previously appearing in Godden's Coromandel Sea Change), where everyone is a suspect, including proprietress Auntie Sanni, to solve the mystery. “A complex tale, fraught with mystery... Readers who enjoy far-away cultures will find this tale a treat.” —Library Journal The Lady and the Unicorn: Battling poverty and prejudice, the three “half-caste” daughters of an Englishman and an Indian mother live with their widowed father and “Auntie” in a crumbling mansion in 1930s Calcutta. Tough-minded Belle Lemarchant is determined to improve her lot in life, while her twin, Rosa, looks for escape in romance, and their younger, darker-skinned sibling, Blanche, wanders the halls and grounds, communing with ghosts. A powerful coming-of-age story in a society blinded by caste divisions, Godden's novel is a heartbreaking human drama. “One of the delights of reading a Rumer Godden novel is the magnetic pull of the exotic settings, affecting readers and characters alike.” —Newsday The Peacock Spring: When Una, fifteen, and her twelve-year-old sister, Halcyon, are summoned from their English boarding school to join their diplomat father in New Delhi, they encounter an exotic new world, racial prejudice, and a calculating Eurasian governess, whose relationship with their father seems troubling in its intimacy. When Una becomes friends with Ravi, a young Indian gardener, their forbidden attraction threatens to end in scandal and disaster. “Ms. Godden... has a wonderful way with fictional children, tender and true and never sentimental.” —The New York Times Coromandel Sea Change: With an election coming, business is brisk at Patna Hall, a resort hotel on the lush Coromandel Coast in southern India. Anglo-Indian hotel owner Auntie Sanni has her hands full with Indian politicians, British diplomats, a journalist involved in espionage, a woman of mystery, and an English couple on their honeymoon whose new marriage is strained by their conflicting responses to India. As the nearby Coromandel Sea is teeming with sharks, so is Patna Hall brimming with adultery, blackmail, and intrigue. “[A] sense of timelessness reminiscent of E. M. Forster.” —The Times

Ten years separate these two poignant novels featuring the same young woman, by the New York Times–bestselling “novelist in the grand tradition” (Anita Brookner). British novelist Rosamond Lehmann “has always written brilliantly of women in love” (Margaret Drabble). In her pair of novels featuring Olivia Curtis—a shy, romantic, and hopeful seventeen-year-old looking forward to her first dance, and later, a sadder young woman in her twenties who still longs to capture lost passion—Lehmann creates “a completely compelling intimacy” that lingers long after the stories are over (Hermione Lee, The Guardian). Invitation to the Waltz: Seventeen-year-old Olivia Curtis has been invited to her first dance. She is thrilled and terrified. In her diary, she confides her hopes, doubts, and fears—about her pretty, confident older sister, Kate; her precocious baby brother, James; her eccentric country neighbors; and of course, the upcoming party, which she is sure will be the crowning event of her life. Divided into three parts—Olivia's birthday, the day leading up to the dance, and the event itself—Invitation to the Waltz beautifully captures the conflicting emotions of a teenager on the threshold of womanhood. “Utterly charming and so desperately true that it almost hurts.” —The New York Times The Weather in the Streets: Ten years older with a failed marriage behind her, Olivia runs into Rollo Spencer, her girlhood crush from the ball, on a train, and is swept up in a heated but clandestine affair, since Rollo is married. Lehmann's “honest” and “powerful” novel charts the tempestuous course of Olivia and Rollo's forbidden relationship, from the first throes of passion through the toll of their deception on Olivia as she confronts the harsh reality of being the other woman (Kirkus Reviews). “A vividly realized, painfully convincing story of a love affair, written in Lehmann's characteristic spare, poetic prose.” —Joyce Carol Oates

The New York Times–bestselling “masterpiece” and its haunting sequel, from a British novelist of “visceral power” (Jonathan Coe, The Guardian). “A novelist in the grand tradition,” New York Times–bestselling author Rosamond Lehmann wrote moving and memorable stories about the inner emotional lives of British girls and women (Anita Brookner). Jonathan Coe noted that Lehmann “has every quality that a great writer should possess... [including] an astonishing, unembarrassed emotionality that gives visceral power to her recurring themes—thwarted love, faithlessness, the unbearable sadness of naïve romantic feelings being crushed by the passage of time.” Those themes are explored through the character of Rebecca Landon, who appears as an innocent girl in Lehmann's bestselling The Ballad and the Source, and as an emotionally wounded woman in her sequel, A Sea-Grape Tree, written over thirty years later. The Ballad and the Source: In this New York Times bestseller, when the former best friend of Rebecca Landon's grandmother returns home to England, the ten-year-old girl is enchanted by the elderly woman's magnetic personality and shockingly blunt manner. Rebecca comes to learn that Sibyl Jardine left her husband for another man decades ago, becoming estranged from her daughter and never seeing her grandchildren... until now. Set during the First World War, this “haunting book, expertly handled” follows Rebecca's journey into adolescence and her evolving awareness of the complexity of human behavior and emotions through her friendship with Sibyl (Kirkus Reviews). “[Lehmann] broods delicately and beautifully over the past, turning the gaze inward.” —The New York Times A Sea-Grape Tree: In this lyrical sequel set in 1933, an adult Rebecca has fled to an island in the Caribbean, after a heart-wrenching betrayal by her married lover. There, she meets a colony of expatriates, including a former pilot who was crippled in the war and now lives as a recluse, with whom she begins an affair. But there's yet another presence on the island—the spirit of the complex woman who fascinated Rebecca as a child: Sibyl Jardine. “Full of her sensibility, her funniness, her own particular acumen. It is also beautifully written and devised.” —Elizabeth Jane Howard

Three darkly comic novels from the two-time Whitbread Award winner whose “masterful restraint... reveals an author in complete control of her artistry” (The Guardian). With taut prose and mordant wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself as “one of the most distinctive and admired voices in postwar British fiction” (The New York Times). In the three novels collected here, she deploys her signature, unforgiving insight into human nature, drawing on her own life experience to produce tightly knit tales of innocence and mischief. The Dressmaker: For seventeen-year-old Rita, romance with an American GI feels like a Hollywood-style escape from wartime England—and the two aunts who've raised her. But in this Man Booker Prize–shortlisted novel, Rita soon discovers that life is nothing like the movies. “A little triumph of economy with pent thoughts and cramped emotions that whisper frantically on when the book is shut.” —The Guardian The Bottle Factory Outing: Working at an Italian wine-bottling factory, London flatmates Brenda and Freda anticipate a rare day of pleasure on a company outing. Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this comic novel takes an unsettling turn only Bainbridge could deliver. “An outrageously funny and horrifying story.” —Graham Greene Injury Time: In this Whitbread Literary Award–winning novel, Edward and his mistress try to host a discreet dinner party, but it's an awkward affair to say the least. With the addition of two uninvited, rather forceful guests, more than feelings will get hurt in this “comic and sinister” novel (The Sunday Times). “A near-masterpiece... horribly true to life.” —London Evening Standard

A Whitbread Award–winning novel of Welsh twins and an international bestseller about Aboriginal culture by “the brilliant English writer and stylish nomad” (Los Angeles Times). After his masterpiece of travel writing, In Patagonia, put him on the literary map, Bruce Chatwin penned a novel about twin brothers who never venture far from their Welsh farm. On the Black Hill won the Whitbread Literary Award for Best First Novel and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Following that work of fiction, Chatwin turned his focus to Australia and Aboriginal culture, creating a wholly original hybrid of memoir, travelogue, and novel in the international bestseller, The Songlines. On the Black Hill: For forty-two years, identical twins Lewis and Benjamin Jones have shared a bed, a farm, and a life. But the world has made its mark on them each in different ways. At eighty, Lewis is still strong enough to wield an ax, and though he's hardly ever ventured outside his little village on the Welsh/English border, he dreams of far-off lands. Benjamin is gentler, a cook whose favorite task is delivering baby lambs, and even in his old age, remains devoted to the memory of their mother. With his delicate attention to detail, Chatwin's intense and poetic portrait of their shared lives in a little patch of Wales is “beautiful and haunting” (Los Angeles Times). “A brooding pastoral tale full of tender grandeur.” —The New York Times Book Review The Songlines: Long ago, the creators wandered Australia and sang the landscape into being, naming every rock, tree, and watering hole in the great desert. Those songs were passed down to the Aboriginals, and for centuries they have served not only as a shared heritage, but also as a living map. Entranced by this cultural heritage, a narrator named Bruce travels to Australia to probe the deepest meaning of these ancient, living songs, and embarks on a profound exploration of the nomadic instinct. “Extraordinary. A remarkable and satisfying book.” —The Observer