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Three sharply observed novels from the “prodigiously inventive” Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, The Sea (The New York Times). “One of the most significant novelists of her generation” (The Guardian) and a “consummate storyteller” (The Independent), British author Iris Murdoch grappled with questions of morality as well as the nature of love in novels that are every bit as entertaining as they are thought provoking. Over the span of her career, she was the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Literary Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Henry and Cato: Henry Marshalson and Cato Forbes were inseparable childhood friends. But their lives took different paths. Henry went to the United States to teach art history. Cato became a priest. When Henry's brother dies, leaving him sole heir to his family's vast estate, he returns to England, and the two friends reconnect. As Henry struggles to come to terms with his personal passions and family obligations, Cato fights against his religious doubts and darker urges. Soon, both men find themselves entwined in a deadly intrigue that could ruin not only their lives but also the lives of those they hold dear. “Murdoch's finest novel.” —Joyce Carol Oates The Italian Girl: After a long absence, Edmund Narraway has returned to his childhood home to attend his mother's funeral. The visit rekindles feelings of affection and nostalgia, but also triggers a resurgence of the tensions that caused him to leave in the first place. As Edmund once again becomes entangled in his family's web of corrosive secrets, his homecoming tips a precariously balanced dynamic into sudden chaos. “[An] inbred story of modern life... a ritual of innocence and corruption... accomplished with many dark fancies, sudden surprises and arcane implications.” —Kirkus Reviews The Philosopher's Pupil: The quiet English town of Ennistone is shaken up when George McCaffrey's car plunges into the cold waters of a canal, carrying with it his wife—and when the village's most celebrated son, famed philosopher John Robert Rozanov, returns, upending the lives of everyone with whom he comes in contact, in this New York Times Notable Book. “The most daring and original of all her novels.” —A. N. Wilson

The complete New York Times–bestselling trilogy of historical fiction set in China, from an award-winning novelist and Pulitzer Prize finalist in journalism. Spanning over three centuries of Chinese history, New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author Robert Elegant takes readers from the opulent courts and complex intrigue of the emperors to the bloody battlefields, and vividly recreates a richly detailed world where the quest for power and pleasure drives men and women to extremes of both loyalty and betrayal. In this special single-volume edition, the novels are presented in chronological historical order. Manchu: In this New York Times bestseller, soldier of fortune Francis Arrowsmith joins a Portuguese expedition to aid the decadent and corrupt Ming dynasty in its fight against the Manchu invaders. He embarks on an epic adventure that will merge his destiny with the fate of China itself. “Does for seventeenth-century China what James Clavell's Shogun did for sixteenth-century Japan.” —The Christian Science Monitor Mandarin: In nineteenth-century China, imperial rule is crumbling as the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion rage. On the streets of Shanghai, a Jewish silk merchant tries to save his Chinese partner from a false accusation and corrupt penal system, while in the imperial palace the “Virtuous Concubine” Yehenala contrives to bear the opium-eating, syphilitic emperor's only son, thus laying the foundation for her elevation to the pinnacle of power in China as the formidable empress dowager. “Exciting, historically accurate, a good read.” —The New York Times Dynasty: A New York Times bestseller, this epic of love and adultery, money and power, set amid the revolutionary turbulence of twentieth-century China, from the fall of the last emperor to the rise of Mao Tse-tung, follows the Sekloong dynasty of Hong Kong, a trading empire founded by Sir Jonathan, the illegitimate offspring of an Irish adventurer and his Chinese mistress, in all its triumphs, tragedies, betrayals, and bloodshed. “An action-packed novel... conjured up with perception and vigor.” —The New York Times Book Review

The hunt is on for an elusive Nazi war criminal in this “absorbing intellectual thriller that keeps you guessing... until the final page” (The New York Times). For four decades Pierre Brossard has eluded capture as one of the most vicious SS officers in history. Condemned to death in absentia he's tenuously protected by an intricate web of Nazi collaborators and an extreme right-wing faction of the Catholic Church. With nothing more than a suitcase and a prayer, Brossard seeks refuge in a monastery outside Salon-de-Provence. He knows the Committee for Justice is closing in. With every reason to fear his days are numbered, he realizes only one man can help him get away with murder: Commissaire Vionnet, a retired police chief who, forty years earlier, allowed Brossard to escape. But two other men are collaborating as well: a hired assassin known only as T, and Cardinal Primate Delavigne, reformist of the postwar church. He's as unstoppable as T, as ruthless as Brossard, and he can't wait to play this game to its unpredictable end. “An exciting, classic novel of hunter and hunted” inspired by a true story, The Statement was made into an award-winning film starring Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton, and Alan Bates (The Washington Post).

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A married woman begins an impulsive affair in Paris in this novel of “brilliant insight” (The Times, London). Sheila Redden, a devoted mother and reserved wife of a busy Belfast surgeon, is awaiting the arrival of her husband at a Paris hotel. In a matter of days, they'll be celebrating a second honeymoon after sixteen years of marriage. But Sheila never could've imagined the chance encounter with Tom, a handsome and attentive American student—or that in one inexplicable moment, she'd abandon everything she knows to disappear into the unknown with an irresistible stranger. It's more than a sexual awakening. It's a chance to see her ordinary life from a distance—her dutiful role as mother and wife, her sacrifices, her lost sense of self, and the realization that she's already been vanishing little by little for quite some time. All the while, Sheila's concerned husband and brother are retracing her steps, following her on a cathartic and devastating journey that's far from over.

A day in the life of a mad housewife in Manhattan: “One of the truest and most awesome books I have ever read” (The Scotsman). She was born Mary Dunne. A New York actress in a stalled career, she's previously been known as Maria and Martha. Married three times, she's also been called Mrs. Phelan, Mrs. Bell, and currently, Mrs. Terence Lavery—wife of the esteemed playwright. No wonder Mary Dunne forgot her name this morning at the hairdresser. She has no idea who she is anymore. Or maybe she's just crazy. She's curious to find out. Over the course of a single day, Mary tries to recall more than her name. But as memories of her past come trickling back—infuriating, illuminating, and grievous—she realizes there's so much she'd prefer to forget. As she tries to escape what she calls “the dooms,” Mary must confront what she's done with her life—deliberately, haplessly, or by default. If only she were going crazy; it would be so much easier to explain it all away. Hailed by the Globe and Mail as a “feminist novel written before the wave of feminist novels began,” I Am Mary Dunne is “as complex and satisfying as anything Moore has yet done” (The Observer).

A “near-masterpiece” about faith and doubt by the award-winning, international bestselling author (The New York Times). In Rome, surrendering to secular pressures, the Fourth Vatican Council is stirring a revolution with their official denial of the church's core doctrines. They've abolished clerical dress and private confession; the Eucharist is recognized only as an outdated symbol; and they're merging with the tenets of Buddhism. They're also unsettled by the blind faith of devout pilgrims from around the world congregating on a remote island monastery in Ireland—the last spot on earth where Catholic traditions are defiantly alive. At the behest of the Vatican, Father James Kinsella has been dispatched to Muck Abbey with an ultimatum: Adhere to the new church or suffer the consequences. But in Abbot Tomás O'Malley, Kinsella finds less an adversary than a man of bewildering contradictions—unyieldingly bound to his vows, yet long-questioning his devotion to God. Now, between Kinsella and O'Malley comes an unexpected challenge that will reveal their truths, their purpose, their faith, and their doubt. “Told with... superb grace and wit,” Catholics was adapted by Brian Moore for the 1973 film starring Martin Sheen and Trevor Howard (The New Yorker).

A collection of twelve disarmingly witty tales about the complexities of love and intimacy from “a storyteller of genius” (Evelyn Waugh). “The sense of the author at play dominates” Graham Greene's entertaining anthology as the masterful British author looks at love, lies, vanity, mortality, romantic obsessions, and seduction from a dozen sharply observed perspectives (The New York Times). A bored faculty wife looking for a fling discovers something more illuminating than sex; a jaded writer who eavesdrops on a pair of hopeful lovers feels compelled to relieve them of their foolish ideals and ambitions; a widow and a divorcée commiserate in mourning for their lost men, only to rejoice in their freedom after two bottles of blanc de blancs; a young man devises a test of true love—to find a woman who won't laugh at the absurd circumstances of his father's death; and in the title story, an oblivious young bride honeymooning in Antibes encourages a friendship between a gay couple and her adventurous and handsome new husband.

A detective and a chorus girl stalk the shadows of a murderer in this thriller from “a pioneer of the modern mood we now think of as noir” (LA Weekly). Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit—a government minister—is one calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track—and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven's got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life he can trust, maybe his only hope for salvation. Or at least, escape—because Anne is also Mather's fiancée. Now the fate of two men will depend on her. And either way, it's betrayal. With its themes of deception, double cross, and the consequences of indiscriminate passion, the breathless cinematic narrative of Graham Greene's thriller became a perfect fit for the classic 1942 film noir starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

An “adventurous... intelligent... ingenious” novel of crime and punishment in pre–World War II London (V. S. Pritchett). During a demonstration in Hyde Park, Communist bus driver Jim Drover acts on instinct to protect his wife by stabbing to death the policeman set to strike her down. Sentenced to hang—whether as a martyr, tool, or murderer—Drover accepts his lot, unaware that the ramifications for the crime, and the battle for his reprieve, are inflaming political unrest in an increasingly divided city. But Drover's single, impulsive act is also upending the lives of the people he loves and trusts. Caught in a quicksand of desperation, sexual betrayal, and guilt, they will not only play a part in Drover's fate, but they'll become agents—both unwitting and calculated—of their own fates as well. Turning the traditional narrative of the police procedural, domestic drama, and political thriller on its head, It's a Battlefield was described by Graham Greene himself as “a panoramic novel of London,” one without heroes and villains, only “the injustice of man's justice.”

The “strikingly original” debut novel by the masterful British author is “a perfect adventure” of love and smuggling on the English coast (The Nation). Francis Andrews is a reluctant smuggler living in the shadow of his brutish father's legacy. To exorcise the ghosts of the man he loathes, Andrews betrays his colleagues to authorities and takes flight across the downs. It's here that he stumbles upon the isolated cottage of a beguiling stranger named Elizabeth—an empathetic young woman who is just as lonely, every bit the outsider as he, and reconciling a troubling past of her own. Andrews, a man on the run from those he exposed, believes he's found refuge and salvation. But when Elizabeth encourages him to return to the courts of Lewes and give evidence against his accomplices, the treacherous and deadly repercussions may be beyond their control. “The ultimate strengths of [Graham] Greene's books is that he shows us the hazards of compassion,” a theme that would find its earliest expression in The Man Within, his first published novel (Pico Iyer).

A Monte Carlo honeymoon becomes a gamble in Graham Greene's “superbly well told” comedy of love, marriage, and risk (J. B. Priestley). A modest London accountant on a budget, Mr. Bertram has settled on a honeymoon at the seaside resort of Bournemouth with his fiancée, Cary. However, Bertram's boss, the solicitous Herbert Dreuther, won't hear of anything so common. Bertram and Cary are to be married in Monte Carlo, after which they'll be Dreuther's guests on his private yacht and sail down the coast of Italy. It sounds too lovely to be true. And surely Bertram can afford one night at the Hôtel de Paris. But when the absentminded Dreuther fails to show, and days turn into weeks, Bertram and Cary find themselves well beyond their means. Unable to check out, trapped in luxury, and with nowhere to turn but the casino, Bertram has a plan—and absolutely no idea what there is left to lose.

Greene's “sharply, often incisively etched” novel of the interlocked fates of unwary strangers on a train from Belgium to Constantinople (The New York Times). The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend for a three-day journey to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey—and a score to settle; a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who's found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class—a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution; and a murderer on the run looking for a getaway. As the train hurtles across Europe, the fates of everyone on board will collide long before the Orient Express rushes headlong to its final destination. Originally published in the UK as Stamboul Train in 1932, Graham Greene's “novel has movement, variety, interest; taken on the surface, it is an interesting and entertaining story of adventure, penetrated through and through with the consciousness of the on-rushing train, with that curious sense of the temporary suspension of one's ordinary existence which comes to many on ship or train” (The New York Times).

In postwar London, a boy is drawn into a labyrinth of personal betrayals, intrigue, love, and revolution: “In short, a tremendous yarn” (Paul Theroux). On his twelfth birthday, Victor Baxter is spirited away from boarding school by a stranger known only as the Captain who claims to have won him in a backgammon game with the boy's diabolical father. Settling into a new life in a dire London flat, Victor becomes the willing ward of his mysterious abductor and the tender and childless Liza. He quickly adapts to the only family he's ever known, despite the Captain's long disappearances on suspicious “adventures” and a guarded curiosity about this peculiar but devoted couple who call him son. Then one day, in pursuit of answers, and perhaps an adventure of his own, Victor responds to an entreaty from the Captain to come to Panama. What transpires in this world of dangerous imposture is absolutely revelatory—for both Victor and the Captain. In Graham Greene's final novel, “we enter those disparate worlds [he] has made his own—the England of Brighton Rock and The Ministry of Fear, and the exotic Central American territories in which his restless talent has so often roamed” (The New York Times).

Two fascinating philosophical inquiries from the “dazzlingly gifted” New York Times–bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of The Moviegoer (USA Today). Winner of the National Book Award for The Moviegoer, the Southern writer Walker Percy possessed “an intellectual range and rigor few American novelists can match” (The New York Times Book Review). In these two provocative works, Percy manages to be perceptive and playful as he more directly explores the philosophical foundations of his groundbreaking fiction. The Message in the Bottle: In these profound and passionate essays that “have a way of quickening the spirit and cleansing the sight,” Percy looks to language to answer the question of who we are as humans (The New Republic). He posits that the act of assigning meaning by naming things makes humans unique. Percy develops a theory of language through the example of Helen Keller being stimulated by the feel of water along with the sign for water, and explores questions such as why other animals don't talk and why humans in technologically advanced, materially comfortable societies are so sad. “A delight... a pleasure to read.” —Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post Book World Lost in the Cosmos: “Charming, whimsical, slyly profound,” Lost in the Cosmos is a one-of-a-kind mix of self-help parody and philosophical speculation (The New York Times). Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Percy's guide is a laugh-out-loud spin on a familiar genre that also pushes readers to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions, such as: “Why is it no other species but man gets bored?” and “Explain why Moses was tongue-tied and stagestruck before his fellow Jews but had no trouble talking to God.” “A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke; a chapbook to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Three unforgettable novels from the “subversive and ever-mischievous imagination” of a celebrated British author and five-time Man Booker Prize nominee (The New York Times). With crisp prose and sardonic wit, Dame Beryl Bainbridge established a unique position for herself in the landscape of modern British literature. In the three novels collected here, Bainbridge explores disasters both epic and intimate, drawing inspiration from historical figures as well as her own life experiences to produce tightly woven tales that are at once ironic and honest, subtle and surprising. An Awfully Big Adventure: In postwar Liverpool, a teenage girl joins a local theater troupe and discovers the unflattering truths behind the gloss of adulthood. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this atmospheric novel was adapted into a film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. “A former actress herself, Ms. Bainbridge chronicles the backstage antics of her fictional theater company with knowing aplomb.” —The New York Times The Birthday Boys: In 1910, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott led a harrowing race to the South Pole. With this imaginative yet historically accurate retelling of their famous and ill-fated mission, “Bainbridge has quite surpassed herself” (Financial Times). “Equally convincing in its evocations of the icy, unendurable landscape without, and the chilling interior landscapes of damaged souls.” —The Sunday Telegraph Master Georgie: The story of a British surgeon journeying toward the horrors of the Crimean War is told from the perspective of three companions who each believe they knew him best. This “stunning” novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won numerous awards (The New Yorker). “Accomplished with stupendous technical skill... a true novelist's novel.” —The Guardian

From the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Good Earth: These three novels are fascinating portraits of women in China. In 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature for The Good Earth, which had already earned her the Pulitzer Prize. Upon choosing Buck's novel for her book club in 2004, Oprah Winfrey said: “Reading Pearl Buck's writing feels like reading poetry to me. I just love the quiet rhythm of the words. They evoke the simple beauty of the characters and the harsh mystery of China's ancient culture.” The daughter of missionaries, the New York Times–bestselling author would continue to explore many aspect of Chinese culture in her work, and the three novels collected in this volume represent some of her most compassionate and revealing fiction. Pavilion of Women: This “vivid and extremely interesting novel,” set in early twentieth-century China, follows an upper-class wife's quest for personal freedom (The New Yorker). After Madame Wu turns forty, she encourages her husband to take a young concubine so she can finally begin to discover her own mind—and a new world opens up before her as she reads forbidden books and studies English with a progressive former priest. “Beautifully written... A fine, full flavorsome novel.” —Newsweek Peony: A young Chinese bondmaid in nineteenth-century China falls in love with the son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. As the couple's traditions collide, their relationship faces opposition from every side. “Peony has the vividness of scene and episode and character and the colorful detail that [Buck's] readers have come to expect of her novels in China.” —New York Herald Tribune Imperial Woman: In this “richly woven... quite absorbing” New York Times bestseller, Buck brings to life the story of Tzu Hsi, the magnetic and fierce-minded woman who rose from concubine to become the working head of the Qing Dynasty and the last empress of China for nearly half a century (The Nation). “Certainly, no fictioneer could imagine a more incredible woman.... Pearl Buck has done a remarkable and painstaking job in recreating her.” —Saturday Review

Three touching contemporary British novels of love, romance, and humor from the “high-spirited and inventive” international bestselling author (The Daily Telegraph). The Vacillations of Poppy Carew: Poppy embarks on an exhilarating journey of self-discovery after inheriting her father's fortune. Traveling from England to Africa and back again, she must choose her future from a band of eccentric suitors. Not That Sort of Girl: Rose falls in love with penniless Mylo but trades love for security by marrying wealthy Ned. Although Rose vows to never leave Ned, Mylo is never far from her thoughts. As time carries on she wonders what she'd risk to be with man she loves... Second Fiddle: Forty-ish and fiercely independent, Laura is used to manipulating artistic men, but things change when she meets Claud, a twenty-three-year-old struggling writer. Haunted by a secret that prevents her from committing to a man, Laura must soon confront the one thing she never expected: falling in love.

Three beautiful novels from the groundbreaking, award-winning author—including “a landmark work of lesbian fiction” and basis for the film Desert Hearts (The New York Times). First published in 1964, Desert of the Heart broke ground with its realistic and complex portrayal of love between two women, and immediately established Jane Rule's reputation as an “extraordinary writer—perhaps the most significant lesbian fiction writer of the twentieth century” (Katherine V. Forrest). Desert of the Heart: Rule's debut novel is set in 1950s Reno, Nevada, where English professor Evelyn Hall has come for a quick divorce from her husband. There she meets Ann Childs, fifteen years her junior, who works as a change apron in a casino. As their friendship deepens into a romantic relationship, Evelyn's preconceptions about love, morality, and identity are challenged. “An intelligent and utterly believable novel.” —Joyce Carol Oates The Young in One Another's Arms: In Ruth Wheeler's Vancouver rooming house during the Vietnam War, an eclectic assortment of misfits, dropouts, deserters, and radicals become each other's chosen family. When developers threaten the property, the community is challenged to find a new home on Galiano Island. “[A] mature and satisfying work.” —Bay Area Reporter This Is Not for You: Through a decades-long correspondence between Katherine and Esther, the woman with whom she falls passionately in love, Rule's second novel follows a group of friends living in New York and abroad as they explore the freedoms—and limitations—of their sexuality, as the repressed fifties gives way to the liberated sixties. “A beautiful, ironic, civilized novel.” —Margaret Lawrence

Three iconic novels about an unforgettable schoolmaster and a timeless utopia by the award-winning, New York Times–bestselling author. Goodbye, Mr. Chips: Throughout his tenure at an English boys'school, stern Arthur Chipping has shaped many young lives. But Mr. Chips has been inspired as well—by the social changes of his country and, not least, by his students. Based on Hilton's experiences at the Leys School, Cambridge, this novel is an enduring testament to the difference one good teacher can make. “A tender and gentle story as warming to the heart and as nourishing to the spirit as any I can remember.” —Alexander Woollcott, The New Yorker To You, Mr. Chips: When James Hilton penned his beloved Goodbye, Mr. Chips, he drew on his own formative years at a Cambridge boarding school. In this collection, he adds to the legend of Mr. Chips through exquisite short stories, as well as autobiographical sketches of his experience with the English public school system during the first half of a tumultuous century. Mr. Chips is “one of the most endearing creations of modern fiction” (The Daily Telegraph). Lost Horizon: When British diplomat Hugh Conway's plane crashes in the Himalayas, he and fellow survivors are led to the hidden valley of Shangri-La, a paradise kept secret for more than two hundred years. In this idyll, where inhabitants live for centuries amid peace and harmony, the visitors must face the daunting prospect of returning home to a world about to be torn open by war. “One of the century's most enduring literary mysteries.” —The Guardian

Four lyrical and unforgettable tales from one of our “most interesting novelists”—including the New York Times bestseller, Seventh Heaven (Jane Smiley). As Newsweek said of her novel Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman has a “gift for touching ordinary life as if with a wand, to reveal how extraordinary life really is.” Whether in an ancient tribe of female warriors or a sleepy Long Island suburb in the late 1950s, the novels in this collection carve out a piece of that uniquely Hoffmanesque landscape—somewhere between magic and reality, hope and disappointment, the mythical and the mundane—where we are surprised but delighted to rediscover mercy and our humanity. The Foretelling: This young adult New York Times bestseller is the “spare, compelling coming-of-age story” of Rain, born out of sorrow but destined to lead her tribe of Amazon warriors (Kirkus Reviews). Determined to win her mother's love and take her rightful place as the next queen, Rain becomes a brave and skilled fighter. But the dream of a black horse clouds her future, portending death. Peace, mercy, and love are forbidden words in her people's language—can Rain teach her sisters to speak in a new tongue before it's too late? “Alluring... Hoffman's prose eloquently expresses the beliefs and rituals of a lost civilization and offers a sympathetic portrait of a young leader who chooses kindness over cruelty.” —Publishers Weekly White Horses: A “sexually charged... almost hypnotic” story about the fairy-tale fantasies of girlhood and the realities of growing up (Publishers Weekly). When Teresa was a little girl, she dreamed of fearless heroes on white horses, the romantic outlaws who populated the stories her mother told her. As an adult, she is irresistibly drawn to her brother, Silver, even as he recklessly pursues a life of crime and danger, captivated by the belief that he may be the night rider of her dreams. “Haunting... Alice Hoffman is a daring and able writer.” —The New Yorker Angel Landing: An explosion at a nuclear power plant under construction on Angel Landing changes the lives of Natalie, a therapist; her activist boyfriend, Carter; her eccentric aunt Minnie; and the man who walks into her office with an incredible confession to make. “Alice Hoffman's writing at its precise and heartbreaking best.” —The Washington Post Seventh Heaven: In this New York Times bestseller, the arrival of a free-thinking divorced mother, Nora Silk, and her two young sons transforms a Long Island suburb during the summer of 1959, in a novel that's “part American Graffiti, part early Updike” (The New York Times). “Before you know it, you're half in love with the ordinary people who inhabit this book; you're seduced by their susceptibility to the remarkable.” —The New Yorker

The bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner takes his examination of British working-class rebellion into the 1960s. In his best-known works of fiction, British novelist Alan Sillitoe “powerfully depicted revolt against authority by the young and working class” (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. Following those acknowledged masterpieces, Sillitoe continued to explore rebellion against an oppressive society in three novels linked by anarchist antihero Frank Dawley. In these powerful novels, Sillitoe would continue to prove himself “one of the best English writers” (The New York Times) and “the most quietly eloquent of his cohort of postwar British novelists” (Jonathan Lethem). The Death of William Posters: Frank Dawley has finally quit his soul-crushing factory job in Nottingham, left his alienating marriage, burned his possessions, and sold his car. Now he is hitching a ride to wherever the road will take him. Haunting Frank's physical and existential travels is a ubiquitous inscription painted on nearly every street corner in England: BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Relentlessly hounded by authorities, whoever William Posters is, he becomes a symbol of the servile proletariat—exactly what Frank hopes to escape. He finds his way from England to Spain to Morocco—and into the beds of several married women along the way. Finally, in Algeria, he meets a revolutionary American, whom he joins in a high-stakes gunrunning mission. A Tree on Fire: Jewish dilettante Myra Bassingfield is returning to England from Gibraltar with her four-week-old son. The child's father, Frank Dawley, has disappeared into the African desert, where he is fighting for Algerian independence against French troops. Greeting Myra is Frank's friend, Albert Handley, an idealistic painter living in a chaotic home with a large family. But after Albert's brother burns down the house, the Handley brood moves in with Myra in Buckinghamshire. By the time Frank finally returns to England, they have formed a commune—a domestic cell of protest that may just plant the seeds of a new revolution. The Flame of Life: Collective cohabitation soon reveals its downfalls within the commune that has set up camp at the home of wealthy Myra Bassingfield. Painter Albert Handley is pursuing a whirlwind existence of art, sex, and chaotic domestic life. Frank Dawley, returned from gunrunning in Algeria, has brought his wife and two kids from Nottingham to live in the Buckinghamshire kibbutz. And when a young Spanish anarchist arrives with assassination on her mind, her trunk full of notebooks may condemn Frank for a sin committed in the African desert. As the community begins to unravel, the very notion of revolution comes under scrutiny.

Set in the South Pacific, this debut novel is “a brilliant, discordant, and vulnerable picture of running away to sea and coming of age” (Matthew P. Murphy, editor, WoodenBoat magazine). It's been two years since fifteen-year-old Gabe's father uprooted his family and left the United States to sail around the world. The wanderlust ended in the islands of Ma'atea, where Gabe feels every bit the outsider. Until he meets two other palagis: a headstrong boy named Lloyd and the beguiling Tanya. Together they form an unbreakable bond—out of love, boredom, and the need for self-discovery. Gabe's restlessness leads to quiet rebellions at first, full of flirtations with a burgeoning sexuality. But when he fears being suspected of a serious crime, he and his friends decide to flee Tongu Tongu. Their escape is Plumbelly, a twenty-nine-foot sloop that will be their refuge as they make their way toward the groundswells of the Pacific, to be carried into perils worse than they ever imagined.

Three novels from the “prolific and provocative” British satirist: from the joy of inspiration to the shock of betrayal and the pleasure of vengeance (Time Out). Perhaps best known for her “small, mad masterpiece,” The Life and Loves of a She Devil, Man Booker Prize nominee Fay Weldon has been writing some of the boldest, funniest satirical novels for over half a century (The Washington Post Book World). In her mid-eighties, she's penned a scathing sequel, The Death of a She Devil, “a brilliant black comedy” (The Mail on Sunday). The three volumes collected here—from an epistolary novel inspired by Jane Austen to a widow's discovery of her husband's betrayal and a tale of abandonment that twists into comeuppance—all prove Weldon's wit and insights into the human condition to be as sharp as ever. Letters to Alice: With the dire warning, “You must read, Alice, before it's too late,” Aunt Fay implores her niece to immerse herself in the works of enduring authors. Taking its inspiration from Jane Austen's relationship with her niece, Weldon's epistolary novel explores the literary life, as lived by both Austen and eighteen-year-old Alice, as she struggles with her own writing, school, parents, romance, ambition, and spiky green hair. “Wise, sharp, informative... shrewd and funny.” —The Times Literary Supplement Worst FearsA New York Times Notable Book A darling of the London theater world, Alexandra Ludd is playing Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House when her husband, Ned, former theater critic and stay-at-home father to their young son, Sascha, dies of an apparent heart attack. But when Alexandra returns to their country home, her grief begins to give way to suspicion. Ned didn't keel over in the dining room, as her good friends told her. He died in their bed—and he wasn't alone. What's a widow to do? “This splendid and spiteful novel shows Fay Weldon to be in as fine form as ever.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer The Heart of the Country: When her husband kisses her and their children goodbye, departs for the office, and never returns, Natalie blames herself. Perhaps if she hadn't been cheating on him every Tuesday and Thursday, he wouldn't have left her for his secretary, a local beauty queen. Penniless and soon homeless, Natalie finds herself navigating the heartless labyrinth of the state welfare system. There, she meets Sonia, who offers to shelter Natalie and her children. But Sonia has her own agenda (hint: she's narrating from a mental institution) that will culminate in a monstrous act of vengeance at the town's carnival. “Galloping, good, mean fun.” —Kirkus Reviews

Two deeply empathetic novels about families in crisis 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 the international bestseller, Notes from an Exhibition, and its subtly linked companion novel, A Perfectly Good Man, Gale's generous compassion for his characters and their struggles resonates on every page. Notes from an Exhibition: Gifted painter Rachel Kelly lived a life of manic highs and suicidal lows, which took its toll on her family. After a fatal heart attack in her studio in Penzance, Rachel is honored with a retrospective of her work, attracting art lovers but also stirring up emotional turmoil in her husband and four grown children as they try to come to grips with a legacy of secrets and the devastating effects of her bipolar disorder. Told from the multiple viewpoints of the family members—including Rachel—Gale's compassionately curated novel evolves into “an engrossing portrait of a troubled and remarkable character” (The Mail on Sunday). “A warm, well-written novel about creativity and the perils of living with the creative spirit.” —The Times Literary Supplement A Perfectly Good Man: Barnaby Johnson is a good man, a priest in a West Cornwall parish, beloved and trusted by his community. But when twenty-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralyzed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in his presence, the reverberations shake Barnaby, his family, and his neighbors to the core. Those around him then invite Barnaby's morally repellent nemesis to attempt to bring about his downfall. With several narrators, this “warm and humane... beautifully written” novel confronts profound questions of morality, faith, and consequences (The Times, London). “A moving account of a man's struggle with faith, marriage, and morality.” —The Sunday Times

With wicked wit and savage glee, British novelist Fay Weldon “breaks taboos like tape at a marathon” (Los Angeles Times). Perhaps best known for her “small, mad masterpiece,” The Life and Loves of a She Devil, Man Booker Prize nominee Fay Weldon has been writing some of the boldest, funniest satirical novels for over half a century (The Washington Post Book World). In her mid-eighties, she's penned a scathing sequel, The Death of a She Devil, “a brilliant black comedy” (The Mail on Sunday). Weldon's take-no-prisoners milieu is often the war between the sexes; she “[points] up the mad underside of our sexual politics with a venomous accuracy for which wit is far too mild a word” (The New York Times Book Review). The Life and Loves of a She DevilA New York Times Notable Book “With infectious, wicked glee,” Weldon tells the story of Ruth, whose husband, Bobbo, has fallen in love with Mary Fisher, a bestselling romance novelist who lives in a high tower overlooking the sea (Chicago Tribune). Mary is petite, dainty, and lovely. Ruth is not. When Bobbo moves out, Ruth decides to orchestrate an elaborate and masterful revenge. Weldon's “powerfully funny and oddly powerful” novel was made into a film with Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr (The Washington Post Book World). “A scintillating, mind-boggling, vicarious thrill for any reader who has ever fantasized dishing out retribution for one wrong or another.” —The New York Times Book Review The Hearts and Lives of Men: In Weldon's “imaginative work of Dickensian scope” set in 1960s London, Clifford Wexford and Helen Lally meet at a party and fall passionately in love (Los Angeles Times). But their baby, Nell, isn't even a year old when their marriage unravels. Divorce quickly follows, and so begins a battle for Nell's care and affection. Helen remarries; Clifford has affairs—and something quite remarkable happens to little Nell, as an ill-conceived kidnapping plot sets her on a series of picaresque adventures in this modern-day fairy tale. “Wry, gutsy and loaded with fun.” —The New York Times PraxisShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Praxis Duveen is a survivor. At five years old, in 1920s England, she is still innocent, the product of an unstable mother and a father who abandoned her and Hypatia, her half-crazy sister. As the decades fly by, Praxis experiences many incarnations, from prostitute to rape victim, wife to adulteress, and eventually becomes the accidental leader of an international women's movement. Now, from her dingy basement apartment where she's attempting to write a memoir, Praxis recounts her remarkable journey—peppered with more than a few detours along the way. “Weldon's most directly feminist novel... A narrative that convinces, horrifies, and entertains.” —Library Journal

Two unforgettable novels from the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection, Songs in Ordinary Time, “a writer to reckon with” (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) as well as “a cross between Elizabeth Gaskell and David Lynch” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). In the two powerful novels collected here, Morris offers compassionate accounts of damaged and desperate people struggling to survive. The Lost Mother: Told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Thomas, The Lost Mother follows a shattered family in rural Vermont during the Great Depression. Deserted by their mother, Thomas and his eight-year-old sister, Margaret, are reduced to living in a tent with their father, Henry. When a wealthy neighbor begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son, Henry weighs an unexpected proposition, the consequences of which may cost him everything. “A perfectly lovely book about perfectly awful things.” —The Washington Post “The author paints a brutal landscape and authentic characters with delicacy and precision.” —Publishers Weekly A Dangerous Woman:Named one of the five best novels of the year by Time magazine Emotionally unstable Martha Hogan is an outcast in her small Vermont town. She stares; she has violent crushes on people; and perhaps most unsettling, she cannot stop telling the truth. After a traumatic experience in her teens, the thirty-two-year-old now craves love and companionship. But her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her, including her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian, and a seductive man who preys on her desires. Bitter and distrusting, Martha is slowly propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her life. “Thrilling and deeply affecting.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “A powerful, disconcerting, and heartbreaking story of a woman who is most dangerous to herself.” —Library Journal

British adolescent angst has never been so “laugh-out-loud funny” (The New York Times)—the journey begins with these first two books in the heartbreakingly hilarious series. Commiserate with “one of literature's most endearing figures” (The Observer)—a sharp-witted, pining, and achingly honest underdog of great expectations and dwindling patience who knows all (or believes he does) and tells all. First published in 1982, Adrian Mole's chronicle of angst has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, spawned seven sequels, been adapted for television, and staged as a musical—truly “a phenomenon” (The Washington Post). The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13and ¾: Adrian Mole must amass his grievances—his acne vulgaris is grotesque; his crush, Pandora, has received seventeen Valentine's Day cards (seventeen!); his PE teacher is a sadist; he fears his parents'marriage is over since they no longer smoke together; his dog has gone AWOL; no one appreciates his poetry; and Animal Farm has set him off pork for good. If everyone were as appalled as Adrian Mole, it would be a better world. For now, for us, it's just “screamingly funny” (The Sunday Times). The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole: Growing up among inferiors in Great Britain isn't easy for a sensitive “poet of the Midlands” like Adrian, considering everything in the world is conspiring to scar him for life—his hormones are in a maelstrom; his mother is pregnant (at her age!); his girlfriend is in shut down; and he's become allergic to non-precious metals. As his “crisply hilarious saga” (Booklist) continues, the changes Adrian undergoes will surely be profound. “Townsend's wit is razor sharp” (Daily Mirror) as she shows us the world through the haunted eyes of her luckless teenage diarist and self-proclaimed “undiscovered intellectual,” proving again and again why she's been called “a national treasure” (The New York Times Book Review).

A New York Times Notable Book: Darkly comic fables of modern life from a “major discovery” whose “writing gets in your bloodstream like a fever” (The Washington Post Book World). A housewife with a ravenous lust for the adolescent boy who mows her lawn swallows him whole. A woman nonchalantly hacks off her leg at a posh private club. A father babyproofs his house so thoroughly he never sees his wife and child. And a businessman passing through an airport risks it all to save a giant lobster from death. In these “brisk, funny, stylish, original” stories, the award-winning author of Carnivore Diet merges the mundane with the unimaginable, and peels back the squeaky-clean façade of suburbia to expose the strangeness underneath (Elle). Combining biting wit, wild imagination, and “unsettling, hallucinatory” prose, Julia Slavin masterfully satirizes the world of upscale families and young professionals as they confront their greatest fantasies and most grotesque fears in unexpected, and often hilarious, ways (The New York Times Book Review).

Two shocking novels of destructive obsession from a New York Times–bestselling author and “a remarkable talent” (The Washington Post Book World). Sin: Ruth calls herself a malevolent creature, ruled since childhood by hatred and envy for her adopted sister, Elizabeth. She grew up in Elizabeth's shadow, always falling short of her goodness and generosity, constantly resenting her very presence in the family. As they grow older, Ruth sets out to destroy her without guilt or hesitation. Ruth will strike Elizabeth where she's most vulnerable: She will steal her husband and send her collapsing into ruin. Written in Hart's concise, striking prose, Sin is a powerful and compulsively readable exploration of hate—and the destruction and tragedy it begets. “The reader looks on with mingled shock and fascination... a tour de force.” —The New York Times Damage: Hart's debut novel, a New York Times bestseller, is “a taut, sinister tale” of a man's desperate obsession and scandalous love affair (Vanity Fair). He is a man who appears to have everything: wealth, a beautiful wife and children, and a prestigious political career in Parliament. But his life lacks passion, and his aching emptiness drives him to an all-consuming—and ultimately catastrophic—relationship with his son's fiancée. “A passionate, elegant, ruthless story.” —Iris Murdoch “Damage is a masterpiece.” —The Washington Post

From the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, the Sea and “one of the most significant novelists of her generation” (The Guardian). A “consummate storyteller,” British author Iris Murdoch grappled with questions of morality as well as the nature of love in novels that are every bit as entertaining as they are thought provoking (The Independent). Over the span of her career, the “prodigiously inventive” Murdoch was the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Literary Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (The New York Times). A Word Child: Twenty years ago, Hilary Burde was one of the most promising scholars at Oxford, a student with a rare talent for linguistics and an unquenchable drive—until the accident. Now, forty-one and a decidedly ordinary failure, Hilary finds his quietly angry routine shattered when his old professor reappears—a man whose own demons are tied to Hilary's and the tragedy from years ago. As the two men begin to circle each other again, digging up old wrongs and seeking forgiveness for long-buried ills, they find themselves on a path that will either grant them both redemption or end in their mutual destruction. “Marvelous... riveting... fine and elegant.” —Los Angeles Times An Unofficial Rose: Hugh Peronett's life is tinged with regret: Twenty-five years ago, he ended an affair with Emma Sands, a detective novelist who had stolen his heart, to be with his wife, Fanny. Now Fanny is gone, and both Hugh and his grown son, Randall, find themselves at a crossroads of passion and righteousness. As Hugh, Emma, Randall, Randall's wife, Randall's mistress, and several others are caught in a dance of romance and rejection in bucolic rural England, they search for the true meanings of love, companionship, and desire. “[A] Shakespearean comedy of misaligned lovers, minus the spirits and potions. Here the characters are responsible for their own actions, and Murdoch delights in painting these young, middle-aged and elderly adventurers and the psychological processes that direct their actions.” —Publishers Weekly Bruno's Dream: With not much time left to live, Bruno makes a final request to those who care for him: He wishes to see his estranged son, Miles, once more. After decades of broken contact due to Miles marrying a woman Bruno once found unsuitable, the prodigal son returns home—and finds himself confronting much more than a dying man's last demand. As Miles; his wife and his sister-in-law; Bruno's son-in-law, Danby; and Bruno's nurses and aides gather at this deathbed vigil, they become entangled in a web of affairs. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Bruno's Dream explores the turbulent passions and bitter grudges that will change them all—even long after Bruno is gone. “Murdoch is in command of her talents... above all there are the transcending elements of passion and profundity on the subjects of death and love beautifully articulated in dramatic action.” —The New York Times

Three unforgettable novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, the Sea and “consummate storyteller” (The Independent). “One of the most significant novelists of her generation” (The Guardian), the “prodigiously inventive” British author Iris Murdoch grappled with questions of morality as well as the nature of love in novels that are every bit as entertaining as they are thought provoking (The New York Times). Over the span of her career, she was the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Literary Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The Flight from the Enchanter: In 1950s London, when the enigmatic and charismatic businessman Mischa Fox turns his entrepreneurial gaze on a small feminist magazine, his intoxicating influence begins to affect the lives of those involved: the fragile editor, Hunter; his sister, Rosa, who splits her time and affections between her brother and two other men; innocent Annette, whose journey from school to the real world ends up being more fraught than she could have foreseen; as well as their circle of friends and acquaintances, all of whom find themselves both seduced and repulsed by Fox. “Brilliant, witty, and original.” —The Sunday Times The Red and the Green: In 1916, as World War I rages across Europe, Andrew Chase-White, lieutenant in the British army, travels to Ireland to see his extended family. Though he was raised in England by Protestant parents, many of his relations on the Emerald Isle are Catholic and nationalist. His arrival in Dublin ignites old resentments, new passions, political tensions, and religious crises, sending the family into a torrent of fights and alliances, affairs and betrayals. And as the historic gunfire begins at the General Post Office on the day of the Easter Rebellion, the lives of Andrew and his kin will be changed forever. “[Murdoch is] prodigiously inventive.” —The New York Times The Time of the Angels: In a crumbling London rectory after the Second World War, a priest descends into a spiritual crisis and madness. Carel Fisher was once a bastion of faith, a shining example of Anglican goodness and Christian values. But time and circumstance have worn him down as surely as the bombs of the Blitz have broken apart the very walls around him. His convictions have vanished, as has his belief in mankind. As relationships and desires, resentments and retributions, begin to crowd the small church, secrets are revealed that will shatter the lives of all involved. “Excites and delights.” —The New York Times

From “the most ingenious, inventive, and exciting of our novelists”: Three brilliant novels exploring colonialism, faith, and the mysteries of desire (V. S. Pritchett). This collection features three classic novels that explore Graham Greene's most important themes: Catholicism, international intrigue, and the never-ending struggle to know oneself. From West Africa to Vietnam to Mexico, these stories prove that “no serious writer of [the twentieth] century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than Graham Greene” (Time). The Heart of the Matter: In a British colony of West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious man of modest means charged with securing borders. But when he's passed over for a promotion, the humiliation hits hard—for his wife. To make it up to her, Henry accepts a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise's passage out of Africa. His single indiscretion quickly leads him—one moral compromise after another—into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. “A powerful, deep-striking novel... of a spirit lost in the darkness of the flesh.” —New York Herald Tribune The Quiet American: Vietnam, 1955. British journalist Thomas Fowler is covering the insurgency against French colonial rule and doing what he can to protect his Vietnamese lover, Phuong. Alden Pyle of the CIA believes in bringing American democracy to Vietnam by any means necessary. But when his ideas of conquest come to include Phuong, pride, passion, and blind moral conviction collide with terrible consequences. “A heartrending romance... Haunting and profound.” —All Things Considered, NPR The Power and the Glory: In 1930s Tabasco, Mexico, Catholicism is being outlawed. As churches are razed and devotees are executed, a member of the clergy known only as the “whisky priest” flees. He now travels as one of the hunted—attending, in secret, to the spiritual needs of the faithful. When a peasant begs him to return to Tabasco to hear the confessions of a dying man, the whisky priest knows it's a trap. But it's also his duty—and possibly his salvation. “A thriller—but also a novel of ideas... A book I would have simply died to write.” —Scott Turow, New York Times–bestselling author

Three iconic novels from “a superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy” (The New York Times). Graham Greene has been hailed as “one of the finest writers of any language” (The Washington Post) and “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety” (William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies). His extraordinary reputation rests largely on these three superb novels, all of which have been adapted into classic films. Brighton Rock: Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised in the prewar Brighton slums, leads a motley pack of gangsters whose small-time scams have erupted in murder. The coverup leads Pinkie to a timid and lovestruck young waitress—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—one determined to avenge Pinkie's latest victim. “Brilliant and uncompromising.” —The New York Times The End of the Affair: Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, and Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant, begin a series of doomed and reckless trysts. After Maurice miraculously survives a bombing, Sarah ends the affair—quickly and without explanation. It's only when Maurice crosses paths with Sarah's husband that he discovers the unexpected fallout of their duplicity. “One of the most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language.” —William Faulkner, Nobel Prize–winning author Our Man in Havana: 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, he passes along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts. But when MI6 dispatches a secretary to oversee his endeavors, Wormold fears his 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. “High-comic mayhem... weirdly undated... [and] bizarrely prescient.” —Christopher Buckley, New York Times–bestselling author

Four razor-sharp satires from a Man Booker Prize nominee who chronicles the battle of the sexes with “infectious, wicked glee” (Chicago Tribune). The beloved author of The Life and Loves of a She Devil sends up marriage, 1950s London, fad diets, celebrity feminists, and Doctor Faustus, proving once again that she is “the social and sexual soothsayer of our literary times” (Company). The Fat Woman's Joke: A novel about sex, food, marriage, and the indignities of the 1960s. After a lifetime of gorging herself, Esther Wells has an epiphany: She and her husband are going on a diet. Dedicated foodies throughout their marriage, they are about to discover what happens when new passions supplant old. “[Weldon is] an insightful and persuasive social commentator with an exhilarating mind.” —Susan Isaacs, author of Compromising Positions Down Among the Women: In 1950s London, Scarlet was raised by her mother—a former radical who left her husband to be fiercely independent. But at twenty, Scarlet has already had one abortion, and is about to become a single mother to the child she's naming Byzantia. Over the course of twenty years, Scarlet and her friends will discover it's never too late to become the women they are meant to be. “[A] stinging, brilliant comic novel.” —The Christian Science Monitor Growing Rich: Carmen is sixteen when Bernard Bellamy spies her from the back seat of his big, black BMW. He's just made a bargain with Mephistopheles: his mortal soul in exchange for the fulfillment of his desires. As time passes, inexplicable things happen to Carmen and her friends. But she's determined to hang on to her soul, no matter what obstacles—or temptations—are erected in her path. Will she succumb? Only the devil knows... “Glorious entertainment.” —Women's Journal Darcy's Utopia: With her husband in prison for financial crimes, Eleanor Darcy is a media sensation. A self-professed “feminist of the socialist variety,” she grants an interview to a pair of journalists. During the course of their conversations, two journalists find themselves on a life-changing journey as Eleanor spins her vision of a future where money is abolished and “all men will believe in God and be capable of love.” “A dazzling tour de force from one of Britain's most inspiring and intelligent novelists.” —Cosmopolitan

Two award-winning novels—including This Sporting Life—from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist and “an absorbing writer” (The New Yorker). The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award. “The leading novelist of his generation,” Storey was also a playwright and screenwriter, going on to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel, Saville (The Daily Telegraph). The collected fiction gathered here includes This Sporting Life as well as his second novel, focusing on a female protagonist, also from a Yorkshire coal mining town. This Sporting Life: In a bleak Yorkshire mining town, an aggressive rugby league footballer finds fame, fortune, and countless women but cannot outrun the emptiness he feels inside. Storey also wrote the screenplay based on his “impressive first novel” for the award-winning film starring Richard Harris (The New York Times). “Classic... a revelation... Skeptical, belligerent, and acidly ironical.” —Edmund White, The Paris Review Flight Into Camden: Margaret, a miner's daughter, leaves her oppressive family in Yorkshire, hoping to make a new life in London with a married teacher in this “love story written with seriousness and intensity” (The Observer). Storey's second novel, told in Margaret's voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. “A tour de force of domestic oppression... Rises on occasions to a pitch of precise beauty which I can only... describe as poetry.” —The Guardian

Three powerful novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist of This Sporting Life and “an absorbing writer” (The New Yorker). The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award and was made into a film with Richard Harris. “The leading novelist of his generation,” Storey was also a playwright and screenwriter, going on to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel, Saville (The Daily Telegraph). The collected fiction gathered here explores madness, romantic obsession, adolescent yearning, and class divisions with Storey's characteristic “understanding of people and society” (The Times Literary Supplement). A Serious Man: Richard Fenchurch has had a long, successful career as a playwright, painter, and novelist. But at sixty-five, he is coming apart at the seams. His married daughter, Harriet, moves him from his squalid London flat to his ancestral mansion. Home again with ghosts all around, Fenchurch ruminates on past loves and choices, while struggling to maintain his freedom and sanity. “This spellbinding giant of a book is dashing, hectic, complex, sometimes almost wickedly aimless and terrifying. It reads like a wild animal flexing its muscles.... An electrifying success.” —The Mail on Sunday A Temporary Life: As his wife wastes away in a hospital, sinking deeper and deeper into a terrifying and incomprehensible madness, Colin Freestone tries to make sense of what his life has become. Having moved to Yvonne's hometown in northern England for her psychiatric care, he teaches art at a second-rate college headed by a nutrition-crazed dean. He makes friends and meets women, but nothing can distract him from the fact that his wife is slowly dying and he is powerless to stop it. “A triumph... bitter, enriching.” —The New York Times A Prodigal Child: Desperate to escape the poverty of his family and his drunken father who works as a farmhand, Bryan goes to live with the childless Fay Corrigan at her posh home in town during the week, while attending a prep school that she pays for. But Bryan soon feels a growing chasm between his new life and the world he left behind. And his mounting jealous-erotic obsession with the much-older Fay leads to actions—and consequences—that will reverberate for years to come. “Quiet but telling drama, intense observation.” —Penelope Lively

Three thought-provoking novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning British novelist of This Sporting Life and “an absorbing writer” (The New Yorker). The son of a coal miner who went on to play professionally in the rugby league, British author David Storey drew heavily on his own background for his debut novel, This Sporting Life, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award and was made into a film with Richard Harris. “The leading novelist of his generation,” Storey was also a playwright and screenwriter, going on to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel, Saville (The Daily Telegraph). Collected here, Storey's characters range from a seventeen-year-old compulsive note writer to a seventy-year-old suicidal art historian and a middle-aged sports columnist, but they all share a common trait: a profound questioning of life's meaning. Thin-Ice Skater: An angst-ridden seventeen-year-old who shares intimate details of his life in the form of memos written to himself, Rick Audlin first goes to live with his much-older film producer half-brother, Gerry, whose second wife, Martha, a former movie star, has been committed to a mental institution. When Gerry has to go abroad, Rick moves in with his long-estranged other half-brother, James, a failed crime novelist, and is seduced by Clare, James's wife. But Rick begins to realize something else is going on—something that will eventually lead him to a shattering secret in his family. As It Happened: After a failed suicide attempt in front of a moving train, seventy-year-old art historian and professor emeritus Matthew Maddox attends art therapy classes, hoping to find meaning in his life. Although he feels isolated, Maddox does have his champions. Simone, his lover and partner, is returning from an analysts'conference in Vienna. There is also his former mentor, whose wartime past fascinates Maddox; his older sister, Sarah; and his younger brother, Paul—and Eric Taylor, once his most promising student, now a convicted murderer, in whom Maddox sees echoes of his own life. “A novel packed with argument and written with a close attention to the significance of gesture, the thing seen, the sound heard, the thought apprehended.” —The Scotsman Present Times: Former playwright Frank Attercliffe cowrites a sports column about football and lives with his children in relative peace—until the night his wife, who left him three years ago for a car dealer, returns home and announces she wants to move back in. Just one catch—she wants Frank to move out. “I enjoyed this book for its savagery, its stoically enduring hero, its taut, explosive dialogue.” —The Sunday Telegraph

A “masterful... brilliantly constructed novel” of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian). It's 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it's not just a political tangle that's kept him tethered to the country. There's also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what's best for Southeast Asia, but rather a “Third Force”: American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as Pyle's blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, it's ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing. Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham Greene's “complex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigue” would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism (The New York Times).

This prize-winning novel of a fugitive priest in Mexico is quite simply “Graham Greene's masterpiece” (John Updike, The New York Review of Books). In the Mexican state of Tabasco in the 1930s, all vestiges of Catholicism are being outlawed by the government. As churches are razed, icons are banned, and the price of devotion is execution, an unnamed member of the clergy flees. He's known only as the “whisky priest.” Beset by heretical vices, guilt, and an immoral past, he's torn between self-destruction and self-preservation. Too modest to be a martyr, too stubborn to follow the law, and too craven to take a bullet, he now travels as one of the hunted—attending, in secret, to the spiritual needs of the faithful. When a peasant begs him to return to Tabasco to hear the confessions of a dying man, the whisky priest knows it's a trap. But it's also his duty—and possibly his salvation. Named by Time magazine as one of the hundred best English-language novels written since 1923, The Power and the Glory is “a violent, raw” work on “suffering, strained faith, and ultimate redemption” (The Atlantic).

Graham Greene's masterful novel of love and betrayal in World War II London is “undeniably a major work of art” (The New Yorker). Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, develops an acquaintance with Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant named Henry. Maurice claims it's to divine a character for his novel-in-progress. That's the first deception. What he really wants is Sarah, and what Sarah needs is a man with passion. So begins a series of reckless trysts doomed by Maurice's increasing romantic demands and Sarah's tortured sense of guilt. Then, after Maurice miraculously survives a bombing, Sarah ends the affair—quickly, absolutely, and without explanation. It's only when Maurice crosses paths with Sarah's husband that he discovers the fallout of their duplicity—and it's more unexpected than Maurice, Henry, or Sarah herself could have imagined. Adapted for film in both 1956 and 1999, Greene's novel of all that inspires love—and all that poisons it—is “singularly moving and beautiful” (Evelyn Waugh).

The highly acclaimed first two novels by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple and “a lavishly gifted writer” (The New York Times Book Review). The first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple—which also won the National Book Award and was adapted into both an award–winning film starring Whoopi Goldberg and a Tony Award–winning Broadway musical—New York Times–bestselling author Alice Walker is without question “one of [our] best American writers” (The Washington Post). Before her success with The Color Purple, Walked penned the two powerful and unforgettable novels collected here. Meridian: This “classic novel of both feminism and the Civil Rights movement” is the story of Meridian Hill, who, as she approaches the end of her teen years, has already married, divorced, and given birth to a son (Ms. Magazine). She's looking for a second chance, and at a small college outside Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960s, she becomes involved in the Civil Rights movement. So fully does the cause guide her life that she's willing to sacrifice virtually anything to help transform the conditions of a people whose subjugation she shares. “Beautifully presented and utterly convincing.” —The New Yorker “A fine, taut novel... Remarkable.” —The New York Times Book Review The Third Life of Grange Copeland: In Walker's debut novel, Grange Copeland, a deeply conflicted and struggling tenant farmer in the Deep South of the 1930s, leaves his family and everything he's ever known to find happiness and respect in the cold cities of the North. This misadventure, his “second life,” proves a dismal failure that sends him back where he came from to confront his now-grown-up son's disastrous relationships with his own family, including Grange's granddaughter, Ruth Copeland, a child Grange grows to love. Love becomes the substance of his third and final life. He spends it in devotion to Ruth, teaching and protecting her—though the cost of doing so is almost more than he can bear. “[A] splendid novel.” —Chicago Tribune “A solid, honest sensitive tale... leavened by those moments of humor and warmth that have enabled men and women to endure so much tragedy.” —Chicago Daily News

New York Times Bestseller: The “touching and effective” story of an American minister who returns home from WWII with five orphaned Holocaust survivors (The New York Times). Rev. Johnny Fletcher serves wounded soldiers from the battlefield as a military chaplain during World War II. His forté is spiritual solace in the darkest of times, but his life changes when he performs a public heroic act: facing down an angry mob intent on attacking five young Holocaust survivors. Upon learning they have no homes or families to return to, Fletcher decides to bring them to America. To his dismay, his coal-mining community of Barryfield, Pennsylvania, greets this makeshift family with prejudice and distrust. Beneath the town's placid surface run buried religious divisions. Fletcher's commitment to raising the children according to their individual faiths—two Protestant, two Catholic, and one Jewish—meets with horrific levels of intolerance. Dealing with such prejudice turns more sinister still when a local newspaper publisher cynically uses the story for his own purposes. Together with Lorry Summerfield, the beautiful, disillusioned daughter of Barryfield's most powerful figure, Fletcher must try to awaken the townspeople to the better angels of their nature before it's too late.

The saga of a ruthless businessman, the steel empire he forged, and the woman he could never tame: “A virile story, vivid with life and force” (Chicago Daily News). The son of German immigrants, Franz Stoessel comes of age at the end of the nineteenth century with the conviction that nothing matters in America except wealth and power. As a foreman at the local steel mill in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, he is brutal to his fellow workers, believing that a man's sins can be buried beneath his fortune. When a charismatic Englishman attempts to form a union at Schmidt Steel Company, Franz meets the threat with violent force. Nothing will stand in his way—not the health and safety of his colleagues, nor his tender feelings for a beautiful cousin who disapproves of his materialism. Time and time again, Franz makes the cold-hearted decision to put himself above all others—and reaps the rewards that elude his friends and family. But are his choices driven by strength or fear? And when the reckoning comes, who will stand by his side? A compelling portrait of American capitalism, The Strong City contains the “real vitality” that made Taylor Caldwell one of the twentieth century's most beloved novelists (The New York Times).

New York Times Bestseller: In the “undeniably powerful” sequel to Dynasty of Death, a new generation of Bouchards battles over the family empire (The New York Times Book Review). In the decade after World War I, Jules Bouchard prepares to leave controlling interest in his global munitions enterprise to his son Armand. But the inheritance comes with a warning: Armand's ruthless brothers, Emile and Christopher, will be gunning for him. It's not long before Christopher commits financial treachery in an effort to unseat his brother. Worse, he hatches a plot involving his sister, Celeste, whose innocence he had vowed to always protect. While Christopher's machinations and Armand's countermoves threaten to tear the family apart, hope emerges from a distant relative who seems to possess the noble character of his ancestors. But are his intentions as honorable as they seem?

New York Times Bestseller: A sprawling epic of an American railroad dynasty's “sensational intrigues and stormy struggles for power” (The New York Times Book Review). Founded in Portersville, Pennsylvania, in the latter days of Andrew Jackson's presidency, the Interstate is a small regional railroad with vast potential. Also, it is the birthright of Aaron deWitt's sons: ruthless yet charming Rufus and stubborn, idealistic Stephen. When Stephen wins control of the Interstate, his victory starts a series of events that will roil the deWitt family for generations. Over decades, the Interstate grows into an enterprise capable of shaping the future of the nation. Yet, both its triumphs and defeats sow the seeds of the deWitt family's downfall. Brothers plot against brothers, sons demean fathers, wives betray husbands—all in pursuit of monumental power. Not even Cornelia, Rufus's beautiful and cunning daughter, can ensure that the deWitt family name won't disappear. Spanning nearly a century, Never Victorious, Never Defeated is a brilliant dramatization of the lives of America's robber barons and further proof that Taylor Caldwell “never falters when it comes to storytelling” (Publishers Weekly).

The “darkly exuberant and passionate” saga of a man who flees Victorian England in disgrace—only to build an empire of corruption in America (The New York Times). The son of a wealthy English merchant, John Turnbull's destiny appears to be a life of gentlemanly leisure. His path: graduate from his fashionable school and marry his beautiful cousin, Eugenia, whom he loves. Yet, one wild night, a jealous classmate tricks him into making a fateful mistake. Forced to give up his former life, Turnbull sails for America. He soon falls in with the unscrupulous businessman Mr. Wilkins. Together, they steal patents, smuggle contraband through the Southern blockade during the Civil War, run guns to Japan, and finance the opium trade. But as Turnbull amasses a fortune large enough to vanquish his most powerful enemies, he doesn't realize his gravest threat comes from within his own family. Packed with fascinating period details, The Turnbulls is a mesmerizing family drama from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Captains and the Kings and Dynasty of Death.

In the final chapter of the saga that began with Dynasty of Death and The Eagles Gather, a global munitions empire must take sides in World War II. Peter Bouchard journeyed from afar to intervene in the power struggle between Armand and Christopher Bouchard. At stake was control of the family's vast conglomerate spanning the armament, airplane, and automobile industries. Now Peter and his wife, Celeste, have returned from Europe, where the winds of war are blowing once again. Peter warns that the coming conflict will be one of the darkest chapters in human history—but the Bouchards have always profited in dark times. Henri Bouchard has grown into a ruthless tycoon, but when he sees the threat to America, he throws himself into the war effort with single-minded determination. As he battles bureaucracy and rival powers within his own family, he finds himself drawn to Celeste, the woman he once loved. This, one of Taylor Caldwell's most subtle romances, awakens Henri's compassion even as it threatens his grip on the Bouchard dynasty. A “sprawling... lush” novel that captures the clamor and uncertainty of the years before the Second World War, The Final Hour is a fitting conclusion to the trilogy that stands as one of Caldwell's finest achievements (Kirkus Reviews).

New York Times Bestseller: On the eve of WWI, a wealthy German immigrant fights for his family's future in this “stirring... exciting” tale (Chicago Sunday Tribune). Pennsylvania, 1913. The four Wittmann brothers manufacture steel precision tools. Jochen (Joe) is a ruthless businessman who seeks to improve the bottom line at any cost. Friedrich (Fred) dabbles in Socialism but would never sacrifice his dividends. Wilhelm (Willie) prefers to collect art rather than visit the factory floor. Only Karl (Charles), a widower, has the vision to keep the family business in the black. Now, as the winds of war sweep across Europe, anti-German sentiment turns the family's allies against them, and war profiteers threaten to remake the entire steel industry into a merchant of death. But Charles's greatest worry is that his son will be shipped overseas to die. As Charles struggles against powerful forces inside and outside the Wittmann family, he finds an ally in Willie's neglected wife, Phyllis. Who can predict if their unlikely romance is cause for hope or a sign of impending disaster? A stirring family saga and a brilliant exposé of the military-industrial complex, The Balance Wheel ranks alongside Dynasty of Death and Captains and the Kings as one of Taylor Caldwell's finest accomplishments.

From the bestselling author of Captains and the Kings: The story of a blacksmith's son, a small town, and a secret dark enough to seal a man's fate. Raised in a two-room shack behind his father's smithy shop, Dan Hendricks was marked as an outcast from earliest childhood. The people of South Kenton assumed the poor, gangly boy would become as shiftless and dissolute as his drunkard father. Despite the withering judgment and abuse, Dan manages to remain honest and open-hearted into adulthood. He founders in his attempt to find the tenderness and support a man needs. He cannot be with the woman he truly loves, and the one he marries takes a perverse pleasure in seeing him suffer. At the limits of his endurance, when Dan finally breaks we are left to wonder whether this is a destiny foretold or a senseless tragedy. Full of the force and passion of Taylor Caldwell's best-known novels, To Look and Pass is a revealing portrait of the dark side of small-town America from an author who “never falters when it comes to storytelling” (Publishers Weekly).

Three comedies of manners set in postwar England by the New York Times–bestselling author of Excellent Women and “the rarest of treasures” (Anne Tyler). Often characterized as the twentieth-century literary heiress to Jane Austen, and heralded by Phillip Larkin as “the most underrated novelist of the century,” Barbara Pym explored female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life—not the least of which, unrequited love—with sharp wit and deep compassion for her characters. No wonder Eudora Welty called her work “sheer delight” and the New York Times raved, “her entire canon is a treat.” A Glass of Blessings: Wilmet Forsyth is bored with her everyday routine: teatimes, local gossip, even with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant who dotes on her. But Wilmet's conventional life takes a turn when she runs into the enigmatic brother of a close friend. Piers Longridge is a mystery Wilmet is determined to solve. Driven by a fantasy of romance, the sheltered, naïve Englishwoman sets out to seduce Piers—only to discover that he isn't the man she thinks he is. Some Tame Gazelle: Pym's debut novel invites readers to “step into the Jane Austen–like lives of Harriet and Belinda Bede,” sisters who live together in a small English village (The Christian Science Monitor). Shy, sensible Belinda has been secretly in love with the married archdeacon of their church for thirty years. Meanwhile Belinda's more confident younger sister, Harriet, is herself pursued by an Italian count whose proposals of marriage are always graciously declined. But it's a new arrival in their midst who has everyone talking. For now, in this poignant novel of unrequited love, that is enough. Jane and Prudence: Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were friends at Oxford, but now lead very different lives. Jane is married to a vicar in a proper English parish with a daughter she adores. Prudence lives in London, career-minded and fiercely independent—until Jane decides she should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind. What follows is a delightfully trenchant story of manners, morals, family, and female bonding that redefines the social novel for a new generation.