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'I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.' So says Angela Carter of this collection, written during a period living in Toyko. These exotic, sensuous stories represent Carter's first major achievement in the short story form. Lush imaginary forests, a murderous puppet show and an expressionistic vision of Japan: each one instantly conjures an atmosphere, dark and luminous in turn, and from the recognisably daring imagination of one of the great twentieth-century stylists.

How to be a good father? Children's birthday parties, unsuccessful family holidays, humiliating antenatal music classics: the trials of parenthood are all found in Knausgaard's compelling and honest a

Babies: our biggest mystery and our most natural consequence, our hardest test and our enduring love. Anne Enright describes the intensity, bewilderment and extravagant happiness of her experience of

How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist William Styron had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, Styron describes

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When

Your sister might be the kindred soul who knows you best, or the most alien being in your household; she might enrage you or inspire you; she might be your fiercest competitor or closest co-conspirato

Is there anything quite so exhilarating as swimming in wild water? This is Roger Deakin's swimming tour of Britain, a frog's-eye view of the country's best bathing holes - the rivers, rock pools, lake

Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for

Bob Slocum is anxious, bored and fearful of his job. So why is it he wants nothing more than the chance to speak at the next company convention? In this darkly satirical book, Joseph Heller takes us f

How do you remember the summers of your childhood? For Laurie Lee they were flower-crested, heady, endless days. Here is an evocation of summer like no other - a remote valley filled with the scent of

Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first comes to London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the languag

Salman Rushdie, a self-described 'emigrant from one place and a newcomer in two', explores the true meaning of Home. Writing with insight, passion and humour, he looks at what it means to belong, whet

Miserly and mysterious, the richest man in the Five Towns lives simply, ruling his household with an iron fist and a cruel temper. His daughter, Anna, is used to the life of strict, thrifty order impo

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads: Opens at Night

When a twist of fate delivers an ambitious young medical student to the court of King Charles II, he is suddenly thrust into a vibrant world of luxury and opulence. Blessed with a quick wit and sparkling charm, Robert Merivel rises quickly, soon finding favour with the King, and privileged with a position as ‘paper groom’ to the youngest of the King’s mistresses. But by falling in love with her, Merivel transgresses the one rule that will cast him out from his new-found paradise…

Eight years ago Anne Elliot bowed to pressure from her family and made the decision not to marry the man she loved, Captain Wentworth. Now circumstances have conspired to bring him back into her socia

**NOW THE WINNER OF THE 2022 BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR AND TWO 2022 BAFTA AWARDS**Discover Thomas Savage's dark poetic tale of a small town in early 20th century America. Phil and George are brothers, more than partners, joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley. Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent.Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business. Phil is a vicious sadist, with a seething contempt for weakness to match his thirst for dominance; George has a gentle, loving soul. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years.When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins an relentless campaign to destroy his brother's new wife. But he reckons without an unlikely protector. From its visceral first paragraph to its devastating twist of an ending, The P

A glorious collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm. The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of fa

Winter holidays can be just as fun as summer with the Swallows and Amazons! "'You know what it's like. Dark at teatime and sleeping indoors: nothing ever happens in the winter holidays.'" Or so Nancy

The Ds can't wait to go and stay with Nancy and Peggy in the Lake District during the summer holidays. But when the Amazons' dreadful Great Aunt invites herself to stay too, the summer is threatened w

'Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful.' So here we are on Christmas Eve, locked up in rotten Mrs

When Dick and Dorothea arrive in the Norfolk Broads all set for a blissful summer on the river, they find their friends the Death and Glories in a very bad situation. Accused of setting boats adrift,

The Swallows, Amazons and Captain Flint don't pay much heed to the harbourmaster's friendly warning as they set off for China. They are on a round-the-world voyage aboard the Wild Cat and it's been pl

When the Walker family's holiday plans are ruined by Daddy having to work, the whole summer seems lost at sea. But a dull holiday for the children is too miserable to bear so their parents hatch a pla

When the wind on the moon blew straight into Dinah and Dorinda's hearts it meant that they couldn't help but behave badly for a whole year. Transformed into kangaroos, they terrorise the sleepy town o

Dick and Dorothea - also known as The Ds - arrive in Norfolk all ready to learn how to sail. They couldn't hope for a better teacher than Tom Dudgeon. But Tom is in a spot of trouble. After seeing the

Can you imagine finding gold? That's just what the Swallows and Amazons and Dick and Dorothea decide to hunt for in the hills high above the lake. But it's a hot and dry summer and water is in scarce

Joan Aiken's life sales are 750,000 copies. Aiken also won the Guardian and Edgar Allen Poe Award. She was presented with an MBE for her services to literature"Wait, wait! Save us! What’ll we do?" Si

'Password Emil!'Emil and the detectives are on holiday by the seaside when they meet the three acrobat twins, the three Byrons. One Byron is the father and the other two are the sons, Mackie and Jacki

'You know what it's like. Dark at teatime and sleeping indoors: nothing ever happens in the winter holidays.' Or so Nancy thinks. Then the lake ices over completely and the Swallows and Amazons, alon

Picked in Waterstone's survey of the world's 100 best ever children's books Katy Carr remains one of the sparkiest heroines of children's fiction, right up there with Jo from Little Women and Anne of

It is London in the late 1930s and sixteen-year-old orphan Portia is plunged into the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home. Wide-eyed and disconcertingly vul

What could be more relaxing than a refreshing holiday on the river with your two best friends and faithful canine companion, Montmorency? However, as J. discovers, there is more to life on the waves

When war broke out in 1914, Somerset Maugham was dispatched by the British Secret Service to Switzerland under the guise of completing a play. This title collects stories that are rooted in author's o

High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerrilla band prepares to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer, has been sent to handle the dynamiting. There, in the mo

THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF AND KILMARTIN TRANSLATION Time Regained begins in the bleak and uncertain years of World War I. Years later, after the war's end, Proust's n

On the evening of Good Friday in the year 1300, Dante finds himself lost in a dark and menacing wood. The ghost of Virgil offers to lead him to safety but the path lies through the terrifying kingdom

A collection of stories of the lives of Manhattan office workers, a cab driver seeking immortality, frustrated would-be novelists, suburban men and their yearning, neglected women in the 1950s, the er

Joe Christmas - a man doomed, deracinated and alone - wanders the Deep South in search of an identity, and a place in society. After killing his perverted God-fearing lover, it becomes inevitable that

In the remote Kingdom of Castalia, the scholars of the Twenty Third century play the Glass Bead Game. The elaborately coded game is a fusion of all human knowledge - of maths, music, philosophy, scien