82ASK

A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Tracy Chevalier

Shakespeare's Othello is ingeniously transplanted into a high school setting in this taut story about teenage friendship and racial tension. 
 
Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat’s son Osei knows he needs an ally. Luckily he hits it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again. 
 
The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970s suburban Washington schoolyard in this powerful drama of alienation, adolescence and friends torn apart. 
 
‘A compact and intense read full of twists, turns and intrigue’ Daily Express 
 
'New Boy, with its angsty teenagers, racial frictions and a magnificently fleshed out antagonist, is a tense and tight read... A heady rollercoaster of emotions' Observer 
 
SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before: nine iconic plays transformed by the best novelists of our time, with covers by Michael Craig-Martin.

New Boy

Othello, Retold

Charles Dickens

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Dickens's unforgettable novel with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape. Dickens graphically conjures up the capital’s underworld, full of sex workers, thieves and lost and homeless children, and gives a voice to the disadvantaged and abused. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

Oliver Twist

Virginia Woolf

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Woolf's delightful, boundary-pushing classic, with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth’s court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

Orlando

Julian Barnes

History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us. 
 
From the Titanic to the Amazon, the raft of the Medusa to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters presents a surprising, subversive, fictional history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is no ordinary history, but something stranger: a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. 
 
'Funny, ironic, erudite, surprising, and not afraid to take a dive overboard into the depths of sorrow and loss’ Nadime Gordimer

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Angela Carter

Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake? 
 
Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SARAH WATERS 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** 
 
'A spellbinding achievement' Literary Review 
 
'Raunchy, raucous...a rich, turn of the 19th century world, which reeks of human and animal variety' The Times

Nights at the Circus

Marjorie Bowen

Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors.

A rediscovered gothic classic with a groundbreaking, gender-nonconforming protagonist at its heart. 
 
‘I do not sin,’ he smiled. ‘I am Sin’ 
 
In a quiet medieval city, alone in his shadowy chambers, Dirk Renswoude worships the devil. Then the wind brings the young scholar Theirry to his door. Could this beautiful man share his dark obsession? Under a hushed midnight sky, the pair swear themselves to the black arts, and to one another. 
 
Yet Dirk shies away at the slightest touch. He will not discuss his past. As the duo hex their way across moonlit woodlands and learned cities, it becomes clear that Dirk will stop at nothing to live the life he desires, while concealing one precious secret. 
 
'A subtle and complex thriller…Just don’t give away its secret' Washington Post 
 
READER LOVE - JOIN THE DARK SIDE: 
'Beware. This is dark gothic fiction at its best.' 
'A thick and oozing tale of every possible sin and horror...perfect for spooky season' 
'That twist!' 
'For fans of historical fiction, or horror, or fantasy, this novel should prove absolutely scrumptious.' 
'A super fun Gothic extravaganza.' 
'Demons! Spells! Satanic rituals! Love triangles! Ghosts and witches! Medieval opulence! Gruesome violence! THE ANTICHRIST! ...Flat-out, straight-up awesome.' 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

Black Magic

Natsume Soseki

Discover the original Japanese Cat classic, now in a vibrant new translation by Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City. 
 
'I am a Cat. But I still don't have a name...' 
 
Once a stray kitten, I Am a Cat’s narrator finds himself adopted by a local scholar and thrown headfirst into the absurd upper middle-class world of Meiji-era Japan. Now a noble but somewhat world-weary observer, he has ample opportunity to dissect the strange ways and convoluted conversations of the human race. 
 
First published at the turn of the 20th century, and regarded as one of Japan’s most iconic classics, I Am a Cat is a captivating exploration of identity, society, and the often bewildering nature of the human condition—all seen through the eyes of a very special, uncompromising cat. 
 
‘A biting satire of Meiji-era Japan' Jessie Burton, Guardian 
 
‘Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature’ Haruki Murakami

I Am a Cat

Volume One

Jewelle Gomez

In this radically reimagined vampire myth, the night hides many things... 
 
Louisiana, 1850. A young girl escapes slavery and is taken in by two mysterious women. 
 
Rumoured to be witches, the pair travel only at night, dress in men's clothing and seem to know others' innermost thoughts. But the girl sees the promise of true freedom in their dark glittering eyes: the promise to 'share the blood' and live forever. They name her Gilda. 
 
Over the next two hundred years, Gilda moves through unseen spaces: through antebellum brothels, hair salons and jazz clubs, searching for a way to exist in the world. But can Gilda truly outrun the darkness of history and face a future where the lives of everyone she loves are at stake? 
 
'A groundbreaking work of Afrofuturism before the term was even coined' Guardian 
 
'A lush, exciting, inspiring read' Sarah Waters 
 
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.

The Gilda Stories

A. S. Byatt

A romance, a literary quest, a modern classic. 
 
‘Possession is eloquent about the intense pleasures of reading. And, with sumptuous artistry, it provides a feast of them’ Sunday Times 
 
A pair of young scholars investigate the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time. Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. 
 
‘Exhilarating genius’ Guardian 
 
**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE**

Possession

A Romance

Junichiro Tanizaki

Four sisters live in dilapidated houses, the daughters of a once-great merchant family of Osaka. 
 
Each of the women navigates her own complex relationship to the fading lustre of the Makioka family name, in the years leading up to the Second World War. Rich with breathtaking descriptions of ancient customs and an ever-changing natural world, Tanizaki evokes in poignant detail a long-lost way of life even as it withers under the harsh glare of modernity. 
 
‘An exquisite novel about four sisters living though a turbulent decade...I'd put it in the 10 greatest books of the 20th century’ David Mitchell 
 
‘A classic novel of a whole country about to turn on the terrible hinge of the war into modernity; its tone is elegiac and bleak’ Observer

The Makioka Sisters

These two novellas by the inimitable Tanizaki were among his favourites. 
 
The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi recounts the dark sexual obsessions of a sixteenth-century warlord, accidentally initiated in his youth into the morbid rites attendant upon battle. Based on invented documents that overlap with historical reality, the story unfolds a masterly balance of irony and melodrama, elegance and brutality. 
 
Arrowroot also touches on the pursuit of legend, but in a very different mode. Cast in the uniquely Japanese form of the ‘essay novel’, the narrative blends the stories of two friends on an expedition into the mountains south of Kyoto, one of them following the traces of a medieval myth, the other in search of a more recent, private past. 
 
‘After 20 years of writing novels in a fairly orthodox style, Tanizaki fused two interests - traditional Japanese storytelling and experimental narrative – into a unique style’ New York

The Secret History of The Lord of Musashi

William Maxwell

Discover the tragically beautiful world of So Long, See You Tomorrow, a quietly devastating masterpiece of human frailty and resilience 
 
Away from the quiet farmlands of Illinois, two lonely teenagers – bound by the burden of their home lives – forge a delicate friendship. But when jealousy ignites in one of their families, it leads to unthinkable tragedy, and severs the two boys' bond forever. 
 
Fifty years later, haunted by the past, the narrator seeks to piece together those harrowing events and find redemption for a lifetime of regret. So Long, See You Tomorrow is a haunting exploration of memory, loss, and the enduring quest for forgiveness. 
 
‘One of the great books of our age. It is the subtlest of miniatures that contains our deepest sorrows and truths and love’ Michael Ondaatje

So Long, See You Tomorrow

Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. 
 
As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer’s work, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But we also gradually come to learn some important and shocking details about Geoffrey himself. 
 
A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour-de-force of seductive originality. 
 
‘Unputdownable... A mesmeric original’ Philip Larkin 
 
‘Delightful and enriching...a book to revel in!’ Joseph Heller 
 
‘A wry and graceful book... Unfailingly sharp and often very funny’ Sunday Times 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR TO MARK THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST PUBLICATION

Flaubert's Parrot

Jack Hilton

'Witty and unusual' George Orwell 
'Magnificent' W H Auden 
 
A lyrical tour of life as a young working-class man born into the first days of the 20th century, Caliban Shrieks is a lost masterpiece of 1930s British literature. 
 
Caliban Shrieks’ narrator went from a childhood of poverty, yet joy and freedom, to the punishing grind of factory life and the idiocy of being sent blindly into war. He was turned out of the army a vagrant - seeing England from city to city, county to county - before being thrust back into an uncertain cycle of working life as it unfolded in the post-war years. 
 
A story of men and women lost, wandering – and angrily dreaming of a better, fairer England, Hilton’s autobiographical novel is a bold modernist retelling of the myth of how we find ourselves disenfranchised from the world and sold into a slavery of our making.

Caliban Shrieks

Michael Ondaatje

Booker prize winning author Michael Ondaatje invites you on a brutal, beautiful journey into the American West. . . 
 
At twenty-one years old, Billy the Kid has killed a man for each year he’s been alive. 
 
Roaming the blasted planes of the Wild West, he moves between friends, foes and lovers, fighting to keep just one step ahead of the law. Yet in this twisted wasteland – a country of mad dogs, of sweat and gore and blinding heat – the sheriffs play dirty too.Melding prose, poetry, imagined interviews and ephemeral photography, Ondaatje weaves together a lyrical reinterpretation of Billy’s short, infamous existence, forming a portrait of a young man, and a young country, borne out of violence, threaded through with disaster, yet rich in wonder. 
 
‘Ondaatje’s language is clean and energetic, with the pop of bullets. This is literature, art.’ Annie Dillard 
 
'Ondaatje’s eye for detail is wonderful and he uses it poetically, with superb restraint' Larry McMurtry

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Yukio Mishima

The second book in Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetraology - this is a story of political violence, traditional samurai values and nihilism. 
 
Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical believer in the ancient samurai ethos. He turns terrorist, organising a violent plot against the new industrialists, who he believes are threatening the integrity of Japan and usurping the Emperor's rightful power. As the conspiracy unfolds and unravels, Mishima brilliantly chronicles the conflicts of a decade that saw the fabric of Japanese life torn apart. 
 
'Runaway Horses is disturbing material, also a harbinger of Mishima's own act of 'patriotic' self-slaughter... Strange, elegant, erotic' Guardian

Runaway Horses

Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial families, a new and powerful elite. 
 
Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family &ndash; members of the waning aristocracy &ndash; but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko. His devoted friend Honda watches from the sidelines. It is only when Satoko is engaged to a royal prince that Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion. 
 
'An austere love story, probably my favourite of his novels' David Mitchell, Independent on Sunday 
 
'[Mishima's] best work, unnerving as it may be, still casts a spell; and I suspect it will retain its dark radiance' Guardian

Spring Snow

Mishima&rsquo;s literary powers are on full display in his penultimate novel, a meditation on reincarnation and Buddhist philosophy. 
 
Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business. He is granted an audience with a young Thai princess known as 'Moonlight', an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. Convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, he undertakes a long, arduous pilgrimage to the holy places of India. There he encounters her again. But the princess has become one more embodiment of all that Honda cannot possess. 
 
'An elegy to the loss of pureness in the Japanese national spirit' Japan Times

The Temple of Dawn

This is Mishima's novel about the pressure of living an idealised life. It tells a fictionalised account of real events - the lonely acolyte who destroyed a famous Kyoto temple. 
 
Mizoguchi grows up a lonely boy in a poor family, a hopeless and frustrated stutterer. Only tales of the beauty of a famous temple in Kyoto, told by his dying father, sustain him. Taunted by his schoolmates, he eventually escapes to become an acolyte at the temple. But there, witness to acts of callous violence and terrified by the bombing of the war, Mizoguchi develops an all-consuming obsession with the temple's preservation - until the beauty of the place itself starts to feel like his deadliest enemy. 
 
This powerful story of sacrifice and unattainable ideals brings together Mishima's preoccupations with violence, desire, religion and national history to dazzling effect. 
 
'One of the outstanding writers of the world' New York Times

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Leo Tolstoy

'If you've never read it, now is the moment. This translation will show that you don't read War and Peace, you live it' The Times 
 
Tolstoy's enthralling epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. He creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships. His heroes are the thoughtful yet impulsive Pierre Bezukhov, his ambitious friend, Prince Andrei, and the woman who becomes indispensable to both of them, the enchanting Natasha Rostov. 
 
&lsquo;It is simply the greatest novel ever written. All human life is in it. If I were told there was time to read only a single book, this would be it&rsquo; Andrew Marr 
 
TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

War and Peace

Erich Maria Remarque

The most famous anti-war novel ever written. 
 
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young 'unknown soldier' experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches. 
 
'Remarque's evocation of the horrors of modern warfare has lost none of its force' The Times 
 
TRANSLATED BY BRIAN MURDOCH 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition. 
 
All Quiet on the Western Front, BAFTA and Oscar winner, 2023

All Quiet on the Western Front

Vintage Quarterbound Classics

Roberto Bolaño

Auxilio Lacouture is trapped. 
 
For twelve days she hides alone in a lavatory on the fourth floor of her university. Staring at the floor, she begins a heartfelt and feverish tale: she is the Mother of Mexican poetry. 
 
A highly charged first-person semi-hallucinatory novella, Amulet is a potent stream of consciousness through which the poets of Mexico rage and swirl. Filled with wild, dark literary prophecies, heroic poets, mad poets, artists &lsquo;choked by the brilliance of youth&rsquo;, Auxilio&rsquo;s passionate narration &ndash; both heartbreaking and lyrical &ndash; is suffused with the essence of Roberto Bolaño&rsquo;s art. 
 
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 
 
'Encapsulates the violence and tragedy of recent Latin American history' The Times 
 
&lsquo;Roberto Bolaño redefined the form of the novel in his masterpiece 2666; with the hallucinatory narrative of Amulet, he reimagines what literature can become&rsquo; New Statesman

Amulet

Margaret Forster

Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up, coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from the First World War to Greenham Common and beyond. 
 
This is the &lsquo;edited&rsquo; diary of an individual woman, born in 1901, and a story of the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins keeping her journal, vividly recording the drama of everyday life. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s, through social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London, this is a story both fictional and true. Full of the texture of life, beautifully observed and evocative, it tells the story of an ordinary woman&rsquo;s life against the huge canvas of the last century. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

Diary of an Ordinary Woman

Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unknowable, unpromising member of Chile&rsquo;s young poetry scene. 
 
But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile&rsquo;s leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder. Known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities, Weider&rsquo;s dazzling trajectory is a cause for astonishment and speculation amongst his old poetry friends. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins? 
 
Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator&rsquo;s attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation. 
 
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 
 
&lsquo;Roberto Bolaño's universe &ndash; huge, interconnected, polyphonic &ndash; is formed from the collision of a wicked sense of humour and a vast and white-hot moral fire... His oeuvre is among the great, blistering literary achievements of the twentieth century&rsquo; Lauren Groff 
 
&lsquo;For stunning wit, brutal honesty, loving humanity and a heart that bleeds into the simplest of words, no other writer ever came close&rsquo; Marlon James

Distant Star

Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway's great novel of the Spanish Civil War 
 
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 mountains, he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship of war. And there he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped from Franco's rebels... 
 
'One of the greatest novels which our troubled age will produce' Observer 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo lies in hospital, hiccupping himself to death. 
 
When the doctors struggle to offer a diagnosis, his wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud, the mesmerist and reclusive bachelor Pierre Pain. Pain, in love and eager to impress, agrees to help. But on a night that 'smells of something strange', things soon go awry... 
 
A wonderfully oneiric novella that blends the finest of Edgar Allan Poe with Jorge Luis Borges and Bolano's truly astonishing alchemical gifts, Monsieur Pain is a gripping noir conspiracy as rich as it is strange. 
 
TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS 
 
&lsquo;A surrealist nightmare, with overtones of Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler&rsquo; The Times 
 
This marvellous little yarn is dark, mysterious and rich in surprises... If you have yet to enter the daringly kaleidoscopic labyrinth that is Roberto Bolano's imagination, this is a lively place to begin what will be quite an experience&rsquo; Irish Times

Monsieur Pain

Kurt Vonnegut

Read Kurt Vonnegut's powerful masterpiece, which is as timely now as when it was first published. 
 
Billy Pilgrim – hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier – has become unstuck in time. Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out? 
 
Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency. 
 
‘An extraordinary success. A book to read and reread. He is a true artist’ New York Times Book Review 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

Slaughterhouse 5

Elizabeth Bowen

A haunting portrayal of love and betrayal in a London hollowed by war. 
 
It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella's life begin to crumble. 
 
&lsquo;Alive with the erotic tensions of the blackout, the Blitz and the heightened pleasures of sex in the proximity of death&rsquo; London Review of Books 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROY FOSTER 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition

The Heat of the Day

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

A Dance to the Music of Time

A Fairy Tale Revolution

A Frank Grasby Mystery

A Guide For the Curious

A Horatio Hornblower Tale of the Sea

A Jo Birmingham Thriller

A Jon Roscoe Thriller

A Ladybird Book

A Ladybird Magic Windows Book

A Look Back at

A Luke Carlton Thriller

A Max Mingus Thriller

A Michael Bennett Thriller

A Midge McGowan Mystery

A Mitchum Thriller

A Moneybunny Book

A Murder Most Unladylike Collection

A Murder Most Unladylike Mini Mystery

A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery

A Nigel Strangeways Mystery

biblio.categories.code

biblio.publicationStatus

biblio.brand

biblio.workEditions.format

biblio.ageRange

biblio.series.seriesName

biblio.imprint.description

biblio.type

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Search Results

Penguin Shop: 15% off for a limited time with code PENGUINXMAS2025

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter