(P/B) THE PENELOPIAD
For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, maintaining a kingdom while her husband was off fighting the Trojan war was not a simple business. Already aggrieved that he had been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours and keep over a hundred lustful, greedy and bloodthirsty suitors at bay... And then, when Odysseus finally returns and slaughters the murderous suitors, he brutally hangs Penelope’s twelve beloved maids. What were his motives? And what wa...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO
Struggling to keep a grip on reality after his wife's death, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of: with his young son in tow, he hits the road. An epic chronicle of one man's judgement, "The Death of Bunny Munro" is also an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son. (from the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) HOLLYWOOD
'What will you do?' 'Oh, hell, I'll write a novel about writing the screenplay and making the movie.' 'What are you going to call it?' 'Hollywood.' Henry Chinaski has a penchant for booze, women and horse-racing. On his precarious journey from poet to screenwriter he encounters a host of well-known stars and lays bare the absurdity and egotism of the film industry. Poetic, sharp and dangerous, Hollywood - Bukowski's fictionalisation of his experiences making the film Barfly - explores the many dark shadows to be found in the neon-soaked gl...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU
In her remarkable stories of seemingly ordinary people living extraordinary lives, Miranda July reveals how a single moment can change everything. Whether writing about a middle-aged woman's obsession with Prince William or an aging bachelor who has never been in love, the result is startling, tender and sexy by turns. One of the most acclaimed and successful short story collections, No One Belongs Here More Than You confirms Miranda July as a spectacularly original, iconic and important voice today. (From the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) THE GOOD MAN JESUS AND THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST
'If I vanished he wouldn't notice, if I died he wouldn't care. I think of him all the time, and he thinks of me not at all. I love him, and my love torments me. There are times when I feel like a ghost beside him; as if he alone is real, and I'm just a daydream.' This is the story of two brothers. One is impassioned and one reserved. One is destined to go down in history and the other to be forgotten. In Pullman's hands, this sacred tale is reborn as one of the most enchanting, thrilling and visionary stories of recent years. (From the pub...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) HAM ON RYE
Legendary barfly Charles Bukowski's fourth novel, first published in 1982, is probably the most autobiographical and moving of all his books, dealing in particular with his difficult relationship with his father and his early childhood in LA. Ham on Rye follows the path of Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski through the high school years of acne and rejection and into the beginning of a long and successful career in alcoholism. The novel begins against the backdrop of an America devastated by the Depression and takes the Chinaski legend up...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) LANARK
Lanark, a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying. First published in 1981, Lanark immediately established Gray as one of Britain's leading writers. (From the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) ASK THE DUST
Arturo Bandini arrives in Los Angeles with big dreams. But the reality he finds is a city gripped by poverty. When he makes a small fortune from the publication of a short story, he reinvents himself, indulging in expensive clothes, fine food and downtown strip clubs. But Bandini's delusions take a worrying turn when he is drawn into a relationship with Camilla Lopez, a beautiful but troubled young woman who will be responsible for his greatest downfall. Ask the Dust is an unforgettable novel about outsiders looking in on a town built on...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) THE AWAKENING
Over one long, languid summer Edna Pontellier, fettered by marriage and motherhood, becomes acquainted with Robert Lebrun. As the days shorten and the temperature drops Edna succumbs to Robert's devotion. But as her desire grows so too does her discontentment - with the role society has forced her to play and with the bonds that hold her fast - and her world begins to unravel with devastating consequences... The Awakening is widely regarded as one of the forerunners of feminist literature alongside Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Flaubert's M...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) THE HAWKLINE MONSTER
Magic Child, a fifteen-year old Indian girl, wanders into the wrong whorehouse. She is looking for the right men to kill the monster. The monster that lives in the ice caves under the basement of Miss Hawkline's yellow house. Richard Brautigan takes the reader on a heroic, magical adventure through Eastern Oregon. The Hawkline Monster confirms his place as one of the twentieth century's most exciting writers. (From the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) LIFE OF PI
After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific.The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan, a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger and Pi - a 16-year-old Indian boy.The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of literary fiction of recent years. Yann Martel's Life of Pi is a transformative novel, a dazzling work of imagination that will delight and astound readers in equal measure. It is a triumph of storytelling and...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) GIRL MEETS BOY
Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's remix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world. (From the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE
Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them... So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can. Be prepared for a mesmerising tale of passion, intrigue, ambition and revenge. (From the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
Richard Brautigan's wonderfully zany, hilarious episodic novel set amongst the rural waterways of America. Here's a journey that begins at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square, wanders through the wonders of America's rural waterways and ends, inevitably, with mayonnaise. With pure inventiveness and free-wheeling energy, the counterpoint to all those angry Beatniks, Brautigan tells the story of rural America, and the hunt for a bit of trout fishing. Funny, wild and sweet, Trout Fishing in America is...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) RAGNAROK
An odyssey of childhood, mythology and the imagination from the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession and The Children's Book. As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, Byatt's mesmerising tale - inspired by the myth of Ragnarok -is a landmark piece of storytelling from one o...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) SPARK'S SATIRE
From a fraudulent psychiatrist grappling with two equally fraudulent clients in Aiding and Abetting, to the dirty dealings of The Abbess of Crewe's band of corrupt nuns, to the three plane crash survivors of Robinson eking out an existence on an Atlantic island after its resident mystic disappears, these three satires probe the recesses of human fallibility with formidable precision. Spanning five decades, the glittering, sharp and sinister works of Spark's Satire confirm their author as one of our most incisive and wickedly funny satiris...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) DREAMING OF BABYLON
When you hire C. Card, you have scraped the bottom of the private eye barrel. And when Card is hired to steal a body from the morgue, he needs to stop dreaming, find bullets for his gun and get there before someone else does. Not since Trout Fishing in America has Brautigan so successfully combined his wild sense of humour with his famous poetic imagination. In this parody of the hard-boiled crime novel, the adventures of seedy, not-too-bright C. Card are a delight to both the mind and the heart. (From the publisher)...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) SOMBRERO FALLOUT
A heartbroken American writer starts a story about an ice-cold sombrero that falls inexplicably from the sky and lands in the centre of a small Southwest town. Devastated by the departure of his gorgeous Japanese girlfriend, he cannot concentrate on his writing and in frustration he throws away his beginning. But as the man searches through his apartment for strands of his lost love's hair, the discarded story in the wastepaper basket - through some kind of elaborate origami - carries on without him. Arguments over the sombrero begin, one ...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) BENEATH THE UNDERDOG
Charles Mingus, bassist, composer and bandleader, was one of the towering figures of American twentieth-century music. In this acclaimed memoir, Mingus documents his childhood on an Army base in Arizona, his difficult teenage years in Watts and his musical education from the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. In a unique and lyrical voice, his story charts the highs and lows of a life lived to the full. Beneath the Underdog is also a portrait of life in the forties and fifties, and of ideas of identity and race i...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...

(P/B) THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES
From the cruel irony of 'A member of the Family' to the fateful echoes of 'The Go-Away Bird' and the unexpectedly sinister 'The Girl I Left Behind Me', in settings that range from South Africa to the Portobello Road, Muriel Spark probes the idiosyncrasies that lurk beneath the veneer of human respectability, displaying the acerbic wit and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her unique talent. The Complete Short Stories is a collection to be loved and cherished, from one of the finest short story writers of the twentieth century. (From the pu...
Διαβάστε περισσότερα...