In 1845 Thoreau, a Harvard-educated 28-year-old, went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years, living self-sufficiently in a small cabin built with his own hands. Walden is his personal account of the experience, in which he documents the beauty and fulfilment to be found in the wilderness, and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism which continues to define our modern world.
The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon iron gates reads:
Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn
As dusk shifts to twilight, tiny lights begin to flicker all over the tents, as though the whole circus is covered in fireflies. When the tents are aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign lights up:
Le Cirque des Rêves
The Circus of Dreams
The gates shudder and unlock, seemingly by their own volition.
They swing outward, inviting the crowd inside.
Now the circus is open.
Now you may enter.
Discover this amazing fantasy read with a different kind of magic.
A complex, intense American novel of family from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
With an introduction by Richard Hughes
Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, The Sound and the Fury has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, the novel explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart, this is a novel about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it.
What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'
'Savage, funny, frequently on the verge of teetering into lunacy... My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a non-negotiable in your holiday carry-on this summer' - Vogue
It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
Our narrator has many of the advantages of life: Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn't just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend.
Blackly funny, both merciless and compassionate – dangling its legs over the ledge of 9/11 – My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a showcase for the gifts of one of America's major young writers.
This is the story of a woman with no name. Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. She is an icon of privilege, yet longs to erase herself completely, to sleep. For a year.
It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a savagely funny novel of a woman looking out from the abyss.
Hana and her little sister Emi are part of an island community of haenyo, women who make their living from diving deep into the sea off the southernmost tip of Korea.
One day Hana sees a Japanese soldier heading for where Emi is guarding the day’s catch on the beach. Her mother has told her again and again never to be caught alone with one. Terrified for her sister, Hana swims as hard as she can for the shore.
So begins the story of two sisters suddenly and violently separated by war. Moving between Hana in 1943 and Emi as an old woman today, White Chrysanthemum takes us into a dark and devastating corner of history — and two women whose love for one another is strong enough to triumph over the evils of war.
'Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer...a zany but moral mad scientist' Time
A diabolical government asserts control by eliminating orgasms. A scientist discovers the secret to unlocking instant happiness, with unexpected consequences. In an America where everyone is equal every which way, a tennage boy plans to overthrow the system.
Welcome to the Monkey House gathers together twenty-five of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories from the 1950s and 1960s. Shot through with Vonnegut's singular humour, wit and bewilderment at humanity, this is a collection that celebrates a true master of short-form fiction.
This is the story of Precious Jones, a sixteen year old illiterate black girl who has never been out of Harlem. She is pregnant by her own father for the second time, and kicked out of school. Placed in an alternative teaching programme, she learns to read and write. This is Precious's diary, in which she honestly records her relationships and her life.
'The Color Purple for the nineties' Vogue
'Sapphire's vibrant, unindulgent first novel has you cheering the awesome Precious on until the last page' Mail on Sunday
'Has all the power and vehemence of rap...brutal in its defence of the vulnerable' Independent
'Part wishful prayer, part manifesto, mingling poetry and humour...splendid, turbulent, bracing language...its music takes you over, its story grips... A voice to remember' Scotland on Sunday
'Harrowing yet hilarious... packs a powerful punch' Guardian
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. "
Mr Jones, the owner of Manor Farm, is a lazy drunk. The animals decide to overthrow him in a revolution that will allow them to run the farm, liberating themselves and creating a new life of equality and freedom. But they have underestimated the pigs. Napoleon and Snowball form an elite and take control for themselves, and the tyranny of the farmer is replaced with another kind of control leaving the animals again subject to a ruthless and cruel authority.
Imagined only as Orwell could, this powerful fable is instilled with humour and an underlying urgency that makes this one of the most prescient warnings ever written.
When Mary Lennox is sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everybody says is the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It is true, too.
Mary is pale, spoilt and quite contrary. But she is also horribly lonely. Then one day she hears about a garden in the grounds of the Manor that has been kept locked and hidden for years. And when a friendly robin helps Mary find the key, she discovers the most magical place anyone could imagine...
Black Beauty is the prettiest young horse in the meadows, and spends many happy days under the apple trees with his friends Ginger and Merrylegs. But this easy life comes to an end when Beauty is sold and goes from farm to inn to cabhorse in London, enduring rough treatment from foolish and careless masters. Beauty remains faithful, hardworking and full of spirit despite his trials, and through him we learn that all horses and humans alike deserve to be treated with kindness.
THE PREQUEL TO LIFE AND FATE NOW AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH FOR THE FIRST TIME, STALINGRAD IS A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND NOW A MAJOR RADIO 4 DRAMA
'One of the great novels of the 20th century, and now published in English for the first time' Observer
'A gripping panorama of the human experience' Kenneth Branagh
In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini plan the huge offensive on the Eastern Front that will culminate in the greatest battle in human history.
Hundreds of miles away, Pyotr Vavilov receives his call-up papers and spends a final night with his wife and children in the hut that is his home. As war approaches, the Shaposhnikov family gathers for a meal: despite her age, Alexandra will soon become a refugee; Tolya will enlist in the reserves; Vera, a nurse, will fall in love with a wounded pilot; and Viktor Shtrum will receive a letter from his doomed mother which will haunt him forever.
The war will consume the lives of a huge cast of characters – lives which express Grossman’s grand themes of the nation and the individual, nature’s beauty and war’s cruelty, love and separation.
For months, Soviet forces are driven back inexorably by the German advance eastward and eventually Stalingrad is all that remains between the invaders and victory. The city stands on a cliff top by the Volga River. The battle for Stalingrad – a maelstrom of violence and firepower – will reduce it to ruins. But it will also be the cradle of a new sense of hope.
Stalingrad is a magnificent novel not only of war but of all human life: its subjects are mothers and daughters, husbands and brothers, generals, nurses, political officers, steelworkers, tractor girls. It is tender, epic, and a testament to the power of the human spirit.
‘You will not only discover that you love his characters and want to stay with them – that you need them in your life as much as you need your own family and loved ones – but that at the end... you will want to read it again’ Daily Telegraph
50th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION
As a young man and a prisoner of war, Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the 1945 US fire-bombing of Dresden in Germany, which reduced the once proudly beautiful city to rubble and claimed the lives of thousands of its citizens.
For many years, Kurt tried to write about Dresden but the words would not come. When he did write about it, he combined his trademark humour, unfettered imagination, boundless humanity and keen sense of irony to create one of the most powerful anti-war books every written, and an enduring American classic.
This special edition is published with notes of appreciation from some of the book's ardent fans (Kate Atkinson, Richard Herring, Robin Ince) as well as fascinating extra material from Vonnegut's archive which casts light on the genesis, reception and enduring influence of an iconic American classic.
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