Category Archives: Travel Guides
Swimming Lessons
`Gil Coleman looked down from the window and saw his dead wife standing on the pavement below.` Gil`s wife, Ingrid has been missing, presumed drowned, for twelve years. A possible sighting brings their children, Nan and Flora, home. Together they begin to confront the mystery of their mother. Is Ingrid dead? Or did she leave?
In Montparnasse: The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali
“Describes with plenty of colour how surrealism, from Rene Magritte`s bowler hats to Salvador Dali`s watches, was born and developed” The TimesDuring the 1920s, in the Parisian neighbourhood of Montparnasse, a unique flowering of avant-garde artistic creativity became the cradle of Dada and Surrealism. In this crowd biography, Sue Roe tells the story – from
The Ten (Food) Commandments
Britain`s culinary Moses brings us the new foodie rules to live by, celebrating what and how we eat. The Ten Commandments may have had a lot going for them, but they don`t offer those of us located in the 21st Century much in the way of guidance when it comes to our relationship with our
The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
`Out of the secret world I once knew, I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit. First comes the imagining, then the search for reality. Then back to the imagining, and to the desk where I`m sitting now.`From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a
Mrs Osmond
Having fled Rome and a stultifying marriage, Isabel Osmond is in London, brooding on the recent disclosure of her husband`s shocking, years-long betrayal of her. What should she do now, and which way should she turn, in the emotional labyrinth where she has been trapped for so long? Reawakened by grief and the knowledge of
Big Pig, Little Pig: A Year on a Smallholding in South-West France
`A love story, a meditation on meat eating, on farming animals, on the relations between man and beast. Yallop writes with great tenderness` Daily TelegraphOn her fortieth birthday Jacqueline Yallop built a pig sty in rural south-west France. She and her husband Ed had decided to turn their Aveyron cottage and garden into a small
Figures in a Landscape: People and Places
A rich feast of travel writing, literary essays and fascinating interviews from Sunday Times bestselling travel author Paul Theroux”Wonderful… Evidence of both the breadth of Theroux`s interests and his skill in bringing them to life” Sunday TimesDrawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, `Figures in a Landscape` ranges from
The Cost of Living
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st CenturyThe powerful second memoir from the twice-Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home`Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realise we don`t want to hold it together . . .` `At the age of 50 and
The Man Who Saw Everything
Longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker PrizeShortlisted for the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize”An ice-cold skewering of patriarchy, humanity and the darkness of the 20th century Europe” The Times”It`s like this, Saul Adler.””No, it`s like this, Jennifer Moreau.”In 1988, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. Apparently fine, he gets up and poses
The Old Man and the Sand Eel: My Grandad, Fishing and My Quest to Find Britain`s Lost Wild Waterways
`A wonderfully fluent account of how the strange magic of water and the beings that inhabit it can enchant and intoxicate` Chris Yates Growing up on the Cambridgeshire Fens, Will Millard never felt more at home than when he was out with his granddad on the riverbank, whiling away the day catching fish. As he
A Start in Life
`Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.` Ruth Weiss, an academic, is beautiful, intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry, she seeks not salvation but enlightenment. Yet in revisiting her London upbringing, her friendships
Winter
“Graceful, mischievous, joyful… Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope” Independent”A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit… Luminously beautiful” ObserverFrom the Baileys Prize-winning, Man Booker-shortlisted author of `Autumn` and `How to be both`…The unmissable second novel in Ali Smith`s acclaimed seasonal quartet — a Christmas story like no otherWinter? Bleak. Frosty
The News: A User`s Manual
The News is Alain de Botton`s witty and insightful exploration of our twenty-first century obsession with media. Why do we keep checking the news? Today, the news occupies the same dominant position in our lives as religion once did. But rarely do we consider how it touches us. Here, Alain de Botton examines a number
Moon Tiger
Penelope Lively`s Booker Prize winning classic, Moon Tiger is a haunting story of loss and desire, published here as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Claudia Hampton – beautiful, famous, independent, dying. But she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a `history of the world…and in the process,
The Forty Rules of Love
From the author of The Architect`s Apprentice and Honour, The Forty Rules of Love is Elif Shafak`s compelling and profound novel following Ella Rubinstein on a journey of self-discovery, examining life and love through Sufi mysticism. Discover the forty rules of love…Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that
The Mosquito Coast
The Mosquito Coast, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is a breathtaking novel about fanaticism and a futile search for utopia from bestseller Paul Theroux. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Allie Fox is going to re-create the world. Abominating the cops, crooks, junkies and scavengers of modern America, he
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
The fourteenth century was a time of fabled crusades and chivalry, glittering cathedrals and grand castles. It was also a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.Here, Barbara Tuchman masterfully reveals the two contradictory images of the age, examining the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture
The Good Liar
NOW A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLERThis is a life told back to front.This is a man who has lied all his life.Roy is a conman living in a small English town, about to pull off his final con. He is going to meet and woo a beautiful woman. He will swiftly move in with
Autumn
Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That`s what it felt like for Keats in 1819.How about Autumn 2016?Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand
Billy Liar
The classic comedy of a 50s youth trapped inside a Walter Mitty fantasy-world, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. Keith Waterhouse`s Billy Liar was published in 1959, and captures brilliantly the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small town. It tells the story of Billy Fisher, a Yorkshire teenager unable to stop lying –
