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

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Edward St Aubyn

Shakespeare’s King Lear is reimagined in Edward St Aubyn's gripping story of a media mogul who has lost control. 
 
Henry Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage he handed over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him to doubt the wisdom of past decisions. 
 
Now imprisoned in a care home in the Lake District with only a demented alcoholic comedian as company, Dunbar starts planning his escape. As he flees into the hills, his family is hot on his heels. Who will find him first, his beloved youngest daughter, Florence, or the tigresses Abby and Megan, so keen to divest him of his estate? 
 
‘Malevolently enjoyable… A fable of fatherly neglect and daughterly cruelty’ Financial Times 
 
‘Deeply affecting…and funny’ 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.

Dunbar

King Lear, Retold

Margaret Atwood

Shakespeare’s The Tempest gets the Margaret Atwood treatment in this ingenious, funny, tear-jerking story about loss, revenge and remaking oneself through art. 
 
Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. 
 
His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he’s staging a Tempest like no other. It will boost his reputation. It will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. Also brewing revenge. 
 
After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It’s magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall? 
 
'Surpassingly brilliant' The Times 
 
‘Riotous, insanely readable and just the best fun...' Observer 
 
**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017** 
 
SHAKESPEARE RETOLD: Time travel. Zombies. Power-hungry media moguls. This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen him before. Nine iconic stories transformed by the best novelists of our time, celebrating the Bard’s lasting legacy.

Hag-Seed

The Tempest, Retold

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

Jeanette Winterson

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is reimagined in Jeanette Winterson's page-turning story of a girl banished from home as a baby. How will things turn out this time? 
 
A baby girl is abandoned, banished from London to the storm-ravaged American city of New Bohemia. Her father has been driven mad by jealousy, her mother to exile by grief. Seventeen years later, Perdita doesn't know a lot about who she is or where she's come from – but she's about to find out. 
 
Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale vibrates with echoes of Shakespeare's original and tells a story of hearts broken and hearts healed, a story of revenge and forgiveness, a story that shows that whatever is lost shall be found. 
 
‘A shining delight of a novel’ 
New York Times 
 
'Clever and beautiful...it soars' 
Financial Times 
 
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.

The Gap of Time

The Winter's Tale, Retold

The Winter’s Tale Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

Anne Tyler

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is hilariously reimagined by one of our greatest living novelists, in this very funny, heartbreaking story of one woman, two men and unconventional happy endings. 
 
Kate Battista is stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and infuriating younger sister Bunny? Dr Battista has other problems. His brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, his new scientific breakthrough will fall through... 
 
When Dr Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he's relying - as usual - on Kate to help him. Will Kate be able to resist the two men's touchingly ludicrous campaign to win her round? 
 
Anne Tyler's brilliant retelling of The Taming of the Shrew asks whether a thoroughly modern woman like Kate would ever sacrifice herself for a man. The answer is as surprising as Kate herself. 
 
'A thoroughly modern love story' Guardian, Book of the Year 
 
‘The worst wedding in history...vintage Anne Tyler’ The Times 
 
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.

Vinegar Girl

The Taming of the Shrew, Retold

William Shakespeare

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of Shakespeare's immortal poems with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
Love sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love. Some appear to be written to a young man, some to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery – why did Shakespeare write them, and to whom? – each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive. 
 
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.

Sonnets

Robert Frost

A wonderful collection of Robert Frost’s writing. 
 
No poet is more emblematically American than Robert Frost. Hailed as ‘the most eminent, the most distinguished Anglo-American poet’ by T.S. Eliot, he is the only writer in history to have been awarded four Pulitzer Prizes. In iconic poems like ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, simple images summon the rural landscape of New England, and Frost unfailingly moves the reader with his profound grasp of the human condition. 
 
This is the most comprehensive and authoritative volume of Frost's verse available, comprising all eleven volumes of his poems, meticulously edited by Edward Connery Lathem.

The Collected Poems

Various

This is dub poetry: bold and musical, funny and furious. 
 
This collection brings together the work of nine inventive and brilliant poets who defined and drove the dub poetry genre. From the Caribbean, Canada and the UK, the poetry in this collection spans forty years, as dub became a powerful cultural and creative force. 
 
With roots in the reggae culture of 1970s Kingston, dub poetry uses the vivid expressions of everyday spoken language to describe and challenge the experience of life on the margins. Early dub poetry took on police violence, slums and poverty. Later, as Caribbean migrants arrived in countries like Britain and Canada, dub poets faced new issues: racism, discrimination and hostility. Over four difficult decades, dub gave marginalised people a voice for their anger, defiance and creativity. It was the soundtrack to post-Windrush culture. 
 
Serious and humorous, alive and urgent, here is the very best of dub poetry. 
 
The poets included in this collection are: Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper.

Verbal Riddim

Dub Poetry

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

John Milton

The great British epic, a work of rich and fascinating poetry and one of the most enduring books ever created. This edition contains both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. 
 
&lsquo;Paradise Lost was the first literary work in English written on a planetary scale&rsquo; Guardian 
 
Satan is out for revenge. His rebellion has failed, he has been cast out from heaven and is doomed to spend eternity in hell. Somehow he must find a way to prove his power and wound his enemies. He fixes upon God's beloved new creations, Adam and Eve, as the vehicles of his vengeance. In this dramatic and influential epic, Milton tells the story of the serpent and the apple, the fall of man and the exile from paradise in stunningly vivid and powerful verse. 
 
INTRODUCED BY ORLANDO READE, AUTHOR OF WHAT IN ME IS DARK 
 
'Milton's language ravishes the ear, yet the verse also floods the inner eye with spectacular imagery' The Times

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

Anne Carson

This is a volcanic journey into the soul of a winged red monster named Geryon. It is queer coming-of-age love story, a Greek myth retold, and a modern classic. 
 
Tormented as a boy by his brother, Geryon escapes to a parallel world of photography. He falls deeply in love with Herakles, a golden young man, who deserts him at the peak of infatuation. So Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, fascinated by his wings, his redness and the fantastic accident of who he is. But all is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by Herakles&rsquo; return. 
 
Autobiography of Red is a deceptively simple narrative filled with currents of meaning, emotion, and the truth about what it&rsquo;s like to be red. An extraordinary, modern epic poem - moving, disturbing and delightful. 
 
'Totally engrossing' Ocean Vuong 
 
'This book is amazing - I haven't discovered any writing in years that's so marvellously disturbing' Alice Munro 
 
&lsquo;A profound love story...sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender&rsquo; Ruth Padel, New York Times Book Review

Autobiography of Red

Dylan Thomas

'It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...' 
 
Under Milk Wood tells the story of a Welsh village during one spring day. It is populated by some of the best-loved characters in British literature. Lyrical, funny, moving, it is rooted in place but with a universality that has spoken to generations of readers. A Welsh epic, a work of poetic genius, a modern classic. 
 
'A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality' Guardian

Under Milk Wood

A Play for Voices

Love sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love. 
 
Some appear to be written to a young man, some to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery - why did Shakespeare write them, and to whom? - each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive. 
 
INTRODUCED BY ANDREW McMILLAN 
 
'This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love' Don Paterson, Guardian

Izumi Shikibu

Ono no Komachi

Here is a collection of sexy, brief, fleeting poems about love, lust and longing. They originate from a time in Japanese history where aristocratic women of the Heian court were free to marry and conduct love affairs according to their desires. Education and refinement were so highly valued that the courtly manner of expressing oneself, whether to give condolences for a death, to send back a forgotten fan, or to heighten the anticipation of a lover's visit, was with a poem of just five lines. A convention of secrecy surrounding love affairs fills these verses with palpable emotion. 
 
These vivid and erotic poems express love in all its forms, and do so with amazing economy of words, unforgettable imagery and breath-taking modernity. 
 
INTRODUCED BY NIKITA GILL 
 
'They are full of dreams, of autumns, of lovers known or not yet met, of desire, wonderment, loneliness' Irish Times 
 
Translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani, this is an edition that brings the story of the poems to life with a detailed introduction and notes on the translation.

The Ink Dark Moon

Pablo Neruda

This is one of the greatest collections of love poetry ever published. Inspired by Pablo Neruda's youthful relationships and injected with an expressive eroticism, these poems are as accomplished as they are evocative and sensual. First published in 1924 to international acclaim when Neruda was just nineteen, this book is still adored the world over for being one of the most memorable, intense and romantic works of poetry ever written. 
 
It is a work of poetry to be cherished by lovers old and new. The perfect Valentine's Day present. 
 
INTRODUCED BY LEO BOIX 
 
'The poems today remain as urgently gorgeous as freshly picked flowers' Carol Ann Duffy 
 
The Vintage Classics Love Poems series brings together some of the most sensual, heart-breaking and romantic poetry ever written. Working in collaboration with Vintage Creative Director Suzanne Dean this edition has been created by Spanish illustrator Jesús Cisneros.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Ai Qing

A timeless, visionary collection of poems from one of China's most acclaimed poets-now available in English for the first time in a generation and featuring a foreword by his son, contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei 
 
One of the most influential poets in Chinese history, Ai Qing is mostly unknown to Western readers, but his work has shaped the nature of poetry in China for decades. Born between the fall of imperial Manchurian rule and the establishment of the Communist People's Republic, Ai Qing was at one time an intimate of Mao Zedong. He would eventually fall out with the leader and be sentenced to hard labor during the Cultural Revolution, when he was exiled to the remote part of the country known as "Little Siberia" with his family, including his son, Ai Weiwei. 
 
 In his work, Ai Qing tells the story of a China convulsing in change, leaving behind a legacy of feudalism and imperialism but uncertain what the future will hold. Breaking with traditional forms of Chinese poetry, Ai Qing innovatively adapted free verse, writing with a simple sincerity in clear lines that could be understood by everyday readers. Selected Poems of Ai Qing is an extraordinary collection that traces the powerful inner life of this influential poet who crafted poems of protest, who longed for a newer, happier age, and who wrote with a profound lyricism that reaches deep into the heart of the reader.

Selected Poems

Wilfred Owen

'Orpheus, the pagan saint of poets, went through hell and came back singing. In twentieth-century mythology, the singer wears a steel helmet and makes his descent "down some profound dull tunnel" in the stinking mud of the Western Front. For most readers of English poetry, the face under that helmet is that of Wilfred Owen.' Professor Jon Stallworthy, from his Introduction. 
 
When Wilfred Owen was killed in the days before the Armistice in 1918, he left behind a shattering, truthful and indelible record of a soldier's experience of the First World War. His greatest war poetry has been collected, edited and introduced here by Professor Jon Stallworthy. This special edition is published to commemorate the end of the hellish war that Owen, though the hard-won truth and terrible beauty of his poetry, has taught us never to forget.

The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen

Elias Lonnrot

Kalevala is the poetic name for Finland: ‘the land of heroes’. Here you’ll find the cultural essence of a young country but an old land, the stories, songs and poems that recount the mythical adventures of humankind. Ambition, lust, romance, birth and death can all be found within its pages, as well as the sampo, a mysterious talisman that brings great happiness to its possessor and over which great battles will be fought. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HORATIO CLARE

Kalevala

Homer

Read this stunning translation of Homer's great war epic, the legendary tale of honour, love, loss and revenge during the fall of the city of Troy. 
 
 
High on Olympus, Zeus and the assembled deities look down on the world of men, to the city of Troy where a bitter and bloody war has dragged into its tenth year, and a quarrel rages between a legendary warrior and his commander. Greek ships decay, men languish, exhausted, and behind the walls of Troy a desperate people await the next turn of fate. 
 
 
This is the Iliad: an ancient story of enduring power; magnetic characters defined by stirring and momentous speeches; a panorama of human lives locked in a heroic struggle beneath a mischievous or indifferent heaven. Above all, this is a tale of the devastation, waste and pity of war. 
 
 
Caroline Alexander's virtuoso translation captures the rhythms and energy of Homer's original Greek while making the text as accessible as possible to a modern reader, accompanied by extensive extra material to provide a background to the poem. 
 
 
The result of 3,000 years of story-telling, Homer’s epic tale of the fall of Troy has resonated with every age and every human conflict: this is the Iliad at its most electrifying and vital.

The Iliad

W. Somerset Maugham

In his day, W. Somerset Maugham was most celebrated as a playwright, and the breadth of his ability is manifested in this collection of his most popular plays. Included here are the noirish mystery The Sacred Flame, the hilarious satires The Circle, The Constant Wife, and Our Betters, and the sharp-witted drama Sheppey. Whether suspenseful or acerbically witty, these plays take a sly look at the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of their time.

Plays Volume One

Witty, comedic and engrossing, this second collection showcases the range of W. Somerset Maugham’s talent as a playwright. The delightful satires of marriage Lady Frederick and Home and Beauty are included here alongside the insightful war drama For Services Rendered, and Maugham's tense colonial drama The Letter. Eclectic in theme and sardonic in style, these plays are masterpieces of English social comedy and melodrama.

Plays Volume Two

Oscar Wilde

A selection of Oscar Wilde's best and most important plays - sharp, relevant and brilliant to this day. 
 
 Who would have thought a comedy of manners written more than a hundred years ago would still be so apt and so funny? Oscar Wilde was a genius of play-writing, and his deftness, wit and sharp eye for social satire keep audiences in thrall to this day. Alongside Earnest, discover a biblical tragedy retold, Lady Windemere and her infamous fan and Wilde's take on an ideal husband, in this selection of Wilde's most important plays. 
 
 ‘[The Importance of Being Earnest] has a strong claim to being the most perfect comedy in the English language’ Daily Telegraph

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Sean Borodale

Bee Journal is a poem-journal of beekeeping that chronicles the life of the hive. 
 
 It observes the living architecture of the comb, the range and locality of the colony; its flights, flowers, water sources, parasites, lives and deaths. Because of its genesis as a working journal, there is here an unusual intimacy and scrutiny of life and death in nature. The language is dense and clotted, the imagery thrillingly fresh, and the observing eye close, scrupulous and full of wonder. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Bee Journal (The Birds and the Bees)

Euripides

This stunning translation, by the acclaimed poet Robin Robertson (Forward Prize, Man Booker shortlist 2018), has reinvigorated Euripides' devastating take of a god's revenge for contemporary readers, bringing the ancient verse to fervid, brutal life. 
 
Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, has come to Thebes, and the women are streaming out of the city to worship him on the mountain, drinking and dancing in wild frenzy. The king, Pentheus, denouces this so-called 'god' as a charlatan. But no mortal can deny a god and no man can ever stand against Dionysus. 
 
'The dialogue is taut, volcanic and often exquisitely beautiful... Euripides deserves to have his exquisite verse transformed into modern speech, and in Robertson I believe he has found a poet who can do that.' Edith Hall, Literary Review

Bacchae

Walt Whitman

Do I contradict myself? 
Very well then I contradict myself. 
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) 
 
Abundant, ecstatic, generous, courageous - this is the first American epic poem, a celebration of selfhood and a catalogue of nineteenth-century American life of all ages and races. Revolutionary in style and controversial in content when it was first published in 1855, Whitman's masterwork has since inspired generations with its intoxicating rhythms and images, and its inclusive, praiseful joy. 
 
THE ORIGINAL 1855 TEXT

Song of Myself

Kurt Vonnegut

For eight years, big game hunter and war hero Harold Ryan has been presumed dead, lost in the Amazon rainforest while hunting for diamonds. Now he’s back, only to find his wife engaged to a hippy doctor and his son transformed into a pampered sissy. Though his hunting trophies remain, an inexplicable birthday cake sits in the living room bearing a strange icing inscription: Happy Birthday Wanda June. Can the household bear the returning force of Harold’s machismo? And who on earth is Wanda June?

Happy Birthday, Wanda June

Adam O'Riordan

The perfect gift for Valentine’s Day 
 
'And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods 
Makes heaven drowsy with harmony' 
Love's Labour's Lost, William Shakespeare 
 
When Love Speaks brings together the greatest writing on love and commitment - from Donne to Cole Porter, Sappho to P.G. Wodehouse, love letters of the great composers to Edwardian marriage advice. These poems and passages capture high romance and everyday happiness, feverish first love and tender union. This joyful anthology provides a range of unique and inspiring readings for a wedding or civil ceremony. 
 
Selected by the poet Adam O'Riordan

When Love Speaks

Poetry and prose for weddings, relationships and married life.

Alan Ayckbourn

'What is remarkable about Alan Ayckbourn's comedy is that it contrives to be simultaneously hilarious and harrowing. Literally, it is agonisingly funny' 
Daily Telegraph 
 
In Three Plays Ayckbourn's perfectly pitched dialogue slices into the soul of suburbia. The settings are simple - a kitchen, a bedroom, a party - but the relationships between the husbands and wives are more complicated. Fraught relationships are exposed with humour, bathos and a sharp understanding of human nature.

Three Plays - Absurd Person Singular, Absent Friends, Bedroom Farce

Raymond Carver

Fires is the best introduction to the full range and humanity of Carver's writing. It contains four essays, including a moving memoir od his father's working life in the saw-mills of the Pacific Northwest, a tribute to his mentor John Gardner, and the title essay about the influences on his writing life; fifty poems, many of them not collected elsewhere; and seven stories, including three from the early collection Furious Seasons.

Fires

Edward Albee

When middle-aged Martha and her husband George are joined by the younger Nick and Honey for late-night drinks after a party, the stage is set for a night of drunken recriminations and revelations. Battle-lines are drawn as Martha and George drag their guests into their own private hell of a marriage.

Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf

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.

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