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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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Jo Nesbo

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is transformed into a page-turning Jo Nesbo crime thriller, the story of the ex-addict cop Inspector Macbeth. 
 
He's the best cop they've got. 
When a drug bust turns into a bloodbath it's up to Inspector Macbeth and his team to clean up the mess. 
 
He's also an ex-drug addict with a troubled past. 
He's rewarded for his success. Power. Money. Respect. They're all within reach. 
 
But a man like him won't get to the top. 
Plagued by hallucinations and paranoia, Macbeth starts to unravel. He's convinced he won't get what is rightfully his. 
 
Unless he kills for it. 
 
‘Shakespeare's darkest tale – reimagined by the king of Nordic noir’ Mail on Sunday 
 
'A deliciously oppressive page-turner' Guardian 
 
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.

Macbeth

Macbeth, Retold

‘Shakespeare's darkest tale reimagined by the king of Nordic noir’ Mail on Sunday

Jean-Patrick Manchette

Murder isn’t always ugly. 
 
Aimée is drop-dead gorgeous, razor-sharp, and lethally efficient. A killer with a cool head and a taste for chaos, she arrives in the backwater town of Bléville – a festering stew of grudges, corruption, and small-town rot – ready to make a killing. 
 
It's a game she’s played before: stir up trouble, pit the locals against one another, then disappear with blood on her hands and money in her pocket. But this time, something breaks and the game turns on her. 
 
Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the crime novel into a weapon of satire and stylish mayhem. Fatale is his bloodiest, funniest, and most brilliantly unhinged work: a riot of revenge, farce, and gleeful destruction. 
 
PRAISE FOR JEAN-PARICK MANCHETTE 
 
 
‘Manchette was Le Homme... We must revere him now and rediscover him this very instant. ’ James Ellroy 
 
'A comic genius... I read and reread him, stunned, appalled, and laughing out loud' Rachel Kushner 
 
'Manchette is one of the greatest writers since Dashiell Hammett, his only true son and heir' David Peace 
 
‘Manchette is Camus on overdrive... He deserves much the same attention’ James Sallis 
 
‘Manchette is legend among all of the crime writers I know, and with good reason: his novels never fail to stun and thrill from page one’ Duane Swierczynski

Fatale

Enter the brutal, revolutionary world of Jean-Patrick Manchette, 'France's king of noir fiction' (The Times) 
 
In Paris, the Nada gang – a small cell of left-wing radicals – hatch a plan to kidnap the U.S. ambassador. They’re armed, angry, and almost successful – but totally unprepared for what follows. As the crackdown begins, the group splinters, exposing cowardice, betrayal, and the thin line between radical idealism and outright nihilism. There will be no heroes – only casualties. 
 
Jean-Patrick Manchette skewers both the establishment and its would-be destroyers in this pitch-black political thriller. His most overtly radical work, Nada is a savage, stylish dissection of violence, ideology, and the wreckage left behind. 
 
PRAISE FOR JEAN-PARICK MANCHETTE 
 
 
‘Manchette was Le Homme... We must revere him now and rediscover him this very instant. ’ James Ellroy 
 
'A comic genius... I read and reread him, stunned, appalled, and laughing out loud' Rachel Kushner 
 
‘Manchette is Camus on overdrive... He deserves much the same attention’ James Sallis 
 
‘Manchette is legend among all of the crime writers I know, and with good reason: his novels never fail to stun and thrill from page one’ Duane Swierczynski

Nada

Marlen Haushofer

Claustrophobic and shattering, this is the story of one ordinary woman unable to save a teenager in her care. It is the story of Stella... 
 
Stella is a friend's nineteen-year-old daughter who has come to live with Anna and her family. Unloved and neglected, Stella's presence disturbs the already tense and tumultuous household. She lodges uncomfortably in their lives, whilst Anna struggles to bring warmth and welcome to the home. Her son continues to be gloomy and her daughter oblivious. Meanwhile Richard, Anna's adulterous husband, pretends not to notice Stella at all… 
 
Marlen Haushofer, author of The Wall, is the undisputed mistress of sustained dread and this gripping short novel deserves to be rediscovered. 
 
TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE 
 
'This potent 1958 novella from Austrian writer Haushofer takes the form of a mother’s agitated confession... This one hits hard' Publisher's Weekly 
 
'Chillingly unillusioned... A fable about the habitual moral inertia of educated people' London Review of Books 
 
‘Haushofer is a rather terrifying writer… Killing Stella limns a world of guilty secrets and repressions’ New Yorker

Killing Stella

Thomas Bernhard

'‘One of the darkest and funniest writers... A must read for everybody’ Karl Ove Knausgaard 
 
After a severe illness, the unnamed narrator of Correction returns to Austria to sift through the writings of his childhood friend, Roithamer - a brilliant but tormented scientist. The self-exiled son of a wealthy family, Roithamer dedicates his unexpected inheritance to an impossible vision: constructing a perfect Cone in the remote Kobernausser forest. His pursuit of perfection spirals into obsession, pushing him toward inevitable tragedy. 
 
Thomas Bernhard’s masterwork of precision and intensity, Correction is a haunting meditation on genius, madness, and the cost of human intellect.

Correction

Gunnar Gunnarsson

'As we come nearer to Christmas this wondrous book becomes ever more poignant and magical. Once read never forgotten' Michael Morpurgo 
 
Every winter, in the days leading up to Christmas, Benedikt walks into the snowy mountains of Iceland to rescue sheep lost in the blizzards. 
 
With his dog and his ram by his side, traversing wild snowstorms and crystalline nights, fuelled by endless cups of hot coffee, Benedikt dedicates himself to helping other living beings in need. It is midwinter in the harshest of landscapes, but this is a place of deep belonging and peace – brutal and remorseless yet irresistible and indispensable. It is also a time of peace, filled with the anticipation of that special time of year – the days before Christmas: Advent. 
 
This enchanting Icelandic classic of one man’s selfless quest at Christmas time has been newly translated into English for the first time in 90 years. 
 
‘I’ve been preparing for winter by reading Advent... A beautiful, fable-like tale' Sarah Perry, Guardian 
 
'Every page is a hymn to Iceland, to snow and ice and to winter. It is a true classic in every sense' Annie Worsley, author of Windswept 
 
'A deeply comforting midwinter read' Katherine May, author of Wintering 
 
‘Gunnar Gunnarsson’s novel is the Icelandic A Christmas Carol’ Vanity Fair 
 
TRANSLATED BY PHILIP ROUGHTON

Advent

Intan Paramaditha

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

In this dazzling debut story collection from celebrated Indonesian writer Intan Paramaditha, fairytale, taboo, lust and death all come together in a heady, intoxicating mix. 
 
A black velvet butterfly darts out of a cave. Menstrual blood pools in the backseat of a car. Rats pour forth from an open doorway. 
 
These stories set in the Indonesian everyday – in corporate boardrooms, in shanty towns – reveal a soupy otherworld stewing just beneath the surface. Melding horror and myth, this is subversive feminist fiction at its finest, where men and women alike are arbiters of fear, and where revenge is sometimes sweetest when delivered from the grave. 
 
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.

Apple and Knife

Hitomi Kanehara

In this darkly addictive, devious novel, love is pain. 
 
Rin is flying back from her honeymoon. She's madly in love with her husband. The future looks rosy. 
 
Then he disappears to the bathroom and Rin imagines that he has gone to seduce the flight attendant. As her thoughts spiral out of control, the phrase 'madly in love' takes on a more sinister meaning. 
 
Prizewinning author Hitomi Kanehara follows Rin's life backwards from this moment, as a picture of the dark core and violent past of this disturbed young woman gradually comes into focus. 
 
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.

Autofiction

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

Yoko Ogawa

Three strange, tortuous stories from the shadow queen of contemporary Japanese fiction. 
 
A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster-brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool - sparking an unspoken infatuation that draws out darker possibilities. 
 
A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, but rather than a story of growth the diary reveals a more sinister tale of greed and repulsion. 
 
Driven by nostalgia, a woman visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo. There she finds an isolated world shadowed by decay, haunted by absent students and the unsettling figure of the looming caretaker. 
 
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 Diving Pool

Julio Cortázar

‘A deeply touching, enjoyable novel, beautifully written and fascinatingly mysterious and intricate in its designs’ New York Times 
 
In a city that could be Paris, London or Vienna, a loose-knit group of travellers, artists, and dreamers gather – drawn together by a cryptic passage from a book. Among them are the exiled writer Juan, the elusive Hélène, and the troubled Celia, each slipping between reality and illusion as their lives intertwine. Conversations turn into riddles, encounters take on the weight of fate, and a dark undercurrent of violence pulses beneath it all. 
 
Both playful and disorienting, 62: A Model Kit is Julio Cortázar’s most enigmatic puzzle – an intricate, hypnotic novel that challenges the very nature of storytelling.

62: A Model Kit

In 1970s Paris, a group of revolutionaries plot the daring kidnapping of a powerful Latin American official. But among them is Andrés, a man adrift in a world of high-stakes politics. 
 
As Andrés spirals into a crisis of identity, Cortázar intersects the group’s story with real-life documents, newspaper clippings, and personal reflections to construct a compelling mosaic that explores the complexities of revolution, commitment, and the human spirit.

A Manual for Manuel

A collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style. 
 
'Julio Cortázar is truly a sorcerer and the best of him is here, in these hilariously fraught and almost eerily affecting stories' Kevin Barry 
 
A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession. 
 
As dream melds into reality, and reality melts into nightmare, one constant remains throughout these thirty-five stories: the singular brilliance of Julio Cortazar’s imagination. 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY KEVIN BARRY 
 
‘Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed’ Pablo Neruda

Bestiary

The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar

In a fog-drenched Buenos Aires, Juan and Clara should be preparing for their final exam. Instead, they roam the city with friends, drifting through cafés, encountering strange happenings, and unravelling life’s mysteries. All the while, they are shadowed by the mysterious Abel. 
 
Darkly funny and steeped in ambiguity, Final Exam is Julio Cortázar’s haunting allegory of a world on the brink—his melancholic, defiant farewell to an Argentina he would soon leave behind forever.

Final Exam

Julio Cortazar's crazed masterpiece, the forbearer of the Latin Boom in the 1960s 
 
'Cortazar's masterpiece. This is the first great novel of Spanish America... A powerful anti-novel but, like deeply understood moments in life itself, rich with many kinds of potential meanings and intimations' Times Literary Supplement 
 
Dazed by the disappearance of his muse, Argentinian writer Horatio Oliveira wanders the bridges of Paris, the sounds of jazz and the talk of literature, life and art echoing around him. But a chance encounter with a literary idol and his new work – a novel that can be read in random order – sends Horatio’s mind into further confusion. 
 
As a return to Buenos Aires beckons, Horatio’s friend and fellow artist, Traveler, awaits his arrival with dread –the lives of these two young writers now ready to play out in an inexhaustible game of indeterminacy.

Hopscotch

When a group of Argentinians win a mysterious lottery, their prize – a luxury cruise – seems too good to question. But as the voyage unfolds, strange and unsettling events begin to mount. The passengers find themselves trapped aboard a ship run by a silent, secretive crew, and the true nature of their journey grows ever more uncertain. 
 
Funny, frightening, and richly lyrical, The Winners is a philosophical thriller of tangled fates and wayward love – an incisive meditation on power, exile, and the myth of the New World.

The Winners

Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami's third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase is the mystery hybrid which completes the odyssey begun in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. 
 
The man was leading an aimless life, time passing, one big blank. 
 
His girlfriend has perfectly formed ears, ears with the power to bewitch, marvels of creation. The man receives a letter from a friend, enclosing a seemingly innocent photograph of sheep, and a request: place the photograph somewhere it will be seen. Then, one September afternoon, the phone rings, and the adventure begins. Welcome to the wild sheep chase. 
 
‘A science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas’ Independent 
 
‘A highly accomplished piece of craftsmanship’ New Yorker 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

A Wild Sheep Chase

the surreal, breakout detective novel, now in a deluxe gift edition

Special 3D Edition

Murakami's surreal, mind-bending masterpiece: a sci-fi pastiche and a Utopian fantasy novel ingeniously woven together. 
 
A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan. Unicorn skulls and voracious librarians. John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story, post-modern manifesto. All this rolled into one rip-roaring novel, End of the World and Hard-boiled Wonderland is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami’s international following. 
 
Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy. 
 
‘A remarkable writer...he captures the common ache of contemporary heart and head’ Jay McInerney 
 
‘His fantasies, with their easy reference to western pulp fiction and music, retain a beauty of the mind’ Guardian 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Jacqueline Harpman

SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL. 
 
Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation, now available in a beautiful hardback gift edition. 
 
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? 
 
Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner. 
 
Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men. 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE 
 
Discover the reader obsession of 2025 
 
**Orlanda, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**

I Who Have Never Known Men

Deluxe Edition

The haunting, enigmatic love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar in Japan, and is his bestselling title throughout the world 
 
Autumn 1969, and soon I would be 20. 
 
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past. 
 
‘Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami’s writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility’ Guardian 
 
'Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and loss of faith' Sunday Times 
 
'A masterly novel' New York Times

Norwegian Wood

the classic Japanese love-story, now in a deluxe gift edition

Discover Haruki Murakami’s most beloved novel

'THE ’90S GENDER SWAP NOVEL YOU NEED TO READ NOW' (NEW YORK TIMES), FROM THE AUTHOR OF I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN 
 
There’s a voice in Aline’s head: a voice that wants out. 
 
Brash, boisterous and sexually adventurous, this voice seems to be the antithesis of Aline, a prim literature professor for whom each day promises to be as quiet and conventional as the last. 
 
That is until, after thirty-five years of imprisonment, her alter ego breaks free. 
 
Taking on a life of his own, Orlanda – Aline’s second self – slips into the taut, rugged body of a young man. As Aline continues unaware, Orlanda follows, dragging gleeful chaos in his wake, vowing to leave both their existences forever altered. 
 
A bewitching fable, an androgynous dream, Orlanda is one woman’s reckoning with all the hidden sides of her soul. 
--- 
READER REVIEWS - JOIN THE ORLANDA OBSESSION: 
'Hilarious, life affirming, haunting…truly perfect in prose, plot, and concept. Just wow' 
'A powerful novel, witty, wicked and teasing' 
'It’s the perfect book' 
'This is the second book I've read by her and it's another masterpiece' 
'Reading this has confirmed Jacqueline Harpman as one of my favourite writers I’ve ever encountered'

Orlanda

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novel - here they are together in one edition. 
 
Now I think it’s time to tell my story. 
 
Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s two first novels. Home from college on his summer break, the narrator spends his time drinking beer and smoking with his friend nicknamed the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers. Three years later he has moved to Tokyo to work as a translator and live with indistinguishable twin girls. But the Rat has remained behind. Haunted by memories of the past, the narrator embarks upon a quest to find the exact model of pinball machine he and the Rat had enjoyed playing years earlier: the three-flipper Spaceship. 
 
‘Quintessential Murakami…an excellent introduction to a writer who has since become one of the most influential novelists of his generation’ Guardian 
 
‘Murakami’s way of making emotionally resonant images and symbols bump around on the page, and in one’s mind, remains fresh’ Evening Standard 
 
'I was so taken with its atmosphere that I read and reread it' Patti Smith 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Wind/ Pinball

Two Novels

Junichiro Tanizaki

Two or three times a day I think to myself: maybe I’ll die today. 
 
While recovering from a stroke, seventy-seven-year-old Utsugi turns to his diary to wryly record his struggle with his ageing body. Though impotent and in pain he notes down his growing desire for his beautiful daughter-in-law Satsuko, a chic, Westernised dancer with a shady past. Written when the author himself was an old man and shining with self-effacing humour, Tanizaki’s last novel is a tragicomedy about desire and the will to survive. 
 
‘Lightly comic, lyrically evocative and savagely cruel’ New York Times 
 
‘An artistic masterpiece’ Irish Times

Diary of a Mad Old Man

A seductive psychological thriller about obsession, jealousy and deceit - and a Japanese queer classic. Sonoko must tell her story. Listen and decide for yourself. 
 
Sonoko Kakiuchi is a cultured Osaka lady in an uninspiring marriage. When she decides to take an art class in town she meets the extraordinary Mitsuko, a woman as beautiful and charismatic as she is cunning. They begin a passionate affair but as Sonoko’s infatuation with Mitsuko deepens, she finds herself sinking ever-further into a quicksand of sex, humiliation and deceit. 
 
‘A riveting tale of malevolent corruption fatally masked by a terrible and deceptive beauty’ Kirkus Reviews 
 
‘Classic Tanizaki…exuberant storytelling within a multi-layered narrative of sexual obsession’ Japan Times 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KRISTEN ROUPENIAN

Quicksand

Kaname’s marriage is disintegrating. 
 
It is the 1920s in Tokyo and he and his wife, Misako, are trapped in a parody of a progressive Western marriage. He escapes into the arms of a lover, whilst closing his eyes to the likelihood that his wife will do the same. But this unhappy arrangement can’t last. Misako’s father steps in, believing that their relationship has been damaged by the influence of a new and alien culture, attempting to heal the breach by educating his son-in-law in the Japanese traditions of aesthetic and sensual pleasure. Meanwhile a fixation with his father-in-law’s mistress is fermenting within Kaname. 
 
‘Chilling…Tanizaki is a master of ambiguity’ The Times 
 
‘Tanazaki pulls aside the shoji that screens Japanese home life to eavesdrop on what people are really saying and thinking behind their polite facades’ New York Times

Some Prefer Nettles

A husband and wife each write in their diary, never knowing if it is being read by the other. 
 
Ikuko and her husband are deeply in love but have grown physically apart, each unsure of the other’s desires. When Ikuko finds the key to her husband’s diary she ignores it, but she does begin to keep a diary of her own. Both parties start to set down in writing the evolution of their sex life and their deepest, most private desires. Who is reading whose diary? Who knows what? So begins an extended erotic game of lust, jealousy and manipulation. 
 
‘A story about sex and marriage that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover’ The Times 
 
'Sensational and serious' New York Times

The Key

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

An Austrian housewife sits in her loft intent on her drawings of birds and insects. 
 
The loft is a retreat where she can work undisturbed. It is also a retreat from her dull and dissatisfied husband, a man who sighs unhappily even when she sneezes. Their grown-up children are living independent lives and the house is very quiet. Her dreams are filled with domestic drudgery. 
 
Then one day, a package arrives containing extracts from the narrator's diary, written twenty years before. Back then she had been sent away to a remote cottage in a bid to 'cure' her from unexplained sudden deafness. More mysterious packages containing old diary entries arrive. Who is sending them? And what did happened all those years ago in the forest? 
 
'A thrilling novel... What gives this book its tremendous power? First the voice is charming, with a skittish beauty throughout... But there is also disarming honesty, and a lack of vanity, which appeals as only truth can’ John Self, Guardian 
 
TRANSLATED BY AMANDA PRANTERA

The Loft

A woman's weekend away in the Austrian mountains takes an inexplicable and sinister turn - and becomes a fight for survival. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT 
 
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival. 
 
This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world. 
 
'One of the most beautiful and most harrowing books I’ve ever read, as well as one of the best' Susan Choi 
 
'Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat' London Review of Books 
 
'Brilliant in its sustainment of dread, in its peeling away of old layers of reality to expose a raw way of seeing and feeling.' Nicole Krauss 
 
TRANSLATED BY SHAUN WHITESIDE

The Wall

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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