'Scurrilous, shameless and very funny' - Times Literary SupplementCharles Highway, a precociously intelligent and highly sexed teenager, is determined to sleep with an older woman before he turns twen
In this magnificent collection of essays, Barthes explores the myths of mass culture taking subjects as diverse as wrestling, films, plastic and cars, deciphering the symbols and signs within familiar
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.?Ebenezer Scrooge is unimpressed by Christm
A classic swashbuckling tale of piracy, romance and redemption — one of the great adventure novels of the 20th century.Wrongfully arrested following the Monmouth rebellion of 1685, Peter Blood, countr
When Andre-Louis witnesses the murder of his best friend by an arrogant aristocrat he swears to avenge his death. Forced to flee his hometown after stirring up revolutionary fervour in the citizens, h
Denis Stone, a naive young poet, is invited to stay at Crome, a country house renowned for its gatherings of 'bright young things'. His hosts, Henry Wimbush and his exotic wife Priscilla, are joined b
Anthony Beavis is a man inclined to recoil from life. His past is haunted by the death of his friend Brian and by his entanglement with the cynical and manipulative Mary Amberley. Realising that his d
A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive and exciting Charles Townse
Because of the boyhood trauma of seeing his mother make love to another man in the presence of his dying father, Mizoguchi becomes a hopeless stutterer. Taunted by his schoolmates, he feels utterly al
These seven stories were the last that Carver wrote. Among them is one of his longest, 'Errand', in which he imagines the death of Chekhov, a writer Carver hugely admired and to whose work his own was
"A dozen stories that overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life...Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty...his eye set only on describing and revealing th
Rake, drunkard, aesthete, gossip, raconteur extraordinaire: the narrator of Bohumil Hrabal's rambling, rambunctious masterpiece "Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age" is all these and more. Speakin
A classic work by a great British author, published for the first time by Vintage. Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaub
Tells the story of four sisters, and the declining fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. This title presents a loving and nostalgic recreation of the sumptuous, intricate upper-class life of Osak
When Lucy Snowe leaves England to look for a new life on the Continent she has no idea what lies in store for her. This quiet, lonely girl must learn quickly when she finds herself teaching in a forei
After her philandering husband dies from typhoid, the young widow Etsuko moves into the household of her father-in-law, where she numbly bears the old man's sexual advances. Soon she falls in love wit
Nevil Shute’s most beloved novel, a tale of love and war, follows its enterprising heroine from the Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback.Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman
"Deserves first prize in every category... superbly written, wildly funny." --Daily TelegraphAlan Hollinghurst's first novel is a tour de force: a darkly erotic work that centres on
A ground-breaking and moving lesbian novel that was banned in the UK on first publication.Stephen Gordon was a little girl who always felt different. A talent for sport, a hatred of dresses and a pref
