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Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison''s best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR BERNARDINE EVARISTO Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, ''Beloved''. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison''s enduring masterpiece and best-known work.
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''She wanted to die, and she wanted to live in Paris.'' This is the story of Emma, trapped in a disappointing marriage with a dull country doctor, she dreams for a life more like the sentimental novels she reads. In an attempt to break from the drab reality of her provincial life in Normandy, Emma takes a lover, and disaster soon follows. Greedy, delusional and selfish, the character of Emma Bovary scandalised readers from the novel''s first publication in 1857, yet her magnetism is undeniable. A landmark work in modern realism, Madame Bovary vibrates with the inner life of a woman hungry for more. Meet ten of literature''s most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.
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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITS 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.
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In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a party she is to give that evening. As she readies her house she is flooded with memories and re-examines the choices she has made over the course of her life.
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Mysterious disappearances, domestic cases, noiseless, bloodless snuffings-out... the law can look as deep as it likes, but when the crime itself goes unsuspected... oh yes, there's many a murderer basking in the sun...
When Therese Raquin is forced to marry the sickly Camille, she sees a bare life stretching out before her, leading every evening to the same cold bed and every morning to the same empty day. Escape comes in the form of her husband's friend, Laurent, and Therese throws herself headlong into an affair. There seems only one obstacle to their happiness; Camille. They plot to be rid of him. But in destroying Camille they kill the very desire that connects them...
First published in 1867, Therese Raquin has lost none of its power to enthral. Adam Thorpe's unflinching translation brings Zola's dark and shocking masterwork to life.
A NEW TRANSLATION BY ADAM THORPE 'Adam Thorpe's version deserves to become the standard English text' Daily Telegraph
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THE NO.1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 40 MILLION BOOKS SOLD WORLDWIDE 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.
'The king of all crime writers' Sunday Express
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A deluxe gift edition of Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MAGGIE O'FARRELL As an orphan, Jane's childhood is full of trouble, but her stubborn independence and sense of self help her to steer through the miseries inflicted by cruel relatives and a brutal school. A position as governess at the Thornfield Hall promises a kind of freedom. But Thornfield is a house full of secrets, its master a passionate, tormented man, and before long Jane faces her greatest struggle in a choice between love and self-respect.
VINTAGE CLASSICS BRONTE SERIES - beautiful editions, three iconic stories, three extraordinary women.
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HEROES & VILLAINS
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Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension.
At four years old, Richard Wright set fire to his home in a moment of boredom; at five his father deserted the family; by six Richard was - temporarily - an alcoholic. Moved from home to home, from brick tenement to orphanage, a grandmother in Jackson, an aunt in Arkansas, he had had, by the age of twelve, only one year's formal education. It was in saloons, railroad yards and streets that he learned the facts about life under white subjection, about fear, hunger and hatred, while his mother's long illness taught him about suffering.
The same alertness and independence that made him the 'bad boy' of his family and the victim of endless beatings also lost him numerous jobs. Gradually he learned to play Jim Crow in order to survive in a world of white hostility, secretly satisfying his craving for books and knowledge until the time came when he could follow his dream of justice and opportunity in the north.
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Virginia Woolf's most unusual and fantastic creation, a funny, exuberant tale that examines the very nature of sexuality.
WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY PETER ACKROYD AND MARGARET REYNOLDS As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colourful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge, but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.
The Vintage Classics Virginia Woolf series has been curated by Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Reynolds, and the texts used are based on the original Hogarth Press editions published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**
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Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer... Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter''s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood''s Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret... Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness - but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death? Praise for Rose Tremain: ''One of the very finest British novelists'' Salman Rushdie ''One of my favourite writers'' Nina Stibbe ''There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain'' John Boyne
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The archetypal Dickensian tale of the failures of charity and the dangers of individualism in a changing world.
'Please, sir, I want some more.' Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape. In Oliver Twist, Dickens graphically conjures up the capital's underworld, full of prostitutes, thieves and lost and homeless children, and gives a voice to the disadvantaged and abused.
A beautiful and quirky collectible edition as part of the Vintage Classics Dickens series.
Also includes:
A Christmas Carol A Tale of Two Cities David Copperfield Great Expectations Hard Times
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"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. " This the famous and iconic fable of revolutionary farm animals who overthrow their elitist human master only to find themselves subject to a new authority. Determined and steadfast horses Boxer and Clover, the opportunistic pigs Snowball and Napoleon, and the deafening choir of sheep are imagined as only Orwell could with power, humour and an underlying urgency that makes this one of the most prescient warnings ever written.
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BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED Joe Trace - in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband - shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen-year-old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound, Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and realities of black urban life.
Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction
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Nouv.
Beautifully structured and brilliantly paced. It displays Tessa Hadley''s extraordinary skill at making both surface life and deep interiors come fully alive.
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Dickens' supremely timeless work on ambition and self-improvement.
'I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.' Pip's life as an ordinary country boy is destined to be unexceptional until a chain of mysterious events lead him away from his humble origins and up the social ladder. His efforts to become a London gentleman bring him into contact not just with the upper classes but also with dangerous criminals. Pip's desire to improve himself is matched only by his longing for the icy-hearted Estella, but secrets from the past impede his progress and he has many hard lessons to learn.
A beautiful and quirky collectible edition as part of the Vintage Classics Dickens series.
Also includes:
A Christmas Carol A Tale of Two Cities David Copperfield Hard Times Oliver Twist
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Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison''s best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. As young girls in a poor but close-knit community, Nel and Sula are inseparable. But their paths as adults couldn''t be more different: while Nel settles in town to raise a family, Sula escapes for the progressive ideals of the big city. When Sula reappears ten years later, she comes face to face with a community whose values are at odds with her fierce individualism and rebellious ways. Reunited, Nel and Sula must confront the consequences of their actions and the dreadful secret they shared in childhood. Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. Terrifying, comic and tragic, Sula overflows with love and life, friendship and betrayal.
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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AUDREY NIFFENEGGER Love is Angela Carter''s fifth novel and was first published in 1971. With surgical precision it charts the destructive emotional war between a young woman, her husband and his disruptive brother as they move through a labyrinth of betrayal, alienation and lost connections. This revised edition has lost none of Angela Carter''s haunting power to evoke the ebb of the 1960s, and includes an afterword which describes the progress of the survivors into the anguish of middle age.
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Discover George Eliot's first novel, a tale of rural tragedy and redemption.
It may seem like an old tale: the beautiful village girl, her faithful admirer, a country squire's seduction. But seen through the eyes of any of its players, the old tale becomes one of fresh heartbreak, innocent hopes, best intentions gone awry, and better selves lost and restored. George Eliot's first novel shows all her humane intelligence and intimate knowledge of the richness and complexity of ordinary life.
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WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY MARGARET ATWOOD AND DAVID BRADSHAW Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...
Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.
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Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird' Meet Scout, the narrator of this book. Her story is one of Deep South summers, fights at school and playing in the street. The spooky house of her mysterious neighbour, Boo Radley, sags dark and forbidding nearby. Her brother, Jem, and her friend, Dill, want to make Boo come outside.
Her story is about justice. When Scout's father, a lawyer, agrees to defend a black man against an accusation by a white girl, he must battle the prejudice of the whole town.
It's about imagination - not just the kind you need for childhood games. Because you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.
Vintage Children's Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
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Discover an exquisitely told, tragic tale of thwarted love. It is in 1950s'' Brighton that Marion first catches sight of Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier and Marion is smitten - determined her love will be enough for them both. A few years later in Brighton Museum Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world. Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed. ''A moving story of longing and frustration'' Observer
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Over ten million copies sold ''Outstanding...a stunningly good read'' Observer ''Mark Haddon''s portrayal of an emotionally dissociated mind is a superb achievement... Wise and bleakly funny'' Ian McEwan The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour''s dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.
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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SAMANTHA ELLIS When Agnes's father loses the family savings, young Agnes determines to make her own living - as a governess. Working for the Bloomfields, her enthusiasm is soon dampened by isolation and the cruelty of the children in her charge. Agnes hopes for better in her second job, but when the scheming elder daughter Rosalie makes designs on Agnes's new friend, the kind curate Mr Weston, she feels herself silenced and sidelined. Becoming a governess is one thing, becoming invisible is quite another.
