A classic tale from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, of a family torn apart by the arrival of Ben, their feral fifth child.‘Listening to the laughter, the sounds of children playing, Harriet and David would reach for each other’s hand, and smile, and breathe happiness.’Four children, a beautiful old house, the love of relatives and friends – Harriet and David Lovatt’s life is a glorious hymn to domestic bliss and old-fash ...
First published in 1984, under a pseudonym, as ‘The Diary of a Good Neighbour’ and ‘If the Old Could …’, and now published as ‘The Diaries of Jane Somers’, this is in many ways classic Lessing.The diaries introduce us to Jane, an intelligent and beautiful magazine editor concerned with success, clothes and comfort. But her real inadequacy is highlighted when first her husband, then her mother, die from cancer and Jane feels strangely removed. In ...
One of Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collections, available in ebook for the first time.In a ghost town hotel in a burning desert three old men await the January rains – and are visited by a strange musician. A family of colonists on Mars are homesick for Earth. Terrified, they begin to notice that each is undergoing a subtle transformation. A man seeks the forgotten scent of sarsaparilla in his attic – and passes through a window into the ...
Volume one takes us from his very first story – A Book in Time, published in The Bookseller in 1954 and never seen again until now – right up to his establishment as a major new voice in science fiction by the end of that decade.As he enters his 89th year this is a long-overdue retrospective of the career of one of the most acclaimed science fiction writers of all time, and a true literary legend.This ebook was updated on 6 October 2014 to inclu ...
A brand new ebook omnibus featuring Agatha Christie’s favourite characters: Messrs Quin and Satterthwaite.Harley Quin is an enigma. He appears and disappears unexpectedly – and usually by strange tricks of the light caused by stained-glass windows or flickering firelight. His background, family and friends are all a mystery – his almost supernatural powers of detection are, however, very real.Mr Satterthwaite is altogether more normal – fundamen ...
A beguiling, entrancing novel that tells the story of a prominent Egyptian family’s struggle to survive the turmoil of post-World War II Cairo.Gigi grew up in a wonderful house in Cairo, a house that was home to a large, extended family. The men of the house were involved in politics and business, cotton and trading, and the women visited and gossiped, shopped and arranged marriages and other family matters. The house was always open to visitors ...
Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and a modern Chinese classic with over one million copies sold.Sisters Tiao and Fan grew up in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution where they witnessed ritual humiliation and suffering. They also witnessed the death of their baby sister in a tragic accident. It was an accident they could have prevented; an accident that will stay with them forever.In the China of the 1990s the sisters lead seemingly ...
First published in 1978, and widely considered to be the sequel to her masterpiece ‘By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept’, this remarkable book further established Smart’s reputation as a brave and inspirational writer.A still beautiful woman, 31 years old with four children by a faithless lover, cannot break the habit of expectation. She must learn to submit to the cold, bare, unglamorous tenets of reality – the untenable position of lo ...
The classic bestselling Chinese novel spanning four decades following the creation of the People's Republic in 1949, translated into English for the first time.Originally published in 1987, two years before the Tiananmen Square protests, The Ancient Ship immediately caused a sensation in China. Wei’s award-winning first novel is the story of three generations of the Sui, Zhao, and Li families living in the fictional northern town of Wali during ...
