In twenty-three dispatches - that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, and Edmund Wilson, the author offers a look at the modern novel. He connects his encyclopaedic understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, and V S Naipaul.

The first anthology of women's writing about walking, edited by Wanderers author Kerri Andrews.

A recovery of the lost, plucky heroines of historic fairy tales.

Collected in one spellbinding volume for the first time, these are the digressive, exuberant, rip-roaringly funny diaries of one of Britain's best writers and heaviest smokers

Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional and genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne's landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books.

Spiritual conversions figure heavily in such novels as Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland" and Toni Morrison's "Paradise". What connects such varied works is that their convert-characters are disenchanted with secularism yet apprehensive of dogmatic religiosity. This work is a study to identify a body of contemporary fiction in such terms.

Adam Watt's biography considers Proust's early years of personal and aesthetic experiment, the growth of his masterwork A la recherche du temps perdu and his personal decline due to ill-health.

While the battles for modern art and society were being fought in France and Spain, it has seemed a betrayal that John Betjeman and John Piper were in love with a provincial world of old churches and tea-shops. In this multi-awardwinning book, the author tells a different story.

An investigation of the life and world of Bede, 'the father of English history'.

A chronicle of Geoffrey Chaucer's life, accomplishments and roles outside poetry.

A collection of essays that explores how reading shapes an individual's life.

Folklorist Ben Gazur guides you through the dark alleys of British history to uncover how our food habits have been passed down through generations of folklore.

How does science fiction imagine forms of life that are plausible, and yet different from anything that we already know?

A captivating look at what draws us to the shocks and thrills of horror, by film critic and broadcaster Bogutskaya.

The captivating true story of an underdog business - a feminist bookshop founded in Thatcher's Britain - from a woman at the heart of the women's liberation movement. An Independent and Stylist Best Non-Fiction Book for 2024

An intimate portrait illuminating the life and work of Amos Oz, the award-winning Israeli writer and activist

A clear-sighted and entertaining defence of literary realism, and an account of its key practitioners

Cats have provided the inspiration for an incredible range of fiction, memoir and poetry, from ancient myths and fables to much-loved children's books, and from classic tales to contemporary novels. A must for all cat-lovers, this book celebrates the inspirational connections between our favourite feline friends and the literary imagination.