A story of passion and idealism, which describes a group of men and women in the Middle Ages whose destinies are fatefully linked with the building of a cathedral. In a country torn by civil war, two generations struggle to rise above their primitive circumstances and create something beautiful.

Looks at the experiences of some of the first astronauts in order to ascertain what makes them tick and why they are prepared to put their lives at such enormous risk. This book won the American Book Award for Non-Fiction.

This account of love's vicissitudes begins as a comedy of misunderstanding, then slowly darkens and deepens, drawing the reader into the quagmires of the heart. The author also wrote "Metroland", "Before She Met Me", "Flaubert's Parrot" and "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters".

Barbara Pym turns her exquisitely sharp eye for comedy on an acutely portrayed nexus of relationships ...

On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages ...

A shockingly funny story of lunacy and murder in small-town Ireland.

D, a courier carrying cocaine from Jamaica to London, decides to go it alone and disappears into the mean streets of Hackney carrying a kilo of white powder that his erstwhile friends are anxious to recover. But D's treachery will never be forgotten - or forgiven.

'Helen Fielding is one of the funniest writers in Britain and Bridget Jones is a creation of comic genius' Nick Hornby

JFK is President and Ezekiel (aka Easy) Rawlins has a job with the Los Angeles Board of Education as a school janitor. No dogs are allowed on the school premises but Pharaoh, the dog in question, belongs to Idabell Turner, a curvaceous teacher whose husband has murder on his mind.

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, this is a brilliantly innovative and highly entertaining novel from the celebrated pioneer of urban fantasy.

A weird and wonderful contemporary science-fiction classic from the author of VURT, PIXELJUICE, NEEDLE IN THE GROOVE and NYMPHOMATION.

This novel follows four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, who meet to carry out his last wish: to have his ashes scattered into the sea.

Ulrich has no qualities in the sense that his self-awareness is completely divorced from his abilities. He is drawn into a project, the "Parallel Campaign", to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph's coronation in 1918.

The perfect introduction to the man Samuel Beckett called 'a most gifted writer'.

This work is an attack on the destruction of the culture and environment of indigenous tribes in Latin America and the South Pacific by fundamentalist missionaries from the US.

A novel about two museum guards, one an eccentric uncle, the other his orphaned nephew, DeFoe. This book is an examination of the desire to step out of the everyday and into action. With echoes of the holocaust and of a world lost but not forgotten, this is a poignant novel.

A twentieth century classic

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000, this is an extraordinary and heart-breaking debut novel.

Stunning true-life Manhattan noir from a prize-winning author.

Taking its title from a picture by surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico, this is the story of a young Indian from the Crown Colony of Trinidad, who arrives in post-imperial England. He observes the gradual but profound changes wrought on the English countryside by the march of "progress".

Mohun Biswas has spent his 46 years of life striving for independence. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, he yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the Tulsi family, on whom he becomes dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in a struggle to weaken their hold over him.

Madeline Wolfe has given up her home and her hemisphere to come to London to live with the British man in her life. She soon discovers that being an Australian is currently passe, and suntans now have the social cachet of a heavy drinker. And then she discovers that she is pregnant.

When Michael Herr went to Vietnam in 1967 he was virtually unknown as a writer. But with "Dispatches" he brought us a terrifying account of what it was like to fight in, and survive, the war in Vietnam. These are his journals, describing the waste and the human lives involved.

Three classic essays by Tom Wolfe, together in one volume for the first time.