The second in a two volume collection of short stories by the acclaimed author of 'Empire of the Sun', 'Crash' and 'Super-Cannes'. The new edition is introduced by Adam Thirwell.
My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say. I'm supposed to say that the bruises on my arms and the black eye came from falling down the stairs. But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents.
In a Europe riven into a hundred tiny principalities, chef Rudi is drawn into a new career with a shadowy organisation that will move anything across any state line - for a price. Soon, he's in a world of high-risk smuggling operations, where kidnappings and double-crosses are as natural as a map that constantly redraws itself.
Most people only know one London; but what if there were several? Kell is one of the last Travelers - magicians with a rare ability to travel between parallel Londons. There's Grey London, dirty and crowded and without magic, home to the mad king George III. There's Red London, where life and magic are revered.
Kell is plagued by his guilt. Having given up smuggling, he is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila. As Red London prepares for the Element Games - an extravagant international competition of magic - a certain pirate ship draws closer. But another London is coming back to life. Black London has risen again.
The author roams the US, Mexico, Morocco, Paris and London, Kerouac records, in prose of pure poetry, life on the road. In this book, he reveals both the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfilment.
A biography of the founder of Buddhism and a study of Siddartha Gautama's life and works. It recounts the story of Prince Siddhartha's upbringing and his father's wish to protect him from all human suffering, despite a prediction that he would become a great holy man in later life. It offers an introduction to the world of Buddhism.
A tale of teenage romance in New England. It features the story of Jack and Maggie who are in love with the idea of being in love, looking ahead to marriage with hope and trepidation. It captures the intensity and the ordinariness of adolescent life, with its torments and complications. It also discusses about growing up in America.
Lost during the author's lifetime, it is an intense portrait of friendship and brotherhood and a meditation on the desire to escape society, following the fortunes of two men as they impulsively decide to work their passage on the S S Westminster: drinking, arguing, playing cards, dodging torpedoes and contemplating the beauty of the sea.
Offers an examination of the author's own New York life. Transcribing taped conversations between members of their group as they took drugs and drank, this book reveals a portrait of people caught up in destructive relationships with substances, and one another.
A semi-autobiographical tale of Kerouac's own trip to France, to trace his ancestors and explore his own understanding of the Buddhism that came to define his beliefs.
In 1960 Jack Kerouac was near breaking point. Driven mad by constant press attention in the wake of the publication of On the Road, he needed to get away to solitude again or die, so he withdrew to a cabin in Big Sur on the Californian coast.
Tells the story of the legendary road trip that Jack Kerouac took before the publication of "On the Road", told through the persona of Jack Duluoz and accompanied by his thinly-disguised Beat cohorts Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs.
Peter Martin, a college track star determined to idle away what he knows will be one of his last innocent summers in his tranquil New England home town. But with the war escalating in Europe and his two closest friends both plotting their escapes, he realizes how sheltered his upbringing has been.