With VENUS, Hanif Kureishi turns his piercing gaze onto the pains of old age. Maurice (Peter O'Toole) and Ian (Leslie Phillips) are veteran stage actors whose slow, inevitable decline is disrupted by the arrival in their lives of Ian's niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker).
First published in 1870, the author of 'Venus in Furs' defined - and unwittingly gave his own name to - that sexual proclivity we know as masochism in this understated, charged erotic classic.
Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss are both reeling from recent unhappiness when they meet and swiftly fall in love. Lucy is Wemyss' 'sweet girl', and to Lucy, Everard is the whole world. The only blot on Lucy's happiness is the shadowy figure of Wemyss' first wife, Vera, who died in mysterious circumstances.
Poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny - the tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country that's rapidly coming apart, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends
Welcome to Vermilion Sands, the fully automated desert-resort ready to fulfill your most exotic whims. Home to the idle rich it now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world.
A novel from internationally acclaimed author Paulo Coelho - a dramatic story of love, life and death that shows us all why every second of our existence is a choice we all make between living and dying.
Introducing the novelization of a forthcoming 10-part lavish BBC2 drama series of the same name about a young Louis XIV and the creation of the Versailles palace; sweeping, sexy, utterly addictive.
At moments when reality shows itself to be unstable or uncanny, we experience a form of vertigo. This experience is further complicated when we try to transform experience into writing, and fact clashes with memory. Sebald's novel, part fiction, part travelogue explores this theme.
This is a woman as a mother, daughter, wife, spectator, lover, mistress. She shifts between roles, countries, and languages. Skilled and successful, she controls how much she cares. Yet as every new woman emerges and every new story is told, the calm surfaces of Joanna Walsh's Vertigo shatter, pulling us into the panic underlying everyday life.
Former steel worker Harry Perkins has led the Labour Party to a stunning victory at the general election. His manifesto includes removal of American bases and public control of finance. The Establishment is appalled by the prospect. As M15 conspires with the city and the press barons, Perkins finds himself in a no-holds-barred battle for survival.
A collection of Jeeves stories, every one a winner, in which Jeeves endeavours to give satisfaction: by saving a grumpy cabinet minister from being marooned and attacked by a swan - in the process saving Bertie Wooster from his impending doom, and by rescuing Bingo Little and Tuppy Glossop from the soup (twice each).