Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. Now it languishes in a drawer, and Robin hides in his room, increasingly frightened by a world he doesn't understand. His friends have failed him and romance eludes him.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead.

The first of Edith Wharton's works depicting life in "old New York", The Touchstone is an acutely observed novella , and an exploration of the tension between self-serving opportunism and the desire to live a moral life."

This collection of short stories explores the "muddy foreshore and abysmal depths" of the human psyche. "Caring, Sharing" envisages a realm where adults can be the children they really are, while "The Nonce Prize" presents a chilling portrait of a man who has been framed as a child abuser.

A dream-like, emotionally charged tale by a bold new voice in Japanese fiction

Superintendent Battle is called to investigate a murder at the home of an elderly widow at a clifftop seaside house in Devon...

This story describes the experiences of a group of people on a trip to Turkey. Aunt Dot is set on the emancipation of Turkish women through the encouragement of a wider use of the bathing hat, whilst Laurie's only object is pleasure.

Edited by award winning novelist and short story writer, this volume seeks to offer fresh renditions to the Irish story - angles, approaches, and modes of attack.

A coming of age story, which draws on the author's New England childhood.

A novel about the inhabitants of a country house in Suffolk from the late fourteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. It begins with the story of Martin Reed, a serf existing under the control of a universally accepted and supported hierarchy.

He discovers that her husband worked for a company that monitored the cleanliness of Venice's water supply and that he had died in a motorcycle accident. Distracted briefly by Vice Questore Patta's obsession with youth crime in Venice, Brunetti turns to the remarkable research skills of Patta's secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi.

A New York Times Bestseller, 'Tracks' is Louise Erdrich's masterpiece -- a story for our times, narrated by a uniquely twentieth century figure.

May, AD 41. The emperor Claudius has acceded to the throne, and Rome's citizens look forward to an era of peace. Not so Marcus Corvinus however, who finds himself investigating two murders. At first Marcus refuses to cooperate - but when his enquiries lead him to Rome's busy trading port, he uncovers a disturbing connection between the two deaths.

In "The Riddle of the Sands", a gripping spy story set amongst the shoals and mists of the North Sea coast in the years before the First World War, Erskine Childers fathered the modern genre of spy adventures. Childers himself led a life involving spying, gun-running and conspiracy. This title tells the story of this talented eccentric

"Stephanie Hodgson-Wright's excellent edition of this important work is the most user-friendly available." -- Jacqueline Pearson, University of Manchester

An epic in miniature: a gripping tale of a man's disintegration and his country's transformation, from the National Book Award-winning author of Tree of Smoke.

INCLUDED IN THE BEST OF GRANTA SERIES: an epic miniature of one man's life journey through the American West at the turn of the twentieth century.

An epic miniature of one man's life journey through the American West at the turn of the twentieth century.

This novel looks at life in the dark underside of Edinburgh, the AIDS capital of Europe, through the jaded eyes and harsh vernacular of heroin addict Mark Renton, who is sick of his friends, sick with the city and its deserted docklands, and above all sick with himself.

"Trainspotting"

This work is part of the "Continuum Contemporaries" series giving readers accessible and informative introductions to 30 of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential contemporary novels. It contains a biography of the novelist and a full-length study of the novel.