The nation's favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its ninth year.Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor's brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the b...

'A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father. . . ' So begins Ann Quin's first novel, a debut 'so staggeringly superior to most you'll never forget it' (The Guardian). Alistair Berg, hair restorer, shares a mistress with his father. He will, he decides, eliminate his rival. After mutilating a ventriloquist's dummy, he finds himself accidentally seduced by the man he needs to kill. Mordant, heady, dark, Berg is Quin's masterpiece, a c...

First published in 1972, Ann Quin's fourth and final novel was a radical break from the introspective style she had developed in Three and Passages: a declaration of independence from all expectations.Brashly experimental, ribald, and hilarious, Tripticks maps new territories for the novel – aspiring to a form of pop art via the drawings of the artist Carol Annand and anticipating the genre-busting work of Kathy Acker through collage and gory satire....

S has disappeared from Ruth and Leonard's home in Brighton. Suicide is suspected. The couple, who had been spying on their young lodger since before the trouble, begin to pour over her diary, her audio recordings and her movies - only to discover that she had been spying on them with even greater intensity. As this disturbing, highly charged act of reciprocal voyeurism comes to light, and as the couple's fascination with S comes to dominate their already flawed marriage, what emerges is an...

A book of voices, landscapes and seasons, Ann Quin's newly republished novel mirrors the multiplicity of meanings of the very word 'passage' – of music, of time, and of life itself. A woman, accompanied by her lover, searches for her lost brother, who may have been a revolutionary, and who may have been tortured, imprisoned or killed. Roving through a Mediterranean landscape, they live out their entangled existences, reluctant to give up, afraid of the outcome.Reflecting the schizo...

This new collection of rare and unpublished writing by the cult 1960s author Ann Quin explores the risks and seductions of going over the edge. The stories cut an alternative path across innovative twentieth-century writing, bridging the world of Virginia Woolf and Anna Kavan with that of Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus.

The British comedian recounts the highs and lows of his wild years: "A gifted writer with a perfect sense of comic timing and anecdote-spinning . . . Lots of fun." — Kirkus ReviewsBy his early thirties, Stephen Fry—writer, comedian, star of stage and screen—had, as they say, "made it." Much loved on British television, author of a critically acclaimed and bestselling first novel, with a glamorous and glittering cast of friends, he had more work than was per...

“An absolutely first-rate anthology. . . a thoughtful and intelligent paean to crime fiction.” — New York Sun#1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George serves up a century's worth of superb crime fiction penned by women. This veritable all-star team delivers tales of dark deeds that will keep you reading long into the night. Some of the works included are:"A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan GlaspellTh...

Anjelica Huston’s “gorgeously written” (O, The Oprah Magazine) memoir is “an elegant, funny, and frequently haunting reminiscence of the first two decades of her life…A classic” (Vanity Fair).In her first, dazzling memoir, Anjelica Huston shares the story of her deeply unconventional early life—her enchanted childhood in Ireland, living with her glamorous and artistic mother, educated by tutors and nuns, intrepid on a horse. Huston was raised on a...

Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survi...

‘This collection is stormy, romantic, strong – the Full Brontë’ The TimesA collection of short stories celebrating Charlotte Brontë, published in the year of her bicentenary and stemming from the now immortal words from her great work Jane Eyre.The twenty-one stories in Reader, I Married Him – one of the most celebrated lines in fiction – are inspired by Jane Eyre and shaped by its perennially fascinating themes of love, compromise and self...

The third volume of Michael Palin's celebrated diaries.TRAVELLING TO WORK is a roller-coaster ride driven by the Palin hallmarks of curiosity and sense of adventure. Michael was not the BBC's first choice for the travel series AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, but after its success, the public naturally wanted more.Palin, however, had other plans. There was his film AMERICAN FRIENDS, a role in Alan Bleasdale's award-winning drama GBH, the staging of his West End...