At the age of sixteen, Andy Cave followed in his father's and grandfather's footsteps and became a miner - one of the last recruits into a dying world. Every day he would descend 3,000 feet into Grimethorpe pit.But at weekends Andy escaped from the pithead to a very different world - testing his nerve on the cliffs and mountains around Britain, and forging endearing friendships with his new companions.Enduring the 1984-5 miners' strike - the guilt, the broken friendships, t...

In 1997, Andy Cave returned from the Himalayas, having climbed the stupendous north face of Changabang but losing his friend and climbing partner in the process. Traumatized by the savage ordeal, he must examine his relationship with the mountains that have defined his life so far. Will he have the courage to undertake such a challenge again? Does he want to? Thin White Line charts his struggle towards finding an answer. It is as much a journey into the mind of an extreme mountaineer as it...

Rand lives free; lean, pure and defiant, the world has little influence on him. His passion is climbing – the mountains, the huge vertical faces. There, where storms, snow, or rockfall can kill, he finds his happiness, sometimes climbing with others, sometimes alone. This is a novel of obsession and where it leads. Rand, not intending it, becomes suddenly famous for a daring rescue in the Alps. What happens when passion is spent and what becomes of heroes is revealed in this terse and powe...

The classic novel of courage and rivalry—a fighter pilot whose dream of becoming an ace is tested by combat, his fellow airmen, and his own faltering confidence during the Korean WarCaptain Cleve Connell has already made a name for himself among pilots when he arrives in Korea during the war there to fly the newly operational F–86 fighters against the Soviet MIGs. His goal, like that of every fighter pilot, is to chalk up enough kills to become an ace.But t...

“A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger; an opaline vision of Americans in France. . . . A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves.” —The New York Times Book ReviewTwenty-year-old Yale dropout Phillip Dean is traveling Europe aimlessly in a borrowed car with little money, until stopping for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, where he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant. Sh...

**A spellbinding collection of stories about passion–by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating.“Life is a volatile mess, and no one portrays that mess better than James Salter. . . . All of the stories in Last Night are superb.”–The New York Times Book Review**In powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life–as it is and never will be again...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • An NPR "Great Reads" Book • Here is PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter's dazzling, sometimes devastating portrait of love and ambition.“Shimmering. . . . Intoxicating. . . . Few can match Salter’s depictions of life’s physical pleasures, the sheer sensual delight of being in this world.”—San Francisco Chronicle**All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change...

In this “powerful” blockbuster of a novel (The New York Times), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Independence Day introduces his most beloved character, failed novelist turned sportswriter Frank Bascombe, during an Easter weekend, as he moves through the great losses of his life.As a sportswriter, Frank Bascombe makes his living studying people—men, mostly—who live entirely within themselves. This is a condition that Frank himself aspires to. ...

Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary AwardWinner of the Alfaguara PrizeWinner of the Gregor von Rezzori Prize'A powerful, humane novel about a man trying to make sense of a war he didn't choose to fight' The Times***'***The story is compelling but through Vásquez's vivid prose (rendered brilliantly into English by the award-winning translator Anne McLean) it also becomes haunting ...

This award-winning satire shares a day in the life of a nineteen-year-old U.S. soldier home on leave from the Iraq War to take part in an NFL halftime show.A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at "the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal"—three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America's most sought-after heroes. For the past two weeks, the Bush admi...

In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America.It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full ...

Karl Ove Knausgaard leaves his wife and everything he knows in Oslo for a fresh start in Stockholm. There he strikes up a deep and competitive friendship with Geir and pursues Linda, a beautiful poet who captivated him years ago.A Man in Love, the second book of six in the My Struggle cycle, sees Knausgaard write of tempestuous relationships, the trials of parenthood and an urge to create great art. His singular insight and exhilirating honesty must be read to be ...