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 great read. A box of delights which is also a thrilling satirical torture chamber.' Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession'An absolute riot . . . totally compulsive.' Observer'A modern master of funny, penetrating satire.' GQ'If Phoebe Waller-Bridge had a score to settle.' Stylist***'*Twisty, clever and gleefully nasty.' The TimesT...

‘Extraordinary’ Angela Carter ‘One of the great war novels of the 20th century’ William Boyd ‘A remarkable journey’ Sunday TimesThe heartrending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War.Like everything else since the war, the sky was in a state of changeBased on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy’s life in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Trapp...

THE TOP TEN BESTSELLER, NOW AN AWARD-WINNING NETFLIX HIT'Effortlessly brilliant . . . hugely moving and outrageously funny.' Observer'A treat to read.' The Times'The great London novel of the twenty-first century.' New Statesman'Brimming with perception, humane empathy and relish . . . a capital achievement.' Sunday Times

* A Financial Times and Evening Standard Book of the Year ** LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020 *'Masterly . . . A signal achievement . . . Remarkable.' Guardian'A 1984 for our times.' Daily ExpressKavanagh begins his time patrolling the Wall.If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he o...

Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996.To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but contentful way, to death.Tarquin Winot – hedonist, food obsessive, ironist and snob – travels a circuitous route from the Hotel Splendide in Portsmouth to his cottage in Provence. Along the way he tells the story of his childhood and beyond through a series of delecta...

**Household gizmos with a mind of their own.Constant cold calls from unknown numbers.And the creeping suspicion that none of this is real.**Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments - stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the ghastly schlock, uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

* A Financial Times and Evening Standard Book of the Year ** LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020 *'Masterly . . . A signal achievement . . . Remarkable.' Guardian'A 1984 for our times.' Daily ExpressKavanagh begins his time patrolling the Wall.If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has to do two ...

Money is our global language. Yet so few of us can speak it. The language of the economic elite can be complex, jargon-filled and completely baffling. Above all, the language of money is the language of power - power in the hands of the same economic elite.Now John Lanchester, bestselling author of Capital and Whoops! sets out to decode the world of finance for all of us, explaining everything from high-frequency trading and the World Bank to the difference betwee...

Fragrant Harbour is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia's last seventy years. Tom Stewart leaves England just before it is hit by the Great Depression to seek his fortune, and finds it in running Hong Kong's best hotel. Sister Maria is a beautiful and uncompromising Chinese nun whom Stewart meets on the boat out from England; their friendship spans decades and changes both their lives. Dawn Stone is an English journalist who becomes the public face o...

One warm July morning Mr Phillips climbs out of bed, leaving Mrs Phillips dozing. He prepares for his commute into the city - but this is no ordinary Wednesday. It is a day on which Mr Phillips will chat with a pornographer, stalk a tv mini-celebrity, have lunch with an aspiring record mogul, and get caught up in a bank robbery. It is, as Mr Phillips comes to realise, the first day of the rest of his life - whether he wants it to be or not. All this is both better and worse than being at w...

'Endlessly witty, but the wit is underpinned by a tremendous, unembarrassed anger and moral lucidity. A superb guide which will turn any reader into an expert within the space of 200 pages' Jonathan CoeThere's probably a word in German for that feeling you get when you can understand something while it's being explained to you, but lose hold of the explanation as soon as it stops. A lot of writing about the credit crunch has that effect: you can grasp it while it's...