Recent Vintage Classics
Jean-Patrick Manchette (Author)
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Donald Nicholson-Smith (Translator)
'The French noir novel you need to help you vent your frustrations right now’ LitHub
Murder isn’t always ugly.
Aimée is drop-dead gorgeous, razor-sharp, and lethally efficient. A killer with a cool head and a taste for chaos, she arrives in the backwater town of Bléville – a festering stew of grudges, corruption, and small-town rot – ready to make a killing.
It's a game she’s played before: stir up trouble, pit the locals against one another, then disappear with blood on her hands and money in her pocket. But this time, something breaks and the game turns on her.
Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the crime novel into a weapon of satire and stylish mayhem. Fatale is his bloodiest, funniest, and most brilliantly unhinged work: a riot of revenge, farce, and gleeful destruction.
PRAISE FOR JEAN-PARICK MANCHETTE
‘Manchette was Le Homme... We must revere him now and rediscover him this very instant. ’ James Ellroy
'A comedic genius... I read and reread him, stunned, appalled, and laughing out loud' Rachel Kushner
'Manchette is one of the greatest writers since Dashiell Hammett, his only true son and heir' David Peace
‘Manchette is Camus on overdrive... He deserves much the same attention’ James Sallis
‘Manchette is legend among all of the crime writers I know, and with good reason: his novels never fail to stun and thrill from page one’ Duane Swierczynski
John Bowen (Author)
In summer, and particularly when the wind blows south-west across the lawn, the sceptic tank gives out a strong stench… ‘Oh, it is a body,’ the girls say. ‘We have a body in there. No one you know. It decomposes, of course, but so slowly one quite despairs.’
In their lovely, quiet Cotswolds village, Janet and Susan are known to the villagers simply as ‘the girls’. Partners in love and work, co-proprietors of a picturesque shop, they lead an enviable, enviably settled life.
But when a moment of small, surprising passion intrudes into the equilibrium of their world, the girls’ lives take a deeply unsettling turn. First comes motherhood. Then comes murder.
Part-macabre comedy, part-crime thriller, part-cosy romance, John Bowen’s The Girls is a novel like none other. Told with warmth, affection and fun, yet laced with darkness and unease, 'the girls' will ensure you never look on Middle England quite so quaintly again.
‘Absolutely wicked’ Armistead Maupin
‘Startlingly offbeat’ Gore Vidal
‘[For] people who like Myra Breckinridge as well as Miss Marple; fans of Beryl Bainbridge, Russell Greenan and Patricia Highsmith; those who feel Barbara Pym-ish on some days and Stephen King-ish on others . . . The Girls charms us as only certain tales ‘of village life’ can’ Washington Post
Pai Hsien-yung (Author)
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Patia Yasin (Translator)
Welcome to Taipei, Taiwan. The Chinese Civil War is now long over, but its shadow still haunts the city’s lost souls.
On the eve of her retirement, a dancer recalls the gentle boy she met in her youth. She loved him then – and never saw him again.
Out at a deserted shoreline, a young man identifies the body of a manservant. He was a soldier once; he is nothing now.
As night sets in, a group of men gather around a lotus pond in the park. There, they tell tales of a time that can never be returned to and search for connection in the darkness.
A masterwork of modern Chinese literature, Taipei People is a collection of dark, wistful stories following the lives and losses of those who fled to Taipei after the 1949 Communist takeover of mainland China.
Intimately drawn, universally powerful, these are tales for anyone who has ever left home, for anyone who has grown up and grown away, for anyone who has said goodbye, and for all those who were not able to.
Steven L. Peck (Author)
Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies.
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp - a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life. As his attempt to leave begins, he comes face to face with the absurdity of existence.
A haunting existential novella, Steven L. Peck's modern classic explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.
William Maxwell (Author)
A nostalgic tale of two lovers' journey through post-war France, from the author of SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW
It is 1948 and a young American couple arrive in war-torn France for a long holiday.
Full of anticipation and enthusiasm, Harold and Barbara Rhodes find themselves enchanted by the glamour and charm of Paris. But as they travel further into the countryside they meet a people still overcoming devastation, and their reception at the Château Beaumesnil is not all the open-hearted Americans could wish for.
Luxuriously meandering and joyously observant, The Château sees William Maxwell bring to life the soul-enriching experience of what it means to truly travel and open oneself up to new life.
‘Surprising on every page... I ended The Château feeling very sad that it was over’ Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life
‘Reading The Château is like meeting a very old friend with whom the conversation is always spontaneous, intimate, restorative and unpredictable’ Salley Vickers
Jacqueline Harpman (Author)
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Ros Schwartz (Translator)
A startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, from the author of I Who Have Never Known Men
In the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman wanders the forest, forbidden from ever leaving its strange depths. As part of her rigid schooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe. Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband’s desires, twice-weekly, as directed – until she begins to pursue her own.
Includes the stories: The Ardennes Forest, The Outcast and The Broom Cupboard
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Haruki Murakami (Author)
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Ted Goossen (Translator)
A nostalgic, jazz-soaked love-letter to a youth spent in pursuit of simple pleasures, from the Japan's most celebrated contemporary storyteller, Haruki Murakami
Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, Pinball, 1973's narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J's Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier - the infamous three-flipper Spaceship.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Toni Morrison (Author)
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Zadie Smith (Introducer)
A stunning, timeless story about race, friendship, what keeps us apart and what drives us apart, from the one and only Toni Morrison, with an introduction by Zadie Smith.
Twyla and Roberta met in a girls’ shelter as children. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then on opposing sides of a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every issue, but the persistence of their bond is undeniable.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Mary Shelley (Author)
Three supernatural tales of longing and loss from the grand-dame of Gothic fiction, Mary Shelley
When a storm drives their boat towards the rocks, a group of sailors is saved by the light of a ruined tower. The locals speak of the Invisible Girl who haunts it – a lost, wandering soul. But the truth is more disturbing, and far more human, than any ghost story.
Includes the stories: The Invisible Girl, The Mortal Immortal and The Mourner
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
