Margaret Atwood (Author)
The new collection from the legendary Atwood is led by the story of a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love -- and what comes after
My heart is broken, Nell thinks. But in our family we don’t say, ‘My heart is broken.’ We say, ‘Are there any cookies?’
In this dazzling collection of stories we meet beloved cats, George Orwell, a daughter whose mother may or may not be a witch, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales. And we meet and re-meet Nell and Tig, a long-married couple, and see the moments big and small that make up a life of love – and what comes after.
'She's Margaret Atwood, and she can do anything' Ann Patchett
'There is no greater living writer' Daily Telegraph
'The outstanding novelist of our age' Sunday Times
'A living legend' New York Times Book Review
Bruce Fulton (Edited by)
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Bruce Fulton (Notes by)
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Kwon Youngmin (Introducer)
This eclectic, moving and wonderfully enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea's dramatic twentieth century, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between North and South and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of Korea's vibrant short-story tradition.
Here are peddlers and donkeys travelling across moonlit fields; artists drinking and debating in the tea-houses of 1920s Seoul; soldiers fighting for survival; exiles from the war who can never go home again; and lonely men and women searching for connection in the dizzying modern city. The collection features stories by some of Korea's greatest writers, including Pak Wanso, O Chonghui and Cho Chongnae, as well as many brilliant contemporary voices, such as P'yon Hyeyong, Han Yujoo and Kim Aeran. Curated by Bruce Fulton, this is a volume that will surprise, unsettle and delight.
Makoto Shinkai (Author)
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Naruki Nagakawa (Author)
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Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator)
The uplifting Japanese bestseller
THE PERFECT GIFT FOR CAT LOVERS
'Compassionate and touching' DAILY MAIL
'Totally beguiling' OBSERVER
Perfect fans of The Travelling Cat Chronicles and Convenience Store Woman
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On the outskirts of Tokyo, local cats weave their way through the lives and homes of their owners as they navigate difficult times.
- A cat named Chobi sends silent messages of courage to a young woman, willing her to end a faltering relationship
- A gifted artist fatally misunderstands her boss's enthusiasm for her paintings
- A manga fan shuts herself away after the death of her friend, while her cat Cookie hatches a plan to persuade her outside
- A woman who has dedicated her life to a distant husband learns a lesson in independence from her cat
Against the urban backdrop of humming trains and private woes, SHE AND HER CAT explores the gentle magic of the everyday.
Populated by both the friendly and the feral, it reveals - with heartstopping clarity and warmth - how even in our darkest moments, community and connection may lead us to a happier place.
***Includes four fabulous illustrations***
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'A beautiful, uplifting novel. As mesmerizing as it is strange' SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE
'Goes to show how cats will save us all' Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City
'A gem, written with deep insight and finely attuned to the ways of cats and their humans. An absolute delight' HAZEL PRIOR author of Call of the Penguins
Haruki Murakami (Author)
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Philip Gabriel (Translator)
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Ted Goossen (Translator)
A dazzling Sunday Times bestselling collection of short stories from the beloved internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami.
Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.
Marked by the same wry humour that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.
‘Supremely enjoyable, philosophical and pitch-perfect new collection of short stories…Murakami has a marvelous understanding of youth and age’ Observer
‘Murakami at his whimsical, romantic best’ Financial Times
Yukio Mishima (Author)
Bringing together Yukio Mishima's finest stories, this selection shows his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance. A moonlit journey to fulfil a wish; a mother lost in mourning; a night of infidelity; and a young lieutenant who ends his life. Filled with rich description and luxurious beauty, these hauntingly beautiful short stories from one of Japan's greatest writers show the pull between duty and desire, ecstasy and death.
In the title story, 'Death in Midsummer', which is set at a beach resort, a triple tragedy becomes a cloud of doom that requires exorcising. In another, 'Patriotism', a young army officer and his wife choose a way of vindicating their belief in ancient values that is as violent as it is traditional; it prefigured his own death by seppuku in November 1970. There is a story in which the sad truth of the relationship between a businessman and his former mistress is revealed through a suggestion of the unknown, and another in which a working-class couple, touching in their simple love for each other, pursue financial security by rather shocking means.
James Joyce (Author)
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Hans Walter Gabler (Edited by)
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Scarlett Baron (Introducer)
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John Banville (Introducer)
EDITED BY HANS WALTER GABLER WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY SCARLETT BARON AND JOHN BANVILLE
In this powerfully influential series of short stories, James Joyce captures uneasy souls, shabby lives and innocent minds in the dark streets and homes of his native city. In doing so, he conjures uncertainties and desires, illumines moments of joy and sorrow otherwise lost in private memory, and pierces the many mysteries at the heart of things.
Stefan Zweig (Author)
‘One of the masters of the short story’ Guardian
These six stories of obsession, secrets, delusions and desires from one of the greatest European writers show individuals caught up in forces beyond their control – whether an art dealer agreeing to a heartbreaking deception, a soldier destroyed by war, a servant infatuated with her employer or a young boy witnessing illicit adult passions. Portraying innocence lost and lives crushed by history, each tale is a psychologically acute, startling human drama. Contains 'The Invisible Collection', 'Episode on Lake Geneva', 'Leporella', 'Buchmendel', 'The Buried Candelabrum' and 'Burning Secret'.
Rebecca Ivory (Author)
Funny, clever and true, read the unmissable short story collection about modern relationships
'Brilliant… This collection covers themes on sex, friendship and work and dives into what it means to be human' STYLIST
'So precise and articulate' SUNDAY TIMES
‘Arresting and inventive’ SALLY ROONEY
'I couldn't get enough' MICHAEL MAGEE
Two teenage girls fixate on each other's bodies; a woman encounters an ex and reflects on the women's group that saved her; an older man's buried grief emerges in encounter with a woman driving a 4×4; and a waitress lacks the money to fix an impacted tooth as the cracks in her life begin to show.
Free Therapy takes us into the inner lives of women and men who are versed in the language of therapy, possessed with the self-knowledge needed to change their lives, but finding themselves unwilling to doing so. As her characters try and fail to connect, Rebecca Ivory reveals the ways in which we posture and present, and the insecurities that lie beneath.
‘Her writing feels so fresh’ PANDORA SYKES
'A major new talent' I