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A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

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Mary Lavin

Mary Lavin is the great unsung voice of Irish fiction. Here are her very best, most electric stories: illuminating, moving, arrows in flight. 
 
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TÓIBÍN 
 
Mary Lavin’s stories feature ordinary people in the tight confines of ordinary life. From rural Ireland and the streets of Dublin they charm, irritate and intrigue in complicated brilliance, appearing to us with unique freshness. Good friendships, bad deeds, frustrations, missteps, hope and laughter are all found in captivating stories where real and astonishing things happen. 
 
Few women were so consistently published in the New Yorker and yet today Lavin’s work is largely unpublished and overlooked. This collection re-establishes her as one of the most genius, irresistible and memorable voices of the last century. 
 
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY COLM TOÍBÍN 
 
‘She is, to come right out with it, magnificent’ New York Times 
 
‘Mary Lavin’s stories are a delight. They are delicate, but not too delicate to carry tragedy on one shoulder and comedy on the other’ Sunday Times 
 
‘Lavin writes like a dream’ New York Times Book Review

An Arrow in Flight

Angela Carter

Discover Angela Carter's classic feminist retelling of favourite fairy tales woven in seductive, luminous storytelling. 
 
Beauty is turned into a Beast, Little Red Riding’s grandmother is stoned to death as a witch and, in the title story, a beautiful young pianist is swept into the world of a rich and sinister aristocrat, a man whose previous three wives have all died in mysterious circumstances. 
 
From familiar fairy tales and legends – Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves – Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories. 
 
'Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality' Ian McEwan 
 
'A quirky, original, and baroque stylist' Margaret Atwood 
 
With an introduction from award-winning short story writer Helen Simpson

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

A special edition of the feminist cult classic

Virginia Woolf

Celebrate a vital work of feminism with this special edition featuring the original cover created by Virginia Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell, and the original text first published by The Hogarth Press. 
 
Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. 
 
Witty, urbane and vital to this day, A Room of One’s Own is a persuasive argument against the intellectual subjection of women, particularly women writers. It weaves together memoir, imaginative speculation and political vision to create one of the most important works of feminism of the twentieth century. 
 
The book sprang from two lectures that Woolf delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1928. The first printing of the book the following year was as a limited edition, a joint publication between The Fountain Press of New York and the Hogarth Press. Two months later it was released to the general trade and has been an essential work ever since. 
 
The text of this edition of A Room of One’s Own is based on the original Hogarth Press edition, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf in October 1929. The dust jacket features the original cover created by Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, for the Hogarth Press. Beneath the cover ‘cinnamon’ boards printed in gilt take inspiration from the finish of the first trade edition. 
 
'Brilliant interweaving of personal experience, imaginative musing and political clarity' Kate Mosse 
 
'Achingly relevant' Natasha Walter, Guardian

A Room of One's Own

Various

Joyeux Noël! Merry Christmas! These festive stories welcome Christmas à la française – delicious, chic and unexpected. 
 
Sparkling Parisian streets, opulent feasts, wandering orphans, kindly monks, oysters, bonbons, flickering desire, and more than a little wine: this collection of stories proves that the French have truly mastered Christmas. 
 
Bringing together the best French Christmas stories of all time, this lovely book includes classics by Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet, plus stories by the esteemed twentieth-century author Irène Némirovsky and contemporary writers Dominique Fabre and Jean-Philippe Blondel. 
 
Let these generous, joyous stories transport you and your loved ones into the heart of a very French Christmas.

A French Christmas

Festive Tales for a Joyeux Noël

VOLUME ONE OF TWO 
 
'A huge, eye-opening, mind-blowing surprise' Lisa Tuttle, Guardian 
 
A genre-defining-and redefining-collection of fiction's boldest, most rebellious, and most prescient genre, featuring a smorgasbord of stories from across the globe 
 
In The Big Book of Cyberpunk, award-winning anthologist Jared Shurin brings together over a hundred stories from more than twenty-five different countries. Here are tales that both establish and subvert the classic Cyberpunk tropes and aesthetic – from gritty, near-future noir to pulse-pounding action. Urban rebels undermine their monolithic corporate overlords, daring heists are conducted through back alleys and the darkest parts of the online world, and dangerous new technology, cybernetic enhancements, scheming AIs, corporate mercenaries, improbable weapons and roguish hackers all collide into rich, thrilling entertainment. Set across two volumes, these are stories that examine the near-now, extrapolating the most provocative trends into fascinating and plausible futures. 
 
We live in an increasingly Cyberpunk world, packed with complex technologies and globalised social trends. It is a world so bizarre that even the futurists couldn’t explain it – though many authors in this book have come closer than most. As both an introduction to the genre and the perfect compendium for the lifelong fan, The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 offer more than a hundred ways to understand where we are, and where we’re going – or simply the opportunity to venture down dazzling, neon-slicked streets.

The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol. 1

VOLUME TWO OF TWO 
 
'A huge, eye-opening, mind-blowing surprise' Lisa Tuttle, Guardian 
 
A genre-defining-and redefining-collection of fiction's boldest, most rebellious, and most prescient genre, featuring a smorgasbord of stories from across the globe 
 
In The Big Book of Cyberpunk, award-winning anthologist Jared Shurin brings together over a hundred stories from more than twenty-five different countries. Here are tales that both establish and subvert the classic Cyberpunk tropes and aesthetic [RR1] [SN2] – from gritty, near-future noir to pulse-pounding action. Urban rebels undermine their monolithic corporate overlords, daring heists are conducted through back alleys and the darkest parts of the online world, and dangerous new technology, cybernetic enhancements, scheming AIs, corporate mercenaries, improbable weapons and roguish hackers all collide into rich, thrilling entertainment. Set across two volumes, these are stories that examine the near-now, extrapolating the most provocative trends into fascinating and plausible futures. 
 
We live in an increasingly Cyberpunk world, packed with complex technologies and globalised social trends. It is a world so bizarre that even the futurists couldn’t explain it – though many authors in this book have come closer than most. As both an introduction to the genre and the perfect compendium for the lifelong fan, The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 offer more than a hundred ways to understand where we are, and where we’re going – or simply the opportunity to venture down dazzling, neon-slicked streets.

The Big Book of Cyberpunk Vol. 2

Buon Natale -- A Merry Christmas -- made all the more joyful with these literary treats filled with ancient churches, trains whistling through the countryside, steaming tureens, plates piled high with pasta, High Mass, dashed hopes, golden crucifixes, flowing wine, shimmering gifts and plenty of style. 
 
In this collection, classic works by Boccaccio to Pirandello intertwine with more recent stories from writers like Anna Maria Ortese, Natalia Ginzburg and Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda to bring together the greatest festive tales from the land of enchantment: Italy. Bursting with family chaos, carols and yuletide cheer, An Italian Christmas showcases stories that put the passionate, fiery side of the festive period back into Christmas.

An Italian Christmas

Festive Tales for La Dolce Vita (Vintage Christmas Tales)

A stunning new collection of short stories about motherhood, selected and introduced by Candice Brathwaite. 
 
______________ 
 
'To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colours of a rainbow' MAYA ANGELOU 
 
The story of motherhood is an endlessly rich one. It's one of love - and all the highs and lows that come with that world-turning emotion - and, in the purest sense, of life itself. Within these pages, some of the finest writers in the world explore motherhood in wildly varying modes, from single parenthood to sisters coparenting, from the deepest hardships to the greatest celebrations. 
 
Selected and introduced by Candice Brathwaite, author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother. 
 
Stories by Lydia Davis, Anita Desai, Mary Gaitskill, Tessa Hadley, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Irenosen Okojie, Casey Plett, Tabitha Siklos, Helen Simpson, Ali Smith

Hurricanes in Perfect Power

Tales of Modern Motherhood

From helpful elves to an enchanting Nutcracker, rediscover the German Christmas tales behind our most iconic festive traditions 
 
*A Daily Express Book of the Year* 
 
Eine fröhliche Weihnachten -- A Merry Christmas -- made all the more joyful with these literary treats redolent of candle-lit trees, St. Nikolaus, gingerbread, roast goose and red cabbage, tinsel and stollen cakes, accompanied by plenty of schnapps. 
 
In this collection, classic works by the Brothers Grimm and Thomas Mann intertwine with more recent stories from writers like Peter Stamm and Martin Suter to bring together the greatest festive tales from Austria, Switzerland and Germany. From a child lost in a snowy, pine-scented forest meeting an unlikely saviour to old lovers reuniting during a last-minute dash across the city for presents, each story creates magical moments of reflection and rediscovery. 
 
Bursting with family chaos, carols and yuletide cheer, A German Christmas showcases those works that have helped define the festive period the world over.

A German Christmas

Festive Tales From Berlin to Bavaria

Richard P Feynman

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BILL GATES 
 
In this warm, insightful portrait of the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, we see the wisdom, humour and curiosity of Richard Feynman through a series of conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton. 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynman's life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism. 
 
Over a period of years, Feynman's conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman

Adventures of a Curious Character

W.G. Sebald

‘Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century’ The Times 
 
What begins as the record of W. G. Sebald’s own journey on foot through coastal East Anglia, from Lowestoft to Bungay, becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present. From Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, to fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms, the result is an intricately patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human. 
 
‘A novel of ideas with a difference: it is nothing but ideas… Formally dexterous, fearlessly written (why shouldn't an essay be a novel?), and unremittingly arcane; by the end I was in tears’ Teju Cole, Guardian

The Rings of Saturn

Kurt Vonnegut

FROM THE ONE-OF-A-KIND IMAGINATION THAT BROUGHT US SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 AND CAT'S CRADLE 
 
 'Kurt Vonnegut is either the funniest serious writer around or the most serious funny writer' Los Angeles Times Book Review 
 
An 'autobiographical collage' of speeches, stories and essays, in Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut writes beguilingly about everything from country music to George Bush, his favourite comedians to his mother's midnight mania, and bittersweet tributes to a dead best friend and a dead marriage. 
 
Resonating with his singular voice, this is a self-portrait in writing that showcases why Kurt Vonnegut is as genius an essayist and commentator on American society as he is a novelist.

Palm Sunday

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

‘Can one part of humanity learn from the bitter experience of another or can it not? 
 
Is it possible or impossible to warn someone of danger...to assess soberly the worldwide menace that threatens to swallow the whole world? 
 
I was swallowed myself. I have been in the dragon’s belly, in its red-hot innards. It was unable to digest me and threw me up. I have come to you as a witness to what it is like there, in the dragon’s belly’ 
 
During 1975 and 1976, Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn embarked on a series of speeches across America and Britain that would shock and scandalise both countries. His message: the West was veering towards moral and spiritual bankruptcy, and with it the world’s one hope against tyranny and totalitarianism. 
 
From Solzhenitsyn’s warnings about the allure of communism, to his rebuke that the West should not abandon its age-old concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, the speeches collected in Warning to the West provide insight into Solzhenitsyn’s uncompromising moral vision. Read today, their message remains as powerfully urgent as when Solzhenitsyn first delivered them.

Warning to the West

Discover Virginia Woolf’s informative and erudite critical essays on some of the key novelists and dramatists of the canon – from the ancient Greeks to Jane Austen and beyond. 
 
Virginia Woolf read, and wrote, as an outsider, denied the educational privileges of her male contemporaries. She was perhaps better able, then, to address a 'common reader' in this wide-ranging collection of essays. With all the imagination and gaiety that are the stamp of her genius, she turns from medieval England to tsarist Russia, and subjects Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian novelists and modern essayists to her wise, acute and entertaining scrutiny. 
 
Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Nancy Mitford, Joseph Conrad, Michel de Montaigne, Daniel Defoe and many others.

The Common Reader: Volume 1

'He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others'. 
So Virginia Woolf described the 'common reader' for whom she wrote her second series of essays. Here she turns her brilliant eye on novels and poetry from John Donne to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft as well as many others. This is an informal, informative and witty celebration of our literary and social heritage by a writer of genius.

The Common Reader: Volume 2

Encountering an eccentric cast of characters along the way, Sebald confronts the frailty of human existence as he voyages along the Suffolk coast on foot. 
 
 What begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia becomes the great, constellated story of people and cultures past and present: of Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. A rich meditation on the past via a melancholy trip along the Suffolk coast, The Rings of Saturn is an intricately patterned and haunting book on the transience of all things human. 
 
VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

(Vintage Voyages)

Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife, invites you to creep through haunted houses and commune with the undead in this anthology of all things ghostly. 
 
 
Haunted houses, spectral chills, and of course, the odd cat. . . 
 
In this volume, Audrey Niffenegger has brought together her selection of the very creepiest, weirdest and wittiest ghost stories around. 
 
Scare yourself silly with old favourites by Edgar Allan Poe and M. R. James. Entertain the unnerving with tales from Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link and Audrey Niffenegger herself. And as bedtime nears, allay your fears with funny new writing from Amy Giacalone and the classic wit of Saki. 
 
 
When the nights draw in and the fire burns low, enjoy the eeriness, the dread and the comedy of all things ghostly.

Ghostly

A Collection of Ghost Stories

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEANETTE WINTERSON 
 
‘What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?’ Security, confidence, independence, a degree of prosperity – a room of one’s own. All things denied to most women around the world living in Virginia Woolf’s time, and before her time, and since. In this funny, provoking and insightful polemic, Virginia Woolf challenges her audience of young women to work on even in obscurity, to cultivate the habit of freedom, and to exercise the courage to write exactly what we think. 
 
ALSO IN THE VINTAGE FEMINIST SHORT SERIES: 
 
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir 
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft 
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf 
My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst

A Room of One’s Own (Vintage Feminism Short Edition)

Tom Wolfe

A wonderful novel and perfect book club choice, The Right Stuff is a wildly vivid and entertaining chronicle of America's early space programme. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY US ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY 
 
‘What is it,’ asks Tom Wolfe, ‘that makes a man willing to sit on top of an enormous Roman Candle…and wait for someone to light the fuse?’ Arrogance? Stupidity? Courage? Or, simply, that quality we call 'the right stuff'? 
 
A monument to the men who battled to beat the Russians into space, The Right Stuff is a voyage into the mythology of the American space programme, and a dizzying dive into the sweat, fear, beauty and danger of being on the white-hot edge of history in the making. 
 
‘Tom Wolfe at his very best… Learned, cheeky, risky, touching, tough, compassionate, nostalgic, worshipful, jingoistic...The Right Stuff is superb’ New York Times Book Review

The Right Stuff

Karl Marx

The Communist Manifesto is a timeless classic providing intelligent insight into socialism, communism and today’s group identity politics. 
 
 This pocket edition includes a new introduction by the economist and bestselling author of Adults in the Room, Yanis Varoufakis. 
 
The Communist Manifesto was first published in London in 1848, by two young men in their late twenties. Its impact reverberated across the globe and throughout the next century, and it has come to be recognised as one of the most important political texts ever written. Maintaining that the history of all societies is a history of class struggle, the manifesto proclaims that communism is the only route to equality, and is a call to action aimed at the proletariat. It is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand our modern political landscape.

The Communist Manifesto

with an introduction by Yanis Varoufakis

Roland Barthes

‘To read through A Barthes Reader is finally to be left with the image of Barthes as one of the great public teachers of our time’ New Republic 
 
Edited by Susan Sontag, A Roland Barthes Reader offers a definitive selection of works by the French intellectual Roland Barthes, including seminal essays, such as 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives' as well as his more unusual works, such as 'The World of Wrestling'. 
 
'At last, with A Barthes Reader, we have a sort of Michelin guide to one of the most beguiling minds of our era. Smartly introduced by Susan Sontag, the Reader samples Barthes' achievement over three decades' Newsweek

A Roland Barthes Reader

Elias Lonnrot

Kalevala is the poetic name for Finland: ‘the land of heroes’. Here you’ll find the cultural essence of a young country but an old land, the stories, songs and poems that recount the mythical adventures of humankind. Ambition, lust, romance, birth and death can all be found within its pages, as well as the sampo, a mysterious talisman that brings great happiness to its possessor and over which great battles will be fought. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HORATIO CLARE

Kalevala

Aldous Huxley

Discover this profound account of Huxley's famous experimentation with mescalin that has influenced writers and artists for decades. 
 
 ‘Concise, evocative, wise and, above all, humane, The Doors of Perception is a masterpiece’ Sunday Times 
 
In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gram of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. Huxley described his experience with breathtaking immediacy in The Doors of Perception. 
 
In its sequel Heaven and Hell, he goes on to explore the history and nature of mysticism. Still bristling with a sense of excitement and discovery, these illuminating and influential writings remain the most fascinating account of the visionary experience ever written. 
 
 WITH A FOREWORD J.G. BALLARD

The Doors of Perception

And Heaven and Hell

Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this visionary collection, Virginia Woolf leads us on a transformative journey through the liberating powers of the mind. From an exploration of why women were barred from writing and under what conditions they might break free, to the solace derived from haunting London's streets, these essays and stories present Woolf at her most impassioned, rendering the pursuit of liberty one of life's most poetic adventures. 
 
Selected from the books A Room of One's Own, The Waves and Street Haunting and Other Essays by Virginia Woolf 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
Love by Jeanette Winterson 
Home by Salman Rushdie 
Language by Xiaolu Guo 
Race by Toni Morrison

Liberty

Vintage Minis

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. His account of his experience, and his vision for all that psychedelics could offer to mankind, has influenced writers, artists and thinkers around the world. 
 
The unabridged text of The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
Drinking by John Cheever 
Swimming by Roger Deakin 
Eating by Nigella Lawson 
Desire by Haruki Murakami

Psychedelics

Oscar Wilde

A selection of Oscar Wilde's best and most important plays - sharp, relevant and brilliant to this day. 
 
 Who would have thought a comedy of manners written more than a hundred years ago would still be so apt and so funny? Oscar Wilde was a genius of play-writing, and his deftness, wit and sharp eye for social satire keep audiences in thrall to this day. Alongside Earnest, discover a biblical tragedy retold, Lady Windemere and her infamous fan and Wilde's take on an ideal husband, in this selection of Wilde's most important plays. 
 
 ‘[The Importance of Being Earnest] has a strong claim to being the most perfect comedy in the English language’ Daily Telegraph

The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Howard Jacobson

Wilbur Sanders

The field of Shakespearean studies is cluttered with the fossils of past discussion, and somehow we have to pick our way around them. In the opening scene to this unusual book, these obstructive entities are brought to life and engage in lively argument. Four essays on Hamlet, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus follow, all of which freshen the air: unfamiliar, unspecialised, free-ranging and openly argumentative, but tied at all points to the original text. Shakespeare wrote out of, and about, a common humanity, and it is with humanity, common and uncommon, that we must read or watch him. This book is accordingly addressed to the academic or the new student.

Shakespeare's Magnanimity

Tom Payne

Bette Davis said ‘Old age ain’t no place for sissies’. If that’s true, we could all use a little help as we approach our twilight years. Translator Tom Payne turns to Ovid, Seneca, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes to discover invigorating counsel on mental decline, medicine, late love affairs, death and legacy. This lively tour of ancient attitudes to ageing, supplemented by a translation of Cicero’s ‘On Old Age’, reveals the true art of growing old gracefully.

The Ancient Art of Growing Old

In his 1932 classic dystopian novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicted a future society in thrall to science and regulated by sophisticated methods of social control. Nearly thirty years later in Brave New World Revisited, Huxley checked the progress of his prophecies against reality and argued that many of his fictional fantasies had grown uncomfortably close to the truth. Brave New World Revisited includes Huxley's views on overpopulation, propaganda, advertising and government control, and is an urgent and powerful appeal for the defence of individualism still alarmingly relevant today.

Brave New World Revisited

Virginia Woolf began writing reviews for the Guardian 'to make a few pence' from her father's death in 1904, and continued until the last decade of her life. The result is a phenomenal collection of articles, of which this selection offers a fascinating glimpse, which display the gifts of a dazzling social and literary critic as well as the development of a brilliant and influential novelist. From reflections on class and education, to slyly ironic reviews, musings on the lives of great men and 'Street Haunting', a superlative tour of her London neighbourhood, this is Woolf at her most thoughtful and entertaining.

Street Haunting and Other Essays

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

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