Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Georges Perec

Georges Perec’s cool, exacting portrait of a couple torn apart by consumer desire 
 
A young couple build their lives around the objects they long to own. From furniture to clothes to carefully imagined interiors, their desires shape their sense of who they are – and who they might become. Yet satisfaction always seems just out of reach.. Precise and quietly ironic, Things explores the promises of material life – and the emptiness that can follow. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Things: A Story of the Sixties

Simone de Beauvoir

Two sisters must find their way in a world designed to confine them. 
 
Marcelle is the elder sister, a woman whose ambitions focus on becoming the companion of a 'man of genius'. Marguerite is the younger sister, a girl whose sanity depends on breaking free of the oppressive expectations of society. Both end up focusing their attentions on the same disappointing man. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Woman of Genius

Eileen Chang

From one of the great Chinese authors of the twentieth century, these newly translated stories illuminate the most intimate matters of the human heart 
 
Since childhood, Ruliang has sketched the same face in the margins of his books, tracing its lines without knowing why. Years later, he meets Cynthia – and recognises it at once. As their lives draw together and drift apart, what once seemed like fate begins to feel more uncertain. In these brief, evocative stories, Eileen Chang traces the pull of memory, love and chance. 
 
Includes the stories: Young at the Time, Blossoms Afloat, Flowers Adrift and Those Old Schoolmates They’re All Quite Classy Now 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Young at the Time

Colette

Colette’s elegant, unsettling study of love turned hostile - and all because of a cat. 
 
A young marriage begins to sour, poisoned by rivalry and resentment. At its centre is a cat – adored by the husband, despised by the wife – whose presence exposes the quiet cruelty and emotional imbalance of the household. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

The Cat

Jacqueline Harpman

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

We Were Forbidden

Halldór Laxness

An intimate, magical novel about one enduring church in a rural Icelandic valley - an ode to a quiet way of life now lost to time forever 
 
The resting place of legendary Viking warrior Egil Skallagrímsson’s skull, Mosfell Church is a lonely, country church, fated to be destroyed. But as the plans to destroy it take shape, stories, myth and folklore abound in one magical last attempt to leave Mosfell standing. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

A Parish Chronicle

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