Meik Wiking founded the world's first Happiness Research Institute in 2013, in Copenhagen, Denmark and is a New York Times and Sunday Times Bestselling author. Meik has been called The Indiana Jones of Smiles and probably the World's Happiest Man by The Times. He is the author of four globally bestselling books which have sold over 2 million copies worldwide: The Little Book of Hygge, The Little Book of Lykke, The Art of Making Memories and My Hygge Home.

Meik Wiking

Sue Meikle has always been obsessed with picture books, and after working as an Early Years Specialist for over 25 years, she has read stories to children from Stockport to South Africa. In schools, in early years centres, while on forest school adventures... Sue has even read stories on a travelling play bus! So, perhaps it was always in the stars for Sue to not just read books, but write them, too! When she's not reading or writing stories, Sue can be found walking her dog or chauffeuring her teenagers around the Greater Manchester area (because that’s where they live… in a home that they made from a derelict barn!)

Sue Meikle

David Meikle is a TV scriptwriter and Sunday Times bestselling author. He has written and co-written seven books, including the autobiographies of Charlie Richardson and Bobby Cummines.

David Meikle

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H.G. Wells

A beautiful deluxe gift edition of the sci-fi classic, the original alien invasion story, with foiled covers, marbled endpapers, sprayed edges, beautiful paper and finished with a silk ribbon. 
 
This is the ultimate story of alien invasion. When a gigantic, mysterious cylinder lands in Woking, England, people gather in crowds curious to see what is happening. But then the aliens emerge, to begin their total conquest of planet Earth. Evolutionarily superior and armed with powerful technology, they begin their programme of human extermination, making their remorseless way towards the capital. Society is disintegrating and humanity faces obliteration, but one man, the narrator of this story, sets out across the desolate wasteland to find his wife. 
 
This hardback is part of VINTAGE COLLECTOR’S CLASSICS, a series of luxurious books especially crafted for collectors and fans of beautiful special editions. Sumptuous design meets the highest quality production. Discover timeless classics beautifully bound for every bookshelf.

The War of the Worlds

Bruce Chatwin

As Seen on BBC Between the Covers 
 
This is Chatwin's unforgettable novel of a man in war-torn Communist Prague, driven to protect his collection of porcelain figurines at any cost. 
 
Bruce Chatwin's bestselling novel traces the fortunes of the enigmatic and unconventional hero, Kaspar Utz. Despite the restrictions of Cold War Czechoslovakia, Utz asserts his individuality through his devotion to his precious collection of Meissen porcelain. Although Utz is permitted to leave the country each year, and considers defecting each time, he is not allowed to take his porcelain with him and so he always returns to his Czech home, a prisoner both of the Communist state and of his collection. 
 
'Chatwin at his most erudite and evocative' New York Times 
 
'His final tour de force... a pristine miniature' Independent 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

Arthur Koestler

This was the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy on ends and means - the other two are THE GLADIATORS and DARKNESS AT NOON - and the first he wrote in English.  The central theme is the conflict between morality and expediency, and in this novel Koestler worked it out in terms of individual psychology.  Peter Slavek starts out as a brave young revolutionary, but suffers a breakdown.  On the analyst's couch he is made to discover, in Koestler's own words, 'that his crusading zeal was derived from unconscious guilt'.

Arrival and Departure

Nevil Shute

When Tom Cutter hires Constantine Shaklin as an engineer in his air freight business, he little realises the extraordinary gifts of his new recruit. Shaklin possesses a religious power which inspires everyone he meets to a new faith and hope for humanity. As Cutter's business grows across Asia, so does Shaklin's fame, until he is widely regarded as a unifying deity. Though he struggles to believe Shaklin is indeed divine, the friendship will transform Cutter's life.

Round the Bend

Various

Discover the dark, whimsical wonder of ancient Korea in this spellbinding hardback collection of magical tales told and retold across the centuries. 
 
Leave behind drab, dark nights to battle the moonlit snowstorms of the winter mountains, shiver at the uncanny horror of the wild-cat woman, explore the enchanted halls of the fairy palace, and follow the strange cries that beckon from beneath the Mysterious Hoi Tree. 
 
The Sky Bridge of Birds brings together some of the best, most bewitching Korean folk stories from across the ages in one new beautiful hardback collection. Carefully commited to writing during the turn of the twenieth cenutry by a unique set of folklorists, the tales of yore presented in this new anthology will transport readers to a time of myth and mystery.

The Sky Bridge of Birds

Classic Korean Folk Tales

Rosemary Tonks

Fun, witty and sun-soaked – literary cartwheels and seaside capers from the astoundingly brilliant mid-century writer who destroyed her own books. 
 
Great friends, Mimi and Caroline, are off on holiday to a beautiful Italian island. There they find themselves part of an eccentric cast of characters including their debonair host and his mistress, a relentless venture capitalist and a villain in the form of the local dentist. There is also Beetle, with whom Mimi is completely and simply in love. As everyone relaxes into island living and the demands of real life drift away, the holiday hijinks culminate in a very Mediterranean prank – the cutting down of the dentist’s prize lemon tree. 
 
Back in print after many decades, this is a glorious novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks. 
 
'Everyone could do with a bit of Tonks in their lives' Stewart Lee 
 
‘Tonks throws out aphorisms, and scorn, like loose change’ London Review of Books

Businessmen as Lovers

Ai Qing

A timeless, visionary collection of poems from one of China's most acclaimed poets-now available in English for the first time in a generation and featuring a foreword by his son, contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei 
 
One of the most influential poets in Chinese history, Ai Qing is mostly unknown to Western readers, but his work has shaped the nature of poetry in China for decades. Born between the fall of imperial Manchurian rule and the establishment of the Communist People's Republic, Ai Qing was at one time an intimate of Mao Zedong. He would eventually fall out with the leader and be sentenced to hard labor during the Cultural Revolution, when he was exiled to the remote part of the country known as "Little Siberia" with his family, including his son, Ai Weiwei. 
 
 In his work, Ai Qing tells the story of a China convulsing in change, leaving behind a legacy of feudalism and imperialism but uncertain what the future will hold. Breaking with traditional forms of Chinese poetry, Ai Qing innovatively adapted free verse, writing with a simple sincerity in clear lines that could be understood by everyday readers. Selected Poems of Ai Qing is an extraordinary collection that traces the powerful inner life of this influential poet who crafted poems of protest, who longed for a newer, happier age, and who wrote with a profound lyricism that reaches deep into the heart of the reader.

Selected Poems

Yukio Mishima

Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial families, a new and powerful elite. 
 
Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family &ndash; members of the waning aristocracy &ndash; but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko. His devoted friend Honda watches from the sidelines. It is only when Satoko is engaged to a royal prince that Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion. 
 
'An austere love story, probably my favourite of his novels' David Mitchell, Independent on Sunday 
 
'[Mishima's] best work, unnerving as it may be, still casts a spell; and I suspect it will retain its dark radiance' Guardian

Spring Snow

Mervyn Peake

Equipped with love, Mr Harold Pye lands on the island of Sark, his mission to convert the islanders into a crusading force for the undiluted goodness that he feels within. The extraordinary inhabitants of the island range from the formidable Miss George in her purple busby to the wanton, raven-haired Tintagieu, 'five foot three inches of sex'. Mr Pye, however, is prone to excess and in the increasingly personalised struggle between good and evil, excess is very nearly his downfall.

Mr Pye

Chi Zijian

'A long-time confidante of the rain and snow, I am ninety years old. The rain and snow have weathered me, and I too have weathered them' 
 
At the end of the twentieth century an old woman sits among the birch trees and reflects on the joys and tragedies that have befallen her people. A member of the Evenki tribe who wander the forests of north-eastern China, hers was a life lived in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel. 
 
Then, in the 1930s, the intimate, secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China. The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the brutal conflict that marks the beginning of the end of life as they know it. 
 
'An atmospheric modern folk-tale, the saga of the Evenki clan of Inner Mongolia - nomadic reindeer herders whose traditional life alongside the Argun river endured unchanged for centuries... This is a fitting tribute to the Evenki by a writer of rare talent' Financial Times 
 
VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.

The Last Quarter of the Moon

A novel from the Vintage Earth collection

Xiaolu Guo

Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first arrives in London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the language a muddle of personal pronouns and moody verbs. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker… 
 
Selected from the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo 
 
 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: 
Babies by Anne Enright 
 Depression by William Styron 
 Race by Toni Morrison 
 Home by Salman Rushdie

Language

Vintage Minis

Angela Carter

‘I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in.’ So says Angela Carter of this collection, written during a period living in Toyko. These exotic, sensuous stories represent Carter’s first major achievement in the short story form. Lush imaginary forests, a murderous puppet show and an expressionistic vision of Japan: each one instantly conjures an atmosphere, dark and luminous in turn, and from the recognisably daring imagination of one of the great twentieth-century stylists.

Fireworks

W. Somerset Maugham

Maugham spent the winter months of 1919 travelling fifteen hundred miles up the Yangtze river. Always more interested in people than places, he noted down acute and finely crafted sketches of those he met on countless scraps of paper. In the resulting collection we encounter Western missionaries, army officers and company managers who are culturally out of their depth in the immensity of the Chinese civilisation. Maugham keenly observes, and gently ridicules, their dogged and oblivious persistence with the life they know.

On A Chinese Screen

Kurt Vonnegut

'Although it is set in the near future, Hocus Pocus is the most topical, realistic Vonnegut novel to date, and shows the struggle of an artist a little impatient with allegory and more than a little impatient with his own country' - New York Times Book Review 
 
Some get all the luck – but not Eugene Debs Hartke. Ex-Vietnam vet, ex-college professor, and now a TB-stricken inmate at Tarkington State Reformatory, his life has been warped by one ludicrous farce after another. Here, on scraps of paper pilfered from the prison library, he recounts his own story for posterity, revealing the hypocrisy and injustices of a world that just doesn’t want him to thrive.

Hocus Pocus

Gut-wrenching, ingenious, absolutely hilarious, this is the rediscovered story of woman's desperate quest for freedom. 
 
'I'm thirty, and I'm stuck' 
 
Arabella is on an increasingly desperate quest for freedom from her overbearing father and her conspicuously absent brother. But her desire for self-actualisation only ends up leading her into the orbit of a happily married man. A spiky, self-conscious love affair begins, complete with awful dinner dates, devastating kisses and agonising introspection. Can Arabella realise what she wants? Can she escape the trap of being sexy, good and likable? 
 
Back in print after many decades, this is an outstanding novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks. 
 
'Salted with wit and peppered with clever images' Guardian 
 
‘At their best, the novels are feats of Tonks’s earlier personality, shining and acrid in its ‘fierce hot-blooded sulkiness’… the glittering triumph of an unscathable ego’ London Review of Books 
 
‘Writing like this…is far too beautiful and accomplished to be kept off the shelf. It catches like nothing else the smogs, the rodentine genes, the murky post-War grays, the lurking sexual violence of London’ Michael Hoffman, Poetry Foundation

The Way Out of Berkeley Square

Brilliantly funny and brutal, this is the story of one woman’s escape from the clutches of polite society, by the incredible mid-century writer who destroyed her own books. 
 
‘No matter her insistence that she just dashed them off to make ‘a lot of red-hot money’ – Tonks's novels are thrillingly strange things. She had the knack’ London Review of Books 
 
Sophie’s mother knows exactly how to needle her. Sophie’s lover Philip knows how to stab her in the heart. She may be clever, charming and smart but is Sophie destined to be an eternal bit-part? 
 
After a particularly callous throwaway remark from Philip, Sophie knows she must break away – from him, from her mother, from the snobbery of her Hampstead Heath upbringing. Being good and agreeable has brought nothing but loneliness; setting out alone might finally bring Sophie satisfaction. 
 
Back in print after many decades, this novel is a piece of dynamite, written by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks. 
 
'A bubbly, empathetic and ultimately lovely novel of a belated coming-of-age' New York Times 
 
'Nobody writes about angsty women like Tonks' The Millions

The Halt During the Chase

Pai Hsien-yung

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.

Taipei People

Mary Lynn Bracht

'Look for your sister after each dive. Never forget. If you see her, you are safe.' 
 
This is the story of Hana and her little sister Emi, who are part of an island community of haenyo, women who make their living from free diving off the southernmost tip of Korea. One day Hana sees a Japanese soldier heading for where Emi is guarding the day's catch on the beach. Saving her sister, Hana herself is captured and forced to become a "comfort woman" in a Japanese military brothel. 
 
Moving between Hana in 1943 and Emi as an elderly woman today, White Chrysanthemum sheds light on a devastating history - and how the bond of sisterhood is strong enough to endure the evils of war. 
 
Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.

White Chrysanthemum

David Grossman

Momik, the only child of two survivors, is brought up in Israel by a family seeking to ignore the past. No-one will explain to him what life was like 'Over There' or what the 'Nazi Beast' is. His 9-year-old mind imagines a Nazi Beast hiding in the cellar, waiting to feed on Jews. Momik increasingly shields himself from all feeling and attachment. But through the stories his great-uncle tells him-the same stories he told the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp-Momik, too, becomes "infected with humanity." 
 
See Under: Love is a luminously imaginative and profoundly affecting work.

See Under Love

Boris Pasternak

Read this stunning new translation of Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the acclaimed translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. 
 
Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago is the epic story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Yuri Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds, and in love with the tender and beautiful nurse Lara. 
 
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have restored the rhythms, tone, precision, and poetry of Pasternak's original, bringing this classic of world literature gloriously to life for a new generation of readers. 
 
 The Vintage Classics Russians Series - sumptuous editions of the greatest books to come out of Russia during the most tumultuous period in its history.

Doctor Zhivago (Vintage Classic Russians Series)

Mishima&rsquo;s literary powers are on full display in his penultimate novel, a meditation on reincarnation and Buddhist philosophy. 
 
Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business. He is granted an audience with a young Thai princess known as 'Moonlight', an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. Convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, he undertakes a long, arduous pilgrimage to the holy places of India. There he encounters her again. But the princess has become one more embodiment of all that Honda cannot possess. 
 
'An elegy to the loss of pureness in the Japanese national spirit' Japan Times

The Temple of Dawn

Pierre Boulle

The Bridge on the River Kwai tells the story of three POWs who endure the hell of the Japanese camps on the Burma-Siam railway - Colonel Nicholson, a man prepared to sacrifice his life but not his dignity; Major Warden, a modest hero, saboteur and deadly killer; Commander Shears, who escaped from hell but was sent back. 
 
Ordered by the Japanese to build a bridge, the Colonel refuses, as it is against regulations for officers to work with other ranks. The Japanese give way but, to prove a point of British superiority, construction of the bridge goes ahead - at great cost to the men under Nicholson's command.

The Bridge On The River Kwai

Eileen Chang

From one of the greatest Chinese authors of the twentieth century, these delicate stories illuminate the most intimate matters of the human heart - now available in English for the very first time. 
 
Since childhood, Ruliang has had the peculiar habit of sketching a certain profile in the margins of his books. He has mapped out this same face, over and over again, without knowing why - until he meets Cythnia. As brief and evocative as sketches themselves, these five stories of lost loves, nostalgia and migration reveal a master of feeling at the peak of her powers. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Young at the Time

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

Junichiro Tanizaki

A seductive psychological thriller about obsession, jealousy and deceit - and a Japanese queer classic. Sonoko must tell her story. Listen and decide for yourself. 
 
Sonoko Kakiuchi is a cultured Osaka lady in an uninspiring marriage. When she decides to take an art class in town she meets the extraordinary Mitsuko, a woman as beautiful and charismatic as she is cunning. They begin a passionate affair but as Sonoko’s infatuation with Mitsuko deepens, she finds herself sinking ever-further into a quicksand of sex, humiliation and deceit. 
 
‘A riveting tale of malevolent corruption fatally masked by a terrible and deceptive beauty’ Kirkus Reviews 
 
‘Classic Tanizaki…exuberant storytelling within a multi-layered narrative of sexual obsession’ Japan Times 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KRISTEN ROUPENIAN

Quicksand

Rudyard Kipling

'No summary can do this marvellous, rich and unforgettable novel anything like justice' Philip Pullman 
 
Kim is an orphan who earns his living begging on the streets of Lahore. One day he befriends an aged Tibetan Lama who, although content to live simply in India, is a rich and powerful abbot in his own country. When the Lama recruits Kim as a disciple and then funds his education at an English public school an adventure begins that will take the unlikely pair to the Himalayas on a thrilling journey of espionage and enlightenment. 
 
'The greatest of all Kipling's books' E. M. Forster

From the acclaimed translators of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, a stunning new translation of Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece, the first since the 1958 original. 
 
Banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, Doctor Zhivago is the epic story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Yuri Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds, and in love with the tender and beautiful nurse Lara. 
 
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have restored the rhythms, tone, precision, and poetry of Pasternak's original, bringing this classic of world literature gloriously to life for a new generation of readers.

Doctor Zhivago

'She's no good, that girl. Much too individualistic' 
 
This is the story of Fenfang who, determined to carve out a life more independent than her provincial roots, gets a job as a film extra in Beijing. But living a modern life is not as easy as it looks in this tumultuous, messy city. Grappling with the narrow world of cinema, an outworn Communist regime, and the city's far-from-progressive attitudes to women, charismatic Fenfang finds her true freedom in the one place she never expected. 
 
20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is a sparkling and wry coming-of-age story about the changing identity of women in contemporary China. 
 
Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

Bao Ninh

Based on the true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, The Sorrow of War is revered as the &lsquo;All Quiet on the Western Front for our era&rsquo;. 
 
Kien&rsquo;s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows the area well &ndash; this was where, in the dry season of 1969, his battalion was obliterated by American napalm and helicopter gunfire. Kien was one of only ten survivors. This book is his attempt to understand the eleven years of his life he gave to a senseless war. 
 
'A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful agonising love story... a magnificent achievement' Independent 
 
TRANSLATED BY FRANK PALMOS AND PHAN THANH HAO 
 
This series of war novels from Vintage Classics presents eight powerful stories about the horror and waste of war - each a passionate plea to prevent its repetition.

The Sorrow of War

In a remote fishing village in Japan, two very different young people fall in love. 
 
Shinji is a hard-working fisherman, Hatsue is the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. She is also a diver for pearls and seaweed with the other women of the community. Shinji is entranced at the sight of Hatsue in the twilight on the beach and a relationship develops via secret notes and meetings. But when the villagers&rsquo; gossip threatens to divide them permanently, Shinji must risk his life to prove his worth. 
 
&lsquo;A work of art...altogether a joyous and lovely thing&rsquo; New York Times 
 
&lsquo;A sunny masterpiece&rsquo; Los Angeles Times

The Sound of Waves

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