Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Lynne Reid Banks

Jane's son David is eight years old and Jane is filled with doubts as he grows up without a father. Toby, her first love, has gone to Israel after the collapse of his marriage to Melissa. Then there is Andy, close at hand, a complex personality with his own problem son. In the background is Terry, David's father, an amorphous shadow hanging over them. 
 
 
This intense, compassionate novel completes the the trilogy which began with The L-Shaped Room,

Two Is Lonely

Robert Pirsig

An odyssey into life's challenging philosophical questions during an unforgettable summer motorcycle trip, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance transformed a generation and continues to inspire millions. 
 
One of the most influential books written in the past half-century, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful examination of how we live and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Following a father and his young son on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, to complete the Chautauqua spiritual journey, it is a story of love, fear, growth, discovery and acceptance. Both personal and philosophical, it is a compelling study of relationships, values, and eventually, enlightenment and meaning - resonant with the confusions and wonders of existence. 
 
Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974. 
 
'The book is inspired, original...the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent' New Yorker 
 
'Mr Pirsig has written a work of great, perhaps urgent, importance... Read this book' Observer

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

An Inquiry into Values

Elizabeth Bowen

Bowen's Court describes the history of one Anglo-Irish family in County Cork from the Cromwellian settlement until 1959, when Elizabeth Bowen was forced to sell the family house she loved. Bowen reviews ten generations of her family, representatives of the Protestant Irish gentry whose lives were dominated by property, lawsuits, formidable matriarchs, violent conflicts, hunting, drinking, and self-destructive fantasies. 
 
Seven Winters recalls with endearing candour Bowen's family and her Dublin childhood as seen through the eyes of a child who could not read till she was seven and who fed her imagination only on sights and sounds.

Bowen's Court & Seven Winters

Mark Doty

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? 
 
When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care, to join Arden, the black retriever. As Beau bounds back to life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days - their tenacity, loyalty and love inspiring him when all else fails.

Dog Years

A Memoir

Tim Parks

How do we find calm in our frantic modern world? Tim Parks – lifelong sceptic of all things spiritual - finds himself on a Buddhist meditation retreat trying to answer this very question. With brutal honesty and dry wit, he recounts his journey from disbelief to something approaching inner peace and tackles one of the great mysteries of our time – how to survive in this modern age. 
 
Selected from the book Teach us to Sit Still by Tim Parks 
 
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: 
Swimming by Roger Deakin 
Motherhood by Helen Simpson 
Work by Joseph Heller 
Liberty by Virginia Woolf

Calm

Vintage Minis

Rose Tremain

What is the secret to true friendship? Is it really love’s quieter relation or something stronger and more profound? And where does the line between the two lie? Rose Tremain looks at two unlikely lifelong friendships, which – though tested – prove unbreakable. Thought-provoking and life-affirming, this is at once an examination and a celebration of friendship in all its glorious complexity. 
 
Selected from the books Restoration and The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain 
 
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 
Language by Xiaolu Guo 
Desire by Haruki Murakami 
Freedom by Margaret Atwood

Friendship

Yanis Varoufakis

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
How do we choose between what is fair and just, and what our debtors demand of us? Yanis Varoufakis was put in such a dilemma in 2015 when he became the finance minister of Greece. In this rousing book, he charts the absurdities that underpin calls for austerity, as well as his own battles with a bureaucracy bent on ignoring the human cost of its every action. Passionately outspoken and tuned to the voices of the oppressed, Varoufakis presents a guide to modern economics, and its threat to democracy, like no other. 
 
Selected from the books And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Adults in the Room

Austerity

Nigella Lawson

In this inspiring, witty and eminently sensible book, Nigella Lawson sets out a manifesto for how to cook (and eat) good food every day with a minimum of fuss. From basic roast chicken and pea risotto to white truffles and Turkish Delight figs, Nigella brings the joy back into the kitchen. 
 
Selected from the books How to Eat and Kitchen by Nigella Lawson 
 
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 
Home by Salman Rushdie 
Summer by Laurie Lee 
Liberty by Virginia Woolf

Eating

Anne Enright

Babies: our biggest mystery and our most natural consequence, our hardest test and our enduring love. Anne Enright describes the intensity, bewilderment and extravagant happiness of her experience of having babies, from the exhaustion of early pregnancy to first smiles and becoming acquainted with the long reaches of the night. Everyone, from parents to the mildly curious, can delight in Enright’s funny, eloquent and unsentimental account of having babies. 
 
Selected from the book Making Babies by Anne Enright 
 
 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: 
Fatherhood by Karl Ove Knausgaard 
Motherhood by Helen Simpson 
Drinking by John Cheever 
Sisters by Louisa May Alcott

Babies

William Styron

How does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist William Styron had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, Styron describes an illness that reduced him from a successful writer to a man arranging his own destruction. He lived to give us this gripping description of his descent into mental anguish, and his eventual success in overcoming a little-understood yet very common condition. 
 
The unabridged text of Darkness Visible by William Styron 
 
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: 
Swimming by Roger Deakin 
Babies by Anne Enright 
Calm by Tim Parks 
Work by Joseph Heller

Depression

This is a story of depression a condition that reduced William Styron from a person enjoying life and success as an acclaimed writer, to a man engulfed and menaced by mental anguish. With profound insight and remarkable candor, Styron tracks the progress of his madness, from the smothering misery and exhaustion, to the agony of composing his own suicide note and his eventual, hard-won recovery. Illuminating an illness that affects millions but which remains widely misunderstood, this book is about the darkness of depression, but it is also ultimately about survival and redemption.

Darkness Visible

Naomi Wolf

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity . 
 
Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma – how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this iconic, gripping and frank exposé, Naomi Wolf exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With pertinent and intelligent examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are consumed by this destructive obsession. 
 
‘Essential reading’ Guardian 
 
‘A smart, angry, insightful book, and a clarion call to freedom. Every woman should read it’ Gloria Steinem

The Beauty Myth

How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women

José Saramago

A delightful insight into the formation of an artist who would become one of the world's most respected writers. 
 
Born in 1922 in the tiny Portuguese village of Azinhaga, José Saramago was only a baby when his family moved to a series of cramped lodgings in a working-class neighbourhood of Lisbon. Nevertheless, he would return to the village throughout his early life, its river and olive groves seeping deep into his memory. 
 
 Shifting between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this touching book is a mosaic of memories. Written with characteristic wit and honesty, Small Memories traces the formation of an artist always fascinated by language and who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world's most respected writers.

Small Memories

Sigmund Freud

The Essentials of Psycho-analysis is the definitive collection of Sigmund Freud's writing. It covers the themes that Freud explored in his work from the meaning of dreams and the concept of the unconscious, instinctual and sexual life to the structure of the personality. Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating, the pieces collected here are the perfect guide to the principle concepts of psycho-analysis.

The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form 
 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
Every day, women around the world are confronted with a dilemma – how to look. In a society embroiled in a cult of female beauty and youthfulness, pressure on women to conform physically is constant and all-pervading. In this shortened edition you will find the essence of Wolf’s groundbreaking book. It is a radical, gripping and frank exposé of the tyranny of the beauty myth, its oppressive function and the destructive obsession it engenders.

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