Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Joseph Heller

Bob Slocum is anxious, bored and fearful of his job. So why is it he wants nothing more than the chance to speak at the next company convention? In this darkly satirical book, Joseph Heller takes us for a turn on the maddening hamster wheel of work. Heller’s workplace is a cradle of paranoia, bravado and nauseating banter, forever shadowed by that perennial question, who’s really running the show here? In Heller’s hands, our daily grind has never seemed so absurd. 
 
Selected from the book Something Happened by Joseph Heller 
 
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 
Liberty by Virginia Woolf 
Death by Julian Barnes

Work

Vintage Minis

Mark Haddon

‘Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark and everyone sailing under a different sky’ 
 
Where do you go if you can’t feel at home in your own family? When the people who made you can’t fathom who you become? In these three tales of quarrelling clans and fraught reunions, Mark Haddon shows family in its frank, unsparing yet frequently absurd light, and, in doing so charts a stormy course into the crucible of the self. 
 
Selected from The Pier Falls, The Red House and A Spot of Bother. 
 
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 
 
Discover the in the Vintage Minis ‘Head Space’ series: 
 
Recovery by Helen Macdonald 
Therapy by Stephen Grosz

Family

Louisa May Alcott

Your sister might be the kindred soul who knows you best, or the most alien being in your household; she might enrage you or inspire you; she might be your fiercest competitor or closest co-conspirator, but she'll always share with you a totally unique bond. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy are four of the most famous sisters in literature, and these stories of the joys and heartaches they share are a touching celebration of the special ties of sisterhood. 
 
Selected from the books Little Women and Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott 
 
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 
Babies by Anne Enright 
Love by Jeanette Winterson

Sisters

Toni Morrison

An exploration of race from one of the twentieth century’s primary chroniclers of the African American experience. 
 
Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on bringing their past home. Strange and unexpected, yet always stirring, Morrison’s writing on race sinks us deep into the heart and mind of our troubled humanity. 
 
 Includes selections from the books Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved by Toni Morrison 
 
‘She gave me permission to be unapologetically Black. She informed me of the power that resided in me. She validated me when the world questioned my humanity’ Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give 
 
 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: 
 Sisters by Louisa May Alcott 
 Love by Jeanette Winterson 
 Babies by Anne Enright 
 Language by Xiaolu Guo

Race

M. R. James

A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A bed that hasn’t been slept in is crumpled and distressed come the morning. A skeletal figure creeps closer and closer to the house where an unsuspecting family lie sleeping. In these chilling tales of the supernatural, M. R. James proves he truly is the master of the ghost story. 
 
Selected from the book Ghost Stories by M.R. James 
 
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 
Summer by Laurie Lee 
Friendship by Rose Tremain 
Love by Jeanette Winterson

Ghosts

F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see.’ 
 
The crackle of gin on ice, the first chords of the band, the low hum of gossip– whether you love or loathe parties, Fitzgerald writes them like no one else. From glittering occasions complete with an orchestra and dancing girls to a fist-fight at the end of a toddler’s birthday, this is a dazzling collection of party pieces from the master of celebration. 
 
Selected from The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night and Flappers and Philosophers 
 
 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

Parties

Helen Simpson

Enjoy Helen Simpson’s sharply funny, humane take on the everyday joys and struggles of motherhood in this perfect Mother’s Day gift. 
 
 Welcome to motherhood – a land of aching fatigue, constant self-sacrifice and thankless servitude, a land of bottomless devotion, small hands and feet like warm pink roses, and velvet kisses. Here is a land where men and women, once carefree and engrossed in work and sex, now try to solve age-old arguments and search fruitlessly for another hour in the day. Perhaps you know this land well, or perhaps you’re entering it for the first time – either way, you need these honest funny humane stories from an expert guide. 
 
Selected from Helen Simpson’s short story collections Dear George, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life and Constitutional 
 
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: 
Language by Xiaolu Guo 
Fatherhood by Karl Ove Knausgaard 
Eating by Nigella Lawson 
Drinking by John Cheever

Motherhood

John Cheever

What’s the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents’ liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done. Seen through the gin-lacquered looking glass of Cheever’s writing, your next drink may have you reaching for a lime and soda instead. 
 
Selected from the book Collected Stories by John Cheever 
 
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 
Eating by Nigella Lawson 
Calm by Tim Peaks 
Love by Jeanette Winterson

Drinking

Margaret Atwood

Can we ever be wholly free? 
 
In this book of breathtaking imaginary leaps that conjure dystopias and magical islands, Margaret Atwood holds a mirror up to our own world. The reflection we are faced with, of men and women in prisons literal and metaphorical, is frightening, but it is also a call to arms to speak and to act to preserve our freedom while we still can. And in that, there is hope. 
 
Selected from The Handmaid’s Tale and Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood. 
 
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

Freedom

Jane Austen

Why do we set so much store by marriage? Jane Austen was fascinated by this question, subjecting it to her forensic eye and wonderfully ironic wit again and again. Here are stolen glances and nervous advances, meddling parents and self-important cousins, society whisperings and the fluttering hearts of young lovers. All of them have their own views and expectations of marriage, and Austen’s are the wisest of all. 
 
Selected from the novels Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen. 
 
 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

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