The Penguin English Library Edition of Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
'My hour is come ... the clock of eternity is about to strike, but its knell must be unheard by mortal ears!'
This violent, profound, baroque and blackly humorous novel is the story of Melmoth, who has sold his soul in exchange for immortality in a satanic bargain, and now preys on the helpless in their darkest moments, offering to ease their suffering if they will take his place and release him from his centuries of tortured wanderings. Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) blended Gothic fiction and psychological realism to create a work of hallucinatory power.
The Penguin English Library - beautiful editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the Second World War.
David Sedaris moved from New York to Paris where he attempted to learn French. His teacher, a sadist, declared that every day spent with him was like giving birth - the Caesarean way. These essays were inspired by the move.
The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic and the need for female solidarity, and includes her landmark piece 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'. 'The truth of her writing is as necessary today as it's ever been' Guardian
Living in the Blackwood family home with only her sister Constance and her Uncle Julian for company, Merricat just wants to preserve their delicate way of life. But ever since Constance was acquitted of murdering the rest of the family, the world isn't leaving the Blackwoods alone.
''A dark, seductive cocktail of a thriller, with a splash of black humour and a twist of horror.'' Francine Toon, author of Pine There was no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going on. Strange noises in the apartment. Impulsive behaviour. Intense dreams. It wasn''t like everything went wrong all at once. Shoplifting. Fighting. Blackouts. There must be a reasonable explanation for all this. ''It will scare the pants off you. It is a perfect horror novel.'' Paul Tremblay ''A short, sharp shocker . . . Relentlessly creepy.'' Sunday Times ''Deeply scary.'' The Times ''Terrifying.'' Daily Mail ''Sinister.'' Time Out
**WINNER of the EU Prize for Literature** 'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES 'Gripping, affecting, surprising. I inhaled it' LISA MCINERNEY 'Captivating, intelligent and courageous' IRISH TIMES 'Spectacular. At once grittily real, wildly magical and insanely alluring - a siren-song of a novel. DONAL RYAN 'Jan Carson seems to have invented a new Belfast in this gripping, surprising, exhilarating novel. RODDY DOYLE 'A brilliant, wry novel, fizzing with energy.' BARNEY NORRIS Dr Jonathan Murray fears his new-born daughter is not as harmless as she seems.
Sammy Agnew is wrestling with his dark past, and fears the violence in his blood lurks in his son, too.
The city is in flames and the authorities are losing control. As matters fall into frenzy, and as the lines between fantasy and truth, right and wrong, begin to blur, who will these two fathers choose to protect?
Dark, propulsive and thrillingly original, this tale of fierce familial love and sacrifice fizzes with magic and wonder.
Successive episodes in the death and burial of Addie Bundren are recounted by various members of the family circle, principally as they are carting their mother's coffin to Jefferson, Mississippi, in order to bury her among her people.
Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with it's five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than seafog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides. And although there's supposed to be a temporary truce between Stewart and the town's biggest crime family, it's soon clear that only Stewart is taking this promise of peace seriously. Before long Stu steps back into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt and all that it has lost him, uncovering ever darker stories. Soon his homecoming takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated. Tough, funny, fast-paced and touching, Stonemouth cracks open adolescence, love, brotherhood and vengeance in a rite of passage novel like no other.
**BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime**
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A JOYFUL 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF A COMING-OF-AGE CLASSIC
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‘There are few modern tales of first love and its disillusions that are as thoroughly realised, as brilliantly lewd, and as hilariously satisfying to men and women of all ages as this one’ - Rachel Cusk
Eighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban - doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for.
But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises...
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‘The perfect book’ - Meg Mason
‘The best possible company in this difficult world’ - Ann Patchett
‘A daisy bomb of joy’ - Maria Semple
‘Funny, charming, teeming with life, and real’ - Nick Hornby
‘I adored it … Redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine’ - Sophie Dahl
‘One of those books that when people have read it, they just push it into your hands silently: "You have to read this book, you will love this book." There’s no other book I love more’ - Caroline O'Donoghue, Sentimental Garbage
‘Reading it again is as comforting as eating toast and Marmite between clean, fresh sheets’ - Rachel Cooke, Sunday Times
‘Think Brideshead Revisited set in the 1970s, only sexier and much funnier. It kills me that I didn’t read it at university, when I really needed it’ - Meg Rosoff, New Statesman
Karoo is a professional fixer of other people's scripts and, by his own acknowledgement, he ruins them all. Calamity and comedy follows shambolic Saul Karoo as his life breaks down. He is a man prone to luck both good and bad, and when a young woman with a strange connection to his past shows up, the plot of his own life comes into sharp focus.
