- Table View
- List View
Of Mice and Men (Penguin Classics) (PDF)
by John SteinbeckNobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck, one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, offers a powerful but tragic tale in Of Mice and Men. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place.'George and his large, simple-minded friend Lennie are drifters, following wherever work leads them. Arriving in California's Salinas Valley, they get work on a ranch. If they can just stay out of trouble, George promises Lennie, then one day they might be able to get some land of their own and settle down some place. But kind-hearted, childlike Lennie is a victim of his own strength. Seen by others as a threat, he finds it impossible to control his emotions. And one day not even George will be able to save him from trouble.Of Mice and Men is a tragic and moving story of friendship, loneliness and the dispossessed.' A thriller, a gripping tale that you will not set down until it is finished.nbsp;
The Long Good-bye (PDF)
by Raymond ChandlerThe Long Good-bye is a classic novel by Raymond Chandler, the master of hard-boiled crime. Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?
Killzone: Ascendancy
by Sam Bradbury'There is no poetry or romance in war, it is brutal and ugly and terrifying and it turns men into animals - shrieking, screaming and running while destroying all in their path. It is survival'Visari, the vicious Helghast dictator, is vanquished, lying dead at the feet of ISA forces soldiers Sev and Rico. Yet the battle is far from over. Visari's death has wreaked havoc in the Helghast Empire, leaving a legacy of destruction. His last act of violence - a nuclear bomb - has decimated the Special Forces. Sev and Rico must complete their mission alone. They will fight to the death to keep the ruthless Helghast troops at bay. Based on Sony's bestselling game Killzone 3
Austerlitz (Modern Library Paperbacks Ser. #Vol. 521)
by Anthea Bell W. G. SebaldAusterlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe.In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years before. Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald's melancholic masterpiece.'Mesmeric, haunting and heartbreakingly tragic. Simply no other writer is writing or thinking on the same level as Sebald' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times'Greatness in literature is still possible' John Banville, Irish Times, Books of the Year'A work of obvious genius' Literary Review'A fusion of the mystical and the solid ... His art is a form of justice - there can be, I think, no higher aim' Evening Standard'Spellbindingly accomplished; a work of art' The Times Literary Supplement 'I have never read a book that provides such a powerful account of the devastation wrought by the dispersal of the Jews from Prague and their treatment by the Nazis' Observer'A great book by a great writer' Boyd Tonkin, IndependentW . G. Sebald was born in Wertach im Allgäu, Germany, in 1944 and died in December 2001. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland and Manchester. In 1996 he took up a position as an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester and settled permanently in England in 1970. He was Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, Vertigo, Austerlitz, After Nature, On the Natural History of Destruction, Campo Santo, Unrecounted, A Place in the Country. His selected poetry is published in a volume called Across the Land and the Water.
The Echo Chamber
by Luke WilliamsEnter the world of Evie Steppman, born into the dying days of the British Empire in Nigeria. It's loud and cacophonous. Why? Because Evie can hear things no one else can. Although she's too young to understand all the sounds she takes in, she hoards them in a vast internal sonic archive. Today, alone in an attic in Scotland, Evie's powers of hearing are starting to fade, and she must write her story before it disintegrates into a meaningless din. But the attic itself is not as quiet as she hoped. The scratching of mice, the hum of traffic, the tic-toc of a pocket watch and countless other sounds merge with the noises of Evie's past: her time in the womb, her childhood in Nigeria, her travels across America with her lover . . .
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth
by Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy began his trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, in his early twenties. Although he would in his old age famously dismiss it as an 'awkward mixture of fact and fiction', generations of readers have not agreed, finding the novel to be a charming and insightful portrait of inner growth against the background of a world limned with extraordinary clarity, grace and colour. Evident too in its brilliant account of a young person's emerging awareness of the world and of his place within it are many of the stances, techniques and themes that would come to full flower in the immortal War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and in the other great works of Tolstoy's maturity.
The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel Of Rumi (Bride Series)
by Elif Shafak*The international bestseller*"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..." Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored. . . 'Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love' Metro'Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent' Daily Telegraph'The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself' The Times
Mirage: Oregon Files #9 (The Oregon Files #9)
by Clive Cussler Jack Du BrulMirage is the new heart-in-the-mouth adventure thriller in the Oregon Files from Clive Cussler.October 1943. A US Navy warship vanishes at sea off the coast of Philadelphia. Its disappearance was rumoured to have been a result of a classified military experiment into the effects of electromagnetic radiation. The story has long since been considered a hoax.But Juan Cabrillo and his colleagues aboard the top-secret spy ship Oregon aren't convinced.Now, a powerful new weapon is for sale - one linked to genius inventor Nikola Telsa, who was working with the Navy when he died in 1943. Was he responsible for the original Philadelphia experiment? Are his notes in the hands of his enemies?As Cabrillo and his crew race to unearth the truth they discover that stakes are dangerously high. And it may already be too late . . .Offering an irresistible combination of breakneck pace and audacious plotting that Clive Cussler has made his own, Mirage is state-of-the-art action-adventure. The ninth title in the Oregon Files series, it is preceded by The Jungle and The Silent Sea.Praise for Clive Cussler:'Cussler is hard to beat' Daily Mail'The Adventure King' Sunday Express'Clive Cussler is the guy I read' Tom Clancy
The Invisible Bridge (Vintage Contemporaries Ser.)
by Julie OrringerLONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTIONParis, 1937. Andras Lévi, an architecture student, has arrived from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to Clara Morgenstern a young widow living in the city. When Andras meets Clara he is drawn deeply into her extraordinary and secret life, just as Europe's unfolding tragedy sends them both into a state of terrifying uncertainty.From a remote Hungarian village to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the despair of Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labour camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the story of a marriage tested by disaster and of a family, threatened with annihilation, bound by love and history.
How It All Began (Platinum Readers Circle (center Point) Ser.)
by Penelope LivelyHow It All Began is the wonderful new novel from Booker Prize winner Penelope LivelyWhen . . . Charlotte is mugged and breaks her hip, her daughter Rose cannot accompany her employer Lord Peters to Manchester, which means his niece Marion has to go instead, which means she sends a text to her lover which is intercepted by his wife, which is . . . just the beginning in the ensuing chain of life-altering events.In this engaging, utterly absorbing and brilliantly told novel, Penelope Lively shows us how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal themselves, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed.Funny, humane, touching, sly and sympathetic, How It All Began is a brilliant sleight of hand from an author at the top of her game.'Contains some of Lively's funniest and most enjoyable character studies . . . she remains a sublime storyteller'Guardian'Deeply comical, essentially kind-hearted, wonderfully written and seasoned with a rare wisdom' Literary Review'More stylish than many writers half her age . . . Lively knows a thing or two about storytelling . . . her candour is refreshing, and reminds us that you don't have to lie to yourself to live life finely until the very end' The TimesPenelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London.
The Kid: A Novel (Bride Series)
by SapphireIn Push Sapphire told the story of Precious Jones and in 2009 her book was adapted into the Oscar-winning film Precious. The Kid is Sapphire's heartbreaking sequel to Push.Abdul is nine years old when his mother dies. Parentless, he is sent to a foster home and then to a Catholic orphanage. But the priests charged to care for him abuse his trust terribly.Abdul reacts in the most frightening way imaginable. Soon he is trapped in a dark cycle of sexual violence and betrayal. Yet through dance, in controlling his body, he discovers a way he might somehow break free and become himself . . .A harrowing and powerful novel set in New York, The Kid is a portrait of a boy growing up in a cruel world.'Prepare to be harrowed; I was sobbing by the end of the first chapter . . . [Sapphire] writes with a burning anger that gives this novel an explosive power' The Times'Hardcore. Brave, bold, uncompromising. The breathtaking velocity and visceral power of Sapphire's prose soars off the page' Observer'Captures the gruelling heartbreak of trying to love anything when the world doesn't love you enough' New York Herald Tribune'A dark and punishing tale' Big Issue'A fearless writer and thinker of enormous talent, insight and skill. Abdul's story is frighteningly realistic. A consummate work of art, style and brains. Full of the energy of pain, rage, grief and doubt' List'Devastating. An accomplished work of art . . . hard to forget' Los Angeles Times'Urgent, troubling, harrowing, masterfully narrated, powerful' DivaSapphire is the author of two poetry collections, Black Wings and Blind Angels and American Dreams and the bestselling novel Push. The film adaptation of her novel, Precious, received the Academy Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress, in addition to the Grand Jury Prize and Audience awards in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance. In 2009 she was a recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship. She lives in New York City.
The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford
by Nancy MitfordAvailable together for the first time in many years, and here in one edition, are ALL eight of Nancy Mitford's sparklingly astute, hilarious and completely unputdownable novels, with a new introduction by India Knight. Published over a period of 30 years, they provide a wonderful glimpse of the bright young things of the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties in the city and in the shires; firmly ensconced at home or making a go of it abroad; and what the upper classes really got up to in peace and in war.
The Second Penguin Book of English Short Stories (The Penguin Book of English Short Stories)
by Christopher DolleyThe short story is enjoying a revival all the more encouraging when viewed against the gloom surrounding the future of the literary novel . . .'Fifteen further short stories from the golden age of the short story offer more gems from some of the masters of the genre. Whether it is the lyrical prose of Thomas Hardy or the irreverent wit of Kingsley Amis, the monologues of Virgina Woolf or Muriel Spark, the authors here demonstrate that the vitality of the form remains as compelling today as when these stories were originally published.
The Aftermath: Soon to Be a Major Film Starring Keira Knightley
by Rhidian BrookSOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM STARRING KEIRA KNIGHTLEYSet in post-war Germany, the international bestseller The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook is a stunning emotional thriller about our fiercest loyalties and our deepest desires.In the bitter winter of 1946, Rachael Morgan arrives with her only remaining son Edmund in the ruins of Hamburg. Here she is reunited with her husband Lewis, a British colonel charged with rebuilding the shattered city. But as they set off for their new home, Rachael is stunned to discover that Lewis has made an extraordinary decision: they will be sharing the grand house with its previous owners, a German widower and his troubled daughter. In this charged atmosphere, enmity and grief give way to passion and betrayal.'Profoundly moving, beautifully written. Ponders issues of decency, guilt and forgiveness' Independent'Terrific. Suspicion, resentment and misunderstanding haunt this city. Richly atmospheric' Sunday Telegraph'An extraordinary read' Daily Mail
Crusade (The Making of England Quartet #2)
by Stewart Binns1072 - England is firmly under the heel of its new Norman rulers. The few survivors of the English resistance look to Edgar the Atheling, the rightful heir to the English throne, to overthrow William the Conqueror. Years of intrigue and vicious civil war follow: brother against brother, family against family, friend against friend.In the face of chaos and death, Edgar and his allies form a secret brotherhood, pledging to fight for justice and freedom wherever they are denied. But soon they are called to fight for an even greater cause: the plight of the Holy Land. Embarking on the epic First Crusade to recapture Jerusalem, together they will participate in some of the cruellest battles the world has ever known, the savage Siege of Antioch and the brutal Fall of Jerusalem, and together they will fight to the death.
Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals
by Niall FergusonWhat if Britain had stayed out of the First World War? What if Germany had won the Second? How would England look if there had been no Cromwell? What would the world be like if Communism had never collapsed? And what if John F. Kennedy had lived?In this acclaimed book, leading historians from Andrew Roberts to Michael Burleigh explore what might have been if nine of the most decisive moments in modern history had never happened.
The Lower River
by Paul TherouxAward-winning writer Paul Theroux draws upon personal experience of living in Malawi in his eye-opening novel, about one man's return to an Africa he no longer recognises, The Lower River. Decades ago Massachusetts salesman Ellis Hock spent four years in Africa - and the continent has never left him. So when his wife walks out and his business goes belly up, Ellis turns back to the one place in which he briefly found happiness.Yet returning to the village of Malabo shocks him. The school he built is a ruin. The people he remembers are poor, apathetic, hostile. The country labours as if under a great, invisible burden. However, Ellis is determined. This is his escape, a paradise regained.But escape can be a snare, a trap for the unwary . . .The Lower River is a hypnotic, compelling and brilliant return to a terrain no one has ever written better about than Paul Theroux: the tragic stage of modern Africa, AIDS-ravaged and despairing in the face of creeping consumerism, greed and dependence.'Remarkable, admirable, riveting, heartbreaking. A masterly, moving portrait of how Africa ensnares and enchants' Guardian'Terrific writing. Theroux's senses are always on full alert' Evening Standard'Powerful, vivid, shocking' The Times'Theroux invests this very 21st-century journey into the heart of ennui with a caustic bite, like the snakes that pop up throughout' Metro'The sense of menace is masterful. Theroux has never written a better novel' Sunday TelegraphAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Stranger at the Palazzo d'Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul's File, The Family Arsenal, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.
Ghost Detectives: The Lost Bride (Ghost Detectives)
by Emily MasonSome ghosts are haunted by their past. When the local museum needs volunteers to help it reopen, Abi, Hannah, Sarah and Grace sign up. The girls discover that the museum has a link to the spirit world when they find an ancient diary and meet a ghost bride from another century. She can't rest in peace until she finds out why her true love left her at the altar. The Ghost Detectives have a romantic first mystery to solve!
Ghost Detectives: The Missing Dancer (Ghost Detectives)
by Emily MasonGhost Detective: The Lost Dancer is brilliant for younger fans of the spy series The Gallagher Girls and also paranormal fiction. Girls of 9+ will love the gentle romance, school friendships and thrilling detective case to be solved. The perfect series for aspiring tweens.Some ghosts are haunted by their past . . .When Abi, Sarah , Hannah and Grace are visited by the ghost of a littl lost girl trying to dance one last time so that her spirit can rest, they jump at the chance to help. But this Ghost Detective case seems to be shrouded in secrets and everywhere they look, people get upset. With clues runing out, can the Ghost Detectives solve the mystery of the missing dancer?Emily Mason is an exciting new Irish author. Her previous book Ghost Detective: The Lost Bride was her debut novel for Puffin. Emily has been a bookworm since she was little. She is now an editor and author but has yet to see any ghosts herself...
I'm Not Here to Give a Speech
by Gabriel Garcia MarquezFor the first time, the speeches of prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez are translated into English and published together in a collected edition. These writings span Marquez's entire life: from his earliest days, speaking as a teenager graduating high school, to his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. Taken as a whole, this collection offers a unique and fascinating insight into Marquez's long career, highlighting his concerns and beliefs both as a writer and as a man.Marquez was beloved throughout his life and celebrated posthumously as a true literary genius. This collection of previously unseen material, written in his distinctively rich and expressive style, will appeal to any Marquez fan.
You Came Back: A Novel
by Christopher CoakeAn astonishing first novel about love and belief, and the difficulty of letting goThirty-something Midwesterner Mark Fife believes he has moved on from the accidental death of his young son and the subsequent break-up of his marriage. He's successful, he's in love again and he believes he's mastered his own memories. But then he's contacted by a strange woman who tells him she's living in his old house, the house where Brendan died, and she's convinced it's haunted by Brendan's ghost.Mark doesn't believe in ghosts, but his distressed ex-wife does, and Mark so much wants to help her. So much so that he begins to doubt his own beliefs and motives. And as he flirts with the idea of trying to contact his son, he begins to endanger the relationships that matter now in his life, with his fiancee Allison and his tough and sceptical father. You Came Back is a wonderfully affecting read about the nature of belief and bereavement, about old loves and new loves, and the hardships involved in letting go.
The Professor of Truth
by James RobertsonThe Professor of Truth is the newest novel by Saltire prizewinner James Robertson. Twenty-one years after his wife and daughter were murdered in the bombing of a plane over Scotland, Alan Tealing, a university lecturer, still does not know the truth of what really happened on that terrible night. Obsessed by the details of what he has come to call The Case, he is sure that the man convicted of the atrocity was not responsible, and that he himself has thus been deprived not only of justice but also of any chance of escape from his enduring grief.When an American intelligence officer, apparently terminally ill and determined to settle his own accounts before death, arrives on his doorstep with information about a key witness in the trial, a fateful sequence of events is set in motion. Alan decides that he must travel to Australia to confront this witness, whose evidence he has always disbelieved, in the hope that this might at last be the breakthrough for which he has waited so long.Praise for The Testament of Gideon Mack: 'The story of a Presbyterian minister who comes back from a near-death experience claiming that he has met the devil, this is both a hugely gripping tale and a fascinating examination of the difference between faith and belief' FT Magazine'A masterly piece of storytelling (and Scottish soul-reaching)' James Naughtie, HeraldPraise for And the Land Lay Still: 'A wonderful novel . . . panoramic, illuminating and compassionate . . . the book represents nothing less than a landmark for the novel in Scotland, and underlines the author's position as one of Britain's best contemporary novelists' Irvine Welsh, Guardian'Bold, discursive and deep, Robertson's sweeping history of life and politics in twentieth-century Scotland should not be ignored' ObserverJames Robertson is the author of four previous novels, The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack and And the Land Lay Still. Joseph Knight was awarded the two major Scottish literary awards in 2003/4 - the Saltire Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year - and The Testament of Gideon Mack was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, picked by Richard and Judy's Book Club, and shortlisted for the Saltire Book of the Year award. And the Land Lay Still was the winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award 2010.
The Apartment: A Novel
by Greg BaxterThe Apartment, the astonishing first novel by Greg Baxter, is a tale of war and peace, friendship and aloneness.A man walks across an old European capital. Heavy snow falls. He has come here from far away, hoping to forget. Instead, he remembers: home, war, lost friends. Complicity. In the company of a new friend and alive to the new experiences of the city, he moves through the snow and his complicated history in search of an apartment.The Apartment, by the author of the acclaimed memoir A Preparation for Death, is a novel about war, the relationship between America and the rest of the world, and the brittle foundations of Western culture; but above all it is a book about the mysteries and alchemies of friendship - truthful, moving and brilliant. Acclaimed by Hisham Matar, Adam Thorpe and Roddy Doyle, among others, The Apartment is a deeply original and profoundly involving novel. 'Admirable for its scope, ambition and unashamed seriousness of purpose, as well as its willingness to take stylistic and structural risks' Julie Myerson, Observer'Stunningly good' Susan Jeffreys, Saturday Review, BBC Radio Four'Baxter's superbly elegant, understated writing explores the dynamics of America's relationship with the rest of the world' The Times'Lucidly written and astutely observed ... The novel exerts a hypnotic force ... Baxter continually undercuts our expectations for his novel. And it is precisely this sort of subversion, along with the author's shimmering prose, that makes The Apartment such a surprisingly compelling read' New York Times'Absorbing, atmospheric and enigmatic ... Its long, frigid journey into a long, sleepless night explores a man's uneasy relationship with his past, himself and a world in which violence is inescapable' Los Angeles Times'Powerful ... Baxter's clean and direct prose generates its own momentum' Daily Beast'A wonderful, horrible, wise novel' Dazed & Confused (Book of the Month)'A dark and sinewy novel, written with sparse clarity and affecting subtlety' Stuart Evers, Observer (Books of the Year)Greg Baxter was born in Texas in 1974. He lived for a number of years in Dublin, and now lives in Berlin. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir A Preparation for Death. The Apartment is his first novel.
A Good American
by Alex GeorgeGermany, 1904: When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute they take one destined for New Orleans, and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together.From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies and the Kennedy assassination, the family is caught up in the sweep of history as they find their place in their adopted country. Accompanied by a chorus of unforgettable characters, from a chicken-strangling church organist to a malevolent bicycle-riding dwarf, each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American.Poignant, funny and heartbreaking, A Good American is a universal story about our search for home.
The Infatuations
by Javier Marías Margaret Jull CostaThe Infatuations is a metaphysical murder mystery and a stunningly original literary achievement by Javier Marías, the internationally acclaimed author of A Heart So White and Your Face Tomorrow.Every day, María Dolz stops for breakfast at the same café. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren't there, and she feels obscurely bereft.It is only later, when she comes across a newspaper photograph of the man, lying stabbed in the street, his shirt half off, that she discovers who the couple are. Some time afterwards, when the woman returns to the café with her children, who are then collected by a different man, and Maria approaches her to offer her condolences, an entanglement begins which sheds new light on this apparently random, pointless death.With The Infatuations, Javier Marías brilliantly reimagines the murder novel as a metaphysical enquiry, addressing existential questions of life, death, love and morality.The Infatuations is an extraordinary, immersive book about the terrible force of events and their consequences.'I am greatly impressed by the quality of Marías's writing . . . he uses language like an anatomist uses the scalpel to cut away the layers of the flesh in order to lay bare the innermost secrets of that strangest of species, the human being' W. G. Sebald'Years ago, I said that Marías was Spain's best living writer . . . Nothing, afterwards, has made me alter that opinion' Eduardo Mendoza, El País''[I am] enthralled by his strange mix of made-up memories, lost experiences and real-life fantasies' Marina Warner, Guardian'Stylish, cerebral . . . Marías is a startling talent' The New York TimesJavier Marías was born in Madrid in 1951. He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and several volumes of essays. His work has been translated into thirty-two languages and won a dazzling array of international literary awards, including the prestigious Dublin IMPAC award for A Heart So White. He is also a highly practised translator into Spanish of English authors, including Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Thomas Browne and Laurence Sterne. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States and in Britain, as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator for over twenty-five years and has translated many novels and short stories by Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American writers, including Javier Marías, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, Bernardo Atxaga and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. She has won various prizes for her work, including, in 2008, the PEN Book-of-the-Month Translation Award and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her version of Eça de Queiroz's masterpiece The Maias, and, most recently, the 2011 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago.