A. S. Byatt

A young academic couple's attempt to trace the relationship between two turbulent, romantic, and superstitious Victorian poets reveals uncanny parallels with their own lives and culminates in the exhumation of a poet's corpse. Reissue. 300,000 first printing. (A Warner Bros. film, directed by Neil LaBute, releasing Fall 2001, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jennifer Ehle, & Jeremy Northam) (General Fiction)

A Romance

Possession

Willa Cather

Marian Forrester brings delight to her husband, an elderly railroad pioneer; to the small town of Sweet Water where they live; and to Niel Herbert, the young narrator of her story, who falls in love with her as a boy and later becomes her confidant. He witnesses this vibrant woman in all her contradictory facets: by turns faithless and steadfast, dazzling and pathetic, invincibly charming yet dangerously vulnerable to the men she charms. All are bewitched by her charisma and grace - and all are ultimately betrayed. 'This classic has the striking economy of Hemingway, and is as poignant an elegy for the pioneer West as I have read. The vivacious Marian Forrester stands as a romantic paean to the pioneer's reckless abandon, counterpointed by the narrator's prim decency' The Times

A Lost Lady

Blending elements of folk and fairy tales with the darker elements of everyday life, a haunting collection of short fiction by the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession includes the story of two middle-aged women confronting their childhood fears and memories and the tale of a man who encounters the ghost of his living wife. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

Little Black Book of Stories

In "Babel Tower a cast of striking characters play out their personal dramas amid the clashing politics, passionate ideals and stirring languages of the early 1960s. Frederica (the heroine of "Virgin in the Garden and "Still Life) now teaching English at an art college, is hiding herself and her son Leo from a violent husband; her urge towards freedom later leads to an angry, humiliating divorce case. Hers is not the only struggle; her friend Jude writes a novel, "Babbletower, which is tried for obscenity; her broth in law Daniel becomes involved in new movements for London's poor and distressed. Their crises mirror those of the age-abroad, this is the decade of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the death of J F Kennedy; at home it is the era of the "Lady Chatterley case, of the Beatles, of Mods and Rockers, art school riots, the Profumo scandal. Moving and absorbing and full of comedy as well as strife, this superb novel brings our own recent past to vivid, and disturbing life. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Babel Tower

Possessione / Posession

A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights" (The New York Times Book Review). With an introduction by David Mitchell, best-selling author of Cloud Atlas Mirrors shatter at the hairdresser's when a middle-aged client explodes in rage. Snow dusts the warm body of a princess, honing it into something sharp and frosted. Summer sunshine flickers on the face of a smiling child who may or may not be real. Medusa's Ankles celebrates the very best of A. S. Byatt's short fiction, carefully selected from a lifetime of writing. Peopled by artists, poets, and fabulous creatures, the stories blaze with creativity and color. From ancient myth to a British candy factory, from a Chinese restaurant to a Mediterranean swimming pool, from a Turkish bazaar to a fairy-tale palace, Byatt transports her readers beyond the veneer of the ordinary—even beyond the gloss of the fantastical—to places rich and strange and wholly unforgettable.

Selected Stories

Medusa's Ankles

Amid the effervescence and turbulence of the 1960s, Frederica Potter finds a career in television in London, while events in Yorkshire threaten to turn her life and the lives of the people she loves upside down, in the triumphant conclusion of a quartet of novels that includes The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, and Babel Tower. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

A Whistling Woman

Phineas G. Nanson sets out to write a biography of a great biographer, only to discover that the fragmentary facts and bits of information are difficult to put together, a discovery that becomes a metaphor for his own complex life.

The Biographer's Tale

Nathan Glass ha sobrevivido a un cáncer de pulmón y a un divorcio, después de treinta y tres años de matrimonio, y ha vuelto a Brooklyn, el lugar donde nació y pasó su infancia. Quiere vivir allí lo que le queda de vida. Hasta que enfermó era un próspero

romance

Posesión

An anthology of stories explores the theme of opposites--alienation and passion, life and art--in the tales of a woman who feels the need to flee after witnessing her husband's death and that of a princess from a cold climate who marries a prince from a desert kingdom. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

Stories of Fire and Ice

Elementals

Ragnarok Exp

Monica Dickens

A novel about a 60-year-old widow who is shunted from one to the other of her more or less unwilling daughters on perpetual uneasy visits, 'The Winds of Heaven' addresses the more awkward aspects of family relationships.

The Winds of Heaven

The Game

Terry Pratchett

A collection of shorter fiction from Terry Pratchett, spanning the whole of his writing career from schooldays to Discworld and the present day. In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world's best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short-form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series. Here are characters both familiar and yet to be discovered; abandoned worlds and others still expanding; adventure, chickens, death, disco and, actually, some quite disturbing ideas about Christmas, all of it shot through with Terry's inimitable brand of humour. With an introduction by Booker Prize-winning author A.S. Byatt, illustrations by the late Josh Kirby and drawings by the author himself, this is a book to treasure.

Collected Shorter Fiction

A Blink of the Screen

This ravishing book opens a window onto the lives, designs, and passions of two charismatic artists. Born a generation apart, they were seeming opposites: Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish aristocrat thrilled by the sun-baked cultures of Crete and Knossos; William Morris, a British craftsman, in thrall to the myths of the North. Yet through their revolutionary inventions and textiles, both men inspired a new variety of art, as vibrant today as when it was first conceived. Acclaimed writer A.S. Byatt traces their genius right to the source. The Palazzo Pesaro Orfei in Venice is a warren of dark spaces leading to a workshop where Fortuny created his designs for pleated silks and shining velvets. Here he worked alongside the French model who became his wife and collaborator, including on the 'Delphos' dress - a flowing gown evoking classical Greece. Morris's Red House, outside London, with its Gothic turrets and secret gardens, helped inspire his stunning floral and geometric patterns; it also represented a coming together of life and art. But it was Kelmscott Manor in the English countryside that he loved best - even when it became the setting for his wife's love affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Generously illustrated with the artists' beautiful designs - pomegranates and acanthus, peacock and vine - A.S. Byatt brings the visions and ideas of Fortuny and Morris dazzlingly to life.

A. S. Byatt

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