Mark Haddon

Margaret Drabble

Ramsey Campbell

Lara Williams

David Constantine

Alan Beard

Gaia Holmes

Bernardine Bishop

Lucie McKnight-Hardy

Matthew Holness

Something has fallen away. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma's award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject - Julia Kristeva's theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille's societal equivalent - with visceral stories of modern unease.

Tales of Modern Unease

The New Abject

Angela Foster

Josephine Klein

Victoria O'Connell

The first title in the Practice of Psychotherapy Series that explores the limits of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Each of the five chapters in this book takes up an aspect of this challenge. In an open and enquiring manner, the authors invite readers to share in their thinking as they describe how they use their psychoanalytic skills to understand the nature of particular challenges. The Practice of Psychotherapy Series is intended to address a wide variety of important and challenging issues confronting those working in diverse contexts as psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Written by members of the respected London Centre for Psychotherapy, this volume offers an honest and stimulating first contribution.

Challenges to Practice

There's more going on in The Street than its inhabitants realise . . . In the course of this delightful, quirky and perceptive novel an elderly soldier with incipient Alzheimer's saves the life of a remarkable child, a resting actor finds real purpose, a woman starved of love discovers it in an unexpected place and a beloved cat achieves immortality.

The Street

Shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award Cecilia Banks has a great deal on her plate. But when her son Ian turns up on her doostep with the unexpected consequence of a brief fling, she feels she has no choice but to take the baby into her life. Cephas's arrival is the latest of many challenges Cecilia has to face. There is the matter of her cancer, for a start, an illness shared with her novelist friend Helen. Then there is Helen herself, whose observations of Cecilia's family life reveal a somewhat ambivalent attitude to motherhood. Meanwhile Tim, Cecilia's husband, is taking self-effacement to extremes, and Ian, unless he gets on with it, will throw away his best chance at happiness. Cecilia, however, does not have to manage alone. In a convent in Hastings sits Sister Diana Clegg who holds the ties that bind everyone not only to each other, but to strangers as yet unmet. As events unfold and as the truth about Cephas is revealed, we are invited to look closely at madness, guilt, mortal dread and the gift of resilience. No one will remain unchanged. 'Frank, courageous and entertaining. I felt better for reading it' Margaret Drabble

Unexpected Lessons in Love

Paul Theroux

Saleem Haddad

Sarah Schofield

Gerard Woodward

Adam Marek

Christine Poulson

Lucie McKnight Hardy

Mike Nelson

Meave Haughey

Karen Featherstone

SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille’s societal equivalent – with visceral stories of modern unease. As we become ever-more isolated by social media bubbles, or the demands for social distancing, our moral gag-reflex is increasingly sensitised, and our ability to tolerate difference, or ‘the other’, atrophies. Like all good horror writing, these stories remind us that exposure to what unsettles us, even in small doses, is always better than pretending it doesn’t exist. After all, we can never be wholly free of that which belongs to us.

With the wit of Marina Lewycka, the piercing observation of Jane Gardam, and the bittersweet charm of Mary Wesley, this will appeal to all who loved Major Pettigrew's Last Stand or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Cecilia Banks has a great deal on her plate. But when her son Ian turns up on her doostep with the unexpected consequence of a brief fling, she feels she has no choice but to take the baby into her life. Cephas's arrival is the latest of many challenges Cecilia has to face. There is the matter of her cancer, for a start, an illness shared with her novelist friend Helen. Then there is Helen herself, whose observations of Cecilia's family life reveal a somewhat ambivalent attitude to motherhood. Meanwhile Tim, Cecilia's husband, is taking self-effacement to extremes, and Ian, unless he gets on with it, will throw away his best chance at happiness. Cecilia, however, does not have to manage alone. In a convent in Hastings sits Sister Diana Clegg who holds the ties that bind everyone not only to each other, but to strangers as yet unmet. As events unfold, and as the truth about Cephas is revealed, we are invited to look closely at madness, guilt, mortal dread and the gift of resilience. No one will remain unchanged. 'Frank, courageous and entertaining. I felt better for reading it' Margaret Drabble

'Outdoes Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh' Margaret Drabble, Observer Accused of child abuse, Father Roger Tree confesses at once; it masks a darker secret. Meanwhile his sister Romola faces a future without their beloved brother, the novelist Hereward Tree. Can she live with the ending of his last book? And then there is Hereward's much younger lover, Carina, who takes fate into her own hands. But it is Betty Winterborne, forced to re-examine the death of her son Mark twenty years before, who has the courage to face the truth. There are the lies we tell others, and the lies we tell ourselves. This is a story about the difference.

Hidden Knowledge

Bernardine Bishop

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