Willa Cather

A. S. Byatt

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

Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillful novels of our time. Time magazine calls her "a novelist of dazzling inventiveness." Possession, for which Byatt won England's prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. "On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession—the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject—she is profound," said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it "more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types." The novel traces a pair of young academics—Roland Michell and Maud Bailey—as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions. With an Introduction by the author that describes the novel's origins and its twenty-year gestation, this Modern Library edition is a handsome keepsake for fans of Possession—new and old alike.

Possession

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

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

A Romance

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.

Fortuny and Morris in Life and at Work

Peacock and Vine

A Novel

Shadow of the Sun, The

On Histories and Stories

In a series of essays on the complicated relations between reading, writing and remembering, gifted novelist and critic Byatt sorts the modish from the merely interesting and the truly good to arrive at a new view of British writing in our time.

Selected Essays

A ravishing, luminous selection of short stories from the prize-winning imagination of A. S. Byatt, drawn from her entire career. Mirrors shatter at the hairdressers 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 a place rich and strange and wholly unforgettable.

As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. Struggling to make sense of her new wartime life, she is given a copy of a book of ancient Norse myths and her inner and outer worlds are transformed. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this mesmerising tale - inspired by the myth of Ragnarok - is a landmark piece of storytelling from one of the world's truly great writers.

The End of the Gods

Ragnarok

Frederica Potter arrives at Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love. It isn't long before she becomes infatuated with a mysterious and controlling poet. Back in Yorkshire, her sister Stephanie abandons academia and is confronted with the boredom and frustrations of motherhood. Meanwhile, their younger brother Marcus begins to recover from a nervous breakdown. Each sibling is desperate to shape their own future, but a horrifying event will soon change their lives forever.

A. S. Byatt

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