Abacus According To Queeney Bainbridge Beryl

Beryl Bainbridge gets better and better...she has succeeded with a daring leap of emphatic imagination in penetrating the minds of Captain Scott and the four men he led to their deaths in Antarctica in 1912 Patrick Skene Catling, Evening Standard • The Birthday Boys is classic Bainbridge - one of her absolute best. It is a fictional account of Captain Robert Scott s 1910 expedition to Antarctica told from the perspectives of five men on the voyage: Scott; Petty Officer Taff Evans; ship s medic Dr Edward Wilson; Lieutenant Henry Bowers; and Captain Lawrence Oates

This wonderful novel showing Beryl Bainbridge at her darkly comic best - out for the first time as an Abacus paperback • Freda and Brenda spend their days working in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory. A work outing offers promise for Freda and terror from Brenda; passions run high on that chilly day of freedom, and life after the outing never returns to normal. Beryl Bainbridge will dazzle readers in this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious novel

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls • In her labyrinthine passageways are played out the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge's haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end

Freda and Brenda are friends spending their days in an Italian-run wine-bottling factory in North London. When a works outing materialises it offers promise for Freda, but terror for Brenda. Unexpected passions run high on the chilly day of liberty and their lives are never the same again. Beryl Bainbridge dazzles readers in this offbeat, haunting yet hilarious novel

It is 1950 and the Liverpool reporatory theatre company is rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan, a story of childhood innocence and loss. Stella has been taken on as assistant stage manager and quickly becomes obsessed with Meredith, the dissolute director. But it is only when the celebrated O'Hara arrives to take the lead, that a different drama unfolds. In it, he and Stella are bound together in a past that neither dares to interpret

Когда мастер Джорджи - Джордж Харди, хирург и фотограф - отправляется из холодной убогости викторианского Ливерпуля в жару и блеск Босфора, за ним плетется небольшой караван преданных последователей: Миртл, его обожающая приемная сестра; отставной геолог доктор Поттер; и ассистент фотографа и когда-то пожиратель огня Помпей Джонс. Все они движимы вперед растущей волной смертей и болезней общей и таинственной виной • Сочетая захватывающий дух взгляд на красоту с интуитивным пониманием смертности, в романе "Мастер Джорджи" Берил Бейнбридж раскрывает своего загадочного героя так же нежно и беспощадно, как она раскрывает грязь и страдания войны, и создает роман яркой глубины и необычайной интенсивности • Книга на английском языке • When Master Georgie - George Hardy, surgeon and photographer - sets off from the cold squalor of Victorian Liverpool for the heat and glitter of the Bosphorus to offer his services in the Crimea, there straggles behind him a small caravan of devoted followers; Myrtle, his adoring adoptive sister; lapsed geologist Dr Potter; and photographer's assistant and sometime fire-eater Pompey Jones, all of them driven onwards through a rising tide of death and disease by a shared and mysterious guilt

Long-suffering child genius Bertie Pollock has much to contend with in the latest instalment of life at 44 Scotland Street, not least the birth of his brother Ulysses. Bertie had hoped that caring for a new baby would command all of his mother's attention, but he quickly sees that his dream of being left to his own devices is not destined to come true. Overprotective Irene bans Bertie from the playground, but then forgets little Ulysses outside the delicatessen, and suffers a deeply embarrassing moment when she unwittingly retrieves the wrong baby • Meanwhile, for the other residents of Scotland Street, all's fair in love and friendship. Big Lou finds a new man, Matthew and Pat edge their relationship towards something more permanent - although this development is not without complications, when a glimpse of someone who just might be her handsome, caddish ex-flatmate Bruce sets Pat's pulse racing - and Domenica's friendship with Antonia is tested to the limit when an assortment of her belongings mysteriously appear in Antonia's new flat

An exciting and atmospheric novel which will continue to expand the audience for Simon Mawer • As Dee Denham, once a beautiful and beloved wife, the toast of colonial Cyprus, lies dying, her former life seems unimaginably distant. And then out of the blue Dee speaks to her son Thomas, sitting at her bedside: she tells him that her illness is a punishment. Compelled by a grief he cannot articulate and a confused childhood memory of betrayal, as Thomas begins the process of dismantling his mother's life he finds himself searching for the meaning of her last words. Embarked on a dangerous liaison of his own, he searches through faded photographs and love letters, seeks out survivors and examines his own imperfect remembrance, and suddenly a whole vanished world comes to life

If you're fat and Indian, you're rich; if you're fat and poor, you're lying. It's only the West where the rich are thin and vegan and moral • Ramesh Kumar grew up deprived and unloved, working on his father's tea stall in the Old City of Delhi. Now, brilliant but poor, he makes a lucrative living taking tests for the sons of India's elite. When one of his clients, the sweet but hapless eighteen-year-old Rudi Saxena, places first in the All Indias, the national university entrance exams, Ramesh sees an unmissable opportunity • Cashing in on Rudi's newfound celebrity, all goes well for both boys for a while. But Rudi's role on a game show leads to unexpected love, blackmail and, finally, a dangerous kidnapping • As Ramesh leads Rudi through a maze of crimes both large and small, their dizzying journey reveals an India in all its complexity, beauty, and squalor, moving from the bottom rungs to the circles inhabited by the ultra-rich and everywhere in between

Wartime Liverpool is a place of ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her two aunts Nellie and Margo, is emotionally naive and withdrawn. When she meets Ira, a GI, at a neighbour s party she falls in love almost as much with the idea of life as a GI bride as with the man himself. But Nellie and Margo are not so blind

Seventeen-year-old Alan can't stand rows. But, though the Second World War has ended, peace hangs by a fine thread at home: his troublesome sister Madge creeps off for night-time liaisons with a German POW; their ineffectual father - broken by the hardships of war and an unhappy marriage - can't put food on the table despite the family's middle-class manners. Meanwhile, his mother pursues her escapist fantasies in romantic novels and love affairs. Obedient, faithful Alan is trapped among them all, the focus of their jibes and resentment, as inexorably the family heads towards disaster. Beryl Bainbridge's classic early novel is a vintage story of English domestic life, laced with sadness, irony and wicked black humour

To celebrate his tenth birthday the whole Humphrey series has a smart new livery, repositioning him alongside perennial favourites such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Paddington • Humphrey enjoys surprises as much as the next hamster, like his brand new hamster ball or a surprise part, but sometimes surprises can be bad… Like coming whisker to whisker with a cat (eek!) or having an alien from another planet move into Room 26! All this and lots-lots-lots more happens in Humphrey's new book of adventures, Surprises According to Humphrey