Alma Books Antonin Artaud. The Man and His Work Esslin Martin

When Tudy’s first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go to study in France. After she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancee has become involved with Riccard, a dashing French pilot and his near-double • A tale of broken trust and infidelity based on Zelda Fitzgerald’s own dalliance with a French pilot, ‘Image on the Heart’ is here presented with other lesser-known stories written by Fitzgerald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which develop many of the themes found in his novels and his more famous works of short fiction • Contains: ‘Zone of Accident’, ‘Fate in Her Hands’, ‘Image on the Heart’, ‘Too Cute for Words’, ‘Inside the House’, ‘Three Acts of Music’, ‘An Author’s Mother’, ‘“Trouble”’, ‘The Guest in Room Nineteen’, ‘In the Holidays’, ‘The End of Hate’, ‘On an Ocean Wave’, ‘The Woman from Twenty-One’ and ‘Discard (Director’s Special)’

In this award-winning collection of cycling tales, Wilfried de Jong uncovers the true soul of cycling – why we do it, why we watch it, why we hate it, why we love it – stripped bare • With his distinctly comic and melancholic charm Wilfried ponders life, love and death on his trusted bike, chasing the essence of our existence against the backdrop of major cycling events or while roaming alone in nature • Whether he is describing being ejected from Paris-Roubaix, a terminal incident with a bird while out riding, or explaining why he is standing stark naked on Belgian cobbles with a tyre in his hand, Wilfried unlocks a sport that involves so much pain, punishment, and a high probability of failure, but that will always liberate and inspire us

The Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Metastasio – Stendhal’s first published work – owes its inspiration to the audacious pragmatism of its author. After the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, Henri Beyle was jobless, soon destined to become a refugee and in desperate need of money. His most abiding passion in life was music, so why not write about it? Unfortunately, however, he knew next to nothing about it. So, calmly and without the slightest pang of conscience, he resolved to plunder the works of other writers – in particular those of the musicologist Giuseppe Carpani, who was annoyed and said so vociferously • The result of Stendhal’s unscrupulous plagiarism is one of the most fascinating literary enigmas of all time. How is it that what started as a blatant act of piracy evolved into a work of enduring genius? Despite its unpropitious beginnings, this work represents the wrong-headedness of a genius – and the singular Louis-Alexandre-Cesar Bomet who signed the Lives was already, in everything that mattered, the man who was to be Stendhal, one of the most enduring literary figures of the nineteenth century

Conceived twenty years before its initial publication in 1869, and regarded by its author as his best work, Malinovka Heights (previously translated in English as The Precipice) is Goncharov’s crowning achievement as a novelist and a triumph of psychological insight. Here presented for the first time in unabridged form in a sparkling new translation by Stephen Pearl, Goncharov’s final novel deserves to be reassessed as one of the most important classics of nineteenth-century Russian literature • After his university studies and a short stint in the army and the civil service, thirty-something Boris Pavlovich Raisky enjoys the life of an artist, frequenting St Petersburg’s elegant circles, dabbing at his paintings, playing a little music and entertaining thoughts of writing a novel

Published in 1880, one year before Verga’s influential novel The Malavoglias, Life in the Country first marked his stylistic shift towards the verismo school of Italian realism. The collection’s centrepiece, ‘Rustic Honour’ (‘Cavalleria rusticana’) – which was famously adapted into a play by the author before becoming an opera by Mascagni – tells the tale of Turiddu, a poor young man who returns from military service and finds himself embroiled in adultery and a feud with a rival • Also including the well-known stories ‘She-Wolf’ and ‘Foxfur’, Life in the Country captures, in an objective, non-judgemental prose, the difficult conditions and personal struggles of the peasant class in his native Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century • Contains: ‘A Reverie’, ‘Jeli the Herdboy’, ‘Nasty Foxfur’, ‘Rustic Honour’, ‘She-Wolf’, ‘Bindweed’s Lover’, ‘The War of the Saints’ and ‘Crackpot’

One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges. In some ways comparable to the controversial Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil shows Tolstoy at his most salacious, and addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy’s earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner’s Morning

A collection of early short stories which helped make Fitzgerald’s name, Tales of the Jazz Age combines period pieces – the most notable of which is the novella-length ‘May Day’ – with more fanciful creations, such as the fantastical ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, recently made into a Hollywood film. Also containing the now classic story ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’, as well as lesser-known sketches and tales, this diverse selection, compiled by Fitzgerald himself from material published in newspapers and magazines, showcases both the variety of his writing and early examples of the themes and characters which would find their way into his later novels

While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their relationship unravels, glimpses of their troubled past emerge, and a series of disturbing events unfolds • Peopled by an unforgettable cast of aristocrats and high-fliers, Tender Is the Night is at once a scathing critique of the materialism and hypocrisy of the Roaring Twenties and a poignant and sensitive account of personal tragedy and disillusionment

Bathsheba Everdene is a headstrong young woman who attracts the attentions of a succession of ill-matched suitors: a quiet sheep farmer, a handsome soldier and an older, wealthy landowner. As the men vie for her affections, she struggles to retain her independence of spirit in the face of their declarations • Introducing readers to the fictional county of Wessex, Thomas Hardy's fourth work of fiction was one of his greatest triumphs, both commercially and critically. Its tale of passion, jealousy and unrequited love is now regarded as one of the finest novels of the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest love stories of all time

Orphaned at an early age, Heidi has been brought up by her mother’s sister Dete in Switzerland. Having been offered a job in Frankfurt, however, her aunt is forced to entrust her young charge into the care of her grandfather, the reclusive Alp-Uncle who lives in the mountains without any interaction with the villagers beneath. The curmudgeonly old man is initially reluctant to accept the new arrangement, but his grand-daughter’s warmth, cleverness and exuberance soon win him over, while Heidi learns to love her new surroundings and makes a new friend, Peter the goatherd. But as Heidi gets settled in her new life, little does she suspect that a major upheaval is just around the corner • A timeless classic of Swiss literature that has inspired many adaptations and has captured the imaginations of children the world over, Heidi: Lessons at Home and Abroad is here presented in a brand-new, unabridged translation by Peter James Bowman, with charming illustrations by Susan Hellard

Published posthumously in 1930, Stendhal’s travel notes on his 1838 journey to southern France contain descriptions of cities such as Bordeaux, Toulouse and Marseilles, peppered with numerous personal digressions, anecdotes and cultural musings • Both an addition to the Stendhalian canon and a pioneering work of the travel-writing genre, Travels in the South of France provides an illuminating perspective on this popular region and the phenomenon of tourism in general

When an army of invading Martians lands in England, panic and terror seize the population. As the aliens traverse the country in huge three-legged machines, incinerating all in their path with a heat ray and spreading noxious toxic gases, the people of the Earth must come to terms with the prospect of the end of human civilization and the beginning of Martian rule. Inspiring films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, television series and sequels, The War of the Worlds is a prototypical work of science fiction which has influenced every alien story that has come since, and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill, well over a century since it was first published