Everyman The Transylvania Trilogy. Volume 2. They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided Banffy Miklos

Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly, in which good manners cloak indifference and brutality. Abady becomes aware of the plight of a group of Romanian mountain peasants and champions their cause, while Gyeroffy dissipates his resources at the gaming tables, mirroring the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire itself

The second volume of Miklos Banffy's panoramic trilogy of the dying years of the Habsburg empire • The tale of two Transylvanian cousins, their loves, their ambitions and their fortunes continues in They Were Found Wanting. Balint Abady is forced to part from the beautiful and unhappily married Adrienne Uzdy. Laszlo Gyeroffy is rapidly heading for self-destruction through drink and his own fecklessness. The politicians, quarrelling among themselves and stubbornly ignoring their countrymen's real needs, are still pursuing their vendetta with the Habsburg rule from Vienna. Meanwhile they fail to notice how the Great Powers - through such events as Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Herzagovina in 1908 - are moving ever closer to the conflagration of 1914-1918 that will destroy their world for ever

Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time • The Nobel Prize-winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century • The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence • Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons – the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal • Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s

Paul Scott's epic study of British India in its final years has no equal. Tolstoyan in scope and Proustian in detail but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence. Book one, The Jewel in the Crown, describes the doomed love between an English girl and an Indian boy, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. This affair touches the lives of other characters in three subsequent books, most of them unknown to Hari and Daphne but involved in the larger social and political conflicts which destroy the lovers • On occasions unsparing in its study of personal dramas and racial differences, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane, not least in the author's capacity to identify with a huge range of characters

The language of flowers is as old as language itself. In the earliest poetry familiar plants were used to represent simple emotions, ideas, or states of mind: love, hope, despair, fidelity, solitude, beauty, mortality. Over time these associations entwined with myth and legend, with religious symbolism, folk and herbal lore. By the early 19th century the 'Language of Flora' had become increasingly refined, especially in England and America, where sentimental flower books listing flower meanings and illustrating them with verse were perennial bestsellers • The Everyman Language of Flowers without sacrificing the charm of its Victorian predecessors aims to provide extended, updated and rather more robust floral anthology for the 21st century, presenting poetry from ancient Greece to contemporary Britain and America, and spanning the world from Cuba to Korea, Russia to Zimbabwe

The Art of Angling offers a bountiful catch of poems from around the world and through the ages on every aspect of the popular sport. Fishing has inspired a wealth of poetry – Tang Dynasty meditations; Japanese haiku; medieval rhymes; classic verses by Homer and Shakespeare; poems by Donne, Goethe, Tennyson and Yeats; modern masterpieces by Federico Garcia Lorca, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell, Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde, Richard Hugo and Derek Walcott. In the hands of the poets collected here, fishing with a hook and line yields reflections both sparklingly light and awe-inspiringly deep. Filled with humour, nostalgia, adventure, celebrations of the beauties of nature and metaphors for the art of living, The Art of Angling is sure to lure anglers and lovers of poetry alike

In this remarkable trilogy, Richard Ford creates one of the most enduring and empathetic characters in contemporary American fiction. When we meet Frank Bascombe in The Sportswriter, his unguarded voice instantly wins us over, drawing us into a life that has been irrevocably changed by the loss of a child, a marriage and a career. We then follow Frank, ever laconic and observant, through Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, witnessing his fortune’s rise and his family’s fragmentation and reintegration. With his finely honed prose and an eye that captures the most subtle nuances of the human condition in all its pathos, humour and strangeness, Richard Ford transforms an ordinary man’s life into a riveting parable of modern existence

It is the autobiography of Giorgio Bassani, told in a time span of around 15 years, a time where the ambiguous and mysterious female figure of Micol was a central part of his life. They live in a time where racial laws are being passed by fascist Italy and as a result Micol and her family open the gates of their huge mansion and even bigger garden to a handful of jeweish friends that have been banned from any recreational activity. In this garden Micol guides the narrating "I" figure through the interior journey in search of his identity and maturity. Unfortunately this journey of truth can only end but in the sourest way; the rejection of a deep love felt by the author for Micol, his spiritual guide

Raymond Chandler’s first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction • The Big Sleep, Chandler’s first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder • In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women • In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector • In all three novels, Chandler’s hard-edged prose, colourful characters, vivid vernacular, and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, establish his enduring claim to the heights of his chosen genre

Described by F. R. Leavis as one of the two most brilliant novels in the language, The Portrait of a Lady marks the evolution of Henry James from talented American writer to world-class novelist. The ‘lady’ of the title is Isabel Archer, a beautiful, intelligent and headstrong American heiress embarked on a treacherous journey to self-knowledge amid the ravishingly rendered landscapes of England and Italy. But it is the characters she encounters who make the story so masterly: the good Lord Warburton and the evil Gilbert Osmond, between whom she hesitates, her candid American friends, and above all the witch-like Madame Merle with whom she does battle for her soul. All are magnificently drawn, and none more so than Isabel herself, who belongs with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina among the supreme creations of European fiction

Although E. Nesbit regarded her poetry as her most important work, it is her children's books (written 'to keep the house going') that ensured her lasting fame and which are still enjoyed with such affection today. Her readers have their oen favourites, but the film version of The Railway Children, with Jenny Agutter as Roberta, the eldest daughter of the man unjustly sent to prison, and the Bernard Cribbins as the friendly railway porter, brought the book to a new generation of readers who love it for Roberta's courage and the satisfaction of the ending when her father is vindicated and restored to his family

Когда застенчивая Мэгги Вервер выходит замуж за итальянского принца, а ее овдовевший отец становится мужем бывшей любовницы принца, начинается сложная и причудливая битва между двумя женами. Блистательная Шарлотта Стант полна решимости вернуть своего возлюбленного; Мэгги - спасти оба брака и оградить своего отца от любых слухов о супружеской измене. Роман Джеймса "Золотая чаша" - это одновременно виртуозное повествование и непревзойденная психологическая драма • Книга на английском языке • When the shy Maggie Verver marries an Italian Prince and her widowed father becomes the husband of the Prince's former mistress, the stage is set for a complex and bizarre battle between two wives. The brilliant Charlotte Stant is determined to take back her lover; Maggie, to save both marriages and to protect her father from any knowledge of the adulterous liaison