Faber and Faber Harsh Times Варгас Льоса Марио

Felicito Yanaque has raised himself from poverty to ownership of a trucking business. His two sons work for him. He receives a threatening letter demanding protection money. The police don’t take him seriously, Felicito refuses to pay up and gets sucked into a nightmare. He becomes a reluctant public hero. Then his mistress is kidnapped, and matters become seriously complicated. And he finds that his troubles have begun very close to home • His fate is interwoven with the story of Rigoberto, a wealthy Lima insurance executive. His boss and old friend, Ismael, suddenly announces that he is marrying his housekeeper, a chola from Piura, to the consternation of his twin sons, a pair of brutal wasters. Ismael escapes to Europe with his new bride, leaving Rigoberto to face the twins’ threats, and their claims that he connived with a scheming woman to rob an old man of his fortune

Set in Peru during the 1950s, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is the story of an 18 year old student who falls for a 32 year old divorcee. Mario, an aspiring writer, works at a radio station that broadcasts, live each day, up to a half-dozen short-run soap operas. At the same time that the author meets his “Aunt Julia”, the radio station, which had been buying scripts by weight from Cuba, hires a Bolivian scriptwriter named Pedro Camacho to write the serials. The novel chronicles the scriptwriter’s rise and fall in tandem with the protagonist’s affair

Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer, returns to the Dominican Republic after a lifelong self-imposed exile. Once she is back in her homeland, the elusive feeling of terror that has overshadowed her whole life suddenly takes shape. Urania’s own story alternates with the powerful climax of dictator Rafael Trujillo’s reign • In 1961, Trujillo’s decadent inner circle (which includes Urania’s soon-to-be disgraced father) enjoys the luxuries of privilege while the rest of the nation lives in fear and deprivation. As Trujillo clings to power, a plot to push the Dominican Republic into the future is being formed. But after the murder of its hated dictator, the Goat, is carried out, the Dominican Republic is plunged into the nightmare of a bloody and uncertain aftermath

When a high-profile businessman is blackmailed by a notorious magazine editor, his comfortable life is threatened by the salacious exposй. While attempting to field the scandal, the businessman’s wife, seeking comfort, begins a secret affair with the wife of his best friend. Then the editor is found murdered, and the two couples have no choice but to descend into the murkiest depths of Peruvian society, while the magazine’s staff embarks on its greatest revelation yet

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • ‘My only concern’, John McGahern once said, ‘is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply.’ • ‘The Country Funeral’ witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog – the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern’s stories take place – to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • Between his second and third tours of duty, a soldier returns home • To his former home, that is, using an old key while the new tenant is at work. Is he re-entering his old life or borrowing someone else’s? Where is the line he will not cross? Each day is the same: he exists in a state of suspension, barely knowing how he passes the time – until someone else intrudes on the intruder • Adrian Tomine, graphic master of alienation and regret, expertly expands the form to express the unsaid and the unbearable in this unforgettable evocation of a post-traumatic life • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • ‘Be sure you don’t answer the door to anyone you don’t know.’ • A little Patricia Highsmith, a touch of Shirley Jackson: the long-neglected Celia Fremlin wrote short, sharp stories that threw women’s lives into shiver-inducing relief • In each of these twinned tales, a mother and daughter meet again, and an ordinary home becomes the setting for a return of the repressed • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • A chance encounter leads a man to spend the afternoon with an older woman, now a widow, who escaped him fifteen years earlier. Neither of them doubts that the day will end in disgust, but for one intimate moment each finds a way to overcome mortality • Written in 1969, before Milan Kundera was known to English-speaking readers, this story renders male and female characters painful equals, and prompted Philip Roth to admire its ‘detached Chekhovian tenderness’ • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • This heart is sore and sad. Crossed in love? • The manuscript of ‘Giacomo Joyce’, written in James Joyce’s best handwriting and folded between the covers of a school notebook, was discovered in Trieste. Most likely written in 1914, some of it served as a rehearsal for passages in Ulysses. Had Joyce meant to pillage it or publish it? Either way, this fragmented evocation of unrequited desire is, in the words of Joyce’s biographer Richard Ellmann, a work of ‘small, fragile, enduring perfection’ • With a new introduction by Colm Toibin • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles • Of course, of everybody of whom this particular hero was suspicious, he was most suspicious of femme fatale, of this woman he was in love with. Even before he discovered she had a spell on her he was distrustful of her. He didn’t want to be, but that’s just how it goes • Written by Anna Burns before she completed her dazzling Man Booker-winning novel Milkman, ‘Mostly Hero’ is the hilarious, hell-raising descendant of Quentin Tarantino and the Brothers Grimm. Originally self-published online, it is available here in print for the first time • Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work

Faber’s bestselling hamster series is given a smart new livery, repositioning our favourite as a perennial classic character, sitting alongside the likes of Winnie the Pooh and Wind in Willows • Dear Friends, • When Og the Frog came to live in Room 26, I felt a little jealous. Still, I tried to be welcoming but I soon discovered that it’s HARD-HARD-HARD to make friends with a lumpy, bumpy frog! • Then I found out that my fellow students were having problems with their friends, too. A.J. and Garth had to deal with a bully named Mean Martin Bean. Heidi and Gail had a terrible argument, and Miranda-Golden had a new stepsister who wasn’t nice at all. Then there was the Poetry Festival, the magic show and the snowstorm! How could one small hamster solve all those problems? • Luckily, I wrote the whole story in my notebook so you could share my adventures

Faber's bestselling hamster series is given a smart new livery, repositioning our favourite as a classic character, sitting alongside the likes of Winnie the Pooh and Wind in Willows • Jingle bells and dancing snowflakes, Christmas was coming and suddenly Humphrey's life as a classroom hamster became unsqueakably exciting! • The music teacher, Miss Lark, spent a lot of time preparing the class for the school show so there was plenty of fun-fun-fun. But Humphrey's classmates were also having some big-big-big problems