Vintage books Panther In The Basement Оз Амос

A teenage son shoots himself under his parents' bed. They sleep that night unaware he is lying dead beneath them • A stranger turns up at a man's door to persude him that they must get rid of his ageing mother in order to sell the house • An old man grumbles to his daughter about the unexplained digging and banging he hears under the house at night • As each story unfolds, Amos Oz, builds a portrait of a village in Israel. It is a surreal and unsettling place. Each villager is searching for something, and behind each episode is another, hidden story. In this powerful, hynotic work Amos Oz peers into the darkness of our lives and gives us a glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday existence • By the winner of the 2013 Franz Kafka Prize, previous winners of which include Philip Roth, Ivan Klima, Elfriede Jelinek, Harold Pinter and John Banville

An unnamed author waits in a bar in Tel Aviv on a stifling hot night. He is there to give a reading of his work but as he sits, bored, he begins to conjure up the life stories of the people he meets. Later, when the reading is done he asks a woman for a drink. She declines and the author walks away, only to climb the steps to her flat, later that night. Or does he? • In Amos Oz's beguiling, intriguing story the reader never really knows where reality ends and invention begins

Following the bizarre accidental death of his wife, Israeli secret service agent Yoel Ravid retires to the suburbs with his daughter, mother and mother-in-law • After a lifetime of uncovering other people's secrets he is forced to look back at the lies he has told himself; at the desolate enigma of his wife's life and death; his years of service to the state and the riddle of his daughter's behaviour

In a village far away, deep in a valley, all the animals and birds disappeared some years ago. Only the rebellious young teacher and an old man talk about animals to the children, who have never seen such (mythical) creatures. Otherwise there's a strange silence round the whole subject. One wretched, little boy has dreams of animals, begins to whoop like an owl, is regarded as an outcast, and eventually disappears • A stubborn, brave girl called Maya and her friend Matti, are drawn to explore in the woods round the village. They know there are dangers beyond and that at night, Nehi the Mountain Demon comes down to the village. In a far-off cave, they come upon the vanished boy, content and self-sufficient. Eventually they find themselves in a beautiful garden paradise full of every kind of animal, bird and fish - the home of Nehi the Mountain Demon

The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a village in Japan's snow country and was expected to lead a life much like her mother's. Instead - after three divorces and with a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval - she ran away to follow her own path in Edo, the city we now call Tokyo • Stranger in the Shogun's City is a rare, captivating portrait of one woman as she endeavours to recreate herself and her life, and provides a window into the drama and excitement of Japan at a pivotal moment in history

This is the story of a haunted Irish childhood • The setting is Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s, fraught with political hatred, family secrets and lethal intrigue. As a young boy tries to make sense of life, poverty and violence shift and obscure the facts; meanwhile his night-time reading of Irish legends weaves enchantment through reality. Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this is one of the finest books about growing up – in Ireland or anywhere – that has ever been written

A bold, visionary story of four intertwining lives from the Nobel prizewinning novelist • WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MALOUF • Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu, Miss Hare wanders, half-mad. In the wilderness she stumbles upon an Aborigine artist and a Jewish refugee. They place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. In a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption

Fresh out of high school, Karl Ove moves to a remote fishing village to work as a teacher. He has no interest in the job itself - or in any other job for that matter, his sole aim is to save money and start writing • All goes well to begin with but as the nights grow longer, his life takes a darker turn. Drinking causes him blackouts, his repeated attempts at losing his virginity end in humiliation, and to his own great distress he develops romantic feelings towards one of his 13-year-old students. And all the while the shadow of his father looms large

An awkward teen with a terrible haircut has a reversal of fortune when he finds artefacts from the future lining a seagulls’ nest • In a godforsaken barn, Presidents Eisenhower, John Adams and Rutherford B. Hayes are bemused to find themselves reincarnated as horses • Clyde and Magreb – he a traditional capes-and-coffins vampire, she the more progressive variety – settle in an Italian lemon grove in the hope that its ripe fruit will keep their thirst for blood at bay

Mitchell is the laureate of old New York. The hidden corners of the city and the people who lived there are his subject. He captured the waterfront rooming-houses , nickel-a-drink saloons, all-night restaurants, the 'visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy Kings and old Gypsy Queens, and out-and-out freak-show freaks.' Mitchell's trademark curiosity, respect and graveyard humour fuel these magical essays • Written between 1943 and 1965, Up in the Old Hotel is the complete collection of Joseph Mitchell 's New Yorker journalism and includes McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr Flood, The Bottom of the Harbour and Joe Gould's Secret

Robert Grieve – pushing thirty and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher – decides to go missing • As he crosses the border from Thailand to Cambodia, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events involving a bag of ‘jinxed’ money, a suave American, a corrupt policeman and a rich doctor’s daughter, in which Robert’s life is changed forever • Alive with malice and grace, this is a taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith: a story of double identities, and innocence in the midst of evil, from a master of atmosphere and observation

The lives of two close-knit couples are irrevocably changed by an untimely death in this Sunday Times bestselling novel • Alex and Christine and Zach and Lydia have been inseparable since their twenties. From student house-shares and grubby pubs to proper homes and grown-up careers, the two couples' lives have been interlinked for decades. Then one evening, Alex and Christine receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead • Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of their loss bringing them closer, the three of them find that love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness as old entanglements and resentments rise from the past