Vintage books Adam, One Afternoon Calvino Italo

'Brilliant-a feast' Guardian • 'This brilliant collection of essays should be a feast for his admirers, as well as for those who approach his dazzling oeuvre for the first time-Calvino is not only constantly and supremely intelligent; he is constantly and supremely faithful to his narrative imagination' Guardian

Discover George Eliot’s first novel, a tale of rural tragedy and redemption • It may seem like an old tale: the beautiful village girl, her faithful admirer, a country squire's seduction. But seen through the eyes of any of its players, the old tale becomes one of fresh heartbreak, innocent hopes, best intentions gone awry, and better selves lost and restored. George Eliot's first novel shows all her humane intelligence and intimate knowledge of the richness and complexity of ordinary life

A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. The worst of the plague is now past, and Manhattan is slowly being resettled. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street – aka ‘Zone One’ and teams of civilian volunteers are clearing out the remaining infected ‘stragglers’ • Mark Spitz is a member of one of these taskforces and over three surreal days he undertakes the mundane mission of malfunctioning zombie removal, the rigours of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and attempting to come to terms with a fallen world • But then things start to go terribly wrong…

"Двадцать одна история" • Знаменитый сборник рассказов одного из самых выдающихся британских писателей двадцатого века. В нем представлен самый известный рассказ Грина "Разрушители" • Написанная между 1929 и 1954 годами, каждая из этих историй несет в себе характерные темы, характерные для великих романов Грина: предательство и месть, любовь и ненависть, жалость и насилие • Начиная с культового рассказа "Разрушители", в котором банда школьников разрушает дом, переживший бомбежку, Грин предлагает нам восхитительно захватывающий взгляд на двадцать один мир, причем каждое произведение написано так же мастерски, как и его романы. От леденящей душу кульминации детского дня рождения до человека, чьи юношеские опрометчивости возвращаются, чтобы преследовать его, - это безошибочно узнаваемая работа одного из величайших и наиболее обожаемых рассказчиков двадцатого века

Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret • When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality • This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – and soon a love triangle forms, which leads Charlie, Miranda and Adam to a profound moral dilemma. Can you design the perfect partner? What makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? • Provocative and moving, Machines Like Me explores whether a machine can ever truly understand the human heart

From the Pulitzer prize-winning Sunday Times bestseller Anne Tyler. A Patchwork Planet is now re-jacketed along with the rest of Tyler's books in striking new backlist style • Barnaby Gailtin has less in life than he once had • His ex-wife Natalie left him and their native Baltimore several years ago, taking their baby daughter Opal with her, and he has acquired an unalterably fixed position as the black sheep of the family in a family where black sheep aren't tolerated. Then the angelic Sophia enters his life and it seems as if all this is set to change. But can he shake off his past? • **ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 1 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** • 'One of my favourite authors' Liane Moriarty • 'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan • 'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve • 'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks

From the Pulitzer prize-winning Sunday Times bestseller Anne Tyler. The Tin Can Tree is now re-jacketed along with the rest of Tyler's books in striking new backlist style • Read Pulitzer Prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Anne Tyler's classic exploration of the impact of grief on a family • When young Janie Pike dies in a tragic accident, she leaves behind a family numbed with grief and torn with guilt and recrimination. In this compassionate and haunting novel Anne Tyler explores how each member of the family learns to face the future in their own way • **ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 1 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** • 'One of my favourite authors' Liane Moriarty • 'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan • 'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve • 'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks

One windy spring day in the Chilterns, Joe Rose's calm, organized life is shattered by a ballooning accident. The afternoon, Rose reflects, could have ended in mere tragedy, but for his brief meeting with Jed Parry. Unknown to Rose, something passes between them - something that gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test to the limits Rose's beloved scientific rationalism, threaten the love of his wife Clarissa and drive him to the brink of murder and madness

'One of the great books about Spain' - Tristan Garel-Jones, Observer • A many-tangented pilgrimage through ten centuries of Spain's history, its politics, its art, literature and architecture, its climate and its people, in which Nooteboom unlocks doors to an undiscovered Spain and reveals his obsession for a country he has come to know intimately over the course of forty years

One warm summer's day at the beach, forty-year-old Cordelia Grinstead, dressed only in a swimsuit and beach robe, walks away from her family and just keeps on going • After hitching a ride with a stranger to a new town where she knows no one, she reinvents herself as a single woman with no ties and begins living a new life altogether. But how long can she keep this up before her real life finds her?

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock finds one of his captains waiting eagerly on his doorstep. He has sold Jonah's ship for what appears to be a mermaid • As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock's marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society, where he meets Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on... and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course • What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the legendary destructive power a mermaid is said to possess?

One of the great allegorical masterpieces of world literature, Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the 'cancerous' Soviet police state. Withdrawn from publication in Russia in 1964, it became, along with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a work that awoke the conscience of the world. As Robert Service wrote of its appeal in the Independent, 'In waging his struggle against Soviet communism, Solzhenitsyn the novelist preferred the rapier to the cudgel'