Vintage books All Passion Spent Sackville-West Vita

Ruth Pennistan is a farmer’s daughter, born and brought up in Kent. But her dark hair and eyes belie a forgotten ancestry – a Spanish gypsy grandmother and a passionate inheritance. Malory, the rather strait-laced guest of the family, falls head over heels in love, even whilst Ruth becomes trapped against her will in a drama of love and tragedy with another man. Vita Sackville-West’s first heroine echoes the passions and contradictions of the author's own life

A subtle and insightful story about boredom, passion, curiosity and memory from the Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago • A subtle and insightful story about boredom, passion, curiosity and memory from the Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago • Senhor Jose is a lonely civil servant who spends his days labouring in the labyrinthine stacks of Lisbon's central registry. Among the file-cards for the living and the dead, one - of an apparently ordinary woman - will transform his life. Breaking away from his strict routine, Jose resolves to track the woman down, obsessively following a thread of clues in a bid to rescue her from an oblivion deeper than the grave • 'When a very good book finds us at just the right moment in life, it can become stitched into our own identity

Henri has a passion for Napoleon - but Napoleon has a passion for chicken. As soldier and emperor butcher their way across Europe, glory falls to ruin and love turns to hate • But, when Henri encounters the red-haired, web-footed Villanelle, he discovers in her an equal. Together they abandon their pasts, and flee to the Venetian canals to meet their singular destiny in the city of chance and disguises

Dazzlingly inventive and utterly original, All Shall Be Well... is a surprise and a delight • Meet Burt Hecker, aka Eckbert Attquiet, a 63-year-old medieval re-enactor with a momentous nose, who dresses in tunics and drinks too much home-made mead. His treasured wife Kitty has died and their strange and beautiful relationship is now the stuff of history; he has sold all of his possessions and bought a one-way ticket to Europe, bent on rescuing his beloved son Tristan from the 'evil' city of Prague. If only he knew that his son doesn't want to be rescued, or found • This is the story of Burt's painful, hilarious and doomed attempts to come to terms with his own past

In settings that range from small town Illinois to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, these stories are distinguished by Maxwell's inimitable wisdom and kindness, his sense of the small details that make up a life, the nuances of joy and sadness that change its direction. Whether describing the reunion of two brothers who will never agree, the furniture of the apartment that becomes everything to a childless couple, the search for the perfect French meal or the life of a ne'er-do-well uncle, Maxwell's stories capture responses that are recognisable in us all

Любовь, общество и политика эдвардианской эпохи исследуются в романе Виты Саквилл-уэст "Эдвардианцы", идеальной книге для поклонников аббатства Даунтон • Себастьян молод, красив и романтичен, наследник огромного и красивого английского загородного поместья. Он - неизменная фигура в вечном круговороте роскошных вечеринок, интриг и традиций в холодном, декадентском сердце эдвардианского высшего общества. Все знают, какую роль он должен сыграть, но Себастьян не уверен, что хочет эту роль. У него будут положение, привилегии и богатство, - если, конечно, он сможет устоять перед соблазном дивного нового мира • Книга на английском языке • Edwardian era love, society and politics explored in this perfect read for Downton Abbey fans • Sebastian is young, handsome and romantic, the heir to a vast and beautiful English country estate

Говоря о Первой мировой войне, всегда вспоминают одно произведение Эриха Марии Ремарка • "На Западном фронте без перемен" - это рассказ о немецких мальчишках, которые под действием патриотической пропаганды идут на войну, не зная о том, что впереди их ждет не слава героев, а инвалидность и смерть… • Каждый день войны уносит жизни чьих-то отцов, сыновей, а газеты тем временем бесстрастно сообщают: "На Западном фронте без перемен..." • Эта книга - не обвинение, не исповедь • Это попытка рассказать о поколении, которое погубила война, о тех, кто стал ее жертвой, даже если сумел спастись от снарядов и укрыться от пули • Книга на английском языке • One by one the boys begin to fall • In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war'

West of Eden is the definitive story of Hollywood, told, in their own words, by the people on the inside: Lauren Bacall, Arthur Miller, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Ring Lardner, Joan Didion, Stephen Sondheim – all interviewed by Jean Stein, who grew up in the Forties in a fairytale mansion in the Hollywood Hills • The book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny (There Will Be Blood) and traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, and the movie studios – from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch (who bought the Stein mansion in 1985) • West of Eden is about money, power, fame and terrible secrets: the doomed Hollywood of the late Fifties, early Sixties – ‘the rotten heart of paradise’

'All Quiet on the Western Front for our era' New Statesman • Kien's job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows the area well - this was where, in the dry season of 1969, his battalion was obliterated by American napalm and helicopter gunfire. Kien was one of only ten survivors. This book is his attempt to understand the eleven years of his life he gave to a senseless war • Based on true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, this novel is revered as the 'All Quiet on the Western Front for our era'

All that stands between one man and murder by the mafia is a penguin • Viktor is an aspiring writer in Ukraine with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company • Although Viktor would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life • But when Viktor opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. Viktor and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape

C L R James, one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century, was devoted to the game of cricket. In this classic summation of half a lifetime spent playing, watching and writing about the sport, he recounts the story of his overriding passion and tells us of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game's psychology and aesthetics, and the issues of class, race and politics that surround it • Part memoir of a West Indian boyhood, part passionate celebration and defence of cricket as an art form, part indictment of colonialism, Beyond a Boundary addresses not just a sport but a whole culture and asks the question, 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?

In The Day of the Locust a young artist, Tod Hackett, arrives in LA full of dreams. But celebrity and artifice rule and he soon joins the ranks of the disenchanted that drift around the fringes of Hollywood. When he meets Faye Greener, an aspiring actress, he is intoxicated and his desperate passion explodes into rage • Miss Lonelyhearts is a decidedly off-kilter, darkly comic tale set in New York in the early 30s. A nameless man is assigned to produce a newspaper advice column. It was meant to be a joke. But as endless letters from the Desperate, Sick-of-it-All and Disillusioned pile up for Miss Lonelyhearts's attention the joke begins to escape him