Vintage books Culture and Society Williams Raymond

Я, как и все остальные, желаю быть совершенно счастливой; но, как и у всех остальных, у меня есть свои представления на этот счет.» • Откройте для себя любимую историю сестер, любви и общества, которая положила начало карьере Джейн Остин • Элинор настолько же расчетлива, насколько импульсивна ее сестра Марианна. Им стоит поучиться друг у друга, особенно после того, как смерть их отца вынудила их покинуть родной дом и вступить в конкруентную среду приличного общества. Обаяние неподходящих мужчин и происки соперниц приносят разочарование на пути к заветному счастью, и все же вместе они не отчаиватся и пытаются найти путь к нему • язык издания: Английский • ‘I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way’ • Discover the beloved story of sisters, love and society that launched Jane Austen’s career

What would happen if society was run by women? Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagines the result • When three American men discover a community of women, living in perfect isolation in the Amazon, they decide there simply must be men somewhere. How could these women survive without man's knowledge, experience and strength, not to mention reproductive power? In fact, what they have found is a civilisation free from disease, poverty and the weight of tradition. All alone, the women have created a society of calm and prosperity, a feminist utopia that dares to threaten the very concept of male superiority

The remarkable story of Bess of Hardwick, her ascent through Elizabethan society and the houses she built that shaped British architectural history • Born in 1521, Bess of Hardwick, businesswoman, money-lender and property tycoon, lived an astonishing eighty-seven years. Through canny choices, four husbands and a will of steel she rose from country squire's daughter to Dowager Countess, establishing herself as one of the richest and most powerful women in England, second only to Queen Elizabeth • Bess forged her way not merely by judicious marriage, but by shrewd exploitation of whatever assets each marriage brought. Wealth took concrete form in her passion for building and she oversaw every stage of the construction of her four houses including Hardwick New Hall, her sole surviving building, which stands as a celebration of one woman's triumphant progress through Elizabethan England

This tender story of parents, children and step-children, mistakes and secrets was Elizabeth Gaskell's last novel and is considered her masterpiece • Set in the watchful society of Hollingford, this is a warm tale of love and longing. Molly Gibson is the spirited, loyal daughter of the local doctor. Their peaceful close-knit home is turned upside down when Molly's father decides to remarry. Whilst Molly struggles to adjust to her snobbish stepmother, she forms a close relationship with her glamorous new stepsister Cynthia. The strength of this friendship is soon tested as their lives become entwined with Squire Hamley and his two sons

Battle is joined! Relish the underhand schemes and plots that unfold as Lucia vyes with Miss Mapp for social dominion over the town of Tilling • Look out for the new BBC adaptation starring Anna Chancellor, Miranda Richardson and Mark Gatiss! • Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling...until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or 'Lucia' to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia's formidable armoury: her duchesses, her Italian, her financial speculations, her celebrated recipe for Lobster a la Riseholme. But Mapp will not relinquish her supremacy in local society so easily, and battle is joined between these two indomitable queens and their rather fickle allies

Life and Fate is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war • Completed in 1960 and then confiscated by the KGB, this sweeping panorama of Soviet Society remained unpublished until it was smuggled into the West in 1980, where it was hailed as a masterpiece

'Beautifully designed... Perfect collectable gift for Austen fans and design devotees' So Darling • Elinor is as prudent as her sister Marianne is impetuous. Each must learn from the other after they are they are forced by their father's death to leave their home and enter into the contests of polite society. The charms of unsuitable men and the schemes of rival ladies mean that their paths to success are thwart with disappointment but together they attempt to find a way to happiness

A glittering, magical fable, the follow-up to the bestselling Haroun and the Sea of Stories • On a beautiful starry night in the city of Kahani in the land of Alifbay a terrible thing happened: twelve-year-old Luka's storyteller father, Rashid, fell suddenly and inexplicably into a sleep so deep that nothing and no one could rouse him. To save him from slipping away entirely, Luka must embark on a journey through the Magic World, encountering a slew of phantasmagorical obstacles along the way, to steal the Fire of Life, a seemingly impossible and exceedingly dangerous task • With Haroun and the Sea of Stories Salman Rushdie proved that he is one of the best contemporary writers of fables, and it proved to be one of his most popular books with readers of all ages

'Two Surface-dwellers. Two! He’s a Fattypuff and you’re a Thinifer. There’s no doubt about it!’ • This is the tale of two brothers. Edmund is a little on the plump side and Terry is a bit of a rake. When they discover the countries under the Earth they are divided and sent to the warring kingdoms of the Fattypuffs and the Thinifers. The Fattypuffs eat hourly with light snacks in between. The Thinifers like nothing more than discipline and work six days a week. Whether you are a jolly Fattypuff or a driven Thinifer you’ll be rooting for the brothers to bring peace to the countries under the Earth • Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can take the quiz to find out if you’re a Fattypuff or a Thinifer! • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Times, Sunday Times and The Economist, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2016 in the New York Times • Shortly before his death, Stefan Hertmans' grandfather Urbain Martien gave his grandson a set of notebooks containing the detailed memories of his life. He grew up in poverty around 1900, the son of a struggling church painter who died young, and went to work in an iron foundry at only 13. Afternoons spent with his father at work on a church fresco were Urbain’s heaven; the iron foundry an inferno • During the First World War, Urbain was on the front line confronting the invading Germans, and ever after he is haunted by events he can never forget. The war ends and he marries his great love, Maria Emelia, but she dies tragically in the 1919 flu epidemic

'Delightful... Her characters are, as always, wonderfully imperfect' New York Review of Books • Alan has changed because he's injured his back. Pain has altered his appearance and made him glum, demanding and resentful. His wife Jane has to do everything for him - fetching, carrying, shopping, cooking, even dressing and undressing him. Sometimes she longs for escape • Delia is a writer and researcher specialising in fairy tales - she is, in her own estimation, a 'Great Artist'. Her husband, Henry, manages her every need making certain Delia gets everything she desires including spectacular doses of adulation • Can Delia coax Alan out of his grumpiness? Can Henry stop Jane feeling guilty? Can the two couples break out of their fixed roles?

A powerful story set in war-torn Danzig about a teenager's rise from clown to hero by Nobel Prize-winner Gunter Grass • To compensate for his unusually large Adam's apple - source of both discomfort and distress - fourteen year old Joachim Mahlke turns himself into athlete and ace diver. Soon he is known to his peers and his nation as 'The Great Mahlke'. But to his enemies, he remains a target. He is different and doomed in a country scarred by the war • Cat and Mouse was first published in 1961, two years after Gunter Grass' controversial and applauded masterpiece, The Tin Drum. Once again Grass turns his attention on Danzig. With a subtle blend of humour and power, Cat and Mouse ostensibly relates the rise of Mahlke from clown to hero. But Mahlke's outlandish antics hide the darkness at the heart of a nation torn by Nazi violence, the war and its aftermath