Vintage books First Love, Last Ritesv Макьюэн Иэн

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

Gun Love is a hypnotic story of family, community and violence. Told from the perspective of a sharp-eyed teenager, it exposes America's love affair with firearms and its painful consequences • 'My mother called anyone or anything that seemed alone, or ended up in the wrong place, a stray. There were stray people, stray dogs, stray bullets, and stray butterflies.' • Fourteen-year-old Pearl France lives in the front seat of a broken down car and her mother Margot lives in the back. Together they survive on a diet of powdered milk and bug spray, love songs and stolen cigarettes • Life on the edge of a Florida trailer park is strange enough, but when Pastor Rex's 'Guns for God' programme brings Eli Redmond to town Pearl's world is upended. Eli pays regular visits to Margot in the back seat, forcing Pearl to find a world beyond the car

A beguiling collection of short stories from award-winning author of Free Love, The Past and Late in the Day, Tessa Hadley • Lottie announces at the breakfast table that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is nineteen but looks five years younger. Her fiance is Edgar Lennox, a composer of religious music and lecturer at Lottie's university, forty-five years her senior.It is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties tested but holding, and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments. Evoking a world that expands beyond the pages, it marks the beginning of what is an astonishing collection to treasure

Young and penniless, Kif Kehlmann, is rung in the middle of the night by notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl proposes a deal: $10,000 for Kehlmann to ghostwrite his memoir in six weeks • Kehlmann accepts but soon begins to fear that he is being corrupted by Heidl. Is he ghostwriting a memoir, or is Heidl is rewriting him? As the deadline draws closer everything that is certain grows uncertain as he begins to wonder: who is Ziggy Heidl - and who is Kif Kehlmann?

As London comes alive with the 1960s youth revolution, one woman makes a choice that defies all expectations • It's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable • But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations

The epic new novel from the bestselling author of Birdsong • 'Wistful, yearning and wise' Elizabeth Day • 1914: Aspiring journalist Anton arrives in Vienna where he meets Delphine, a woman of deep secrets. Anton is entranced by the light of first love, until his country declares war on hers • 1927: For Lena, life in a small town has been cosseted and cold. When her love affair with a young lawyer crumbles, she leaves to take a post at the snow-capped sanatorium, the Schloss Seeblick • 1933: Anton is sent to write about the mysterious Schloss Seeblick. In this place, on the banks of a silvery lake where the roots of human suffering are laid bare, two people will see each other as if for the first time

«Одна история» — это новейший роман прославленного Джулиана Барнса • Итак, познакомьтесь с Полом; ему девятнадцать лет. В теннисном клубе в тихом лондонском пригороде он встречает миссис Сьюзен Маклауд; ей сорок восемь. С этого и начинается их единственная история — ведь «влюбленным свойственно считать, будто их история не укладывается ни в какие рамки и рубрики»… • Книга на английском языке • Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question • First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn't know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he's proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention • As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen

A young boy coming of age in British-occupied Jerusalem trades away one possession after another, only to find something much more wonderful – his first love • When Soumchi, an eleven-year-old boy growing up just after World War II, receives a bicycle as a gift from his Uncle Zemach, he is overjoyed – even if it is a girl's bicycle • Ignoring the taunts of other boys in his neighbourhood, he dreams of riding far away from them, out of the city and across the desert, toward the heart of Africa. But first he wants to show his new prize to his friend Aldo…

This remarkable illustrated novel is Eco's most accessible and entertaining book since The Name of the Rose • In this fascinating, abundant new novel from the incomparable Eco, Yambo, a rare-book dealer, has suffered a bizarre form of memory loss. He can remember every book he ever read but nothing about his own life • In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws into his old family home and searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and diaries kept in the attic. And so Yambo relives his youth: Mussolini, Catholic education, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the flames to capture one simple, innocent image, that of his first love

A bewitching tale of first love, shattering grief, and the dangerous magic that draws us home • Mara's island is one of stories and magic, but every story ends in the same way. She will finish her days on the cliff, turned to stone and gazing out at the horizon like all the islanders before her • Mara's parents - a boxer and a ballerina - chose this enchanted place as a refuge from the turbulence of their previous lives; they wanted to bring up their children somewhere special and safe. But the island and the sea don't care what people want, and when they claim a price from her family, Mara's world unravels • It takes the arrival of Pearl, mysterious and irresistible, to light a spark in Mara again, and allow her to consider a different story for herself

Японские рыбаки издревле почитают бога морей и просят его лишь о том, чтобы море было спокойным, а корабли возвращались домой • Однако юноша-моряк, даже страшась небесной кары за своеволие, молил о том, чтобы ему повстречалась красивая девушка хорошего нрава. И судьба улыбнулась ему • То, что произошло с героями потом, было сродни порыву ветра - неожиданному и неподвластному их воле • "Шум прибоя" - маленький шедевр Юкио Мисимы, самого знаменитого японского писателя XX века • Книга на английском языке • A classic, elegant romance set in a Japanese fishing village • 'A work of art...altogether a joyous and lovely thing' New York Times • Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love • It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village

The great Icelandic novel by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Halldor Laxness • 'There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life' New York Review of Books • First published in 1946, this is a humane, epic novel set in rural Iceland. Bjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor his family, will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartus's obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever • Written by the Nobel prize-winner dubbed the 'Tolstoy of the North', this is a magnificent portrait of the eerie Icelandic landscape and one man's dogged struggle for independence