Vintage books Hard Like Water Yan Lianke

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

'Facts alone are wanted in life' • The children at Mr Gradgrind's school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town so entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects of Gradgrind's teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her

‘Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.’ • The children at Mr Gradgrind's school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town so entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects of Gradgrind's teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her

As the Germans advance into Poland in 1939, Elisha Pomeranz, a Jewish mathematician and watchmaker, escapes into the wintry forest, leaving behind his beautiful, intelligent wife, Stefa • After the war, having evaded the concentration camps, they begin to build new lives - Stefa in Stalin's Russia and Elisha in Israel, where, as they seek their reunion, another war is brewing

В школе мистера Грэдграйнда детям строго-настрого запрещено давать волю воображению, вместо этого им надлежит обращать внимание только на холодную, грубую реальность, потому что в жизни значимы только факты. Они живут в дымном, неблагополучном индустриальном городке, где тревог куда больше, чем развлечений. Учёба у Грэдграйнда особенно сильно отражается на его собственных детях, Томе и Луизе, которые из-за неё оказываются неспособны совладать с непредсказуемыми прихотями сердца. Спасением для них становится их подруга Сэсси Джуп, дочь циркового клоуна, которая, несмотря на их тяжёлую жизнь, смогла сохранить в себе милосердие и сострадание • «Тяжёлые времена», десятый роман одного из самых видных авторов классической британской литературы Чарльза Диккенса станет замечательным подарком для ценителей нестареющей классики

In the ninety-ninth district of a sprawling labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician - and hundreds just like them - are undergoing Re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal and credentials. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in draconian rules, monitoring behaviour and confiscating treasured books • But when bad weather arrives, followed by the ‘three bitter years’, the intellectuals are abandoned by the regime and left on their own to survive. Divided into four narratives, The Four Books tells the story of the Great Famine, one of China’s most devastating and controversial periods

'Like to spend a night in the Goblin?’ • The Swallows are staying on the Suffolk coast while they wait for their father to return home from China. But although the harbour is bursting with bobbing yachts, barges and steamers, this year there's no chance of any sailing for the landlocked Swallows. That is until they rescue young Jim Brading and his boat the Goblin from a sticky situation and to their delight are recruited as crew members. Mother agrees they can go, on one condition – they absolutely must not sail out past Beach End Buoy and into the open sea… • Includes exclusive content: In the 'Backstory' you can test your knowledge of the book, and learn all about the art of sailing! • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned into a monstrous cockroach, the narrator of Philip Roth's fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast • What follows is a deliriously funny yet moving exploration of the full implications of Kepesh's metamorphosis; audacious, heretical - as darkly hilarious as it is existentially unnerving - making new the silliness, triviality and wonderful meaninglessness of lived human experience

Без своего любимого отца и за много миль от дома Саре Крю очень трудно привыкнуть к своей новой жизни в школе-интернате. К счастью, Сара всегда придумывает замечательные вещи, и ее умение рассказывать истории завоевывает у нее множество друзей. Когда приходит письмо с ужасными новостями, злая директриса мисс Минчин заставляет Сару стать служанкой. У нее забирают ее прекрасную одежду и игрушки. Она должна работать с рассвета до полуночи. Как Сара справится со своей вновь обретенной бедностью? Может ли ее воображение помочь ей преодолеть эту ужасную ситуацию? • Книга на английском языке • ‘I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one’ • Without her beloved father and miles from home, it is very hard for Sara Crewe to like her new life at boarding school

In the Caribbean, at the beginning of the last century, a poor rice-growing family struggle to exist. Four siblings pass their days in the ricefield, as does Ma. But Pa is an angry man ready to vent. It is the August rainy season and above their heads the black sky crackles with lightning • On the day that Pa nearly drowns Ma in a tub of washing water, the children and their mother escape into the cane fields to wait out Pa's rage. But eight-year-old Rama, catches a chill in the rain and falls ill. What follows is a tale of the inheritance of loss. It contains a heart-stopping intensity that places it as one of the greatest Caribbean novels ever written

Marie Colvin was glamorous, hard-drinking, braver than the boys, with a troubled and rackety personal life. She reported from the most dangerous places in the world and her anecdotes about encounters with figures like Colonel Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat were incomparable. She was much admired, and as famous for her wild parties as for the extraordinary lengths to which she went to tell the story • Fellow foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum draws on unpublished diaries and interviews with friends, family and colleagues to produce a story of one of the most daring and inspirational women of our times

Ten-year-old Darling has a choice: it's down, or out • 'To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti and not even this one we live in - who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?' • Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isn't all bad, though. There's mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices • They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama and David Beckham live