Vintage books Heliopolis Scudamore James

Upstate is a funny, moving family drama from one of the world’s most influential literary critics • Alan Querry, a successful property developer from the north of England, has two daughters: Vanessa, a philosopher who lives and teaches in Saratoga Springs, NY, and Helen, a record company executive based in London. The sisters never quite recovered from their parents’ bitter divorce and the early death of their mother, with Vanessa particularly affected, and plagued by bouts of depression since her teenage years • When she suffers a new crisis, Alan and Helen travel to Saratoga Springs. Over the course of six wintry days in upstate New York, the Querry family begins to struggle with the questions that animate this profound and searching novel: Why do some people find living so much harder than others? • Rich in subtle human insight, and vivid with a sense of place, Upstate is a perceptive, intensely poignant novel

It is 1969 and James Bond is about to go solo, recklessly motivated by revenge • A seasoned veteran of the service, 007 is sent to single-handedly stop a civil war in the small West African nation of Zanzarim. Aided by a beautiful accomplice and hindered by the local militia, he undergoes a scarring experience which compels him to ignore M’s orders in pursuit of his own brand of justice. Bond’s renegade action leads him to Washington, D.C., where he discovers a web of intrigue and witnesses fresh horrors • Even if Bond succeeds in exacting his revenge, a man with two faces will come to stalk his every waking moment

James and Katherine meet at a wedding in London in 2006, towards the end of the money for nothing years. James is a man with a varied past now living alone in a flat in Bloomsbury; Katherine is separated from her husband and working in an interim job in a luxury hotel. They exchange phone numbers at the wedding, but from then on not much goes according to the script

What does it take to be a family? • Julia has fallen deeply, unexpectedly in love. James is her second chance, and everything she never knew she wanted. It’s perfect but for two things: their children • Julia’s beloved daughter Gwen loathes James and James’s son Nathan takes pleasure in antagonising his new stepsister. Uniting two households is never easy, but the teenagers’ unexpected actions will eventually threaten everyone’s hard-won happiness

A powerful and unique story about connection, showing that miracles can happen – even across a library circulation desk • The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-eight year old librarian Peggy Cort feels as if love and life have stood her up. That is, until the day James Carlson Sweatt – the 'over-tall' eleven year old boy who's the talk of the town – walks into her library and changes her life for ever • Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows – six foot five at age twelve, then seven foot, then eight – so does their most singular romance

There's no better time to rediscover James Bond • Who is Auric Goldfinger? • The Bank of England wants to know and they're also curious to find out what he's done with the huge stock of gold he's been collecting since the war. James Bond is put on the trail • This isn't the first time 007 has come across the enigmatic millionaire and he quickly discovers that Goldfinger never forgets and never forgives. Bond is drawn inexorably into the most ambitious heist of the century and finds himself the only defence against Goldfinger's murderous mania for gold

As America recovers from the Second World War, two families' journeys begin • James Vincent, born in 1942 to an Irish-American family, escapes his parents' turbulent marriage and attends law school in New York, where he moves up the social ladder as a prosperous and bright attorney • Meanwhile, Agnes Miller, a beautiful black woman on date with a handsome suitor, is pulled over by the police on a rural road in Georgia. The terrible moments that follow make her question her future and pivot her into a hasty marriage and new life in the Bronx • Illuminating more than six decades of sweeping change - from the struggle for civil rights and the chaos of Vietnam to Obama's first year as President - James and Agnes's families will come together in unexpected, intimate and profoundly human ways

There's no better time to rediscover James Bond • The British Secret Service has many enemies • Whether it's a sniper in East Berlin, a Russian agent secretly bidding for a Faberge egg, or a retired major in Jamaica with a treacherous secret, it is down to James Bond to neutralize the threat • In these stories the dirty world of international espionage tests Bond's skills to the extreme

Soap Saves Lives. But did you know that excessive use of soap and skin-care products is harming our health and the environment? Apart from in hand-washing there is no need to use soap on our bodies at all? • Doctor and preventative medicine expert James Hamblin gave up showering five years ago and only ever uses soap on his hands. In Clean, he takes us on an irreverent and entertaining journey through our complex relationship with our bodies and cleanliness. Drawing on the latest science, he introduces a new way to think about cleanliness - one that is cheaper, simpler and better for our skin, our immunity and the world in which we live

Malignant forces and supernatural visitors haunt this selection of superbly spooky tales selected and introduced by Ruth Rendell • M. R. James wrote his ghost stories to entertain friends on Christmas Eve, and they went on to both transform and modernise a genre. James harnesses the power of suggestion to move from a recognisable world to one that is indefinably strange, and then unforgettably terrifying. Sheets, pictures, carvings, a dolls house, a lonely beach, a branch tapping on a window - ordinary things take on more than a tinge of dread in the hands of the original master of suspense

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader • He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works

A high-pitched laugh echoes in an empty church. Servants discover their master dead in his bed, the only sign of disturbance an open window. The coffin of a woman hanged as a witch is found to be empty. A bed that hasn’t been slept in is crumpled and distressed come the morning. A skeletal figure creeps closer and closer to the house where an unsuspecting family lie sleeping. In these chilling tales of the supernatural, M. R. James proves he truly is the master of the ghost story • Selected from the book Ghost Stories by M.R. James