Vintage books Just Law Kennedy Helena

Jon is 59 and divorced: a senior civil servant in Westminster who hates many of his colleagues and loathes his work, he is a good man in a bad world • Meg is a bankrupt accountant – two words you don’t want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your CV. Living on Telegraph Hill, she can see London unfurl below her. Somewhere out there is safety • As Jon and Meg navigate the sweet and serious heart of London – passing through 24 hours that will change them both for ever – they tell a very unusual, unbearably moving love story

'They sing in my head even now... What a wonderful storyteller/poet he was' Michael Morpurgo, Guardian • Have you ever wondered how the leopard got his spots? Or how the camel got his hump? Rudyard Kipling's witty and beautifully written stories explain these secrets and many more and introduce such memorable characters as the Elephant's Child, the Cat that Walked by Himself and the Butterfly that Stamped

Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s pub for a pint, a slow one • One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick • Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers.He prompts other memories too – of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who says the unsayable on the radio • But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular Brother, that he cannot control - and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity

Just as Peter Ackroyd's bestselling London is the biography of the city, Thames: Sacred River is the biography of the river, from sea to source. Exploring its history from prehistoric times to the present day, the reader is drawn into an extraordinary world, learning about the fishes that swim in the river and the boats that ply its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces • Peter Ackroyd has a genius for digging out the most surprising and entertaining details, and for writing about them in the most magisterial prose; the result is a wonderfully readable and captivating guide to this extraordinary river and the towns and villages which line it

Meet Fahner, the retired small-town doctor who resorts to the garden axe when his patience with his cruel wife runs out • Meet Patrick, so entranced by the sight of his sleeping girlfriend that he cuts a small piece out of her back, just to see what she tastes like • Meet the silent assassin who calmly despatches two Neo-Nazi thugs on a railway platform • A nameless lawyer invites us to read an extraordinary dossier of violent and unspeakable acts. All the crimes have one thing in common: the guilty have never been convicted in a court of law. But however heinous the crime, the narrator shows how the human circumstances behind events can tell a different story

In this witty and poignant story the railway is pushing its way relentlessly towards the town from Manchester, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order. The arrival of handsome young Doctor Harrison causes yet further agitation not just because of his revolutionary methods but also because of his effect on the hearts of the ladies. Meanwhile Miss Matty Jenkyns nurses her own broken heart after she was forced to give up the man she loved when she was a young girl

Humour, fantasy, rage and despair both help and hinder the protagonists of these stories as they navigate changing circumstances, accumulating losses, moments of comprehension and tenderness. Here is the woman, hoping for a quiet day at the zoo, who finally snaps at a white man's racist tirade and vents years of fury; the micro-celebrity who practises lines for a chat show on which he'll never appear; and the woman who walks out of her honeymoon suite at midnight, perhaps for good. Unsparing in her close examination of human relationships, A. L. Kennedy proves once again why she is regarded as one of our great storytellers

A compelling and painfully emotional thriller from the author of international bestseller Star of the Sea • From the bestselling author of Star of the Sea and Shadowplay, a thrilling novel about a father who takes the law into his own hands • 'Gripping and moving...a taut, expertly crafted plot' Guardian • Dublin, June 1995: the hottest summer since records began. But Billy Sweeney, a middle-aged salesman with a failed marriage, a faltering career and a tumbledown house, has more than weather on his mind • His youngest daughter lies in a coma in hospital following a mysterious attack on the petrol station where she worked. Devastated by the unfolding consequences of that violent night and frustrated by the system, Billy finally decides to take the law into his own hands

‘Barbecued billygoats!’ • Can you imagine finding gold? That’s just what the Swallows and Amazons and Dick and Dorothea decide to hunt for in the hills high above the lake. But it’s a hot and dry summer and water is in scarce supply. Worse still for the troubled campers, they have competition: Squashy Hat. Anybody can see he is a prospector. And talk about squashy hats! The children have never seen squashier. Just who is he and what sort of traps is he laying? Using pigeons to carry messages, braving dangerous mines and fires, the Swallows, Amazons and D’s Mining Company must stake their claim before their dreaded rival • Includes exclusive material: In ‘The Backstory’ you can test your knowledge of the book and learn all about homing pigeons! • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

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

Reissued in new series style to match Faulks's most recent novel Where My Heart Used to Beat, which was a major Sunday Times bestseller in 2016 • A vividly evocative novel set in Cold War and New Frontier era America, from the bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray • America, 1959. With two young children she adores, loving parents back in London, and an admired husband, Charlie, working at the British embassy in Washington, the world seems an effervescent place of parties, jazz and family happiness to Mary van der Linden. But the Eisenhower years are ending, and 1960 brings the presidential battle between two ambitious senators: John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. But when Frank, an American newspaper reporter, enters their lives Mary embarks on a passionate affair, all the while knowing that in the end she must confront an impossible decision

Following the wild success of his novel, Carnovsky, Nathan Zuckerman has been catapulted into the literary limelight. As he ventures out onto the streets of Manhattan he finds himself accosted on all sides, the target of admonishers, advisers, would-be literary critics, and – worst of all – fans • An incompetent celebrity, ill at ease with his newfound fame, and unsure of how to live up to his fictional creation’s notoriety, Zuckerman flounders his way through a high-profile affair, the disintegration of his family life, and fends off the attentions of his most tenacious fan yet, as the turbulent decade of the sixties draws to a close around him • But beneath the uneasy glamour are the spectres of the recently murdered Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr