Vintage books Lurid & Cute Thirlwell Adam

'An intricately crafted novel, sharp-eared, current and full of heart' Guardian, Books of the Year • A spirited fourteen-year-old, Fay, goes missing from a Lincoln council estate. Is she a runaway, or a victim – another face on a poster gradually fading with time? The story of her last few days before she vanishes is interwoven with the varied lives of six locals – all touched in life-changing ways • David is on a family holiday on the bleak Lincolnshire coast; Howard, a retired steel worker with some dodgy friends; Cosmina, a Romanian immigrant; Sheena, middle-aged and single, running a kiddies’ clothes shop; Mike, owner of a second-hand bookshop and secretly in love with Cosmina; and Chris, a TV-producer-become-monk struggling to leave the ordinary world behind

A novel about the brutality of fame and what happens when fandom turns to obsession, from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Quickening Maze • Henry Banks, a brilliant, anxiously ambitious young actor prepared to go to any length for a role, is finally on the brink of achieving serious celebrity • However, Henry has – unwittingly – become an important part of the life of recently-divorced Kristin. Sitting in her beautiful, empty Philadelphia home, Kristin’s obsession with Henry grows and she becomes convinced they are destined to be together. Flying to London she resolves to bring their relationship to fruition no matter what the cost…

What if everything you’d ever wanted was no longer enough? • Adam and Rachel are getting married at last. Childhood sweethearts whose lives and families have been intertwined for years; theirs is set to be the wedding of the year • But then Rachel’s cousin Ellie makes an unexpected return to the family fold. Beautiful, reckless and troubled, Ellie represents everything that Adam has tried all his life to avoid – and everything that is missing from his world. As the long-awaited wedding approaches, Adam is torn between duty and temptation, security and freedom, and must make a choice that will break either one heart, or many

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

Almost half of the developed population has an internet-based addiction. In some ways this is not surprising, as our world is filled with addictive experiences: from social media and messaging, to rolling news and video streaming. Attention spans are decreasing as our time spent glued to our screens are increasing, negatively affecting our ability to relax, sleep, develop relationships and achieve meaningful goals. Psychologist Adam Alter provides insight into why explains the science behind why we can't seem to stop such behaviour and offers practical advice for using technology differently, in order to lead a happier life, and to set yourself free

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

We are living in the anthropocene – an epoch where everything is being determined by the activities of just one soft-skinned, warm-blooded, short-lived, pedestrian species • How do we make our way through the ruins that we have made? • This anthology tries to answer this as it explores new and enduring cultural landscapes, in a celebration of local distinctiveness that includes new work from some of our finest writers. We have memories of childhood homes from Adam Thorpe, Marina Warner and Sean O’Brien; we journey with John Burnside to the Arizona desert, with Hugh Brody to the Canadian Arctic; going from Tessa Hadley’s hymn to her London garden to caving in the Mendips with Sean Borodale to shell-collecting on a Suffolk beach with Julia Blackburn

The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith's red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: 'Ay, would it were a vulture, 'twere more fitting!'

Philip Roth's entire oeuvre - 31 books - to be reissued in electric new Vintage jackets for October 2016 • As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself as 'a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes' - an identity that will cling to him for a lifetime. As Philip Roth follows Kapesh from the domesticity of childhood out into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a menage a trois in London to the depths of loneliness in New York, Kapesh confronts the central dilemma of pleasure: how to make a truce between dignity and desire; and how to survive the ordeal of an unhallowed existence

Creepy. Peculiar. Fairy. Goblin. Liar. Weirdo. Crank. Genius • No one knows what to make of Juliet Slater, not even her mother. And clothes, boys, school, friends, the changing seasons and what other people think - none of these things seem to matter to Juliet. She spends hours in her room with incomprehensible mathematical text books, her mind voyaging in strange seas of thought, alone. Is she a genius? It might take the rest of her life to find out • While Stella Gibbons was celebrated for her beloved bestseller Cold Comfort Farm, the manuscript for Pure Juliet lay unseen and forgotten until it was brought to light by her family in 2014, and is published here for the first time in Vintage Classics. A tale that travels from an eco-millionaire's British country idyll to an Arabian Nights-style fantasy of the Middle East, this is a treat for fans of this witty, curious and always surprising author

Что, если незнакомец, похожий на вас, украл ваше имя, подделал вашу биографию и отправился по миру, выдавая себя за вас? • Поразительно, но Филип Рот встречает в Иерусалиме человека по имени Филип Рот, который путешествует по Израилю, проповедуя странный обратный исход евреев, призывая их вернуться в дома своих предков в Европе. Рот решает остановить его, даже если для этого придется выдать себя за самозванца • Операция "Шейлок" Филипа Рота - это одновременно шпионская история, политический триллер, размышление об идентичности и непостижимое путешествие по нестабильному, пугающему Ближнему Востоку • Книга на английском языке • Philip Roth's entire oeuvre - 31 books - to be reissued in electric new Vintage jackets for October 2016 • 'Subtle, funny and furious' Observer • What if a lookalike stranger stole your name, hijacked your biography, and went about the world pretending to be you? • Startlingly, Philip Roth meets a man in Jerusalem called Philip Roth who has been touring Israel - riding high on the author's reputation - preaching a bizarre reverse-exodus of the Jews, encouraging them to return to their ancestral homes in Europe

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