Vintage books No Great Mischief MacLeod Alistair

The Ruppert Mundys, once the greatest baseball team in America, are now in a terminal decline, their line-up filled with a disreputable assortment of old men, drunks and even amputees. Around them baseball itself seems to be collapsing, brought down by a bizarre mixture of criminality, stupidity, and The Great Communist Conspiracy, aimed at the very heart of the American way of life • In this hilarious and wonderfully eccentric novel Philip Roth turns his attention to one of the most beloved of all American rituals: baseball. Players, tycoons and the paying public are all targets as Roth satirises the dense tapestry of myths and legends that have grown up around The Great American Pastime

A ‘magical, haunting’ (Philippa Gregory) novel of a tragic love affair in a threatened world • In 1649, Jan Brunt, a Dutchman, arrives in England to work on draining and developing the Great Level, an expanse of marsh in the heart of the fen country. It is here he meets Eliza, whose love overturns his ordered vision and whose act of resistance forces him to see the world differently • Jan flees to the New World, where the spirit of avarice is raging and his skills as an engineer are prized. Then one spring morning a boy delivers a note that prompts him to remember the fens, and confront all that was lost there

'In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars' • The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby's party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between sips of champagne his guests speculate about their mysterious host. Some say he's a bootlegger. Others swear he was a German spy during the war. They lean in and whisper 'he killed a man once'. Just where is Gatsby from and what is the obsession that drives him? • Vintage Deco: Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on

В "Великом Гэтсби" Ф. Скотт Фицджеральд запечатлел яркость, беспечность и жестокость богачей в эпоху американского джаза • Великий Гэтсби таинственным образом живет в роскошном особняке на Лонг-Айленде, принимая у себя сотни людей. И все же, кажется, никто не знает его и не знает, как он стал таким богатым. По слухам, он был кем угодно - от немецкого шпиона до героя войны. Люди наперебой требуют приглашений на его дикие вечеринки. Но Джей Гэтсби не обращает на них внимания. Он заботится только об одном человеке - Дейзи Бьюкенен, женщине, которую он ждал всю свою жизнь. Он и не подозревает, что его увлечение приведет к трагедии и закончится убийством • Книга на английском языке • Read F Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of love, money, revenge and betrayal set in Jazz Age America

'A masterpiece' The Times • After the tragic deaths of their parents, Magdalen and Norah discover the devastating news that they are both illegitimate and not entitled to any inheritance. Norah is forced to become a governess to earn her keep but Magdalen has grander plans and embarks on an elaborate scheme of revenge against her cold-hearted relatives

Read this classic uplifting, moving and heartwarming story about life in the face of the cold war • Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicuous aircraft engineer whose eccentric interests in quantum mechanics and spiritualism are frowned upon in aviation circles. But when a passenger plane crashes in unexplained circumstances, Honey must convince his superiors that his unorthodox theories are correct before more lives are lost

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

No longer a boy, not quite a man, Edwin Clayhanger stands on a canal bridge on his last day of school, and surveys the valley of Bursley and the Five Towns. Serious, good-natured and full of incoherent ambition, Edwin's hopes and dreams for the future are just taking shape, even as they are put to the test by challenges from Edwin's domineering father, the stifling constraints of society, and an unusual young woman

No man has ever loved a woman and not imagined her in the arms of someone else • Felix Quinn calls himself a happy man. He owns one of London's oldest antiquarian bookshops. He is married to and adores the beautiful Marisa. But a childhood experience has taught him that loss is intrinsic to love, and Felix realises that he can only be truly happy if his wife is sleeping with another man. Enter Marius into Marisa's affections. And now Felix must ask himself, is he really happy? • By the winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize

The collected stories by one of the greatest short-story writers in the world • These slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces: apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child • Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss • As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword: 'the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness

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

'There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that' • This is the story of Darling, uprooted from her family home by paramilitary police, and living in a Zimbabwean shanty called Paradise. Despite the turmoil, she revels in mischief and adventures with her friends, like stealing guavas from the rich neighbourhood, and singing Lady Gaga at the top of her voice • But when Darling has a chance to forge a different life in America, she realises that this new paradise brings its own set of challenges. In We Need New Names a spirited girl grows into a powerful observer of global identity • Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world