Vintage books Serious Sweet Kennedy A. L

Acute, questioning, humane and passionately concerned for justice, Helena Kennedy is one of the most powerful voices in legal circles in Britain today. Here she roundly challenges the record of modern governments over the fundamental values of equality, fairness and respect for human dignity. She argues that in the last twenty years we have seen a steady erosion of civil liberties, culminating today in extraordinary legislation, which undermines long established freedoms. Are these moves a crude political response to demands for law and order? Or is the relationship between citizens and the state being covertly reframed and redefined?

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

Nik Cohn began to write this book in the late 1960s with a simple purpose: to catch the feel, the pulse of Rock. Nobody had written a serious book on the subject before, and there were no reference books or research to refer to. The result is an unruly, thrilling and definitive history of an era, from Bill Haley to Jimi Hendrix, full of guts, flash, energy and speed. In vividly describing the music and cutting through the hype, Nik Cohn engendered and perfected a new form: rock criticism

‘So long,’ called the harbourmaster. ‘Don’t run into Missee Lee!’ • The Swallows, Amazons and Captain Flint don’t pay much heed to the harbourmaster’s friendly warning as they set off for China. They are on a round-the-world voyage aboard the Wild Cat and it’s been plain sailing for a hundred ports. But when Gibber, the ship’s monkey, accidentally sinks their faithful boat things take a serious turn for the worse. Separated, captured, miles from home, the Swallows and Amazons are about to meet their fate and the pirate who holds it: the legendary Missee Lee • In the 'Backstory' you can learn to decipher Nancy's Morse code and find out about the real life inspirations for Missee Lee • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

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

The year is 1972, the Cold War is far from over and Serena Frome, in her final year at Cambridge, is being groomed for MI5. Sent on Operation Sweet Tooth – a highly secret undercover mission – she meets Tom Haley, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage – trust no one

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…

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

'Blackburn rescues the man from inside the madman. She redeems a lost life' - The Times • In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness which left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book Julia Blackburn follows Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw happening in the world around him into his visionary paintings, drawings and etchings • These were also years of tenderness for Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who was with him to the end. Julia Blackburn writes of the elderly painter with the intimacy of an old friend, seeing through his eyes and sharing the silence in his head, capturing perfectly his ferocious energy, his passion and his genius

Read Pulitzer Prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author Anne Tyler's funny and uplifting exploration of what it is to be an outsider • Morgan Gower has an outsize hairy beard, an array of peculiar costumes and fantastic headwear, and a serious smoking habit. He likes to pretend to be other people - a jockey, a shipping magnate, a foreign art dealer - and he likes to do this more and more since his massive brood of daughters are all growing up, getting married and finding him embarrassing. Then comes his first dramatic encounter with Emily and Leon Meredith, and the start of an extraordinary obsession

On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other