Vintage books The Lives of Others Mukherjee Neel

What happens when we attempt to exchange the life we are given for something better? • Five people, in very different circumstances, from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more • Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life

Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen's dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq's wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice • The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine

When the Khurana boys and their friend Mansoor set out for one of Delhi's markets, disaster strikes without warning. A 'small' bomb detonates, killing the brothers instantly. Mansoor is one of the few survivors • From India to America, the lives of victims and bystanders, mothers and fathers, comrades and adversaries are changed forever. Even the young bomb maker cannot escape the heat of the blast

The story of modern Australia begins in eighteenth-century Britain, where people were hanged for petty offences but crime was rife, and the gaols were bursting. From this situation was born the Sydney experiment, with criminals perceived to be damaging British society transported to Sydney, an 'open air prison with walls 14,000 miles thick' • Eleven ships were dispatched in 1781, and arrived in Australia after eight hellish months at sea. Tom Keneally describes the first four years of the 'thief colony' and how, despite the escapes, the floggings, the murders and the rebellions, it survived against the odds to create a culture which would never have been tolerated in its homeland but which, in Australia, became part of the identity of a new and audacious nation

The House of Mirth follows the tragic fall of Lily Bart, a beautiful socialite who loses her footing in the savage social-climbing world of New York high society in the nineteenth century • Lily Bart has no fortune, but she possesses everything else she needs to make an excellent marriage: beauty, intelligence, a love of luxury and an elegant skill in negotiating the hidden traps and false friends of New York's high society. But time and again Lily cannot bring herself to make the final decisive move: to abandon her sense of self and a chance of love for the final soulless leap into a mercenary union. Her time is running out, and degradation awaits. Edith Wharton's masterful novel is a tragedy of money, morality and missed opportunity

The Hill of Evil Counsel is a fusion of history and imaginative narrative, re-creating the twilight world of Jerusalem during the fading days of the British Mandate. In these three closely linked stories, Oz vividly evokes the stifling atmosphere of impending crisis as real personalities rub shoulders with fictional characters whose hopes and fears are hauntingly portrayed

The first modern spy novel and a must-read for espionage junkies and fans of James Bond and John Le Carre • When Carruthers receives a letter from his friend Davies suggesting a Baltic sailing trip, the vision of a manned yacht, A1 scenery and excellent duck shooting quickly works its charm. But Carruthers hopes for a holiday are quickly dashed. There has been suspicious German activity along the coast. The Medusa, manned by the sinister Dollman, has already tried to destroy Davies. What are the Germans up to? Nothing less than a plot to invade Britain. And only these two courageous Englishmen can stop them • Published in 1903, The Riddle of the Sands is considered the first modern spy novel

The Art of Love may have been written in the days of gladiators and emperors, but Ovid remains the smartest teacher on the subject of love in all of history. His advice is enduringly useful and entertaining. Between these covers you'll find all you need to know about where to meet a new beau, how to handle illicit affairs and how to maintain your allure • This edition also contains the companion volume The Cure for Love - just in case things don't work out

‘The funniest book in the world’ Evelyn Waugh • Mr Charles Pooter is a respectable man. He has just moved into a very desirable home in Holloway with his dear wife Carrie, from where he commutes to his job of valued clerk at a reputable bank in the City. Unfortunately neither his dear friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing, nor the butcher, the greengrocer's boy and the Lord Mayor seem to recognise Mr Pooter's innate gentility, and his disappointing son Lupin has gone and got himself involved with a most unsuitable fiancee • George and Weedon Grossmith's comic novel, perfectly illustrated by Weedon, is a glorious, affectionate caricature of the English middle-class at the end of nineteenth century

The second novel in Willa Cather’s Great Plains trilogy, is a lyrical coming-of-age story charting the struggles of an artists life • Thea Kronberg, gifted with a beautiful voice, defies her humble beginnings in Colorado and finds success far from her small hometown. But her achievements come with painful drawbacks. As the distance between Thea and her roots increases, she must fight to find her inner strength and reach her full potential

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, an enthralling, wrenching novel about the lives and choices of one family, caught on the cusp of identities • Jonah, Ruth and Joseph are the children of mixed-race parents determined to raise them beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. Yet they cannot be protected from the world forever • Even as Jonah becomes a successful young tenor, the opera arena remains fixated on his race. Ruth turns her back on classical music and disappears, dedicating herself to activism and a new relationship. As the years pass, Joseph – the middle child, a pianist and our narrator – must battle not just to remain connected to his siblings, but to forge a future of his own • This is a story of the tragedy of race in America, told through the lives and choices of one family caught on the cusp of identities

Sir Humphrey du Val of the Table of Less Valued Knights – Camelot's least prestigious table, with one leg shorter than the others so that it has to be propped up with a folded napkin – doesn't do quests ... until he meets Elaine, a damsel in distress with a secret to hide • Meanwhile, Queen Martha of Puddock is on the run from an arranged marriage to the odious Prince Edwin of Tuft. But an encounter with the Locum of the Lake (standing in for the full-time Lady) leaves her with a quest of her own: to find her missing brother, long believed dead • The two quests collide, introducing a host of Arthurian misfits, including a freakishly short giant, a twelve-year-old crone, an amorous unicorn, and a magic sword with a mind of her own • With Gods Behaving Badly Marie Phillips showed that she has a rare gift for comedy, giving the Greek Gods an ingenious contemporary twist