Vintage books The Portrait of a Lady Джеймс Генри

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

Thomas More is one of the great figures in English history. Pre-eminent as a courtier and as a humanist, a friend to Henry VIII and the author of Utopia, More's life and career epitomise the great transformation of England in the space of 35 years • In this illuminating book, Peter Ackroyd investigates the paradox of this 'man for all seasons': the man of the world who travelled across Europe to negotiate on behalf of his king, and the unworldly man who's careful silence on the matter of Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn would lead to his disgrace and execution • A magnificent achievement, The Life of Thomas More gives us a rich portrait of the man and the social and cultural world in which he lived

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

His name is Lord Doyle • His plan: to gamble away his last days in the dark and decadent casino halls of Macau • His game: baccarat punto blanco -- 'that slutty dirty queen of casino card games.' • Though Doyle is not a Lord at all. He is a fake; a corrupt lawyer who has spent a career siphoning money from rich clients. And now he is on the run, determined to send the money – and himself – up in smoke • So begins a beguiling, elliptical velvet rope of a plot: a sharp suit, yellow kid gloves, another naughty lemonade and an endless loop of small wins and losses. When Lady Luck arrives in the form of Dao-Ming, a beautiful yet enigmatic lost soul, so begins a spectacular and unnatural winning streak in which millions come Doyle’s way. But in these shadowy dens of risk and compulsion, in a land governed by superstition, Doyle knows that when the bets are high, the stakes are even greater

Dorian is a good-natured young man until he discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt lifestyle and untouched by age. But up in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his portrait tells a different story

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