Vintage books The Rough Patch. The Art of Living Together de Marneffe Daphne

"Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first" • A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white • Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times

Sterne's utterly original novel - the meandering, maddening 'autobiography' of one of literature's oldest comic characters • Doomed to become the ‘sport of fortune’ by an interruption at the crucial moment of conception, Tristram Shandy’s life lurches from one mishap to another: his nose crushed by the doctor’s forceps during birth, christened with the wrong name, an unfortunate incident involving a slamming sash window… Discover the anti-autobiography of the hilarious Tristram Shandy

America is in crisis • In the space of a generation the country has become divided between winners and losers, with its political system on the verge of breakdown and its people adrift amongst failing institutions • In The Unwinding, George Packer tells the human story of America’s vertiginous collapse. Dean Price is a sustainability evangelist in the rural South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker trying to survive the collapse of the Rust Belt; Jeff Connaughton, a political careerist in Washington, and Peter Thiel, a controversial Silicon Valley billionaire. Journeying across three decades, Packer weaves the stories of these four Americans together to paint a rich, complex and compelling portrait of contemporary America as it stands at this, its most pivotal moment

В этот сборник входят самые любопытные и запоминающиеся рассказы сэра Артура Конана Дойла о культовом сыщике Шерлоке Холмсе, включая истории о стычках с опасными загадочными незнакомцами, изобретательных ограблениях, смертельных заговорах и спрятанных бриллиантах. В погоне за новыми делами проницательный детектив и его отважный помощник посещают самые разные места – от привычных лондонских улочек до живописных английских деревень и холодных швейцарских скал, которые тонут в брызгах Райхенбахского водопада • Книга на английском языке • This volume collects together Sherlock Holmes's most memorable and intriguing cases, including adventures with mysterious masked strangers, ingenious heists, murderous plots and hidden jewels, which take the famous detective and his faithful sidekick Dr Watson from the streets of London and the English countryside to a chilling encounter at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland

In 1969, Jane Mixer, a first-year law student at the University of Michigan, posted a note on a student noticeboard to share a lift back to her hometown of Muskegon for spring break. She never made it: she was brutally murdered, her body found a few miles from campus the following day • The Red Parts is Maggie Nelson’s singular account of her aunt Jane’s death, and the trial that took place some 35 years afterward. Officially unsolved for decades, the case was reopened in 2004 after a DNA match identified a new suspect, who would soon be arrested and tried. In 2005, Nelson found herself attending the trial, and reflecting with fresh urgency on our relentless obsession with violence, particularly against women • Resurrecting her interior world during the trial – in all its horror, grief, obsession, recklessness, scepticism and downright confusion – Maggie Nelson has produced a work of profound integrity and, in its subtle indeterminacy, deadly moral precision

Когда Саладин отбил Иерусалим у крестоносцев в 1187 году, вернув Священный город исламскому правлению, он вызвал волну потрясений по всей христианской Европе и мусульманскому Ближнему Востоку, которые ощущаются и сегодня • Это была кульминация в высшей степени захватывающей жизни. Родившийся в знатной курдской семье на севере Ирака, этот воин и дипломат сражался под знаменем джихада, но в то же время неустанно трудился над построением империи, простиравшейся от Северной Африки до Западного Ирака. Собрав вместе неспокойную коалицию,он смог захватить Иерусалим только для того,чтобы начать Третий крестовый поход и встретиться лицом к лицу со своим величайшим противником, королем Ричардом Львиное Сердце • Опираясь на богатую смесь арабских и европейских источников,это исчерпывающий рассказ как о человеке,так и о легенде, которую он породил, ярко описывающий неустанные действия его жизни и прослеживающий их последствия в культуре и политике вплоть до наших дней

The first novel in world renowned film-maker, Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy of novels plotting the fractious marriage of his parents • In 1909, Ingmar Bergman’s mother and father first meet. Anna is a nurse from a wealthy family; Henrik, a poor, trainee priest living with his lover. From the intensity of their courtship, to the difficult early years of their marriage, Bergman fictionalises his parent’s life before his birth, drawing the quiet, emotional sensitivity of his film-maker’s eye deep into the heart of his own family • The Best Intentions is the first in renowned film-maker Ingmar Bergman’s loose trilogy of novels that plots the fractious marriage of his parents, continued in Sunday’s Children and Private Confessions

The complete short stories of the 20th century's greatest visionary • 'Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man' W. H. Auden • This volume contains all of Kafka's shorter fiction, from fragments, parables and sketches to longer tales. Together they reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought. Some are well known, others are mere jottings, observations of daily life, given artistic form through Kafka's unique perception of the world

The Complete Stories gathers together Anita Desai's short story collections Diamond Dust and Games at Twilight and the novellas of The Artist of Disappearance, with a new preface from the author. From the icy suburbs of Canada to the overcrowded B&Bs of Cornwall, via the hill towns and cities of India, Anita Desai observes human behaviour unflinchingly but not unkindly, recognising our ordinariness and our strangeness, and capturing both with quiet precision

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 complete novels of one of the greatest German writers of all time, collected together in one literary masterpiece • Kafka’s characters are victims of forces beyond their control, estranged and rootless citizens deceived by authoritarian power. Filled with claustrophobic description and existential profundity, Kafka has been compared to a literary Woody Allen • In The Trial Joseph K is relentlessly hunted for a crime that remains nameless • The Castle follows K in his ceaseless attempts to enter the castle and to belong somewhere • In Amerika Karl Rossmann also finds himself isolated and confused when he is 'packed off to America by his parents'. Here, ordinary immigrants are also strange, and 'America' is never quite as real as it seems

The Italian Renaissance shaped Western culture - but it was far stranger and darker than many of us realise. We know the Mona Lisa for her smile, but not that she was married to a slave-trader. We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his art, but few now appreciate his ingenious designs for weaponry. We visit Florence to see Michelangelo's David, but hear nothing of the massacre that forced the republic's surrender. In fact, many of the Renaissance's most celebrated artists and thinkers emerged not during the celebrated 'rebirth' of the fifteenth century but amidst the death and destruction of the sixteenth century • The Beauty and the Terror is an enrapturing narrative which includes the forgotten women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, prostitutes, farmers and citizens who lived the Renaissance every day