Vintage books The Twenty-Third Man Митчелл Глэдис

Rediscover Gladys Mitchell – one of the 'Big Three' female crime fiction writers alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers • When a pair of ramblers, lost in the English countryside, stop at a country house to ask for directions, they are most astonished to be ushered in to dinner. It seems they've been invited as a necessity by the superstitious lady of the house, to avoid thirteen guests sitting down to dinner. But the thirteenth guest never arrives, and his headless body is discovered in a wood the next day • Fortunately, numbered among the original dinner guests is a rather extraordinary psychoanalyst, and sometime detective, by the name of Mrs Bradley

Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife Amy to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment

Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is not like other policemen. His methods appear unorthodox in the extreme: he doesn't search for clues; he ignores obvious suspects and arrests people with cast-iron alibis; he appears permanently distracted. In spite of all this his colleagues are forced to admit that he is a born cop • When strange blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, only Adamsberg takes them - and the increasingly bizarre objects found within them - seriously. And when the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut is found in one, only Adamsberg realises that other murders will soon follow…

Hermann Hesse's magnum opus and a twentieth-century classic • In the remote Kingdom of Castalia, the scholars of the Twenty Third century play the Glass Bead Game. The elaborately coded game is a fusion of all human knowledge - of maths, music, philosophy, science, and art. Intrigued as a school boy, Joseph Knecht becomes consumed with mastering the game as an adult. As Knecht fulfils his life-long quest he must contend with unexpected dilemmas and the longing for a life beyond the ivory tower

A timely lesson in the perils of nation-building and a sobering reminder of the limits of military power from the Costa Award winning author of The Volunteer • In its earliest days, the American-led war in Afghanistan appeared to be a triumph - a ‘good war’ in comparison to the debacle in Iraq. It has since turned into one of the longest and most expensive wars in recent history. The story of how this good war went so bad may well turn out to be a defining tragedy of the twenty-first century - yet, as acclaimed war correspondent Jack Fairweather explains, it should also give us reason to hope for an outcome grounded in Afghan reality • In The Good War, Fairweather provides the first full narrative history of the war in Afghanistan, from the 2001 invasion to the 2014 withdrawal

An award-winning epic on the birth of Australia • In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonise Australia • Documenting the brutal transportation of men, women and children out of Georgian Britain into a horrific penal system which was to be the precursor to the Gulag and was the origin of Australia, The Fatal Shore is the definitive, masterfully written narrative that has given its true history to Australia

Venice, 1522. Intelligence arrives from the east confirming Europe's greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has all he needs to wage total war - and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on its throat • From the palaces of Istanbul to the blood-soaked fields of central Europe and the scorched coasts of north Africa, The Lion House tells the true story of two civilisations in an existential duel and the rise of the most feared man of the sixteenth century. It is a tale of the timeless pull of power, dangerous to live with, deadly to live without

Kafka meets The Thick Of It in a bitingly funny new political satire from Ian McEwan • That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature • Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he is the most powerful man in Britain – and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy • With trademark intelligence, insight and scabrous humour, Ian McEwan pays tribute to Franz Kafka’s most famous work to engage with a world turned on its head

The Ds can't wait to go and stay with Nancy and Peggy in the Lake District during the summer holidays. But when the Amazons’ dreadful Great Aunt invites herself to stay too, the summer is threatened with dullness. Staying indoors and reading poetry is not what anyone had in mind. To save the Ds from total boredom, the Amazons arrange for their friends to stay in a tumble-down hut in the woods. And as long as no one discovers they're there they can sail all summer long • In the Backstory you can learn how to make a campfire! • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

"The Jealousy Man" - первый сборник рассказов от короля криминала Ю Несбё • Познакомьтесь с детективом, идущим по следу человека, подозреваемого в убийстве своего близнеца; наемным убийцей, столкнувшимся лицом к лицу со своим злейшим противником; и двумя пассажирами, случайно встретившимися в самолете, что означает романтику или что-то гораздо более зловещее • В своем первом в истории сборнике коротких рассказов этот мастер криминала предлагает захватывающее чтение, от которого вы не сможете оторваться • Книга на английском языке • Murder. Assassination. Revenge • Discover the first short story collection from the King of Scandi Crime • Meet a detective on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin; a hired assassin facing his greatest adversary; and two passengers meeting by chance on a plane, spelling romance or something far more sinister

The first book in Anthony Trollope's Barchester Chronicles is a moving, insightful exploration of moral dilemmas fought in public and private • Mr Harding is a good man, the warden to an alms house which provides a peaceful home to twelve old men. The young and zealous John Bold is also a good man, but he believes he sees in Harding's comfortable existence an injustice which must be exposed. The law, the church and the self-righteous national press all have their say in the scandal that ensues, causing a crisis in the hearts and minds of many in the quiet country town of Barchester • ‘An affecting and delicate short novel’ Guardian

The battered hulk of a huge ship looms out of the stinging spray of a furious gale. Only one man, half-mad, remains aboard, working without sleep or sustenance to save her from sinking • But this man is no hero, and this ship was not meant to be saved. As Hammond Innes' classic tale moves from desperate struggles on the sea to a nail-biting courtroom controversy, the murky truth about the last voyage of the Mary Deare finally comes to light