Vintage books Unbreakable Askwith Richard

In Lacewood, Illinois, Laura Bodey, a divorced mother of two and real estate agent, plunges into a new existence when she learns that she has cancer • This same small town is home to Clare & Company, a soap manufacturer begun by three brothers in nineteenth-century Boston. Over the course of more than a century, it transforms into a powerful international corporation • Clare & Company's stunning growth reflects America's kaleidoscopic history, yet for Laura and her family, this wild success has profound and lasting consequences

Richard Yates was acclaimed as one of the most powerful, compassionate and accomplished writers of America's post-war generation. Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers or the heartbreak of a single mother with artistic pretensions, Yates ruthlessly examines the hopes and disappointments of ordinary people with empathy and humour

Rediscover the extraodinary power of nature and the British wilderness, from award-winning naturalist and author Richard Mabey • In the last year of the old millennium, Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost nature writer, fell into a severe depression. The natural world – which since childhood had been a source of joy and inspiration for him – became meaningless • Then, cared for by friends, he moved to East Anglia and he started to write again. Having left the cosseting woods of the Chiltern hills for the open flatlands of Norfolk, Richard Mabey found exhilaration in discovering a whole new landscape and gained fresh insights into our place in nature • Structured as intricately as a novel, a joy to read, truthful, exquisite and questing, Nature Cure is a book of hope, not just for individuals, but for our species

The truth behind Richard the Lionheart and Bad King John - brilliantly readable, scrupulously researched and full of powerful story-telling • Anyone who has seen The Lion in Winter will remember the vicious, compelling world of the Plantagenets and readers of the romance of Robin Hood will be familiar with the typecasting of Good King Richard, defending Christendom in the Holy Land, and Bad King John who usurps the kingdom in his absence. But do these popular stereotypes correspond with reality? • In this sweeping narrative, celebrated historian Frank McLynn turns the tables on modern revisionist historians and shows these larger-than-life characters as they really were - crusading, fighting vicious wars in France, negotiating with the papacy, engaging in ruthless dynastic intrigue, often against each other: in Richard's case, even holding the kingdom together when fighting in the Holy Land; and in John's, losing Normandy, catastrophically agonising the barons over Magna Carta and losing the Crown Jewels in the Wash

Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright's brutal and gripping masterpiece this black history month • Reckless, angry and adrift, Bigger Thomas has grown up trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. But a job with the affluent Dalton family provides the setting for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause celebre in an ever-narrowing endgame • First published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence and confrontation of racial stereotypes. It went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki • Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the epicentre. Learning about the lives of those affected through their own personal accounts, he paints a rich picture of the impact the tsunami had on day to day Japanese life • Heart-breaking and hopeful, this intimate account of a tragedy unveils the unique nuances of Japanese culture, the tsunami’s impact on Japan’s stunning and majestic landscape and the psychology of its people • Ghosts of the Tsunami is an award-winning classic of literary non-fiction

In 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron • He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show • A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question: is this really who we want in charge?

Bobby is eighteen and lost on the battlefields of Europe, stumbling his way through World War II. He has turned out to be the heroic soldier he imagined and his experience of battle principally involves fear and confusion. Back home, his mother Alice puts all her hopes in her son, and dreams of his return and starting a new life for them both • Richard Yates's novel is both tender and ironic as he follows Bobby's adventures and disasters and reflects on the intense but complicated bond between mother and son

The collected stories by one of the greatest short-story writers in the world • These slow, beautiful stories - resolute and resonant - are small masterpieces: apparently simple but actually crafted with enormous skill and precision. Set against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, they are all concerned with the complexities and mysteries of the human heart, the unbreakable bonds and unbridgeable chasms between man and woman, parent and child • Steeped in memory and myth and washed in the brine and blood of the long battle with the land and the sea, these stories celebrate a passionate engagement with the natural world and a continuity of the generations in the face of transition, in the face of love and loss • As John McGahern says in his eloquent foreword: 'the work has a largeness, of feeling, of intellect, of vision, a great openness and generosity, even an old-fashioned courtliness

'Masterful and beautifully written. Riveting and compellingly authentic. Grips you like a vice from the first page and never lets you go' Damien Lewis • Two men are on the run. They have four hundred miles to go across hostile territory. Soldiers on the ground track them day and night, a helicopter circles above, life becomes a second-by-second fight for survival. Each muscle movement, drop of sweat, glance and instinct matters. Every second counts • Through long slogs across country, risky raids for supplies, moments of sheer panic, and under the intense pressure to survive, an unbreakable bond between two men is forged. This stunningly written, adrenaline-pumping novel is a little-known classic of its genre

If you loved BBC4's Hemingway, rediscover this poignant story of the inability to capture lost youth, by the Nobel Prize-winning author of A Farewell to Arms • Richard Cantrell is an American colonel living in Venice just after the Second World War. The fighting has left him scarred and embittered, a middle-aged man with a heart condition. It seems that only the love of Renata, a nineteen-year-old countess can save him. But Cantrell is living in the shadow of war, every move he makes dictated by old battle instincts, and it is possible that for him the longed-for peace may have come too late • 'The most important author since Shakespeare' New York Times

Liverpool, 1939. Lonely historian Tom Baines is at work on a study of the city's architectural past but the ominous news from Europe, together with his burgeoning friendship with Richard, a young photographer, and his beautiful wife, Bella, are proving a distraction • When the bombings begin, Tom joins up as 'rescue man', retrieving the wounded and dying from the ruins of buildings, but the love affair he embarks on soon leads him into a very different kind of danger