Vintage books Upstate Wood James

As a child Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he was born and transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty-seven, he works high above the above the sprawling metropolis of Sao Paulo for a vacuous 'communications company'. But this is not his world, and this is not a simple rags-to-riches story: Ludo's destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him both extremities of opulent excess and abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness and brutality • By the author of The Amnesia Clinic and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award

It is 1969 and James Bond is about to go solo, recklessly motivated by revenge • A seasoned veteran of the service, 007 is sent to single-handedly stop a civil war in the small West African nation of Zanzarim. Aided by a beautiful accomplice and hindered by the local militia, he undergoes a scarring experience which compels him to ignore M’s orders in pursuit of his own brand of justice. Bond’s renegade action leads him to Washington, D.C., where he discovers a web of intrigue and witnesses fresh horrors • Even if Bond succeeds in exacting his revenge, a man with two faces will come to stalk his every waking moment

James and Katherine meet at a wedding in London in 2006, towards the end of the money for nothing years. James is a man with a varied past now living alone in a flat in Bloomsbury; Katherine is separated from her husband and working in an interim job in a luxury hotel. They exchange phone numbers at the wedding, but from then on not much goes according to the script

Reissued in electric new backlist style for October 2016, The Counterlife was lauded by the likes of John Updike, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, John Banville and James Wood, as well as winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction • The Counterlife is about people living their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter their destinies. Wherever they find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted by the prospect of an alternative existence • Illuminating these lives in free-fall and transformation is the acrobat mind of novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the sceptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey; a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire; a church in London's West End; or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank

What does it take to be a family? • Julia has fallen deeply, unexpectedly in love. James is her second chance, and everything she never knew she wanted. It’s perfect but for two things: their children • Julia’s beloved daughter Gwen loathes James and James’s son Nathan takes pleasure in antagonising his new stepsister. Uniting two households is never easy, but the teenagers’ unexpected actions will eventually threaten everyone’s hard-won happiness

A powerful and unique story about connection, showing that miracles can happen – even across a library circulation desk • The year is 1950, and in a small town on Cape Cod twenty-eight year old librarian Peggy Cort feels as if love and life have stood her up. That is, until the day James Carlson Sweatt – the 'over-tall' eleven year old boy who's the talk of the town – walks into her library and changes her life for ever • Two misfits whose lonely paths cross at the circulation desk, Peggy and James are odd candidates for friendship. In James, Peggy discovers the one person who's ever really understood her, and as he grows – six foot five at age twelve, then seven foot, then eight – so does their most singular romance

There’s something wrong next door. At least, that’s what neighbors Howie Jeffries and Emily Phane both think. Since his daughter and wife moved out, Howie has been alone, an accidental recluse content with his fishing and his dreams of someday sailing away from himself on a boat. Emily couldn’t be more different: she’s irreverent, outgoing and seemingly well-adjusted. But when Emily returns from college to care for her dying grandfather, Howie can’t help but notice her increasingly erratic behavior - not to mention her newfound love of nocturnal gardening • The thing is, although they’ve lived side by side in the only two houses on rural Route 29 in upstate New York since Emily was born, Howie and Emily have never so much as spoken. Both have their reasons: Howie is debilitatingly shy; Emily has been hiding the fact that she suffers from a nighttime affliction that makes her both terrified to go to sleep, and question the very reality of her waking life

Two boys grow up in Thomaston, upstate New York. One of them gets away to Italy, where he becomes a painter. The other stays to marry Sarah, also an artist; to run a small empire of convenience stores; and to tell their story. He's a good man, but Louis Charles Lynch, known as Lucy, isn't always as reliable as he seems, and even he secretly longs for what he can't have • Now, at sixty years old, he and Sarah are about to travel to Venice, where Lucy's oldest friend and rival has traded life and family for a life far removed from Thomaston. The truth about why he left, and aboutthe ties that bind these three friends, is complex, heartbreaking and utterly compelling

There's no better time to rediscover James Bond • Who is Auric Goldfinger? • The Bank of England wants to know and they're also curious to find out what he's done with the huge stock of gold he's been collecting since the war. James Bond is put on the trail • This isn't the first time 007 has come across the enigmatic millionaire and he quickly discovers that Goldfinger never forgets and never forgives. Bond is drawn inexorably into the most ambitious heist of the century and finds himself the only defence against Goldfinger's murderous mania for gold

As America recovers from the Second World War, two families' journeys begin • James Vincent, born in 1942 to an Irish-American family, escapes his parents' turbulent marriage and attends law school in New York, where he moves up the social ladder as a prosperous and bright attorney • Meanwhile, Agnes Miller, a beautiful black woman on date with a handsome suitor, is pulled over by the police on a rural road in Georgia. The terrible moments that follow make her question her future and pivot her into a hasty marriage and new life in the Bronx • Illuminating more than six decades of sweeping change - from the struggle for civil rights and the chaos of Vietnam to Obama's first year as President - James and Agnes's families will come together in unexpected, intimate and profoundly human ways

There's no better time to rediscover James Bond • The British Secret Service has many enemies • Whether it's a sniper in East Berlin, a Russian agent secretly bidding for a Faberge egg, or a retired major in Jamaica with a treacherous secret, it is down to James Bond to neutralize the threat • In these stories the dirty world of international espionage tests Bond's skills to the extreme

Soap Saves Lives. But did you know that excessive use of soap and skin-care products is harming our health and the environment? Apart from in hand-washing there is no need to use soap on our bodies at all? • Doctor and preventative medicine expert James Hamblin gave up showering five years ago and only ever uses soap on his hands. In Clean, he takes us on an irreverent and entertaining journey through our complex relationship with our bodies and cleanliness. Drawing on the latest science, he introduces a new way to think about cleanliness - one that is cheaper, simpler and better for our skin, our immunity and the world in which we live