Vintage books Ways of Escape Greene Graham

The restrictions of a wartime childhood in in London and subsequent post-war shortages have done little to enrich Timothy's early youth • But everything changes when his glamorous older sister, Kath, invites him to spend the summer at Heidelberg. Kath, who left home long ago to work for the American army, introduces her sixteen-year-old brother to a lifestyle that is deliriously fast, furious and extravagant • Dazzled by the indulgent habits of the American forces, but at the same time sensitive to the broken spirits of the German community beneath this sparkling surface, Timothy will find that his summer holiday is in more ways than one an unforgettable rite of passage

Enter Louis de Bernieres' magical, tragic and hilarious South American odyssey • When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them • Despite visiting plagues of laughing fits and giant cats upon the troops, the villagers know that to escape the cruel and unusual tortures planned for them, they must run. Thus they plan to head for the mountains and start a new and convivial civilisation…

Любовь и преступление причудливо переплелись в судьбе юной Тэсс, нищей наследницы древнего рода, обреченной на роль содержанки - и готовой переломить эту судьбу ценой собственной жизни! Став жертвой богатого повесы-соблазнителя, она протестует против грубого посягательства на человеческое достоинство и вынуждена совершить убийство • "Тэсс из рода д`Эрбервиллей" Томаса Гарди - классический роман о страсти, трагедии и утрате • Книга на английском языке • Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich 'relatives', the D'Urbervilles. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal • When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret

Colin Thurbon’s beautiful prose unfolds along the Silk Road, unearthing a richly layered past on his most ambitious journey • On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. A magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment, Thubron covers over 7000 miles in eight months enduring a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell, and undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic, along the way • Vintage Voyages: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

You might think I'd have grown out of getting myself into scrapes now that I'm half past sixteen. But between being vexed by my freckles, taunted by a brazen Jersey cow and kept on my toes by the new twins, Dora and Davy, life at Green Gables is just as eventful as ever • I do try to be a little more grown-up now that I'm a school teacher. The other day I asked the class, 'If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?' One of my pupil's piped up, 'A mouthful.' Could you have kept a straight face?! • Includes exclusive material: In ‘The Backstory’ you can find out about going to school in Avonlea and learn all about the real Green Gables • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

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

Summer of 1911. English society is on the brink of change. The streets of London ring with cheers for a new king's coronation and the cries of increasingly violent suffragette protests • Connie Callaway, fired up by the possibilities of independence, wants more than the conventional comforts of marriage. Spirited and courageous, she is determined to fight for 'the greatest cause the world has ever known' • Will Maitland, the rising star of county cricket, is a man of traditional opinions. He is both intrigued and appalled by Connie's outspokenness and her quest for self-fulfilment • Their lives become inextricably entangled just as the outbreak of war drives them further apart. Buffeted and spun by choice and chance, Connie and Will struggle against the aftershocks of war and the changes it wreaks

Virtual reality has long been one of the dominant cliches of science fiction. Now virtual reality is a reality: from the startling beauty of lifelike video games to the place where war veterans overcome PTSD, surgeries are trialled, and aircraft and cities are designed. VR is, in fact now, the most effective device ever invented for researching what a human being actually is - and how we think and feel • More than thirty years ago, legendary computer scientist, visionary and artist Jaron Lanier pioneered its invention. Here he blends scientific investigation, philosophical thought experiment and his memoir of a life lived at the centre of digital innovation to explain what VR really is: the science of comprehensive illusion; the extension of the intimate magic of earliest childhood into adulthood; a hint of what life would be like without any limits

West of Eden is the definitive story of Hollywood, told, in their own words, by the people on the inside: Lauren Bacall, Arthur Miller, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Ring Lardner, Joan Didion, Stephen Sondheim – all interviewed by Jean Stein, who grew up in the Forties in a fairytale mansion in the Hollywood Hills • The book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny (There Will Be Blood) and traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, and the movie studios – from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch (who bought the Stein mansion in 1985) • West of Eden is about money, power, fame and terrible secrets: the doomed Hollywood of the late Fifties, early Sixties – ‘the rotten heart of paradise’

The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are still some posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the Northside Rises and the eerie bogs of Big Nothin' that the city really lives • For years, Bohane has been in the cool grip of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. But now they say his old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and there's trouble in the air

'A compelling novel about the tragedy of corrupting power, set in post-independence Kenya...Ngugi writes with passion about every form, shape and colour which power can take' Sunday Times • After decades of British rule Kenya has declared its independence, but drought and poor harvests still govern the village of Ilmorog. Undeterred, Munira, Karega, Wanja and Abdulla each move to Ilmorog in search of a more provincial life, only to find themselves suspects in a crime that signals a dark turning of the times • A classic of modern African literature, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s damning satire of politics and corruption in Kenya would prove the catalyst for his imprisonment by the Kenyan government

A young army captain who risked execution to swim from free-market Taiwan to Communist China • A barber who made $150 million in the gambling dens of Macau • The richest woman in China, a recycling tycoon known as the ‘Wastepaper Queen’ • Age of Ambition describes some of the billion individual lives that make up China’s story – one that unfolds on remote farms, in glittering mansions, and in the halls of power of the world’s largest authoritarian regime. Together they describe the defining clash taking place today: between the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control • Here is a China infused with a sense of boundless possibility and teeming romance. Yet it is also riven by contradictions. It is the world’s largest buyer of Rolls Royces and Ferraris yet the word ‘luxury’ is banned from billboards