Revolutionary Road

Richard Yates

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099518624

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

CHOSEN BY LIONEL SHRIVER AS HER ORANGE INHERITANCE - Vintage Classics has partnered with The Orange Prize for Fiction to ask recipients of the prize which book they would pass onto the next generation

THIS ORANGE INHERITANCE EDITION OF Revolutionary Road IS PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION

Books shape our lives and transform the way we see ourselves and each other. The best books are timeless and continue to be relevant generation after generation. Vintage Classics asked the winners of The Orange Prize for Fiction which books they would pass onto the next generation and why. Lionel Shriver chose Revolutionary Road.

This is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves.

'I can't think of a better novel to hand on to readers growing up today than Revolutionary Road' Lionel Shriver

The Leopard

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, translated by Archibald Colquhoun

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099512158

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

This is the new, revised edition which includes recently discovered new material including letters and diary entries by the author and two additional sections of the novel

Lampedusa's masterpiece, one of the finest works of twentieth century fiction, is set amongst an aristocratic family facing social and political changes in the wake of Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily in 1860. At the head of the family is the prince, Don Fabrizio. Proud and stubborn, he is accustomed to knowing his own place in the world and expects his household to run accordingly. He is aware of the changes which are rapidly making men historically obsolete but he remains attached to the old ways. His favourite nephew, Tancredi, may be an ardent supporter of Garibaldi and may later marry outside his class but Don Fabrizio will make few accommodations for the modern world.

Containing, for the first time in any language, the full original text, Tomasi di Lampedusa's classic tale lovingly memorialises the details of a vanishing world while retaining its melancholic and ironic sense of time passing and the frailty of human emotions.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Angela Carter

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099588115

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

Fairy tales retold and interwoven by a master of seductive, luminous storytelling

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HELEN SIMPSON

From familiar fairy tales and legends - Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves - Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

Art of Love

Ovid

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099518822

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'Any man who shows, with such poetic readability, that what is happening between the sexes today was happening two thousand years ago - and that, therefore, the beating out of one's guilt-ridden, female brains is something of a waste of time - has to be a hero' Independent

TRANSLATED BY TOM PAYNE

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, and 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 - in case things don't work out.

With an introduction by Hephzibah Anderson

Can You Forgive Her?

Anthony Trollope

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099528647

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

With sympathy and care, Trollope observes the romances of two controversial heroines in the first of his Palliser novels

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY D. J. TAYLOR

Alice Vavasor should be married to the sensible, kindly John Grey. But despite what her respectable relations might think, Alice cannot quite reconcile herself to this fate. Once upon a time she was engaged to her wild cousin George, and now he stands in need of her money and, perhaps too, her good influence. Meanwhile Alice's friend Lady Glencora has married the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser, but is still pursued by Burgo Fitzgerald, the handsome rascal she loves.

In this hugely compelling novel,Trollope shows the two women struggling to reconcile heart, mind and moral code whilst enduring the stifling scrutiny of their contemporaries.

Complete Fairy Tales

Brothers Grimm

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099511441

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'In oldentimes, when wishing still helped, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful...' 'The Frog King', Complete Fairy Tales

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JACK ZIPES

Wolves and grandmothers, ugly sisters, a house made of bread, a goose made of gold...the folk tales collected by the Grimm brothers created an astonishingly influential imaginative world. However, this is also a world where a woman serves her stepson up in a stew, a man marries a snake, a princess sleeps with a frog, and an evil queen dances to death in a pair of burning shoes. Violent, funny, disturbing, wise and sometimes beautiful, these stories have intrigued children, adults, scholars, psychologists and artists for centuries.

The only complete edition available of the most famous collection of fairy tales ever published, this collection features the 279 stories in an acclaimed, modern, unexpurgated translation.

A Town Like Alice

Neville Shute

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099530268

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'Probably more people have shed tears over the last page of A Town Like Alice than about any other novel in the English language... remarkable' John Ezard, Guardian

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERIC LOMAX

Jean Paget is just twenty years old and working in Malaya when the Japanese invasion begins. When she is captured she joins a group of other European women and children whom the Japanese force to march for miles through the jungle - an experience that leads to the deaths of many. Due to her courageous spirit and ability to speak Malay, Jean takes on the role of leader of the sorry gaggle of prisoners and many end up owing their lives to her indomitable spirit. While on the march, the group run into some Australian prisoners, one of whom, Joe Harman, helps them steal some food, and is horrifically punished by the Japanese as a result. After the war, Jean tracks Joe down in Australia and together they begin to dream of surmounting the past and transforming his one-horse outback town into a thriving community like Alice Springs...

The Songlines

Bruce Chatwin

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099769910

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'Extraordinary - a remarkable and satisfying book' Observer

The songlines are the invisible pathways that criss-cross Australia, ancient tracks connecting communities and following ancient boundaries. Along these lines Aboriginals passed the songs which revealed the creation of the land and the secrets of its past. In this magical account Chatwin recalls his travels across the length and breadth of Australia seeking to find the truth about the songs and unravel the mysteries of their stories.

We of the Never-Never

Aeneas Gunn

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9781741667622

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

In 1902, newly-married Jeannie Gunn (Mrs Aeneas Gunn) left the security and comfort of her Melbourne home to travel to the depths of the Northern Territory, where her husband had been appointed manager of ‘The Elsey’, a large cattle station. One of the very few white women in the area, she was at first resented by people on and around the station, till her warmth and spirit won their affection and respect.She had an unerring ear and eye for the sounds and sights of the country; and this is her moving and simple account of her life amidst the beauty and cruelty of the land, and the isolation and loneliness - together with the comradeship and kindness of those around her.The favourite of generations of Australians since it was first published in 1908, We Of The Never-Never can truly be called a classic.

The Complete Enderby

Anthony Burgess

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099541431

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

Written between 1960 and 1984, and now collected in one volume, the four 'Enderby' novels are Burgess's finest comic achievement.

Enderby - poet, social critic, comrade and Catholic - is endlessly hounded by women. He may be found hiding in the lavatory where much of his best work is composed, or perhaps in Rome, brainwashed into respectability by a glamorous wife, aftershave and the dolce vita. But whether he is pursuing revenge and inspiration in Morocco, expounding on his notorious sex film on a TV chat show, or writing a hit musical based on the life and work of Shakespeare, Enderby emerges triumphant.

Sense & Sensibility

Jane Austen

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099511557

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'I am afraid,' replied Elinor, 'that the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety' - Sense & Sensibility

Elinor is as prudent as her sister Marianne is impetuous. Each must learn from the other after they are they are forced by their father's death to leave their home and enter into the contests of polite society. The charms of unsuitable men and the schemes of rival ladies mean that their paths to success are thwart with disappointment but together they attempt to find a way to happiness.

The Gormenghast Trilogy

Mervyn Peake

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099288893

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

One of the greatest imaginative feats of the twentieth century

Gormenghast is the vast, crumbling castle to which the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, is lord and heir. Titus is expected to rule this gothic labyrinth of turrets and dungeons, and his eccentric and wayward subjects, according to strict age-old rituals, but things are changing in the castle. Titus must contend with treachery, manipulation and murder as well as his own longing for a life beyond the castle walls.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099511144

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it' The Picture of Dorian Gray

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IRVINE WELSH

Dorian is a good-natured young man until he falls in with the immoral Lord Henry and discovers the power of his own exceptional beauty. As he gradually sinks deep into a frivolous, glamorous world of selfish luxury, he apparently remains physically unchanged by the stresses of his corrupt and decadent lifestyle and untouched by age. But up in his attic, hidden behind a curtain, his portrait tells a different story.

The Great Gatsby

F Scott Fitzgerald

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099541530

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

Fitzgerald's glittering Jazz Age masterpiece

Jay Gatsby is a self-made man, famed for his decadent champagne-drenched parties. Despite being surrounded by Long Island's bright and beautiful, Gatsby longs only for Daisy Buchanan. In shimmering prose, Fitzgerald shows Gatsby pursue his dream to its tragic conclusion.The Great Gatsby is an elegiac and exquisite portrait of the American Dream.

The Old Man & the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099273967

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'The best story Hemingway has written. No page of this beautiful master-work could have been done better or differently' Sunday Times

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's magnificent fable is the tale of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. This story of heroic endeavour won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. It stands as a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements.

The Origin of Species & the Voyage of the Beagle

Charles Darwin

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099519171

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

The most important work of modern science now available in Vintage Classics

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DARWIN'S GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER, RUTH PADEL

When the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin returned from South America on board the H.M.S Beagle in 1836, he brought with him the notes and evidence which would form the basis of his landmark theory of evolution of species by a process of natural selection. This theory, published as The Origin of Species in 1859, is the basis of modern biology and the concept of biodiversity. It also sparked a fierce scientific, religious and philosophical debate which still continues today.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

George Eliot

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099516231

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

'Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science' Middlemarch

Dorothea is bright, beautiful and rebellious and has married the wrong man. Lydgate is the ambitious new doctor in town and has married the wrong woman. Both of them long to make a positive difference in the world. But their stories do not proceed as expected and both they, and the other inhabitants of Middlemarch, must struggle to reconcile themselves to their fates and find their places in the world.

Middlemarch contains all of life: the rich and the poor, the conventional and the radical, literature and science, politics and romance. Eliot's novel is a stunningly compelling insight into the human struggle to find contentment.

A Spot of Bother

Mark Haddon

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099561040

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

A designer Vintage Classics edition, published in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum. The cover for 'A Spot of Bother' has been designed by Michael Horsham at the collective tomato

At fifty-seven, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement. Then Katie, his tempestuous daughter, announces that she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the arguing the wedding has occasioned, which gets in the way of her late-life affair with one of her husband's former colleagues. And the tidy life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. This is a deeply moving portrait of a family who fall apart - and come together.

Money

Martin Amis

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099561026

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

Designer Vintage Classics edition. Published in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum. Designed by Saatchi & Saatchi.

'Super-charged, anarchic and full of narrative acrobatics, Money burst on to the Eighties literary scene leaving a trail of imitators and devotees in its wake' Observer

This is the story of John Self, consumer extraordinaire. Rolling around New York and London, he makes deals, spends wildly and does reckless movie-world business, all the while grabbing everything he can to sate his massive appetites: alcohol, tobacco, pills, pornography, a mountain of junk food and more. Ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage, this is a tale of life lived without restraint; of money, the terrible things it can do and the disasters it can precipitate.

'Terribly, terminally funny' Guardian

The End of the Affair

Graham Greene

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099560975

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

A designer Vintage Classics edition, published in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum. The End of the Affair has been designed by Sue Timney

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALI

The love affair between Maurice Bendix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099466734

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

The great classic of American literature, beloved by adults and children alike. Celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2010.

THE ORIGINAL TEXT

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.'

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with both compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, Atticus, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy.

Skywriting By Word of Mouth

John Lennon

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099561262

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

Autobiography, excerpts of fantastical fiction and musings on the break-up of the Beatles and the pressures of celebrity. A delight for fans of John Lennon.

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY YOKO ONO AND ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR

John Lennon wrote the material collected in Skywriting by Word of Mouth during Yoko Ono's pregnancy with Sean Lennon. After John's assassination in 1980, his manuscript was stolen from the Lennon's home. Skywriting was finally published in 1986, and it displays all of Lennon's extraordinary creativity and inventiveness with language. It includes Lennon's only piece of autobiography, 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' as well as short works of fiction, accounts of falling in love, marriage, the break-up of the Beatles and life in America.

Remembering Babylon

David Malouf

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9781741667684

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

In the 1840s, a ship’s boy cast ashore in northern Australia is taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later he steps out of the bush and inadvertently confronts the new white settlers with their unspoken terrors.A picture of Australia at the time of its foundation, focused on the hostility between early British settlers and native Aboriginals. It is essentially the story of a boy caught between both worlds - the “civilised” and the “primitive”.

Black Beauty

Anna Sewell

Vintage, LITERATURE, PB, 9780099572930

$11.77 ex $12.95 inc

Black Beauty is the prettiest young horse in the meadows, and spends many happy days under the apple trees with his friends Ginger and Merrylegs. But this easy life comes to an end when Beauty is sold and goes from farm to inn to cabhorse in London, enduring rough treatment from foolish and careless masters. Beauty remains faithful, hardworking and full of spirit despite his trials, and through him we learn that all horses and humans alike deserve to be treated with kindness.