What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life?
With an introduction by novelist David VannIn April 1992, Chris McCandless set off alone into the Alaskan wild. He had given his savings to charity, abandoned his car and his possessions, and burnt the money in his wallet, determined to live a life…
With an introduction by Neel Mukherjee.In Manhattan, just after the century's turn, three thirty-year-old friends, Danielle, Marina and Julius, are seeking their fortunes. But the arrival of Marina's young cousin Bootie - fresh from the provinces an…
A cult classic, adapted into a film starring Christian Bale. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?Patrick Bateman has it all: good looks, youth, charm, a job on Wall Street, reservations at every new restaurant in town and a line of…
With an introduction by Philipp Meyer.The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full.Set in the anarchic world opened up by America's westward expansion, Blood Merid…
In his most extraordinary book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. These are case studies of people who have lost their m…
With an introduction by Will Self. A classic work of psychology, this international bestseller provides a groundbreaking insight into the human mind.If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self…
With an introduction by Anne Enright Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting. It is the 1920s, and Patrick Lewis has arrived in the bustling city of Toronto, leaving behind h…
With an introduction by Colm ToibinShortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize, The Book of Evidence by John Banville is a dark and unsettling crime classic. This special 25th anniversary edition features extra material.Frederick Charles St John Vandervel…
Filmed for Sky Atlantic, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, The Patrick Melrose Novels is the complete collection of Edward St Aubyn's award-winning novels of childhood trauma and aristocratic decadence. This Picador Classics edition features an introdu…
With an introduction by Andrew Solomon'It stands alone in the literature of manic depression for its bravery, brilliance and beauty.' Oliver SacksI was used to my mind being my best friend. Now, all of a sudden, my mind had turned on me: it mocked m…
With an introduction by Jonathan LethemIt is 1913, and Viennese high society is determined to find an appropriate way of celebrating the seventieth jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef. But as the aristocracy tries to salvage something il…
With an introduction by journalist Hadley Freeman9st 2, cigarettes smoked in front of Mark 0 (v.g.), cigarettes smoked in secret 7, cigarettes not smoked 47 (v.g.).Bridget's second diary ushers in a reformed woman. She is no longer a smoker (well, n…
With an introduction by Salman Rushdie and an afterword by the author. It was the night of February 25, 1964. A cloud of cigar smoke drifted through the ring lights. Cassius Clay threw punches into the gray floating haze and waited for the bell.Whe…
With an introduction by Rory StewartWinner of the Guardian First Book award, a first-hand account one of the defining outrages of modern history. All at once, as it seemed, something we could have only imagined was upon us - and we could still only…
'De Botton is a national treasure.' - Susan Hill, author of The Woman in BlackWith an introduction by Sheila HetiA unique love story and a classic work of philosophy, rooted in the mysterious workings of the human heart and mind.Perhaps it is true t…
With an introduction by Kevin Powers.A groundbreaking piece of journalism which inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket.We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machi…
With an introduction by Martin Scorsese, director of the film starring Andrew Garfield and Adam DriverBeneath the light of the candle I am sitting with my hands on my knees, staring in front of me. And I keep turning over in my mind the thought that…
The post-apocalyptic modern classic with an introduction by novelist John Banville.In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. T…
Guardian journalist Jon Ronson's Them began as a book about different kinds of extremists, but after Jon had got to know some of them - Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen - he found that they had one oddly similar belief: that a ti…
With an introduction by Russell Brand.What if a tiny, shadow elite rule the world from a secret room? My worryingly paradoxical thought process could be summarized thus: Thank God I don't believe in the secret rulers of the world. Imagine what the…
With an introduction by Sebastian FaulksWinner of the Man Booker Prize, The Line of Beauty is a classic novel about class, politics and sexuality in Margaret Thatcher's 1980s Britain.There was the soft glare of the flash - twice - three times - a gl…
With an introduction by Ben Lerner The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.S…
With an introduction by Xiaolu GuoA classic memoir set during the Chinese revolution of the 1940s and inspired by folklore, providing a unique insight into the life of an immigrant in America.When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talking-stor…
The multi-million copy number one bestseller with an introduction by Caitlin Moran.A dazzling urban satire of modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-somethi…
With an introduction by Sarah HallThe 1960s. Philip Dean, a footloose Yale dropout, is touring provincial France and sometimes Paris in a borrowed, once elegant car. He begins a mismatched affair with a young shop girl named Anne-Marie. Together the…
With an introduction by novelist Rachel KushnerIn the vanishing world of the Old West, two cowboys begin an epic adventure, and their own coming-of-age stories. In All the Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole's search for a future takes him across the Mex…
With an introduction by Jeanette WintersonThis unique collection of poems from the Poet Laureate, filled with her characteristic wit, is a feminist classic and a modern take on age-old mythology.Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk. The Boy Next Door.…
With an introduction by Karen Thompson Walker.The internationally bestselling novel that inspired the acclaimed film directed by Peter Jackson.My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 19…
With an introduction by Joanna Lumley.Elegantly constructed and told with exceptional grace, The Light Years is a modern classic of contemporary English life and the beginning of an extraordinary family saga.Every summer, the Cazalet brothers, Hugh,…
With an introduction by Ali Smith.When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive. The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary…
With an introduction by Colm Toibin.Ten years ago, I began to explore the country on which I was supposed to be an authority . . .France is a country famous for its intellectuals, its philosophers and writers, its fashion, food and wine. And yet the…
With an introduction by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James'Oreo's satire on racial identity reads like a story for our times . . . Could Oreo be this year's Stoner? Observer`A rollicking little mas…
With an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning.In 1970s London Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in…
With an introduction by Anne EnrightShortlisted for the Guardian First Book award, a story of civil war and a family's unbreakable bond. How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or live in it. How you see a country depen…
With an introduction by award-winning novelist Colm ToibinOpening with a crime of passion after a years-long love affair has soured, The Dead Girls soon plunges into an investigation of something even darker: Serafina Baladro and her sister run a su…
With an introduction by Ross Raisin.A modern classic of Irish fiction, shortlisted for the 1992 Booker prize.When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on…
With an introduction by author Teju Cole, A House for Mr Biswas is Nobel Prize in Literature winner V. S. Naipaul's unforgettable masterpiece. Heart-rending and darkly comic, it has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels, a clas…
With an introduction by James NaughtieTake a Valium. Have a party. Go on a demo. Shoot a soldier. Make a bang. Bed a friend. That's your problem-solving system . . . But haven't we tried all that?Howard Kirk, product of the Swinging Sixties, radical…
With an introduction by Eimear McBrideA devastatingly powerful, moving and uplifting memoir - now a classic of its genre - that inspired others to tell their own true life stories.When our stepfather staggered home reeking of whisky, ceramic hit the…
With an introduction by Robert MacfarlaneShortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of the Hawthornden Prize.I had attached myself to the birds. I couldn't move on until the birds moved on, and the birds couldn't move on without the spring.…
With an introduction by Jonathan Coe1930s King's Cross, London.When aspiring film actress Estella Lamare is found dead on the cutting-room floor of a London film studio, Cameron McCabe finds himself at the centre of a police investigation. There are…
With an introduction by Roy FosterA classic work of Irish literature, this award-winning novel is an exploration of love, art and identity.This was the night train to Barcelona, some hours before the dawn. This was 1950, late September. I had left m…
With an introduction by Simon CallowJudgements about the quality of works of art begin in opinion. But for the last two hundred years only the wilfully perverse (and Tolstoy) have denied the validity of the opinion that Shakespeare was a genius.Who…
A major film starring Brie Larson. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize. With an introduction by John Boyne.Today I'm five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I'…
With an introduction by Iain SinclairIn the city we can live deliberately: inventing and renewing ourselves, carving out journeys, creating private spaces. But in the city we are also afraid of being alone, clinging to the structures of daily life t…
With an introduction by John HurtA classic love story and a seminal work of Irish literature that is a testament to romance, magic and the power of true love.In love everything changes, and continues changing all the time. There is no stillness, no…
With an introduction by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon'Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read' Independent From the moment when, as a…
With an introduction by John Banville Winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996. To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but contentful way, to death…
With an introduction by Rachel KushnerHe speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.It's a vast and sprawling crowd that comes together to watch the Dodgers-Giants 1951 National League Final, and when Bobby…
With an introduction by Alan Hollinghurst.It was his power that stupefied me and made me regard my knowledge as nothing more than hired cleverness he might choose to show off at a dinner party.A Boy's Own Story traces an unnamed narrator's coming-of…
With an introduction by Andrew O'Hagan When I think about her now, which is most of the time, it's like rewinding a silent film in my head: I see the crucial scenes in our lives together. But what I can't hear is her voice in my head, and that sile…
With an introduction by Kate Mosse Translated by Ros SchwartzAll grown-ups were children once (but most of them have forgotten).A pilot who has crash landed in the desert awakes to see an extraordinary little boy. 'Please,' asks the stranger, 'will…
