When Pelé Broke Our Hearts is the definitive and bestselling story of Wales's remarkable 1958 World Cup campaign. Now republished in an updated and expanded third edition, Mario Risoli’s highly acclaimed book contains additional material from the players and their families and many more photographs and illustrations from the qualifying campaign and tournament. An incredible tale that features the Munich Air Disaster, a bizarre qualification as representatives of FIFA’s Middle East/Asia gro...

From Alan Bennett's Baffled at a Bookcase, to Lucy Mangan's Library Rules, famous writers tell us all about how libraries are used and why they're important. Tom Holland writes about libraries in the ancient world, while Seth Godin describes what a library will look like in the future. Lionel Shriver thinks books are the best investment, Hardeep Singh Kohli makes a confession and Julie Myerson remembers how her career began beside the shelves. Using memoir, history, polemic and some short ...

"Shriver's debut is a 'literary' novel without an iota of pretentiousness. It reads with the grace of a well-written spy story, but conveys some of its author's early wisdom about what our humanity both demands of and grants us." — Washington PostThe first novel by the New York Times bestselling author Lionel Shriver, The Female of the Species is the exotic and chilling story of a highly independent and successful woman's late-lif...

“Complex and nervy, Shriver’s clever meditation will intrigue anyone who has ever wondered how things might have turned out had they followed, or ignored, a life-changing impulse.” — People (Critic's Choice)This dazzling novel from the Orange Prize–winning author of the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin takes a psychological and deeply human look at love and volitionDoes the course of life hinge on a sin...

Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled New York corporate lawyer, he’s more than ready to leave his lucrative career for the excitement and uncertainty of journalism. When he’s offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he’s been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emul...

With a foreword by Lionel Shriver, author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, The Book Club Bible is the essential guide to the best book club reads.

With Peaceful Repose Cemetery, Drew Slocombe is determined to revolutionize the entire death industry and make cheap, ecologically sound burials a popular choice. Unfortunately, Drew's gravedigger has just discovered that their cemetery has one too many corpses. The body of an elderly woman has been occupying the field for months before Drew opened for business. The police don't appear to be particularly concerned by the death, and seem to think that the body is that of a vagrant. But for ...

Featuring:Robert Barnard, Martyn Bedford, Ann Cleeves, Bernie Crosthwaite, Carol Anne Davis, Martin Edwards, Jurgen Ehlers, Kate Ellies, Liz Evans, Paul A Freeman, Jim Gregson, Mick Herron, Sarah Hilary, Andre Marois, Amy Myers, Christine Poulson, Karline Smith, Douglas Stewart and Yvonne Eve Walus.A coroner reveals a body’s tell-tale clues to his students, as he unwittingly dissects his own relationship . . .A breakdown driver turns his roadside ro...

A brand-new novella in the Ghost of Granny Apples Mystery series, featuring Emma Whitecastle’s daughter, Kelly—only available digitally…Like mother, like daughter? Emma Whitecastle’s daughter Kelly just wants to live a normal life and pursue her studies at Harvard. But that’s not so easy when your mother is a famous medium who hosts a TV show on paranormal activity and when your frequent companion is a ghost named Granny Apples.When reporter Tanisha Costell...

Like everything Bennett does, these stories are playful, witty and painfully observant of ordinary people's foibles. They all have brilliant twists, are immensely entertaining and highly moral. And all are modern classics.The Laying on of HandsThe painfully observant account of a memorial service for a masseur to the famous.The Clothes They Stood Up InThe comic tale of an elderly couple's trials after their flat is stripped ...

Alan Bennett's classic story about Queen Elizabeth IIWhat would happen if the Queen became a reader of taste and discernment rather than of Dick Francis? The answer is a perfect story.The Uncommon Reader is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely ( JR Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading na...

Alan Bennett's first collection of prose since Writing Home takes in all his major writings over the last ten years. The title piece is a poignant family memoir with an account of the marriage of his parents, the lives and deaths of his aunts and the uncovering of a long-held family secret. Bennett, as always, is both amusing and poignant, whether he's discussing his modest childhood or his work with the likes of Maggie Smith, Thora Hird and John Gielgud. Also included are his muc...