Josef K. is an employee at a bank, an Everyman without any particular qualities or ambitions. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his “arrest” by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a “crime” he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a “court” with which he cannot communicate. The defendant can only ask questions, but receives no answers to clarify the surreal world in which he is compelled to wande...

The final work of Nobel Prize-winning writer Günter Grass – a witty and elegiac series of meditations on writing, growing old, and the world.Suddenly, in spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, everything seems possible again: love letters, soliloquies, scenes of jealousy, swan songs, social satire, and moments of happiness.Only an ageing artist who had once more cheated death could get to work with such wisdom, defiance and wit. A wealth...

A new translation of the only novel by lauded Romanian literary critic Matei CălinescuAn NYRB Classics OriginalUgly, unkempt, a haunter of low dives who begs for a living and lives on the street, Zacharias Lichter exists for all that in a state of unlikely rapture. After being engulfed by a divine flame as a teenager, Zacharias has devoted his days to doing nothing at all—apart, that is, from composing the odd poem he immediately throws away and consorting ...

Brought to you by Penguin.A collection of Kafka's greatest short fiction, translated by Michael HofmannKafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, Metamorphosis, the story of an ordinary man transformed into an insect, is brought together in this collection with the rest of his works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Contemplation, a collection of his earlier short studies; The Judgement, writ...

Brought to you by Penguin.The incredible story of the death of Eric Garner, the birth of the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement and the new fault lines of race, protest, policing and the power of the people.On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died in New York after a police officer put him in a "chokehold" during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of his life were captured on video and seen...

The first in a “fresh” (Jason M. Hough, New York Times bestselling author) sci-fi space opera that follows a powerful planetary assassin who can destroy planets with a single word but is suddenly faced with an adversary that threatens the entire known universe.Far in the future, human beings have seeded themselves amongst the stars. Since decoding the language of the universe 8,000 years ago, they have reached the very edges of their known galaxy and built...

Brought to you by Penguin.James Tiptree Jr, the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, is widely considered to be one of the most influential American genre writers ever, and a pioneer of feminist science fiction.10,000 Light Years from Home, her brilliant debut collection, displays all her trademark humour, intensity and originality, with dark dystopian thrills, fast-paced intergalactic satire and hardboiled tales of alien invasion. A startling and un...

'Karl continued to push through, but he no longer had any real hope of achieving anything.'Unexpected adventures and whirlwind encounters await Karl Rossman when he arrives in New York from Europe. Cast out by his family and determined to make a better life, he soon finds himself making friends as well as enemies in a bizarre and chaotic new world brimming with unknown places, eccentric characters, and ulterior motives.First published in 1927 and newly tran...

'One of our finest storytellers' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent'Pure magic' M.R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the GiftsFrom Frances Hardinge, the Costa Award-winning author of The Lie Tree comes Deeplight - an underwater adventure as dangerous as the gods themselves . . .The gods of the Myriad were as real as the coastlines and currents, and as merciless as the ...

Boy: Novak turns twenty and takes a bus from New York to the end of the line, Flax Hill, Massachusetts. Here she finds Snow a mild-mannered and deeply cherished girl. Snow displays a certain inscrutability, that's simply harmless until Boy gives birth to Snow's sister, Bird. When Bird is born Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Snow's family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart.

**Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a remarkable novel about Henry James, the American-born novelist and a connoisseur of exile.'A triumph' – The Observer'A masterly achievement' – The Independent**In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced...

'Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?'The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer.As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all ti...