A thrilling and propulsive novel of an Antarctica expedition gone wrong and its far-reaching consequences for the explorers and their families "leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story" (Hilary Mantel).Remember the training: find shelter or make shelter, remain in place, establish contact with other members of the party, keep moving, keep calm.Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of Antarctic surveying, was there...

A collection of stories written in duet.Eight highly original stories, each woven from the joint inspiration of two amazing writers.Sixteen celebrated authors respond, play, twist and develop their story in turn. Without the certainty of being in full control, Duets brings a new dimension to the drama of reading and writing.

Seven of the best recent short stories, disassembled by their authors.An innovative anthology revealing the inspiration, the ideals and the work involved in a great short story. Reverse Engineering brings together contemporary classic stories with their authors' discussions of how they were written.

"A ferocious book, at once intense and alarmingly unsentimental" (James Wood, The New Yorker), this intimate exploration of life at the edges of society is littered with love, loss, despair, and a half–glimpse of redemption―now reissued with an introduction by Yiyun LiOn a cold, quiet day between Christmas and the New Year, a man's body is found in an abandoned apartment. His friends look on, but they're dead, too. Their bodies found in squats and sheds an...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceLonglisted for the Man Booker PrizeA “fiercely intelligent . . . daring, and very moving” novel about an English village haunted by one family’s loss—for readers of The Virgin Suicides and Zadie Smith’s NW (George Saunders, The Paris Review Daily).Midwinter in an English village. A teenage girl has gone missing. Everyone is called upon to...

The powerful first collection of short stories by Jon McGregor.From the publication of his first Booker-nominated novel at the age of twenty-six, Jon McGregor's fiction has consistently been defined by lean poetic language, a keen sense of detail, and insightful characterization. Now, after publishing three novels, he's turning his considerable talent toward short fiction. The stories in this beautifully wrought collection explore a specific physical world and the people who inhabi...

In this potent examination of family and memory, Jon McGregor charts one man's voyage of self-discovery. Like Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, So Many Ways to Begin is rich in the intimate details that shape a life, the subtle strain that defines human relationships, and the personal history that forms identity. David Carter, the novel's protagonist, takes a keen interest in history as a boy. Encouraged by his doting Aunt Julia, he begins collecting the things tha...

Risky in conception, hip and yet soulful, this is a prose poem of a novel—intense, lyrical, and highly evocative—with a mystery at its center, which keeps the reader in suspense until the final page. In a tour de force that could be described as Altmanesque, we are invited into the private lives of the residents of a quiet urban street in England over the course of a single day. In delicate, intricately observed closeup, we witness the hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs of a diverse commu...

“A companion piece to his Man Booker–longlisted Reservoir 13, McGregor’s latest works perfectly well as a standalone, offering an alternately sweet and suspenseful depiction of a community as it reacts, person by person, to the disappearance of a teenage girl.” —Entertainment WeeklyA teenage girl has gone missing. The whole community has been called upon to join the search. And now an interviewer arrives, intent on capturing the community’s unstab...

Featuring:M.J. Hyland, Alison MacLeod, Jon McGregor, K.J. Orr and S.W. Wilson.‘We are living through a golden moment in the history of the short story,’ wrote The Guardian recently, and the annual BBC National Short Story Award is both a testament to this, and one of the reasons why we are. Now in its sixth year, the Award supports and showcases Britain’s best new short fiction and continues to champion the short story as a central literary form.The...

Featuring:David Constantine, Aminatta Forna, Sarah Hall, Jon McGregor and Helen Oyeyemi.The BBC National Short story Award is one of the world's largest awards for a single short story. All five shortlisted stories, including the winner, are published here side by side. The Award is designed to honour Britain's finest short story writers and to re-establish the importance of the short story as a central literary form.This year's shortlist brings tog...

In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, ...