An exhilarating, brutal, comedic masterpiece—an American classic that will “leave you so giddy you’ll go and kick sand in somebody’s face” (Houston Post)When My Search for Warren Harding, Robert Plunket’s glittering story of literary sleuthing and deceit, first appeared in 1983, it garnered immediate and far-reaching acclaim. Frank Conroy at the Washington Post exclaimed, “The author pulled me in so deftly, moved me up an escalating scale...

A Madame Bovary for the heyday of gay New York, Love Junkie is a riotously funny, razor-sharp tale about wanting it all‘He was a charismatic porn star who sold his dirty underwear. I was an upper-middle-class housewife from Bronxville’Mimi Smithers, bored aesthete manquée, lives with her husband Boyce in the New York suburbs, where dreams of dazzling social success elude her. Life takes a quite unexpected turn when she me...

‘One of the most original comic novels of the past half century’ The New Yorker‘Will leave you so giddy you’ll go and kick sand in somebody’s face’ Houston PostPerfect for fans of A Confederacy of Dunces, this is Robert Plunket’s comic masterpiece: a breakneck, unhinged romp through 1980’s LAEliot Weiner – snob, shameless opportunist, Morris dancing-obsessive – is on a mission. He has got w...

Brought to you by Penguin.Perfect for fans of A Confederacy of Dunces, this is Robert Plunket’s comic masterpiece: a breakneck, unhinged romp through 1980’s LAEliot Weiner – snob, shameless opportunist, Morris dancing-obsessive – is on a mission. He has got wind of a trunk of bawdy love letters by Warren Harding, ‘the shallowest President in history’, now guarded by his octogenarian mistress on her crumbling Hollyw...

The blistering 1928 Bolshevik satire, unpublishable in the Russia until 1988 - in a brand new translation'A love that cannot be throttled by the rubber tube of an enema bulb is immortal.'Bookish and idealistic Vladimir is tormented with love for Olga; he brings her flowers when other men bring her flour and millet. Olga eventually agrees to marry him, as her building’s central heating will be out of service all winter and at least with two in the b...

'Your book is the "really good book. Just one" that Roger Butler would have wanted' - Sir Ian McKellen'Absorbing and often very moving' - Peter Parker, Spectator'Sir, we are homosexuals . . .'So began the letter penned by Roger Butler and sent to several British newspaper editors - some of whom were so shocked they thought it was a hoax - in June 1960. Writing such a letter seven years before the d...

**Brought to you by Penguin.What do you do when your country becomes a repressive authoritarian state?**2014: Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics. Russia invades Crimea. Putin is re-elected president. Several political prisoners are amnestied and released early from prison.Maria Alyokhina is among them. She had spent two years in a penal colony after performing the punk prayer ‘Virgin Mary, Banish Putin’ with her friends in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour....

Representing every phase of E. M. Forster’s career as a writer, the fourteen stories in this book span six decades – from 1903-1957 or even later. Only two were published in his lifetime. Most of the remaining stories remained unpublished because of their overtly homosexual themes; instead they were shown to an appreciative circle of friends and fellow writers, including Christopher Isherwood, Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey and T. E. Lawrence.The stories differ widely in mood an...

Brought to you by Penguin.We tend to think that everything important comes from the centre: from big cities, from established orthodoxies in the sciences and the arts, from the Establishment in all its forms. We think this because the centre tells us it is so, but it's a lie. It is only at the edges that we think, innovate and thrive.This book travels to the frontiers of human culture and consciousness; to the edges of continents, of evolution, of artistic ...

Brought to you by Penguin.A stunning meditation on how the physical world can bring us back to earth from the edge of griefIn the aftermath of catastrophic loss, a mother and her young son cross the Atlantic, taking refuge in a wooden house on a remote strip of land. Viewed from the shore, where land meets sea, the horizon is a line that holds their attention and draws them in. Camera in hand, she charts their progress and starts to imagine...

**Brought to you by Penguin.For Constance ‘Connie’ Costa, life is just beginning.** She dreams of leaving behind her dull, dreary life in ‘70s East London, shaking off her deeply embarrassing Greek-Cypriot community of interfering Aunties and pretend ‘cousins’, and running away with her best mate Vas (fellow misfit; NHS specs; soul of a poet). She is determined to take her rightful place alongside her hero, David Bowie, onstage at Wembley Stadium.Only one thing stands in he...

New York Times bestselling author Charles Foster argues that all the best ideas happen at the edges, from a rocky precipice where the first human set foot in Europe **to an ancient Egyptian temple where monotheism was invented.'Literal "eccentricity" is where the scientific, artistic and spiritual giants have always found their home. Venture with Foster if you dare, and embrace life.'** Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary