Μυθιστόρημα

With Sancho Panza, a deposed Communist mayor, his faithful Rocinate, an antiquated motorcar, Monsignor Quixote roams through modern-day Spain in a brilliant picaresque fable. Like Cervantes' classic, Monsignor Quixote offers enduring insights into our life and times.

Kenneth Trachtenberg, the witty and eccentric narrator of More Die ofHeartbreak, has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to benear his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described "plant visionary." While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from "bliss to breakdown." Imagining that a settled existence will end his anguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood of new torments. As Kenneth grapples with his own problems involving his unusual lady-friend Treckie, the two men try to figure out why gifted and intelligent people invariably find themselves "knee-deep in the garbage of a personal life."

The charming and witty prequel to Cranford, Mr Harrison's Confessions is a neglected Gaskell classic with all the period detail, brilliantly drawn characters and a well-knitted plot associated with Gaskell's works. Enjoying the comforts of his well-kept home in middle age, country doctor William Harrison is prevailed upon by his longtime friend Charles, a bachelor, to dispense some advice on the 'wooing and winning' of women's affections. So begin the fascinating and varied recollections of one of Gaskell's best-loved characters.

Newly arrived from China, Mr Ma and his son Ma Wei run an antiques shop nestled by St Paul's Cathedral, where they try to make a living amid the smog and bustle of 1920s London. As they struggle with money, misunderstandings and the ways of the English - from the overbearing patronage of missionary Reverend Ely to their well-meaning landlady Mrs Weddeburn and her carefree daughter - can understanding, even love, blossom? Both a moving story of the Chinese immigrant experience and a bitingly funny satire on the English, Mr Ma and Son delicately portrays the dreams and disappointments of those seeking a new life in a distant land.

"**The dazzling new novel from the prize-winning, bestselling author of Middle England** In the heady summer of 1977, a naive young woman called Calista sets out from Athens to venture into the wider world. On a Greek island that has been turned into a film set, she finds herself working for the famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost nothing. But the time she spends in this glamorous, unfamiliar new life will change her for good. While Calista is thrilled with her new adventure, Wilder himself is living with the realisation that his star may be on the wane. Rebuffed by Hollywood, he has financed his new film with German money, and when Calista follows him to Munich for the shooting of further scenes, she finds herself joining him on a journey of memory into the dark heart of his family history. In a novel that is at once a tender coming-of-age story and an intimate portrait of one of cinema's most intriguing figures, Jonathan Coe turns his gaze on the nature of time and fame, of family and the treacherous lure of nostalgia. When the world is catapulting towards change, do you hold on for dear life or decide it's time to let go? _______________________________________________________ Praise for Jonathan Coe 'Coe is a writer of uncommon decency' Observer 'Brilliantly funny' Economist 'Superb' Times 'Very, very funny' Stylist"

Virginia Woolf's singular technique in Mrs Dalloway heralds a break with the traditional novel form and reflects a genuine humanity and a concern with the experiences that both enrich and stultify existence. Society hostess, Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Her thoughts and sensations on that one day, and the interior monologues of others whose lives are interwoven with hers gradually reveal the characters of the central protagonists. Clarissa's life is touched by tragedy as the events in her day run parallel to those of Septimus Warren Smith, whose madness escalates as his life draws toward inevitable suicide.

"Author Tess Harrow and her daughter, Gertrude, are starting to get a bad reputation due to their involvement in recent murder cases, so Tess has come up with the perfect plan to drum up some positive press. She'll combine her new book release and her bookstore opening into one big event, giving her a chance to wine and dine the locals and some big press contacts. But the night before the party, Tess is greeted by a surprise: her mother has come for a visit, with her much-younger new boyfriend in tow ... a boyfriend Gertrude recognizes as the notorious Levi Parker, a man recently connected to the deaths of three elderly widows. Tess immediately alerts Sheriff Boyd about the visitor, but it's already too late. Levi Parker is found dead and Tess's mother is starting to look like the prime suspect. Bernadette swears she didn't murder Levi, and Tess is doing her best to maintain her mother's innocence, but too many coincidences keep stacking up. With the whole town seemingly against her family, it's up to Tess to get to the bottom of the story before it's too late"--

At the centre of Music for Chameleons is Handcarved Coffins, a 'nonfiction novel' based on the brutal crimes of a real-life murderer.Taking place in a small Midwestern town in America, it offers chilling insights into the mind of a killer and the obsession of the man bringing him to justice. Also in this volume are six short stories and seven 'conversational portraits' including a touching one of Marilyn Monroe, the 'beautiful child' and a hilarious one of a dope-smoking cleaning lady doing her rounds in New York.

My Husband Simon tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they are only kept together by a mutual physical attraction, in spite of innumerable quarrels. They live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in London.

Soon friendship develops into love. Inevitably the problem faces her. Wife or mistress? Nevis finds herself caught in a whirl of circumstances over which she has no control.

Published in 1931 in the immediate aftermath of D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover controversy, Mollie Panter-Downes's book explores the different echelons of the increasingly self-conscious middle class and the ways in which the tensions and nuances of vocabulary, dress, occupation, politics, taste and, ultimately, the literary world contribute to the incompatibility of a marriage.