Books by Lawrence Osborne

Private Investigator Philip Marlowe - now in his seventy-second year - has been living out his retirement in the terrace bar of the La Fonda hotel.Discover the rest of the inimitable Philip Marlowe series - nine classic Chandler adventures, from The Big Sleep to The Long Goodbye, available now in paperback and ebook from Penguin Books.

BOOK OF THE YEAR OBSERVER, MAIL ON SUNDAY'Let's not mince words. This is a great book' Lionel Shriver'An heir to Graham Greene' New York Times Book Review During a white-hot summer on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra, two girls fall into one another's lives to devastating effect.

The Ballad of a Small Player is a sleek, dark-hearted masterpiece: a ghost story set in the land of the living, and a decadent morality tale of a Faustian pact made, not with the devil, but with fortune's fickle hand.

'A modern Graham Greene' - Sunday TimesDavid and Jo Henniger are on their way to a party at their old friends' home, deep in the Moroccan desert.

Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons - a sex change operation, a night with two prostitutes dressed as nuns, and a stay in a luxury hotel. This title takes us to the place where a blend of ancient Buddhist practice and sexual mores has created a version of modernity only superficially indebted to the West.

Asperger's Syndrome, often characterized as a form of "high-functioning autism," is a poorly defined and little-understood neurological disorder. Some parents hope their child will be the next Glenn Gould or Bill Gates, others worry that their child is abnormal and overreact.