Books in the Serpent's Tail Classics series

The depression of the 1930s led people to desperate measures to survive. The marathon dance craze, which flourished at that time, seemed a simple way for people to earn extra money - dancing the hours away for cash, for weeks at a time. But the underside of that craze was filled with a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms.

The true story of trans punk performance art sensation Jayne County's wild and daring life.

The sensational erotic memoir that shocked the world, now a Serpent's Tail Classic.

Jernigan is the great lost American masterpiece of suburban despair, a present-day Revolutionary Road or Stoner.

An essential masterpiece of jazz history by the renowned photographer and music historian, with a new foreword by Richard Williams.

Tells the story of Anne, a young woman who breaks her ankle in a daring escape from prison. She makes it to a highway where she's picked up by a motorcyclist, Julien, who's also on the run. As they travel through nights and days together, they fall in love and must do whatever they can to survive, living their lives always on the edge of danger.

An epic tale with central themes of corruption and the perversion of justice.

A novel about the Battle of the Somme told from the perspective of Bourne, an ordinary private. First published privately in 1929, it may amaze a new generation of readers with its depiction of the horror, the ordinariness and the humanity of war.

A beautiful, haunting novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

And as the summer moves remorselessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the killings accelerate and it seems as if Bob Fraser the half decent copper and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage.

An intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession and greed.

Gregoire Nakobomayo, a petty criminal, has decided to kill his girlfriend Germaine. Luckily, he has a mentor to call on, the far more accomplished serial killer Angoualima. The fact that Angoualima is dead doesn't prevent Gregoire from holding lengthy conversations with him. Little by little, Gregoire interweaves Angoualima's life with his own.

Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. But by night she trawls the porn shows of Vienna while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies' man, Walter Klemmer. With Walter as her student, Erika spirals out of control.

One of the great works of European short fiction, by turns funny, reflective and profound

A computer programmer by day, he is tolerably content, until he's packed off with a colleague - the sexually-frustrated Raphael Tisserand - to train provincial civil servants in the use of a new computer system.

Beloved cult novel repackaged to join the Serpent's Tail Classics series.

Japanese Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe's most important novel.

A work of sonic history that covers the rainforests of amazonas to virtual Las Vegas, from David Lynch's dream house, high in the Hollywood hills to the megalopolis of Tokyo. It begins in 1889 at the Paris Exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed. It comprehensively maps a century of ambient music and its legacy.

When the Ripper murders his thirteenth victim, the whole of Yorkshire is terrorised. Assistant Chief Constable Hunter struggles to solve the hellish crimes and bring an end to the horror. But after his house is burned down, his wife is threatened and his colleagues turn against him, Hunter's quest becomes personal as he has nothing left to lose.