Books in the Virago Modern Classics series

One of the most influential children's writers who ever lived, E. Nesbit deserves a full reappraisal. She once inspired C. S. Lewis and Arthur Ransom - her modern admirers include Neil Gaiman, J. K. Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Kate Saunders and Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

* A startling account of a German survivor of the Second World War. 'One of the most important personal accounts ever written about the effects of war and defeat' Antony Beevor 'One of the most extraordinary and moving books I have ever read' Antonia Fraser

Mary Robson is a young Yorkshire woman, married to her solid, unromantic cousin, John. Together they battle to preserve Mary's neglected inheritance, her beloved farm, Anderby Wold. This labour of love - and the benevolent tyranny of traditional Yorkshire ways - have made Mary old before her time. Then into her purposeful life comes David Rossitur, red-haired, charming, eloquent: how can she help but love him? But David is a young man from a different England, radical and committed to social change. As their confrontation and its consequences inevitably unfold, Mary's life and that of the calm village of Anderby are changed forever.

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.'Damage, Josephine Hart's debut novel, an international bestseller, filmed with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche, now takes its proper place as a Virago Modern Classic. Here is one of the most chilling explorations of physical passion and dark, obsessive love ever written.'A remarkable first novel of awesome accomplishment and quite startling psychological insight' Ruth Rendell

Elsie, sheltered and naive, is seventeen and unhappy. Stifled by life with her bickering parents in a bleak Cornish village, she falls in love with the first presentable young man she meets - Peter, an ambitious London doctor. On his advice she runs away from home and goes to live with her sister Leonora, who escaped eight years earlier. But there are surprises in store for conventional Elsie as her sister has a rather bohemian lifestyle: not only does Leo live in a houseboat on the Thames where she writes Westerns for a living, she shares her boat - and her bed - with Helen. When Peter pays a visit, turning his attention from one 'friendly young lady' to the next, he disturbs the calm for each of them - with results unforeseen by all . . .Mary Renault wrote this delightfully provocative novel in 1943 partly in answer to the despair characteristic of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. The result is this witty and stylish social comedy.

A girl returns from boarding school to her sleepy Merseyside hometown and waits to be reunited with her childhood friend, Harriet, chief architect of all their past mischief. She roams listlessly along the shoreline and the woods still pitted with wartime trenches, and encounters 'the Tsar' - almost old, unhappily married, both dangerously fascinating and repulsive.Pretty, malevolent Harriet finally arrives - and over the course of the long holidays draws her friend into a scheme to beguile then humiliate the Tsar, with disastrous, shocking consequences. A gripping portrayal of adolescent transgression, Beryl Bainbridge's classic first novel remains as subversive today as when it was written.

For Emily Pool, India is a magical place where she has the freedom to escape her mother's suffocating influence. Her days are spent exploring the canals and gardens of East Bengal, and admiringly observing her glamorous, dignified neighbours, the Nikolides. But just as the cracks in Emily's family home are papered over, so do the Pools strive to maintain an outward impression of respectability, and it is through the Nikolides that Emily is exposed to a world of adult deceit and attrition. And when her beloved dog dies, the event forces a confrontation and reveals to Emily that nothing in the town is quite as it seems . . .

Originally published in the 1930s and 1940s and never before collected, these stories by the incomparable Angela Thirkell relate merry scenes of a trip to the pantomime, escapades on ice, a Christmas Day gone awry, and an electrifying afternoon for Laura Morland and friends at Low Rising, not to mention the chatter of the arty set at a London private view. Charming, irreverent and full of mischievous humour, they offer the utmost entertainment in any season of the year.

Robert wants nothing more than to become a serious art historian. But his hopes for an academic life are put on hold when he's driven from London to Venice to escape one lover and seek out another: the enigmatic Bulgarian refugee Lina Pancev. In Venice, Robert encounters a grand carnival of lust, lies, blackmail, cocktail parties and regicide. As he chases Lina, his heart's desire, the city itself provides a priceless education in love, art and beauty.

A gripping novel that explores the shifting sands of moral values - is murder still murder when committed in a lawless place?'Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear . . . Highsmith's finest novel to my mind is The Tremor of Forgery, and if I were asked what it is about I would reply, "e;apprehension"e;' Graham GreeneHoward Ingham finds it strange that no one has written to him since he arrived in Tunisia - neither the film director that he is supposed to be meeting in Tunis, nor his lover in New York who is, he hopes, missing him. While he waits around at a beach resort, unable to progress on the film script he is there to write, he starts work on a new novel, about a man living an amoral double life. Howard also befriends a fellow American who has a taste for Scotch and a suspicious interest in the Soviet Union, and a Dane who appears to distrust Arabs intensely. When bad news finally arrives from home, Howard thinks he may as well stay and continue writing, despite the tremors in the air of violence, tensions and ambiguous morals.

Chasm is the only novel by Dorothea Tanning, the famed surrealist artist, and was published when she was 93 years old.

This vibrant first novel by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most influential African-American writers, is reissued with a new introduction by Jesmyn Ward.

An intense, searing novel exploring the damage of racial and sexual violence.

A range of beautifully produced products celebrating the heritage of the Virago Modern Classics list.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .Working as a lady's companion, the orphaned heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Life begins to look very bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Maxim de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. Whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to his brooding estate, Manderley, on the Cornish Coast, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding Mrs Danvers . . . Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.I am reminded of how profoundly du Maurier changed the way I felt about myself, how she engaged and excited me with her writing.

* An early novel by one of England's most important contemporary novelists.

A volume of Rebecca West's short fiction. Including the novella "The Only Poet", found amongst her papers after her death, this selection comprises unpublished work and published stories gathered from British and American journals and periodicals.

THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON is a witty and entertaining examination of the moral deficiencies of the creed of materialism.

Circles of Deceit is narrated by a painter who specialises as a copyist, this is his story: 'bothered by bills and artistic conscience in about equal measure. . .susceptible to, bullied and badgered by women.' Major figures on the canvas are Clio, his child-bride; Helen, his first wife; his mother Maisie. They confound lies and the truth in a subtle weave, while the silent agony of the painter's son is a poignant reflection on the busy web of deception. And as the copyist transcribes his modern versions of Old Masters, so the past keeps breaking through the surface of the present, until fact and fiction like art and life, meet in a remarkable conclusion.

In six days Silas Mudd will be one hundred years old and is alarmingly healthy - more than can be said of his son. 'Not sure he'll make old bones' he confides loudly to his daughter-in-law. Grumpily flattered by the fuss over his impending party - even from his irritating family, Silas' greater pleasure is 'to go over his life' and the women whom he loved and who made trouble for him: his sterling and capable Aunt; his wonderfully vulgar second wife Bella; Molly, a music-hall singing sister; and Effie, his first and hopeless wife. Silas is the only one left who knows exactly what is shoring up his family. And now he sits, waiting and thinking, just wondering what it would be like if he were to say ...

In a crumbling Calcutta mansion, with faded frescos and a jasmine-covered garden, the Lemarchant family live, clinging to the fringes of respectability: neither Indian nor English, they are accepted by no one and exploited by all.After only a day in India, Stephen Bright meets Rosa Lemarchant. In an ill-fitting dress once belonging to her sister, she is awkward and shy, and couldn't be more different from the stories he has heard of fast 'Eurasian' girls. Ignorant of Calcutta's strict codes of conformity, he falls in love with Rosa and becomes enchanted by the building in which she lives, determined to uncover its secrets.Mystery pervades this story of a memory-haunted house in old Calcutta, as secret as a sundial in a ruined garden.

Surrounded by a family notable for its size, eccentricity and marital irregularities, Letty grows up with one aim - marriage. She learns that social survival depends on winning and keeping a man, and amidst the bustle of New York and London in the 30s and 40s, relentlessly pursues her aim.

A never-before-collected selection of sparkling Christmas-themed stories by Noel Streatfeild that will charm, delight and entertain.

'You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own' New York TimesWhen peace breaks out, it surprises and unsettles familiar wartime routines, and the residents of Barsetshire seem as disconcerted as they are overjoyed. Nevertheless, as the county's eligible young men return home, the social round regains its old momentum. Before long, everyone is spinning in a flurry of misunderstandings and engagements.The older generation, though, sees that the world will never be the same again.

High in the Himalayas near Darjeeling, the old mountaintop palace shines like a jewel. When it was the General's 'harem' palace, richly dressed ladies wandered the windswept terraces; at night, music floated out over the villages and gorges. Now, the General's son has bestowed it on an order of nuns, the Sisters of Mary.Well-intentioned yet misguided, the nuns set about taming the gardens and opening a school and dispensary for the villagers. They are dependent on the local English agent of Empire, Mr Dean; but his charm and insolent candour are disconcerting. And the implacable emptiness of the mountain, the ceaseless winds, exact a toll on the Sisters.When Mr Dean says bluntly, 'This is no place for a nunnery,' it is as if he foresees their destiny...

This is perfect comfort read - an evocative and quietly subversive 1930s gem, with a new introduction by Lucy Scholes

The first in a series of crime capers from a dazzling English eccentric, with a delightful new introduction from Sandi Toksvig - 'Her detective novels are hilarious - less about detecting than delighting, with absurd farce and a wonderful turn of phrase'