Books published by Faber & Faber

'Compelling from first to last page.' DENISE MINAMeet Juniper Song, an under employed, twenty-something, Raymond-Chandler-loving, Korean American woman from downtown LA.When a friend asks Song to carry out surveillance on his father, she figures she doesn't have anything better to do - plus she gets to indulge her Philip Marlowe fantasies. But barely half a day into playing private eye someone has knocked her unconscious and left a dead body in the trunk of her car.

'A gritty, politically charged mystery.' LA TimesJuniper Song - private detective - has a talent for surveillance, and for knowing when a client isn't telling her the whole story.Rubina Gasparian, Song's latest client, is worried about her cousin, who just happens to be carrying her baby as a surrogate. Something tells her she's been hired to do more than just follow a heavily pregnant twenty-six-year-old around LA, and soon enough, Song finds herself caught in the dangerous underbelly of one of LA's biggest immigrant communities.

'Nathanael West and Raymond Chandler would be proud.' LA TimesJuniper Song has a new gig: apprenticed to a private investigation firm in downtown LA, she's racking up hours following cheating spouses.When a NY artist hires her to keep an eye on her long-distance boyfriend in LA, Song has no problem tailing the guy - until a panicked late-night phone call has her racing to the iconic Roosevelt Hotel. There, in the aftermath of a wild party in its top floor suite, she finds only two people left: the boyfriend and a Hollywood legend. Only one of them is still alive.

Graham's New Collected Poems (2004) marked a crucial point in the growth of his reputation, bringing together for the first time all the poems of his seven collections as well as some of the unpublished material that had come to light since his death in 1986.

So topsy-turvy had attitudes become in certain circles that the accusation of being 'unquestionably the biggest war-monger in the world today' was levelled at Churchill not Hitler! This book intends to study the various forms of motivation which led to this phenomenon (pro-Nazi sympathies in Britain).

Fiona MacCarthy traces the stories of the girls who curtseyed that year, and shows how their lives were to open out in often very unexpected ways - as Britain itself changed irreversibly during the 1960s, and the certainties of the old order came to an end.

Five-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, the only British director to have won the top prize at both Cannes (for Secrets & Lies) and Venice (for Vera Drake), Mike Leigh is unquestionably one of world cinema's pre-eminent figures.

This critical magnum opus, unprecedented in Shakespeare studies for its scope and daring, is nothing less than an attempt to show the Complete Works - dramatic and poetic - as a single, tightly integrated, evolving organism.

It's risky work, handlin' men, my lass. For when a woman builds her life on men, either husbands or sons, she builds on summat as sooner or later brings the house down crash on her head - yi, she does.In Husbands and Sons, Ben Power has interwoven three of D. H. Lawrence's greatest dramas, The Daughter-in-Law, A Collier's Friday Night and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd. Together, they describe the community Lawrence came from with fierce tenderness, evoking a now-vanished world of manual labour and working-class pride.On the cracked border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire stands the village of Eastwood. The women of the village, wives and mothers, struggle to hold their families and their own souls together in the shadow of the great Brinsley pit.Husband and Sons by D. H. Lawrence, adapted by Ben Power, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in October 2015 in a co-production with Royal Exchange Theatre.

The truth is that jail is a place where you can still hold on to hope - hope you'll be bailed out, hope you'll be found innocent, hope you'll get a second chance.Four teenagers, never destined to be friends - one rebel, one bully, one geek and one pariah, find themselves on the run from corrupt police officers in a stolen police car. How can you prove your innocence when the people who are supposed to protect you are the ones out to get you? A beautiful, thrilling story of rebellion, and of friendship triumphing against all odds.

Patriotism Perverted is an exploration of British anti-Semitism in the last six months of peace and the first year of the Second World War. It shows how, against the backdrop of an endemic British 'social anti-Semitism', a virulent form of this tendency was able to emerge in the late Thirties in a variety of extremist movements. These movements gained their strength from the popular obsessions, in 1939, with Jewish responsibility for the approaching war (seen as 'The War of the Jews' Revenge'), and with the myth of the Judaeo-Bolshevik Plot. In many cases, these views were closely related with pro-Nazism and were often held by the most patriotic of people. For most, the outbreak of war was a signal to perform their patriotic duty. But there were others who found themselves in a considerable dilemma, torn between patriotism and their desire to subvert a war they believed Britain to have been tricked into undertaking. Researching many prominent figures of the day, including Captain Ramsay and Sir Oswald Mosley, Patriotism Perverted offers a fascinating insight into the views and activities of those in the various anti-Semitic and/or pro-Nazi circles in 1939.

A Messiah of the Last Days (1974) was C. J. Driver's fourth novel. A profound meditation on politics and a complex portrait of English society, it is also fast-paced and suspenseful. Its narrator is Tom Grace, a pragmatic, efficient London barrister with a comfortable life. But his ordered world is unsettled by his involvement with a young man he defends in court - John Buckleson, the charismatic leader of an anarchic movement calling themselves The Free People. Though deeply divided in many ways, the two men are drawn to each other by a common dream of creating a new social and moral order. Buckleson, though, is a figure of interest to more people than those who subscribe to his vision.'C. J. Driver's exceptional alertness to our times is matched by the power and zest of his evocative writing, lit up by wry wit.' Nadine Gordimer.

Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Jerusalem, King of Bohemia, King of Dalmatia, King of Transylvania, King of Croatia and Slovenia, King of Galicia and Illyria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Bukovina, Duke of Modena, Parma, and Piacenza and so on, another thirty or so titles could be added. Was ever a monarch so festooned as Emperor Francis Joseph? He ruled from the Year of the Revolutions, 1848 until his death in 1916. His empire was the most multi-national state ever. An ethnic map of 1910 shows there to be Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Italians, Jews, Muslims, Ladins (in the Tyrol) and Roumanians. What is more, even together the Germans and the Magyars constituted a minority. And yet, as Alan Palmer observes no other European monarch 'exercised full sovereignty for so long.' Unlike Queen Victoria he ruled rather than merely reigned. That alone suggests he was something more than the humourless bureaucrat he is commonly thought to have been, and Alan Palmer is successful in providing a more rounded and sympathetic portrait of him both as head of an empire and head of a family.His personal life was punctuated with tragedy: his brother, Maximilian was executed y Mexican republicans; his only son, Rudolf shot himself and his mistress at Mayerling; his wife, Empress Elizabeth, was stabbed to death in Geneva, and his nephew and heir, Francis-Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo. This was the first biography of Francis Joseph by an English writer and was acclaimed when originally published in 1994.'With great skill Mr Palmer blends in the Emperor's private life with the story of the Empire. . . This is an important book; also an entrancing one.' Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph'A compelling read' Lawrence James, Evening Standard

A glib assessment of Metternich might not be a favourable one, he was not without his ridiculous qualities, and yet he survived, more than survived, in fact, with the 'Age of Metternich' lasting for more than a generation, and giving Europe a measure of peace, albeit repressive, that was much needed after the Napoleonic convulsions.Alan Palmer describes well Metternich's extraordinary longevity. 'Clement von Metternich held continuous office at the head of Europe's affairs for a longer period of time than any other statesman in modern history: he became foreign minister of the Austrian Empire in the autumn of 1809 and he did not resign until the spring of 1848. For thirty-three of these thirty-nine years his statecraft and philosophy of government determined the political pattern of the continent. The 'Age of Metternich' , though often impatiently dismissed by historians as a mere interlude, lasted for twice as long as the 'Age of Napoleon' which preceded it and for half as long again as the 'Age of Bismarck' which followed in the closing decades of the century.'Metternich was a statesman to his fingertips, practising 'the skills of diplomacy with greater fluency than any contemporary Talleyrand, from whom he had learnt many of the refinement of the game.'How would he fare today? Probably quite well as he was, again in Alan Palmer's words, 'an early champion of federalism and a good European ...''As a work of history (it) cannot be faulted.' A. J. P. Taylor, Observer'Well-written, well-researched, lucid and witty.' Philip Ziegler, The Times

'Even the lives of scoundrels play some part in portraying an age...'Our interest in all things Victorian - in the seamy side of the era especially - is ageless and undimmed. Giles St. Aubyn's Infamous Victorians, first published in 1971, stands as a brilliant illumination of two dark stories of the time, replete with sinister elements of iniquity and hypocrisy.In the first fifty years of Victoria's reign two doctors were hanged after being found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court. Both men were 32 years old, both poisoners, both murdered for money. Dr William Palmer was a notorious figure, tried for a single murder though he almost certainly killed others. Dr George Lamson was a morphia addict convicted of killing his crippled young brother-in-law at Blenheim House school. Giles St. Aubyn restores them to life on the page, examines their careers and assesses their guilt.

Richard III has the most controversial reputation of any English king. If he was the murderer of his two nephews and (as many contemporaries thought) the poisoner of his own wife, he has a place among the foremost villains of history. If however his only real crime was to have been on the losing side, then he is the victim of an extraordinary and enduring smear campaign.Which version is correct? Whether true or false, the legend of Richard III's villainy has embedded itself in the nation's consciousness. In this clear, careful narrative, first published in 1983 (the 500th anniversary of a year in which three kings occupied the throne of England) Giles St. Aubyn relates the violent and blood-stained story, his cool, witty style contrasting with the brutality of the period he describes.

'He ascended, eyes riveted, nailed to the steps leading up to the top of the pyramid of the sun. How many human hearts he wondered had been plucked from bodies there to feed the dying light of the sun and create an obsession with royal sculptures, echoing stone?... It was time to take stock of others as hollow bodies and shelters into which one fell...'In Companions of the Day and Night (first published in 1975) Wilson Harris revives figures from his earlier Black Marsden - chiefly Clive Goodrich, the 'editor' of this text, who constructs a narrative from the papers of a figure known as Idiot Nameless: a wanderer between present and past, taking an Easter sojourn in Mexico that lasts both for days and for centuries. The results have the strangely hypnotic power characteristic of Wilson Harris's fiction.

Dennis Brain is recognized as perhaps the greatest horn player the world has known. He helped rescue the horn from the obscurity in which it had languished for over a century, and revived the public's faith in it as a major solo instrument. Brain restored to the concert platform concertos by Mozart and Haydn, and inspired contemporary composers to write for the horn, most notably the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings by Benjamin Britten, composed during World War II, a piece which is now central to the repertoire of tenors and horn players. Brain died at the tragically young age of thirty-six in a car crash. The beauty of his playing and his untimely death captured the public imagination like no horn player before or since. This biography was reissued thirty years after his death, and includes a discography. The book also contains an appreciation by Benjamin Britten.'A clear account of Dennis Brain's brilliant career ...' Times Literary Supplement'...an absorbing and extremely well-written account of the orchestral scene in England.'

The Hazard Mesh, first published in 1946, is the work of a 28-year-old naval officer who disobeyed wartime regulations by keeping a diary 'in the field' during the Normandy D-Day landings and subsequent Lib,ration de la France. This was John Antony Crawford Hugill (1916-1987), who had been plucked from Naval Intelligence by Ian Fleming to serve in the front-line commando unit that came to be known as '30AU.''The Hazard Mesh is a fascinating primary source, a vivid, opinionated, first-hand account of the invasion of Europe in 1944 that is still as fresh as paint... an emotional odyssey that catches the nerviness and mood-swings of war, the irritations and exhilarations of danger, the spasms of rage, boredom, fear and longing.' Nicholas Rankin (from his new Introduction)

Son of the eccentric Adolphus, seventh and favourite son of George III, Prince George was born in 1819 and was briefly heir presumptive to the throne of England until the birth that same year of his cousin Victoria. Instead he became George, second Duke of Cambridge, and rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the Army aged 37, holding that position for 39 years. Often considered a hidebound reactionary, he nonetheless took a keen interest in reform of the Army, and made considerable efforts to improve the soldier's lot.In the year that the title of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was bestowed by HRH the Queen upon Prince William and Catherine Middleton on the morning of their wedding, this charming, substantial and formidably researched life of 'The Royal George' has a renewed topicality.

Marshal Philippe Petain was, in the words of historian Andrew Roberts, 'the most controversial Frenchman of the twentieth century.' A truly distinguished soldier who rose from humble origins, he commanded French forces at Verdun in 1916 and became a national hero. But though by 1940 he had become French Deputy Prime Minister his political abilities were meagre. And after France fell to the Nazis it was Petain who signed the armistice and, from the spa town of Vichy, ruled over the Etat Francais Hitler had left him.Richard Griffiths tells this sorry story in outstanding detail, all the way to Petain's ignominious end, and not stinting to show his culpability in the Vichy persecution of French Jews and its suppression of the internal Resistance.'Petain, utterly obscure until the age of 58, was hurled to fame by his defence of Verdun in 1916. This saved his country's bacon (he would say her honour) at a crisis point of the Great War. Thereafter he became an almost monarchical figure, more revered than any living Frenchman, even after the disaster of 1940. But then, as head of the puppet Vichy government, he slid into ignominy after failing to square honour with military humiliation. Griffiths's durable biography... paints not a devil but a courageous, misguided man with a hole where others keep their political acumen.'Robin Blake, Independent

In the summer of 1812 Britain stood alone, fighting for her very survival against a vast European Empire. Only the Royal Navy stood between Napoleon's legions and ultimate victory. In that dark hour America saw its chance to challenge British dominance: her troops invaded Canada and American frigates attacked British merchant shipping, the lifeblood of British defence.War polarised America. The south and west wanted land, the north wanted peace and trade. But America had to choose between the oceans and the continent. Within weeks the land invasion had stalled, but American warships and privateers did rather better, and astonished the world by besting the Royal Navy in a series of battles.Then in three titanic single ship actions the challenge was decisively met. British frigates closed with the Chesapeake, the Essex and the President, flagship of American naval ambition. Both sides found new heroes but none could equal Captain Philip Broke, champion of history's greatest frigate battle, when HMS Shannon captured the USS Chesapeake in thirteen blood-soaked minutes. Broke's victory secured British control of the Atlantic, and within a year Washington, D.C. had been taken and burnt by British troops.Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, brings all his mastery of the subject and narrative brilliance to throw new light on a war which until now has been much mythologised, little understood.

In 1845 Captain Sir John Franklin led a large, well equipped expedition to complete the conquest of the Canadian Arctic, to find the fabled North West Passage connecting the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Yet Franklin, his ships and his men were fated never to return. The cause of their loss remains a mystery. InFranklin, Andrew Lambert presents a gripping account of the worst catastrophe in the history of British exploration, and the dark tales of cannibalism that surround the fate of those involved.Shocked by the disappearance of all 129 officers and men, and sickened by reports of cannibalism, the Victorians re-created Franklin as the brave Christian hero who laid down his life, and those of his men. Later generations have been more sceptical about Franklin and his supposed selfless devotion to duty. But does either view really explain why this outstanding scientific navigator found his ships trapped in pack ice seventy miles from magnetic north?In 2014 Canadian explorers discovered the remains of Franklin's ship. His story is now being brought to a whole new generation, and Andrew Lambert's book gives the best analysis of what really happened to the crew. In its incredible detail and its arresting narrative, Franklin re-examines the life and the evidence with Lambert's customary brilliance and authority. In this riveting story of the Arctic, he discovers a new Franklin: a character far more complex, and more truly heroic, than previous histories have allowed. '[A]nother brilliant piece of research combined with old-fashioned detective work . . . utterly compelling.' Dr Amanda Foreman

The true story of how Britain's maritime power helped gain this country unparalleled dominance of the world's economy, Admirals celebrates the rare talents of the men who shaped the most successful fighting force in world history. Told through the lives and battles of eleven of our most remarkable admirals - men such as James II and Robert Blake - Andrew Lambert's book stretches from the Spanish Armada to the Second World War, culminating with the spirit which led Andrew Browne Cunningham famously to declare, when the army feared he would lose too many ships, 'it takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition.'

'The hero is the creature other people would like to be. Edwards was such a man, and he enabled people to respect themselves more.' By the mid-fifties Manchester United had caught the imagination of the country. Duncan Edwards played his first game for the club at the age of fifteen years and eight months in 1953. Two years later he won his first England cap and Walter Winterbottom, then England manager, referred to him as 'the spirit of British football'. On GBP15-a-week and living at Mrs Watson's boarding house at 5 Birch Avenue in Manchester, Edwards was the most prized of the Busby Babes. Then in February 1958 came Munich.Half a decade later George Best represented United reborn. 'Georgie' of the boutiques and dolly birds; 'El Beatle' of the European Cup in '68 and European Player of the Year; in the opinion of Pele, the most naturally talented footballer that ever lived. Retired at 27 and reduced to the role of Chelsea barfly and tabloid perennial; George, where did it all go wrong? An investigation into a club, two personalities and an England that has all but disappeared, Best & Edwards plots the course and trajectory of two careers unmoored in wildly different ways.

'I first read a W. S. Graham poem in 1949. It sent a shiver down my spine. Forty-five years later nothing has changed. His song is unique and his work an inspiration.' Harold Pinter. From his first publications in the early 1940s, to his final works of the late 1970s, W. S. Graham has given us a poetry of intense power and inquisitive vision - a body of work regarded by many as among the best Romantic poetry of the twentieth century. This New Collected Poems, edited by poet and Graham-scholar Matthew Francis and with a foreword by Douglas Dunn, offers the broadest picture yet of Graham's work.

In this new selection from the poetry of Lawrence Durrell (the first for thirty years), Peter Porter has drawn on the full range of the published work, from A Private Country (1943) to Vega (1973), and has provided a long overdue revaluation of Durrell's poetic career. In his detailed and generous introduction, Porter makes the case for A Private Country as one of the most accomplished debut collections of the twentieth century, and traces Durrell's preoccupations and poetic personality within the wider scene. The selection of poems makes its own strong case for the continuing power and originality of this attractive, metropolitan and wholly individual body of work.

An Expert in Murder is the first in a new series that features Golden Age crime writer Josephine Tey as its lead character, placing her in the richly-peopled world of 1930s theatre which formed the other half of her writing life. It's March 1934, and Tey is travelling from Scotland to London to celebrate what should be the triumphant final week of her celebrated play, Richard of Bordeaux. However, a seemingly senseless murder puts her reputation, and even her life, under threat. An Expert in Murder is both a tribute to one of the most enduringly popular writers of crime and an atmospheric detective novel in its own right.

Over the coming days they embark on a whirlwind of self-destructive misadventures as Ullis attempts to mask his grief through excessive narcotics, resulting in episodes of increasing dysfunctionality that flirt with total self-obliteration - and perhaps a kind of resolution.

'Fiendish good fun' ANTHONY HOROWITZIf you want to get away with murder, play by the rulesA series of unsolved murders with one thing in common: each of the deaths bears an eerie resemblance to the crimes depicted in classic mystery novels.The deaths lead FBI Agent Gwen Mulvey to mystery bookshop Old Devils. Owner Malcolm Kershaw had once posted online an article titled 'My Eight Favourite Murders,' and there seems to be a deadly link between the deaths and his list - which includes Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.Can the killer be stopped before all eight of these perfect murders have been re-enacted?