Books published by Faber & Faber

'A man, now, well sure enough, one of those you can forget; but a child is forever.' Kate ByrneFor No Man's Land, first published in 1972, Tony Parker persuaded six young unmarried mothers to talk frankly about their lives, their hopes and their problems. As ever Parker didn't impose himself upon the text: the women speak as and for themselves. As such No Man's Land is a precious sociological portrait of a Britain in which many believed that motherhood and marriage were subject to an umbilical linkage.'Tony Parker is himself unique: Britain's most expert interviewer, mouthpiece of the inarticulate, and counsel for the defence of whose whom society has shunned or abandoned.' Anthony Storr, Sunday Times

In 1970 Tony Parker was permitted by the Home Office to make a series of visits to HMP Grendon Underwood, the UK's first psychiatric prison, there to interview inmates and staff for a study of the institution and its unique community.'Tony Parker deserves a place in any future history of literature for his contribution to the creative use of the tape-recorder... We can only guess at the qualities of patience and perceptiveness which have enabled Mr Parker to make of his material one of the most important studies ever to have been published of the habitual criminal.' TLS'The reader will find himself as deeply involved with his characters as Mr Parker is himself.' Spectator

Five Women, first published in 1965, was Tony Parker's fourth book. Its intended subjects had emerged from Holloway prison for women on the same cold spring morning in 1963. Between them they shared 73 criminal convictions and nearly a hundred years 'inside'. Parker intended to interview each of the women about their lives, hopes, intentions, fears; and to arrange follow-up conversations in due course. But one disappeared immediately, and six months later two of the five were dead, two more back in prison. The scope of Parker's project duly changed, but not its purpose - to record the experiences and thoughts of women mired in the cycle of habitual offences and custodial sentences.

'I first met Robert Allerton in prison, where he was captive and I was not... He was a powerful broad-shouldered Cockney [who] had spent his childhood in poverty and much of his manhood in prison; and he had a long record of violent crime.' Tony Parker, from his IntroductionTony Parker's first book The Courage of His Convictions (1962), constructed out of his candid and illuminating dialogues with career criminal Robert Allerton (credited as co-author), is a stunning work that displays all the skills and virtues Parker would bring to his subsequent career as an 'oral historian' of the lives of society's marginal figures. 'This intimate autobiography is a revelation - it provides the first psychological insight into the mentality of that frightening, mysterious and pathetic product of our society, the professional criminal.' Arthur Koestler

'[The White Father] was to be a State of the Nation novel, about the end of Empire, contrasting the last generation of men who'd served it, and the new one which was just breaking out from the long dullness of the post-war years, but didn't really know where it was going...' Julian Mitchell, from his new PrefaceMitchell's fourth novel, published in 1964, earned him both the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. Its protagonist Hugh Shrieve is District Officer in charge of the Ngulu, a small tribe in an African colony on the verge of independence. Fearing 'his' tribe will be overlooked in the politics of a constitutional conference set to take place in London, Hugh returns to England for the first time in years. But there he soon feels lost in his own country.

Imaginary Toys (1961) marked the literary debut of the then 26-year-old Julian Mitchell, who would eventually set aside his prizewinning career as a novelist and achieve wider renown as a dramatist, most famously with Another Country (1981). Imaginary Toys is a novel of Oxford after World War Two, where class consciousness has become newly acute, and a quartet of narrators wrestle with their studies and their more personal difficulties - among the four a coalminer's son and the daughter of a solid bourgeois family, who fall in love to the discomfort of their respective friends.In the first of a sequence of reflective, autobiographical new introductions composed especially for Faber Finds' reissues of his early novels, Julian Mitchell recalls the atmosphere of mid-1950s Oxford, and the path he took to a literary vocation.

A Disturbing Influence was Julian Mitchell's second novel, first published in 1962.The setting is the small, utterly English town of Cartersfield, where the very quietness of life causes trouble. The young and old are preoccupied alike with their own affairs, to the exclusion of the world. Tetchy schoolmaster Mr Drysdale sums it up: 'We don't care much for change in Cartersfield.' But change comes regardless, in the shape of a rootless young man who finds Cartersfield a fine place in which to recuperate after an illness, and a fine place, too, to indulge his appetite for destruction.In a fascinating new preface to this reissue Julian Mitchell describes how he drew on his Cotswold childhood and the town of Cirencester in order to invent his fictional Cartersfield and populate it with a cast of characters.

Julian Mitchell's fifth novel, first published in 1966, is the story of Martin Bannister, whose lonely bachelor life in Manhattan is transformed by a meeting with desirable redhead Henrietta Grigson and her husband Freddy, with whom he embarks on a heady social whirl. But Martin has a surprise in store - a plot twist the real-life inspiration for which Julian Mitchell divulges in his new preface to this Faber Finds edition.'A comedy that is delightfully human, played by characters who have the edgy vitality of real life.'Evening Standard'Mitchell is a writer of the most supple technical accomplishment.' Telegraph'Ingeniously constructed and excellently written.' Listener

As Far As You Can Go was Julian Mitchell's third novel, first published in 1963. Its protagonist is Harold Barlow, a young stockbroker, on his way up in the world - but easily bored, desiring adventure. He accepts a commission to travel to America; and the further west he goes, the more he discovers in the way of wide open spaces and freedoms. There is, however, a limit.In an introduction written especially for this edition, Julian Mitchell describes his interest in writing 'a reverse Henry James novel, about a European discovering America rather than vice-versa.''Like Nabokov, but without his cynicism, Mr Mitchell sets the geography of the United States in motion.' Anthony Burgess, Observer'This raid on the American psyche, so hilarious, yet so horrific in its implications, proves Mr Mitchell a first-rate satirist.' Telegraph

Bit of a wide boy, Terry. Got a spot of form, eye for the ladies, a real rough diamond some might say. Not without his virtues, though, as his campaign for open government shows. No secrets, that's Terry's secret. Allied to charm, that is, of course. Only one person finds it easy to resist his charm and counter his arguments and that's Hilary - one of the serious and dedicated young Civil Servants working in the Home Office in Westminster, who just happens to know the truth about the case in which Terry is currently interested. She despises him and everything he stands for. But then why is she to be found one evening walking through the back streets behind the Strand, to the run-down block where Terry's pressure group has its headquarters? Now You Know takes on government campaigns, ambitious civil servants and determined pressure groups with Frayn's trade-mark wit. Michael Frayn's other novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award.

Heaven, reported St John in Revelation, was a cubical city 12,000 furlongs high made of 'pure gold, like unto clear glass'. That was 1,900 years ago, and Heaven as it is today has changed out of all recognition. Sweet Dreams is the account of a recent journey to the metropolis at the nerve-centre of the universe. The journey was undertaken not by a mystical reporter like St John, but by Howard Baker, an observer of much more modern outlook. He finds a city which offers rich opportunities for leisure and enjoyment - but one which also presents a moral and intellectual challenge. In short, a city which is highly adapted to the requirements of modest, responsible, likeable, educated men of liberal views and genuine social concern called Howard Baker.Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of plays such as Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and his latest novel Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.'May go down in history as one of England's special contributions to the twentieth century.' Times Literary'Lucid, intelligent, delightful, stylish, extremely funny . . . I recommend it wholeheartedly.' New York Times

He knows everything about her before they meet; more about her nine novels that she does herself. He has devoted his life to studying and teaching them and yet he is four times as clever as she is. Now, as she steps off the train in London, something about her in the flesh sets him thinking. Maybe he has a chance to resolve the one remaining mystery at the heart of things. . . Through a series of letters sent by a minor English Literature academic to his old friend in Australia, Frayn combines a vivid and moving study of obsession, with a witty and playful account of what it's like to be on the fringes of the creative process. Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve prime ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace, a meeting like no other in British public life. It is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses.The Audience breaks this contract of silence. It imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each prime minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional - sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive.From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next prime minister.The Audience by Peter Morgan premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2013.

It is 1941. Only child Leo invites schoolfriend Justin to stay the summer on the western tip of Cornwall. Addicted to adventure tales, one night they swim out to investigate a supposed 'spy ship' moored off the coast. The outcome is unnerving for the boys but momentous for Leo's mother Andrea, bringing her into contact with Lieutenant Commander Mike Harrington.'Tim Jeal is a great storyteller... Deep Water is not only an extremely gripping novel, it is also thought-provoking and it subjects the conventional ideas about heroism, romantic love and adventure to a subtle yet searching examination.' Irish News'A very satisfying novel... brilliantly done.' Nina Bawden, The Oldie'Jeal brilliantly conveys a child's interpretation of the world... it is fascinating to watch a child taking revenge on his mother and her lover in such a dramatic fashion.' Times

Tim Jeal's sixth novel, first published in 1983, recreates the frenetic Britain of the 1960s and tells an enthralling tale of three individuals bound together by a risky experiment conducted amid the pop-cultural ferment of the era. Paul Carnforth is young, wealthy, titled, and alive to the opportunities of his times. 'You don't have to like pop to find it interesting', he tells his sceptical wife. Paul decides to fashion a pop star of his own - as a 'moral swipe', also proof of his individual brilliance. But the creation will soon threaten to outgrow his creator.'Pop music, working class heroes, record companies, music publishers and stately homes as settings for orgiastic settings, it's all here ... Mr Jeal writes comedy very well.' Irish Times'Tim Jeal is a writer very much out of the ordinary - trenchant, elegant, subtle.' Sunday Telegraph

'A majestic Victorian tale... Wealthy lawyer Esmond, discarded illegitimate son of a peer, has pinched his way to the top of his profession, while his handsome, debt-ridden cavalry officer brother Clinton has inherited the title and the ancestral home. Beautiful actress Theresa, a widow, a fierce free spirit with a sinewy wit, is the woman both will love.' Kirkus Reviews 'It is rare in this field to meet the realities of passion, its shifts and treacheries; when this combines with rich historical details, including recondite legal and financial ones, the result is outstanding.' Observer 'The novel does imperatively make you want to know what happens next. Three cheers for narrative.' New Statesman 'A superb novelistic situation, starkly worked out as it would be in real life... I was intensely concerned for the fortunes of these people.' Elizabeth Jenkins, Kaleidoscope (BBC)

First published in 1976, Until the Colours Fade was Tim Jeal's fourth novel, set in 1852 in a Lancashire mill town transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Disenfranchised cotton workers are restless, while landed gentry make uneasy common cause with newly wealthy manufacturers. When painter Tom Strickland encounters the combustible Magnus Crawford, lately returned from military service abroad, he is drawn into a web of local hatreds and intrigues that will lead to an epic conclusion at the siege of Sebastopol.'First-rate - I was hooked from the first page... Jeal has a close sympathy for the passions and politics of Victorian Britain.' Times'A long, meaty, intelligent, historical novel, full of qualities like surprise, expectation and its fulfilment, dramatic description and real understanding of the physical enormities of old-style campaigns like the Crimea.' Financial Times'Jeal handles his ambitious range of settings with considerable craftsmanship.'TLS

Derek Cushing - thirtyish, balding, unassuming archivist/researcher into European expansion in East Africa - is also the son of Gilbert, father of Giles, and husband of Diana. On the last count, though, he has begun to fear that he is wearing cuckold's horns. His plan for addressing the crisis leads him to take his wife, son and ageing father to stay at the Cornish mansion of the smooth-talking gallery owner he believes to be his wife's lover. But this, at least, is a place where disputes may be brought to a head.First published in 1974, Cushing's Crusade was Tim Jeal's third novel, for which he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.'Mr Jeal is a writer very much out of the ordinary, trenchant, elegant, subtle.' Sunday Telegraph'A charming, highly enjoyable and most accomplished novel.' Nina Bawden, Telegraph'Extremely funny, perceptive and moving.' Guardian

Ten years after Dinah deserted Harry to marry a friend of his, Harry still loves her obsessively, though his image of her has ceased to relate to her independent reality. Unable to shake this fixation Harry resolves, for the sake of his sanity, to get Dinah back.'Somewhere Beyond Reproach is Tim Jeal's highly readable and often amusing second novel... The writing is sensitive and perceptive.' Daily Telegraph'Jeal is a forceful yet urbane writer who takes perception far beyond the familiar level of perception. His first person narrative, cold and simple in its short sentences, is cleverly combined, in form and style, with an ingenious detachment.' Glasgow Herald'Jeal shows considerable powers of cool and accurate observation. His wine is dry and light and has a bouquet.' Punch'An intricate and absorbing novel.' Evening News

For Love or Money was Tim Jeal's first novel, accepted for publication in 1966 while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. It is the story of temporary gentleman George, who lives as a kept man with Ruth, the older woman he stole from a wealthy peer, but whose relatively comfortable country life is threatened by his difficult relations with Ruth's two sons.'A first novel of genuine merit... Pointed and witty, with good dialogue and brisk backgrounds.' Evening Standard'A subtle five finger exercise... A beautifully complex and compassionate creation.' Francis King, Sunday Telegraph'Harshly uncompromising... The action screws together with an engineer's precision, but Tim Jeal's ability and insight give unity to the whole.' Sunday Times'Written in a style that is sophisticated and simple, acute and dogged... [Mr Jeal's] book really has no faults.' New Yorker

When one of corporate London's transient typists unexpectedly crosses Ralph Loman's path, her disruptive beauty ignites a brief blaze of excitement in his troubled heart. But Francine Snaith is ravenous for attention, driven by a thirst for conquest, and when Ralph tries politely to extricate himself he finds he is bound in chains of consequence from which it seems there is no escape.

Following the failure of the 1848 revolution a great many political refugees headed for England - the richly cosmopolitan hub of an Empire, and the commercial-industrial locus of the world. Among the German contingent of exiles were, famously, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. But many less luminous names, no less well-educated in their native Germany, also settled in England and made their way there, whether as teachers or tailors, journalists or musicians, polemicists or political organizers. Few of these exiles knew how long they would have to call England home: some became keen Anglophiles, while others remained resolutely wedded in spirit to 'the old country.' Rosemary Ashton's study, first published in 1986, charts the fortunes of this disparate group and illuminates Victorian England through their eyes, so making a fascinating account of a neglected area of Anglo-German relations.

What were the consequences for Germany, and the world, that William II was Kaiser at the onset of the 'Great War'? In The Kaiser and His Times (first published in 1964), Michael Balfour analyzes the social, constitutional, and economic forces at work in imperial Germany, and sets the complex and disputed character of the Kaiser, who occupied such a central position in the three decades before 1918, in the context of his family background and the history of Germany. '[Balfour] has borne in mind the Kaiser's own request to the head of his military Secretariat - 'Not dry reports only, please, but now and then a funny story.' The circumstances that allowed to Kaiser to live as if 'The greater part of his life... was illusion' would make comic reading if the results had not been so tragic...' Kirkus Review

On June 6 1944 - 'D-Day' - Allied troops landed in France, opening a way to eventual victory. In this provocative reappraisal of the Second World War, John Grigg suggests that the Allied invasion could have been launched successfully in the previous year, reducing considerably the scale of the war's human tragedy. 'By 1943, Grigg notes, we already had air supremacy in the ETO and more than enough trained troops to launch a cross-Channel invasion; besides, with the Wehrmacht still deep in Russia, German supply lines would have been stretched to the breaking point. Had the Western Allies liberated only France and Belgium in 1943, speculates Grigg, they could have negotiated with Stalin from a position of strength.' Kirkus Review 'A forceful, argumentative, disputatious book, intended to make people think over old prejudices and discard them.' Economist

'This enthralling autobiographical fragment by Stuart Hood, a World War II British intelligence officer, tells of his escape from a prisoner-of-war camp in Parma and his life on the run with Italian partisans in the Resistance.' New York Times'I wanted to do two things. Firstly, give a picture of peasant life. I felt indebted to my peasants who had sheltered me, and admiration for them. The other thing was to make sense of what had happened. I discovered new facts I hadn't understood at the time. This in itself raised the question of remembrance and how one shapes memory, its truth and gaps.' Stuart Hood, 2002'Combines the mesmeric readability of good modern fiction with a feeling of lived experience to which few novels can attain.' Listener'A remarkable, haunting book.' Raleigh Travelyan, Sunday Times

'In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . .'Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, internationally best-selling novelist Paul Auster now remembers the experience of his development from within, through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world, as well as through a selection of the revealing letters he sent to his first wife, acclaimed author Lydia Davis.An impressionistic portrait of a writer coming of age, Report from the Interior moves from Auster's baby's-eye view of the man in the moon to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life. Report from the Interior charts Auster's moral, political and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the post-war fifties and into the turbulent 1960s.Paul Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life - and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: the final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures.At once a story of the times and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.

Twenty years ago, British road cycling was in the doldrums: today it is at the top of the world, thanks to Bradley Wiggins's Tour de France win, Mark Cavendish's Road World title and the dominance of the British squad, Team Sky. Cycling has become that rare beast, a story of British sporting success built from the bottom up. As GB Elite Road Coach and Team Sky's Performance Manager, Rod Ellingworth is one of the chief architects behind that success. Here, for the first time, he tells the story of this amazing journey: the meteoric rise of both teams to the top of the road cycling world, and the four-year campaign that led to Mark Cavendish's historic Road World Championships title in 2011.With an introduction by Mark Cavendish.

These enchanting, haunting stories from Carnegie winner Lucy M. Boston have become modern classics, beautifully evoking all the magic and wonder of childhood. Now The Children of Green Knowe and River at Green Knowe are available in one edition.Children of Green KnoweTolly's great grandmother isn't a witch, but both she and her old house, Green Knowe, are full of a very special kind of magic. There are other children in the house - children who were happy there centuries before. Running around Green Knowe's moat, gardens and mysterious rooms, Tolly slowly discovers them, their toys and animals, and their wonderful stories . . . River at Green Knowe'What a lot of islands the river makes,' said Ida. 'We must go exploring and sail around them all.'And so begins a wonderful, magical summer. Ida, Oscar and Ping are staying with Ida's great-aunt at the ancient, river-encircled house of Green Knowe. They set out to chart the river in the canoe, and soon discover that it has some surprising and mysterious secrets.

Count Arthur Strong tells the story of his extraordinary journey from his humble early years as the only son of contortionist in wartime Doncaster to the dizzy heights and excesses of fame as one of the shining lights of popular entertainment. Count Arthur Strong is a show business legend, after-dinner speaker and a leading authority on Ancient Egypt, having been stationed there during his nation service. He has countless friends in the showbiz world. People like Barry Cryer, the white haired one with glasses off 'I'm Sorry I Haven't Got A Clue' and 'Jokers Wild'. This is his first volume, of what he believes may be a 6 volume collection, of his memoirs. He has a few select dates still available for anything (except window cleaning) and is represented, (if you can call it that) by Richard Daws at Komedia Entertainment. (Or if you want to go directly through me and pay cash, I can do that as well.) (In fact I prefer that.) Thank you.

In his first book with Faber, Hernandez tells the untold stories of these American comics legends' youth, and portrays the reality of life in a large family in suburban 1960s California. Told largely from the point of view of middle child Huey - who stages Captain America plays and treasures his older brother's comic book collection almost as much as his approval - Marble Season deftly follows these boys as they navigate their cultural and neighborhood norms. Set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics, and awash with pop-culture references - TV shows, comic books, super-heroes and music -Marble Season subtly details how their innocent, joyfully creative play changes as they grow older and encounter name-calling, abusive bullies, and the value judgments of others. A coming-of-age story both comic and moving, it will have timeless resonance for children and adults alike.