Books published by Faber & Faber

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Earth has not anything to show more fair:Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty . . .-- Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,September 3, 1802

Sylvia Plath is one of the defining voices in twentieth-century poetry. This classic selection of her work, made by her former husband Ted Hughes, provides the perfect introduction to this most influential of poets. The poems are taken from Sylvia Plath's four collections Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees, and includes many of her most-celebrated works, such as 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus' and 'Wuthering Heights'.

No other jazz musician has proved so inspirational and so fascinating as Coltrane. Ben Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, has written the first book to do justice to this great and controversial music pioneer. As well as an elegant narrative of Coltrane's life Ratliff does something incredibly valuable - he writes about the saxophonist's unique sound.

Johann Joachim Quantz's On Playing the Flute has long been recognized as one of the primary sources of information about eighteenth-century performance practice. In spite of its title, it is not simply a tutor for the flute, but a fully-fledged programme for training musicians of all types, with detailed information on intonation, ornamentation, dynamics, the 'duties' of the various accompanying performers, including the leader of the orchestra, and the principal forms and styles (French, Italian and German) of the time. Although Quantz is most often identified as the teacher of Frederick the Great, his musical roots were in Dresden, the most brilliant musical establishment in Germany; and his travels and studies in Italy, France and England gave him direct experience of most phases of European musical life in the 1720s and 30s. This reissue of the second edition provides a wonderfully complete and detailed picture of musical taste and performance practice in the 18th century, and includes a new introduction by Professor Reilly, drawing attention to recent research on Quantz. Whether you want to learn to play the flute and be taught by the teacher of Frederick the Great, or just to gain a first-hand insight into the history of classical music, On Playing the Fluteis an essential and entertaining read.

This volume uniquely combines a lively biography of one of the best-loved composers of the nineteenth century with a detailed chronological guide to much of his oeuvre, from the most popular - Swan Lake or the 1812 Overture - to the lesser known pieces. David Brown enthusiastically and sensitively guides the reader through Tchaikovsky's music in the context of his life. His writing on the music is accessible and informative, both for the professional musician and the keen amateur listener. The biographical writing includes fascinating quotations from the composer's letters, and those of his friends; the Tchaikovsky that emerges is, despite his periodic struggle with depression, a man with a positive attitude to life, and a kind and supportive friend to many around him. This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Tchaikovsky, his music, or the culture of the time.'One of the finest one-volume biographies to have appeared in recent years, written with such insight that it feels as though one is on a hot-line to the composer himself . . . by the end I felt I knew Tchaikovsky so much better. A classic.' Classic FM Magazine'I can't imagine a more intelligently sympathetic treatment of the man and his music.' BBC Music Magazine

This edition of Herzog on Herzog presents a completely new set of interviews in which Werner Herzog discusses his career from its very beginnings to his most recent productions.Herzog was once hailed by Francois Truffaut as the most important director alive. Famous for his frequentcollaborations with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski - including the epics, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and the terrifying Nosferatu - and more recently with documentaries such as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, Herzog has built a body of work that is one of the most vital in post-war German cinema.

Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters are addressed, with just two exceptions, to Sylvia Plath, the American poet to whom he was married. They were written over a period of more than twenty-five years, the first a few years after her suicide in 1963, and represent Ted Hughes's only account of his relationship with Plath and of the psychological drama that led both to the writing of her greatest poems and to her death. The book became an instant bestseller on its publication in 1998 and won the Forward Prize for Poetry in the same year. 'To read [Birthday Letters] is to experience the psychic equivalent of "e;the bends"e;. It takes you down to levels of pressure where the undertruths of sadness and endurance leave you gasping.' Seamus Heaney 'Even if it were possible to set aside its biographical value . . . its linguistic, technical and imaginative feats would guarantee its future. Hughes is one of the most important poets of the century and this is his greatest book.' Andrew Motion

In the eighteenth century, the palace's most elegant assembly room was in fact a bloody battlefield. This was a world of skulduggery, politicking, wigs and beauty-spots, where fans whistled open like flick-knives.Ambitious and talented people flocked to court of George II and Queen Caroline in search of power and prestige, but Kensington Palace was also a gilded cage. Successful courtiers needed level heads and cold hearts; their secrets were never safe. Among them, a Vice Chamberlain with many vices, a Maid of Honour with a secret marriage, a pushy painter, an alcoholic equerry, a Wild Boy, a penniless poet, a dwarf comedian, two mysterious turbaned Turks and any number of discarded royal mistresses.An eye-opening portrait of a group of royal servants, Courtiers also throws new light on the dramatic life of George II and Queen Caroline at Kensington Palace.

How do we move, think and remember? Why do we get ill, age and die? Distinguished biologist Lewis Wolpert explains how cells provide the answers to the fundamental questions about our lives.Cells are the basis of all life in the universe. Our bodies are made up of billions of them: an incredibly complex society that governs everything, from movement to memory and imagination. When we age, it is because our cells slow down; when we get ill, it is because our cells mutate or stop working.In How We Live and Why We Die, Wolpert provides a clear explanation of the science that underpins our lives. He explains how our bodies function and how we derive from a single cell - the egg. He examines the science behind the topics that are much discussed but rarely understood - stem-cell research, cloning, DNA - and explains how all life evolved from just one cell. Lively and passionate, How We Live and Why We Die is an accessible guide to understanding the human body and, essentially, life itself.

'Vlautin is nothing less than the Dylan of the dislocated.' Independent on SundayAt twenty-two, Allison Johnson is a lost young woman in need of a new start. Down among the lowlifes in Las Vegas, clinging to drink and to Jimmy, the abusive boyfriend whose child she is expecting, she has hit rock bottom. So when the opportunity arises to escape, Allison knows she must take it. She reaches Reno with just a few dollars and her ever-present best friend - Paul Newman. And as she struggles to start a better life it is imaginary conversations with the movie star's greatest characters and real acts of kindness from people she barely knows that might just rescue her from the difficult world she has found herself in.'Vlautin has written the American novel I've been hoping to find.' George Pelecanos'A compassionate look at everyday, ordinary people struggling to make a new life for themselves in America.' Herald

Tim Burton is one of the great modern-day visionaries of cinema, a director who has fabricated his own deliciously nightmarish universe in movies as extraordinary as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks! and The Nightmare before Christmas - not to mention his twisted takes on the tales of Batman, Sleepy Hollow and Planet of the Apes. Following the release of his re-imagining of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with long-time comrade Johnny Depp (who also provides a new foreword here), this updated and fully illustrated new edition of the definitive Burton interview book casts light on Burton's Burbank childhood, his early work at Disney, the recurrent themes and stunning designs of his movies, and the creative obsessions that fuel them.

Set in the mid-1970s in India, A Fine Balance tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a 'State of Internal Emergency'. Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances - and their fates - become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen.Written with compassion, humour and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured and powerful novel by one of the most gifted writers of our time.'A masterpiece of illumination and grace. Like all great fiction, it transforms our understanding of life.' Guardian

Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered. Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team. Dalgliesh is uncertain about his future with Emma Lavenham, the woman he loves, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin has her own emotional problems and the ambitious Anglo-Indian Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is worried about working under Kate. Hardly have the team begun to unravel the complicated motives of the suspects that there is a second brutal killing and the whole investigation is jeopardised when Dalgliesh is faced with a danger more insidious and as potentially fatal as murder.

From P.D. James, one of the masters of British crime fiction, comes the seventh Adam Dalgliesh novel, set against the bleak fens of East Anglia. Death of An Expert Witness is a classic work of detective fiction packed with forensic detail, intrigue and suspense. When a young girl is found murdered in a field, the scientific examination of the exhibits is just a routine job for the staff of Hoggatt's forensic science laboratory. But nothing could have prepared them for the brutal death of one of their own. When the senior biologist is found dead in his laboratory Commander Dalgliesh is called to the bleak fens of East Anglia, where the murderer is lying in wait to strike again. With a wealth of potential suspects and cautious forensic scientists quick to pass on the blame, Dalgliesh becomes embroiled in the complicated passions that lie hidden beneath the calm surface of the laboratory. From PD James, the bestselling author of Death Comes To Pemberley, Children of Men and Death in Holy Orders, comes an atmospheric and thrilling work of detective fiction set in a forensic laboratory on the bleak fens of East Anglia. This novel was adapted into an ITV television series in 1983 and starred Roy Marsden, Geoffrey Palmer and Ray Brooks.

'I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.' Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall on 9/11, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts another hidden story, this time of his own marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death.Passionate and shocking, political and personal: Man in the Dark is a novel that reflects the consequences of 9/11, that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

348 393 9028: MEDUSA. After the heated pool, the air was distinctly cool, even down here in the sheltered terraces above lake Lugano. He keyed in the number, then turned to face the hillside behind the villa. The land rose precipitously, the contours marked by the looping line of Via Totone and its accompanying homes and gardens. There was no one in sight.When a group of Austrian cavers in the Italian Alps come across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental - until the still unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defence Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. The whole affair has the whiff of political intrigue.The search for the truth leads Zen back into the murky history of post-war Italy and obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone thought was as dead and buried as the victim.If you enjoyed the Inspector Zen Mystery series you may also like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, another crime novel by Michael Dibdin.

This is the complete collection of stories from one of the most original and powerful American writers of the twentieth century. Including A Good Man is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge, this collection also contains several stories only available in this volume.

Nominated for seven Oscars and winner of the BAFTA award, this triplet of masterfully interwoven crime stories is witty, gritty and shamelessly violent, displaying Tarantino's visceral approach to character and plot.

This selection made by E.E. Cummings himself from eleven books of poems constitutes a comprehensive introduction to his work.

Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake.

With films such as "The Brood" and "Videodrome", David Cronenberg established himself as Canada's most provocative director. This title charts his development from maker of inexpensive exploitation cinema to internationally renowned director of million-dollar movies, and reveals the concerns and obsessions which continue to dominate his work.

In the spring of 1976, the film-maker, Francis Ford Coppola, and his family left California for the Philippines, where the film "Apocalypse Now" was to be filmed. In this book Coppola's wife records the events of a period which stretched from months into years.

Ricky Gervais has spent a lifetime exploring the finer details of the world of the Flanimals.

The Philokalia is a collection of texts on prayer and the spiritual life, written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition.

'This is a book to be read slowly and lovingly, for it is full of grand passages and haunting phrases from those ancient sages who have left us some of the profoundest reflections ever made upon the nature of man.' F. Yeats-Brown in the Listener

Fundamentals of Musical Composition represents the culmination of more than forty years in Schoenberg's life devoted to the teaching of musical principles to students and composers in Europe and America.

This autobiographical novel is one of the last things written by Kazantzakis before he died in 1957. It paints a vivid picture of his childhood in Crete, and then steadily grows into a spiritual quest that takes him to Italy, Jerusalem, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Russia.

A celebrated actress who has died in mysterious and shocking circumstances leaves behind an unconventional extended family that includes an older sister, a woman in her twenties through whose eyes the story unfolds;

From Pulitzer Prize-winning Sylvia Plath, this is the perfect bedtime read, written for her own children, exquisitely illustrated by Cindy Wume in picture book form for the first time. A Tank Bed's got cranksAnd wheels and cogsAnd levers to pullIf you're stuck in bogs. Or a Jet-Propelled Bed For visiting Mars With mosquito nets For the shooting stars. Beds come in all shapes and sizes, and need not be boring beds at all .... There are submarine beds, for nosing through water like a sardine, beds for fishing, and jet propelled beds that take you all the way to the stars. The perfect bedtime read, playful and comforting, the poem demonstrates Plath's eye for exquisite imagery and arresting language and is exquisitely illustrated in full colour throughout.