Books published by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

The first American release of a 1974 British novel offering a strangely impressionistic, and not altogether satisfying, coming-of-age love story. Helen Wykham is the ugly duckling teenage daughter of the glamorous and outrageous Monica, who's on the lookout for her next husband. While searching, Monica sends her two daughters, Helen and the older, sophisticated Stephanie, to a country house party in their native Ireland. An assemblage of bright, beautiful people and eccentric hosts makes for odd anecdotal fun, but Helen is certain she'll think only of her secret love, a fellow schoolgirl called Lyn who ran away with a man. Then, unexpectedly, she falls in love with the man her sister is having a fling with. Dominic, the centerpiece of the story, is a shadowy, Gatsby-like character, all glamour and mystery and unbearable magnetism - he is related to most of the house guests and seems to have slept with many of them. He is also dying of some unnamed illness. But Dominic is not just dying: He's also nursing a broken heart, having been rejected by a certain schoolgirl, the one and same Lyn. Narrated by an older Helen to her current lover, Wykham (both character and author) has an engaging, self-deprecating style, though it doesn't quite make up for the fact that little goes on, and little known about all the generally charmingly vague and superficial guests. When Helen discovers that it was Dominic who stole Lyn away from her, she immediately declares him to be her mortal enemy, though very soon afterward she falls in love with his cousin, his virtual female twin (sharing even the same name), and all is resolved. With the feel of a prose-poem, the novel shimmers, though ultimately seeming more surface than substance. (Kirkus Reviews)

Rupert is an honored American poet; Gemma a retired architect. They live happily and comfortably in a Greenwich Village apartment; the setting, for over thirty years, of their married life. Each with a previous marriage behind them - which left her with two daughters and him with the promise of greatness - they are now facing the challenge of old age together. Both, in their own way, defy the inevitability of death, and yet both are busy preparing for it. The alternating entries of their private journals, which make up the body of Calisher's text, tell a story of familiarity and the fear of loss, love and uncertainty of the future, meanings and habits. With rare verve and panache, Hortense Calisher has confronted a difficult and often neglected subject - and has triumphed magnificently.

A dramatic and original biography of a married couple, each violated in different ways but bound together by their suffering, their mutual understanding and love, and a desperate struggle for renewal. These twin biographies are brought to life by an imaginary exchange of letters in which, nevertheless, the events described are completely factual. Dita was an inmate of Auschwitz as a young girl - she and her father were the only surviving members of her Czech-Hungarian family. Ronald, a Londoner, was the victim of a dangerous and unnecessary prefrontal leucotomy, against his will, in the knife-happy days when this operation was common and left a pathetic trail of zombies vegetating in the asylums. To say simply that Ronald 'survived', to become a composer and scholar of international repute, is to gloss over the long and painful path of recovery he describes. Dita trod a parallel path, although the trauma each suffered was of a different nature. Auschwitz does not ever relinquish its victims: it remained a perpetual assassin in the wings, and even Dita's death from cancer, nearly forty years later, was perhaps its final victory. This imaginary correspondence is remarkable for the vivid picture it paints of a living death inside Auschwitz as well as the fearful existence of a patient inside a mental hospital in mid-century Britain. Above all, the intimate letters reveal a deep commitment and compassion between two people, a love-story intertwined with the horrific historical events of our time.

A book about the music the hurricane couldn't destroy.

Briefings is a new series of short books to explain and clarify complex contemporary subjects, written for non-specialists by experts in their fields. Themes and topics covered will include Feminism, Education, Cosmology, Medical Ethics, Structuralism, Quantum Physics and Comparative Religion among others. Before the Beginning is a radical attempt to explain and redefine the origins and purpose of creation. Professor Ellis deals clearly and authoritatively with new scientific theories explaining how things began and elucidates the laws which control the operation of the universe. In addition he describes the complex mechanism by which the laws of physics appear to govern and facilitate, as well as to sustain human life. His conclusions about the very meaning of life are often unexpected, but the process by which he reaches them is illuminating and scientifically sound, as would be expected from one of the world's foremost cosmologists.

In his remand cell, a small-time petty criminal surrenders himself to the sadistic fantasties of hatred, rage and despair that are trapped inside him. This terrifying, claustrophobic descent into the isolated mind of a man locked away from society becomes, in Selby's compassionate literary tour de force, a challeging vision of a world deprived of love. The blistering follow-up to Selby's best-selling cult classic Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Room still has the power to provoke, to chill and to disturb

Asher takes us inside the warped and perverted mind of an eighteen year-old school boy, obsessed with sex, drugs, power and lies, in a hard-hitting expose of today's corrupt culture: selfish, anguished, superficial, confused about morality and evoking nastiness and despair.

In an intentionally light-hearted style, Fritz Spiegl has researched the lives and loves of the great composers through the ages. In an alphabetically arranged panorama of biographical portraits, he humorously uncovers hitherto unknown aspects of the composers' personalities that are, at best, discreetly ignored by serious musical analysts or, at worst, have never made the history books at all. He also includes some of the female composers, such as Augusta Holmes and Maria Szymanowska, who are only just becoming appreciated for their contributions to music. Fritz Spiegl's treatment and disclosures, however, are not just idle gossip. His concise use of biographical details gives a clear picture of each composer's musical career, revealing how his emotional life came to influence his music and, in some cases, vice versa. This volume alo features a special section which contains Spiegl's extensive researches into some of the pets of the great composers.