Books published by Random House

A NEW TRANSLATION BY ADAM THORPE A great novel that is also an inexhaustible pleasure to read' GuardianEmma Bovary is an avid reader of sentimental novels; brought up on a Normandy farm and convent-educated, she longs for romance. At first, Emma pins her hopes on marriage, but life with her well-meaning husband in the provinces leaves her bored and dissatisfied. She seeks escape through extravagant spending sprees and, eventually, adultery. As Emma pursues her impossible reverie she seals her own ruin. Madame Bovary is one of the greatest, most beguiling novels ever written. Thorpe's new translation is stunning and heartily recommendedScotsman Thorpe's new translation is to die for Independent [Thorpe s] hard work has yielded beauty. The rhythms are perfectly judged, unexpected enough to make the reader attend to every word Robert Chandler, TLS

When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H.M. Stanley's famous expedition - but travelling alone.Despite warnings that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vessels including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a campaigning pygmy, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat, but the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Powerfully atmospheric, unguessably twisty I devoured it LOUISE CANDLISH, bestselling author of OUR HOUSEThe Death of Mrs Westaway is Ruth Ware's best: a dark and dramatic thriller, part murder mystery, part family drama, altogether riveting' A. J. FINN, bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW'If you re an Agatha Christie fan then you ll love this eerie new offering from mega-author Ruth Ware Dark, unsettling and brilliant.' HEAT'[An] explosive claustrophobic family drama laced with a touch of du Maurier.' WOMAN & HOME When Harriet Westaway receives an unexpected letter telling her she s inherited a substantial bequest from her Cornish grandmother, it seems like the answer to her prayers. There's just one problem Hal's real grandparents died more than twenty years ago. Hal desperately needs the cash and makes a choice that will change her life for ever. She knows that her skills as a seaside fortune teller could help her con her way to getting the money. But once Hal embarks on her deception, there is no going back. She must keep going or risk losing everything, even her life The brand new psychological thriller from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10.

'The book that redefined travel writing' Guardian Bruce Chatwin sets off on a journey through South America in this wistful classic travel book With its unique, roving structure and beautiful descriptions, In Patagonia offers an original take on the age-old adventure tale. Bruce Chatwin s journey to a remote country in search of a strange beast brings along with it a cast of fascinating characters. Their stories delay him on the road, but will have you tearing through to the book s end. It is hard to pin down what makes In Patagonia so unique, but, in the end, it is Chatwin s brilliant personality that makes it what it is His form of travel was not about getting from A to B. It was about internal landscapes Sunday Times

Read the greatest rediscovered classic of recent years 'A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life' Ian McEwan William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death, his colleagues remember him rarely.Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value - of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history - and in doing so reclaims the significance of an individual life. 'A brilliant, beautiful, inexorably sad, wise and elegant novel' Nick Hornby A terrific novel of echoing sadness Julian Barnes

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself - Westerners cannot pronounce her name) arrives in London to spend a year learning English. Struggling to find her way in the city, and through the puzzles of tense, verb and adverb; she falls for an older Englishman and begins to realise that the landscape of love is an even trickier terrain...Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists

A journey along the greatest land route on earth, from the master of travel writing Colin ThubronOn buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. Covering over 7000 miles in eight months Thubron recounts extraordinary adventures - a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell during the SARS epidemic, undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic in Iran - in inimitable prose. Shadow of the Silk Road is about Asia today; a magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment.'It is hard to think of a better travel book written this century' Times

From the author of the Man Booker longlisted The Underground RailroadA pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. The worst of the plague is now past, and Manhattan is slowly being resettled. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street aka Zone One and teams of civilian volunteers are clearing out the remaining infected stragglers . Mark Spitz is a member of one of these taskforces and over three surreal days he undertakes the mundane mission of malfunctioning zombie removal, the rigours of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and attempting to come to terms with a fallen world. But then things start to go terribly wrong

WITH INTROUCTIONS BY EAVAN BOLAND AND MAUD ELLMANThe serene and maternal Mrs Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr Ramsay, together with their children and assorted guests, are holidaying on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life. One of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century, To the Lighthouse is often cited as Virginia Woolf's most popular novel.The Vintage Classics Virginia Woolf series has been curated by Jeanette Winterson, and the texts used are based on the original Hogarth Press editions published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

VIVIDLY EVOKING IRELAND AND LIVERPOOL, RAINBOW'S END IS A WARM AND ENGROSSING SAGA FROM A RISING STAR. Tracing the stories of two quite diffrent girls: Ellen Docherty, in Liverpool, bringing up her younger sister and brother single-handedly, and Maggie McVeigh, in the Dublin tenements, finding a better life working for the Nolan family, and falling in love with Liam, the eldest son, RAINBOW'S END follows two girls on their struggle for happiness. But the First World War changes everything -and unearths a long-buried link between the families.

The year is 1925, and in Liverpool, Rose Ryder worships her father, a tram-driver. She nurses a secret dream of driving trams too, even though it's not considered a job for women. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Colm O'Neill is happily settled - until his father gets a job working on the Liverptool-Birkenhead tunnel, and takes Colm across the water with him. When tragedy strikes and her beloved father is killed, Rose and her mother scrape a living by turning their home into a boarding house. And it is their boarding house which Colm and his father come to when they arrive in Liverpool...