Books published by Vintage Publishing

Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, an Italian general is despatched to Albania to recover his country's dead. Once there he meets a German general who is engaged upon an identical mission, and their conversations brings out into the open the extent of their horror and guilt, newly exacerbated by their present task.

THE BOOK: One of Thomas Mann's most delightful stories, Royal Highness is richly resonant with may of his themes and symbols. His careful depiction of a decaying, stratified society rejuvenated by modern forces illustrates in fable what he regarded as a universal truth - that ripeness and death are a necessary condition of rebirth.

He was, of course, a man better known for burning books than collecting them and yet by the time he died, aged 56, Adolf Hitler owned an estimated 16,000 volumes - the works of historians, philosophers, poets, playwrights and novelists. This title provides a view of Hitler's evolution and offers insights into his emotional and intellectual world.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MATTHEW PEARLEdgar Allan Poe invented detective fiction with these three mesmerising stories of a young eccentric named C.

In 1928 two extraordinary Englishmen competed in an unprecedented event - a transcontinental road race across America that required them to run an average of 40 miles for 80 consecutive days.

This anthology is shaped not by literary chronology but by the timeless human drama it records: its five 'acts' move from speculation and COUP DE FOUDRE through the troubled endurings of love - its consummations, dangers, joys, perversions and abdications - to loneliness and memory.

Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang won't be defeated. Determined to live a modern life, Fenfang works as a cleaner in the Young Pioneer's movie theatre, falls in love with unsuitable men and keeps her kitchen cupboard stocked with UFO instant noodles.

TAYLORThese three brilliant novels span Henry Green's career as a novelist and display his unique talents as a writer. In Blindness, Green's first novel, a young man is blinded in a senseless accident but thereafter discovers new imaginative powers.

When the war breaks out, Rose, a well-to-do widower with a young son, Christopher, volunteers for the Auxiliary Fire Service in London, and is trained under a professional fire officer, Pye.

In the bitter cold of Danish Jutland, where the sea freezes over and the Nazis have yet to invade, a young girl dreams of one day going on a great journey to Siberia, while her beloved brother Jesper yearns for the warmer climes of Morocco.

Centres around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities.

Two Cambridge academics, the historians Nick and Sarah Mallinson, take a sabbatical with their three small and lively girls in a remote Languedoc farmhouse. But the farmhouse contains its own histories, far darker and murkier than the Mallinsons are used to dealing with.

Heralded as a genius, the forerunner of modern fantasy and credited with the invention of the psychological drama, science fiction and the detective story , Edgar Allan Poe had a life as dramatic and tragic as his art.

For four months and five hundred miles the author walked the mountains of Lebanon, following tracks and rivers. His journey was not only a survey of a remarkable country, but a quest for the gods and divinities who held the secrets of death and rebirth in the land's ancient cults. This title tells his story.

First published on the anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new writings - a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace and humanity's tendency towards violence.

On the outskirts of Paris, two men have been found with their throats cut. It is assumed that this is a drug-related incident of the kind so often uncovered in that area of town. But Adamsberg is convinced that there is more to it. Anxious to keep control of the case, he must call in a favor from the pathologist Ariane Lagarde.

When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands.

Winner of the Grand Prix 2009 de la Critique Bande Dessinee. Tamara Drewe has transformed herself.

WINNER OF THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR SIDETRACKEDHerbert Molin, a retired police officer, is living alone in a remote cottage in the vast forests of northern Sweden. He has no close friends, no close neighbours, and by the time his body is eventually found, Molin is almost unrecognisable.

This ebullient, gallivanting novel encapsulates the world vision of the Czech Republic's best-loved author in one tumbling, breathtaking sentence. Saints and sinners, emperors and embezzlers, barmaids and balalaikas all play their part in the bawdy reminiscences of Hrabal's cobbler as he charms an audience of young beauties.

The mysterious death of a young woman on an Australian farm reveals a bittersweet story of doomed wartime romance amidst a family crisis. Alan Duncan returns to his family home in Australia after the war and several years of study in England.

When Peter Moran picks up a man on the roadside while driving through a bitter rainy night on the South Downs, he embarks upon an adventure that will lead him into treasonous international plots, flying adventures and tests of both his bravery and his loyalty.

Nevil Shute was a power and a pioneer in the world of flying long before he began to write the stories that made him a bestselling novelist. This autobiography charts Shute's path from childhood to his career as a gifted aeronautical engineer working at the forefront of the technological experimentation of the 1920s and 30s.

For a group of four New York friends, the past ten years have been defined by marriage and motherhood. Illicit affairs, money problems, issues with children and husbands all rear their heads, and the friends wonder if it's time for a change...

Bart Jones was eyewitness to Chavez' rise to power, and describes his life in extraordinary detail, creating a comprehensive portrait of a man who has affected the most radical transformation of Venezuela for half a century, and dramatically affected the political debate throughout Latin America.

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence.

Three novellas - one of a grandmother, one of an old miser, and one of a childless couple - Narayan returns the reader to a world of small-town India, with its wry humour, its small betrayals, and its moments of great poignancy.

Shirley Hughes is one of the best-loved and most innovative creators of books for young children. A young man, in his best bow-tie and boater, meets a fashionably dressed - and rather bird-like - young lady.

From working the land in Narromine to winning cricket's World Cup three times, Glenn McGrath has always faced life with fierce determination and an unerring will to succeed, despite the odds.

Death Comes for Peter Pan is a turbulent and unpredictable love story - the story of a young woman's fight for her husband's dignity and a powerful indictment of the politics that rule medicine today.