Books published by Vintage Publishing

'Ring magic is different from the magic of the theatre, because the curtain never comes down - because the blood in the ring is real blood, and the broken noses and the broken hearts are real, and sometimes they are broken forever.

Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore, he was smitten, and in the heat of World War II fervour, they marry in haste.

**Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature**The characters who populate an Alice Munro story live and breathe.

The story of Perkin Warbeck is one of the most compelling mysteries of English history. Officially, however, he was proclaimed to be Perkin Warbeck, the son of a Flemish boatman. In doing so she delves into the secret corners of European history and produces a portrait of the late fifteenth century that is breathtaking in its detail.

Scientists have begun to apply insights from the theoretical study of networks to understand forms as superficially different as social networks and electrical networks, computer networks and economic networks, and to show how common principles underlie them all. Duncan J.

At the centre of The Navigator of New York is the rivalry between Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to be the first American to reach the North Pole. His adventure brings him celebrity, acclaim from New York 'society', real love, and finally the truth about the bitter feud between two strange, driven men.

Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful is set in the 1950s, the time of the Passive Resistance campaign, the Sophiatown removals, the emergence of the South African Liberal Party and the early stages of the Nationalist government in power.

Set in 1968 in the Parisian suburbs, No Telling is narrated by twelve-year-old Gilles as he approaches his Solemn Communion, puberty, and some sense of the chaos around him.

Birt teaches in the state institution for girls run by two authoritarian spinsters, the inseparable Misses Edge and Baker. One sunny summer's morning, the morning of the Founders' Day Ball, as Mr Rock goes up to the school to fetch his pig-swill for Daisy, it is discovered that two of the girls have gone missing in the night.

A collection of 29 pieces on books, writing, photography, and the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. With literary subjects ranging from Defoe through Rilke and Kafka to the giants of the 20th century, those who admire Coetzee as a novelist can also read his literary criticism.

A House in Corfu is the story of one of the most beautiful places on earth, still astonishingly unspoilt, on the west coast of Corfu. Full of colour and contrast, A House in Corfu shows the huge changes in island life since the time of the building of the house, and celebrates, equally, the joy of belonging to a timeless world;

Steve Earle is widely regarded as one of the finest narrative songwriters in the world. These stories, peopled with addicts, hitchhikers, singers, Vietnam vets and drug smugglers, reflect the many facets of the man and the hard-fought struggles, defeats and eventual triumphs he has experienced in a career spanning three decades.

On ritual occasions Plato, the orator, summons the citizens of London to impart the ancient history of their city, dwelling particularly on the unhappy era of Mouldwarp (AD 1500-2300).

The last remaining tenant in a condemned New York tenement, Harry Lesser struggles against rising panic and escalating odds to complete the novel he started ten years earlier.

The constants of nature are the numbers that define the essence of the Universe. For the first time astronomical observations are suggesting that some of the constants of Nature were different when the Universe was younger.

To enter the world of Ben Okri's stories is to surrender to a new reality. In rich, lyrical, almost hallucinatory prose Ben Okri guides us through the fabulous and the mundane, the serene and the randomly violent. Written with the lucid clarity and logic of dream, Stars of the New Curfew is a book of visionary imagination.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARECakes and Ale is both a wickedly satirical novel about contemporary literary poseurs and a skilfully crafted study of freedom.

Umberto Eco undertakes a series of idiosyncratic and typically brilliant explorations, starting from the perceived data of common sense, from which flow an abundance of 'stories' or fables, often with animals as protagonists, to expound a clear critique of Kant, Heidegger and Peirce.

Fusing invention and reality, magic realism and earthy humour, Lochner's adventures in the valley centre around the journey he undertakes to discover the truth about the elusive and erotic figure of Emma, one of Brink's most remarkable creations.

A carefully prepared plan is essential to the success of any business. This guide provides a planning framework and shows you how to complete it for your own business in 100 short, easy-to-follow steps.

Looks at the way in which we, as human beings, put our bodies through a series of potentially harmful positions as we go about our daily lives, not to mention injuries through sex. This guide offers advice on diet, exercise, posture and relaxation. It includes exercises that can be performed safely and easily at home to treat strains and injuries.

Dulce Chacon's book has had an immense success in Spain, no doubt because the novelist speaks with a just and powerful voice, and because she has allowed women - the most anonymous, the most suppressed, the most silenced - to speak out" Le MondeIt is 1939.

Drawing on examples ranging from ancient Greece to Tony Blair's Britain, this title addresses 20 of questions that have asked over the centuries about the course of human events. It takes ride over continents and across centuries in search of answers that are sometimes surprising, often controversial, and of great relevance to how we live today.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for FictionCaryl Phillips' ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African diaspora.

Hank Williams is not just one of America's greatest songwriters but also one of the most enigmatic - a raw poet from the rolling pine woods of south Alabama whose anguished lyrics were celebrated from the clamorous roadhouses of the Deep South all the way to Carnegie Hall.

Shadbolt, Holden.Holden's Performance is the sprawling life story of Holden Shadbold: a hilarious all-Australian trajectory from car maniac to cinema bouncer to Prime Ministerial bodyguard. Guileless and matter of fact, Holden is fated to follow the flamboyant people around him- ex-Corporal McBee, who zealously woos Holden's mother;

This rich selection - made by the author - exhibits those qualities in poem after poem, reflecting, moreover, an exciting experimentation with rhythm and language and a movement toward an embrace beyond the personal.

Kennedy's absorbing, moving and gently political first novel dissects the intricate difficulties of human relationships, from Margaret's passionate attachment to her father and her more problematic involvement with Colin, her lover, to the wider social relations between pupil and teacher, employer and employee, individual and state.

This is the second volume of Vonnegut's autobiographical writings - a collage of his own life story, snipped up and stuck down alongside his views on everything from suicidal depression to the future of the planet and Andrew Lloyd Webber. this rare glimpse of Vonnegut's soul is a dagger to the heart of Western complacency.

This was the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy on ends and means - the other two are THE GLADIATORS and DARKNESS AT NOON - and the first he wrote in English. The central theme is the conflict between morality and expediency, and in this novel Koestler worked it out in terms of individual psychology.