Books published by Vintage Publishing

A tender portrait of grief, fatherhood and a life going to pieces from the bestselling author.'Vivid and moving... It would be hard to find a better writer than Petterson' Irish TimesIn 1992 Arvid Jansen is thirty-eight, divorced and paralysed by grief. More than a year has passed since the tragic accident that took his parents and two of his brothers.Existence has become a question of holding on to a few firm things. Loud, smoky bars, whisky, records, company for the night and taxis home. Or driving his Mazda into the stunning, solitary landscape outside of Oslo, sleeping in the car when his bed is an impossible place to be.Adrift and inept, Arvid feels his life unravelling. Is there any redemption for a man in his situation?'Per Petterson writes about masculinity as well as anyone' Torrey Peters'A rare insight into male vulnerability' Evening Standard

A collection about motherhood at a time of continuous crisis - from one of Ireland's most important poets'Everyone should be reading her' OBSERVER'One of the most accomplished poets of her generation'GUARDIANThese poems emerge from the experience of being a single mother in Belfast, and against a background of seemingly continuous crisis. Political upheaval and anxiety, violence and death are all registered in these poems, which ask questions about where independence is balanced by our relationships with others, and where our inner lives meet the globally connected world. These are poems about cities - living, travelling and working in cities, getting sick and dying in cities - but also about retreating from all that: to her daughter at home, the budgie, cat and tortoise, or escaping to the park, the municipal pool, the Irish countryside, Newfoundland, or Paris, or into a Nina Simone song. This is a necessary book - a book very much of our time - with a consistent tone that is brave and bleak, but which also carries with it some much-needed humour, and a wealth of beautiful writing.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEA dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse, full of trial and sacrifice, The Perfect Nine is a glorious epic about the founding of Kenya's Gikuyu people and the ideals of beauty, courage and unity. 'One of the greatest writers of our time' Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieGikuyu and Mumbi settled on the peaceful and bounteous foot of Mount Kenya after fleeing war and hunger. When ninety-nine suitors arrive on their land, seeking to marry their famously beautiful daughters, called The Perfect Nine, the parents ask their daughters to choose for themselves, but to choose wisely. First the young women must embark on a treacherous quest with the suitors, to find a magical cure for their youngest sister, Warigia, who cannot walk. As they journey up the mountain, the number of suitors diminishes and the sisters put their sharp minds and bold hearts to the test, conquering fear, doubt, hunger and many menacing ogres, as they attempt to return home. But it is perhaps Warigia's unexpected adventure that will be most challenging of all.Blending folklore, mythology and allegory, Ngugi wa Thiong'o chronicles the adventures of Gikuyu and Mumbi, and how their brave daughters became the matriarchs of the Gikuyu clans, in stunning verse, with all the epic elements of danger, humour and suspense. 'A tremendous writer... it's hard to doubt the power of the written word when you hear the story of Ngugi wa Thiong'o' Guardian

Brought to you by Penguin.What came before the Big Bang, and what exists outside of the universe it created?Until recently, scientists could only guess at what lay past the edge of spacetime. But as pioneering theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton explains, today new scientific tools are giving us the ability to peer beyond the limits of our universe and test our theories about what is there. Her groundbreaking research suggests that we sit in a quantum landscape whose peaks and valleys hide a multitude of other universes, and whose topography holds the secret to the origins of existence itself. Recent evidence has revealed the signatures of one such sibling universe in our own night sky, confirming Mersini-Houghton's theoretical work and offering humbling proof that our universe is just one member of an unending cosmic family.A mind-expanding journey through the multiverse, Beyond the Big Bang will reshape our understanding of humanity's place in the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos.(c) Laura Mersini-Houghton 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

A thrilling and perplexing investigation of a true Victorian crime at Dublin railway station. Dublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. He has been savagely beaten, his head almost severed;

Good father or good assassin? Can he be both? From the internationally bestselling author of BULLET TRAIN: A seemingly ordinary family man tries to juggle his home life with his job as a hitman.Picture a mantis raising up its blades. It looks fearsome, but it's still just a tiny insect. The mantis actually thinks it can win. Even though it's tiny, it's still ready to fight to the death.Kabuto is an ordinary guy; stressed with work, hassled by his wife and disrespected by his son. No wonder he visits his doctor so often. Except 'the Doctor' is actually his handler, and Kabuto is a hired assassin. The 'prescriptions' the Doctor hands over are his unlucky targets. Because although Kabuto may seem like a small man at home, he's really good at killing people.But Kabuto is worn out with the business of murder. He is trying to break free from the Doctor's control. His wife wants more from him and his teenage son needs more attention. So he's trying to pay his way out of the Doctor's employment with a few last jobs. But the most lucrative jobs involve taking out other professional assassins and his final assignment puts both him and his family in danger.

Downtown Abbey meets Agatha Christie covered in snow in this utterly captivating murder mystery.__________________________________An invitation to die for. . . Christmas 1937. An assortment of guests, including journalist turned amateur sleuth Daphne King, have arrived at Maybridge Castle, deep in the Cumbrian countryside. Hector Hayton, once something of a fixture on the society circuit of London, has recently purchased the castle and transformed it into 'England's first and only bona fide haunted hotel'. Guests can enjoy a range of ghoulish activities, from séances with a local medium to tours of the forest bordering the castle, where newly-discovered graves suggest that it is the final resting place of countless women persecuted in the witch trials. During a game of murder-in-the-dark, however, one of the guests is killed, and it becomes clear that Maybridge Castle lives up to its haunted reputation.

A clear-sighted, intimate new poetry collection from the prizewinning author of Other People's Countries and Throw me to the WolvesIn Blood Feather, a book of doubling and displacement, we see time in a new way: the past, personal and collective, lingering as an ever-present ghost - while lost beyond recall.The first section, 'Squeeze the Day' - a series of deeply moving poems about the author's mother, displaced between languages - investigates her illness and death; how being bilingual is like having a double, a second self; how each self haunts the other. 'The Noises Things Make When They Leave' elegises today's post-industrial landscapes, their people and professions: sidelined by literature, bypassed by globalisation. The final sequence, 'After the Flood', links the book's themes, seeking a way of seeing things for the first time and the last time simultaneously. Exploring the gaps between languages and between our selves in language, Patrick McGuinness dreams of a new tense in which the world's losses are redeemed:'It's the anniversary of my mother's death,and it's my mother's birthday -the day she short-circuited the tenses,made the current flow both ways.'In his intimate, confiding voice, McGuinness shows how identity is layered, permeable, always in motion - how we are always actor and audience to ourselves.

Buon Natale -- A Merry Christmas -- made all the more joyful with these literary treats filled with ancient churches, trains whistling through the countryside, steaming tureens, plates piled high with pasta, High Mass, dashed hopes, golden crucifixes, flowing wine, shimmering gifts and plenty of style.In this collection, classic works by Boccaccio to Pirandello intertwine with more recent stories from writers like Anna Maria Ortese, Natalia Ginzburg and Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda to bring together the greatest festive tales from the land of enchantment: Italy. Bursting with family chaos, carols and yuletide cheer, An Italian Christmas showcases stories that put the passionate, fiery side of the festive period back into Christmas.

Following his bestselling biographies of some of our favourite birds - The Robin, The Wren, The Swallow and The Swan - author and naturalist Stephen Moss now turns his attention to a group of birds we rarely see, occasionally hear, yet are always on our minds: the owls.Owls are among the most mysterious birds in the world. Their hauntingly beautiful calls at dusk and nocturnal habits have long captured our collective imaginations - inspiring more superstitions, folktales and myths around the world than any other group of bird. The 'magnificent seven' most famous species of owl - the tawny, little, barn, long-eared, short-eared, snowy and eagle owl - each have vast ranges spanning multiple countries and continents where they have lived alongside people for thousands of years. Discover the secret lives they live between twilight and dawn, from the moment they first hatch, to their nightly hunts and how they raise the next generation.

A piercing short novel of thwarted love and true friendship from one of our greatest living writersMarianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne's telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that - in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella - she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can't envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.

Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the nude portraits she took of Clara throughout her childhood.At age eighteen, sick of her notoriety as 'the girl in the pictures', Clara fled New York City, settling and making her own family in small-town Maine. But years later, when Ruth reaches out from her deathbed, Clara suddenly finds herself drawn back to the past she thought she had escaped.From the beloved author of Signal Fires and Family History, Black & White is a moving love letter to those familial bonds that both bruise and make you in equal measure.

Rachel Jensen has it all: a husband she adores, fulfilling work in art restoration, a terrific teenage daughter and finally a new baby on the way. So when she worries about mysterious changes in her daughter Kate's behaviour, friends reassure her it's just normal teen angst.But then a terrifying accident involving Kate and her infant brother sets off a series of events that threaten to destroy everything Rachel has worked so hard to build.From the beloved author of Signal Fires and Black & White, Family History is a visceral, ferociously paced novel about one mothers nightmarish realisation that she cannot protect her own child.

An extraordinarily brave and moving memoir from one of the world's most famous transparency activists and trans women.In 2010, Chelsea Manning was working as an intelligence analyst for the US Army in Iraq. She disclosed 720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera. By far the largest leak in history, these documents revealed a huge number of diplomatic cables and footage of atrocities. She was sentenced to 35 years in military prison.The day after her conviction, Chelsea declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition. She was sent to a male prison, spent much of that time in appalling conditions in solitary confinement and attempted suicide multiple times. In 2017, after a lengthy legal challenge and an outpouring of support, President Obama commuted her sentence.README.txt is a story of personal revolt, resilience and survival. Chelsea details the challenges of her childhood and adolescence in Oklahoma and in her mother's native Wales. She writes revealingly and movingly about a period of homelessness in Chicago, living under 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' in the US Army, and the experience of coming to terms with her gender identity and undergoing hormone therapy in prison. We witness her Kafkaesque trial and heroic quest for release.This powerful, courageous and observant memoir sheds light on the big themes of today - identity, authenticity, technology, the authoritarian state - and will stand as one of the definitive testaments of our digital, information-driven age.'Chelsea Manning is the biggest hero that ever lived' Vivienne Westwood'Searing ... uplifting ... redemptive' The New York Times'Electrifying ... an insider confessional turned inside out for the 21st century' Washington Post